IX. thing, that hath blessedness in it. The very heathens, saith SERM. St. Austin, had a great design upon one treasure that they found they had lost, used all means they could think would contribute toward the recovery of it; and in that quest went at last, saith he, and gave their souls to the devil, to get purity for those souls. It were then but reason that you would give your souls unto God to purchase it, that you would set a turning, a purifying, when the same compendium renders you pure and blest together, when the being happier than you were before, is all that you pay to be so for ever. I have tired you with preaching that, that would have been more seasonable to have prayed for you, that God having, as on this day, "raised up His Son Jesus," will vouchsafe to send Him into every of our hearts, to bless us, to bless this accursed, miserable kingdom, this shaking, palsy Church, this broken state, this unhappy nation, this every poor sinner soul, by "turning" all, and "every one from his iniquities," by giving us all that only matter of our peace and serenity here, and pledge of our eternal felicity hereafter; which God of His infinite mercy grant us all, for His Son Jesus' sake, whom He hath thus raised. To whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be ascribed, as our only tribute, the honour, &c. [S. August. de Civ. Dei, lib. x. c. 10. Op., tom. vii. p. 247, C.] SERMON X. PREPARED AT CARISBROOK CASTLE, BUT NOT PREACHED. GOD'S COMPLAINT AGAINST REVOLTERS. SERM. Why should you ISAIAH i. 5. be stricken any more? you will revolt more and more. Ir is a heavy complaint of God's, and though expressed without much noise, yet in a deep melting hearty passion, not only in the verse next before my text, with heaven and earth called to be witnesses of the complaint, but with a little varying of the expression, every where else throughout the Prophets, that "Israel doth not know, God's people doth not consider." All the arts of discipline and pedagogy had been used to teach them knowledge and consideration, i. e., to bring them to a sight and sense of their estate; lectures, warnings, chidings, blows, shaking and rousing, and hastening them, if it were possible, to awake them out of that lethargic, senseless condition. The whole people used like that proud king of Babylon, driven from men, set to live and converse with the beasts of the field,-such were the Chaldeans, whither they were carried captive, if so be as it fared with him, so it might possibly succeed with them; the field be a more gainful school than the palace had been, that by that means at least they might "lift up their eyes to heaven, and their understanding return to them;" turned from men into beasts, that that stranger metamorphosis might be wrought on them, a transformation from men into men, from ignorant, brutish, into prudent, considering men; nay, [1 Cor. v. delivered up even unto Satan by way of discipline, that 5.] Satan might teach them sense; the plagues of Egypt, of Sodom, of hell let loose upon them, to try whether like the rubbing and the smarting of the fish's gall, it might restore these blind Tobits to their eyes and souls again. To work the same work, if it be possible, upon us, is, I profess, my Dan. iv. [34.] X. business and only errand at this time. There hath been a SERM. great deal of pains taken by God to this purpose; doctrine and discipline, instructions and corrections, and all utterly cast away upon us hitherto, the "whole head sick, and the [Is. i. 6.] whole heart faint," in the words next after my text; which you must not understand as ordinarily men do of the sins of that people, that those were the "wounds, and bruises, and putrified sores,"—give me leave to tell you that is a mistake for want of considering the context, but of judgments, heavy judgments, diseases, piteous diseases, both on head and heart, epilepsies, racking pains in the head; the whole kingdom may complain in the language of the Shunamite's child, "O my head, my head;" nay, in the prophet's, "the [2 Kings iv. 19.] crown is fallen from our head," the crown of our head torn and fallen from our head, and the heart in terrible fainting fits, every foot ready to overcome; from the "sole of the foot to the crown of the head," from one extreme part of the nation to another, nothing but distress or oppression, suffering or acting direful tragedies, misery or impiety,—the latter the more fatal symptom, the greater distress of the two,-and yet "no man layeth it to heart," England "will not know, [Is. i. 3.] will not consider." The truth is, the deformities which are in ourselves, we are such partial self-parasites that there is no seeing in a direct line, no coming to that prospect but by reflection; shall we therefore bring the elephant to the water, and there shew him and amaze him with the sight and ugliness of his proboscis? The state of the Jews is that water where we may see the image of this present kingdom most perfectly delineated in every limb and feature; its prosperity, its pride, its warnings, its provocations, its captivities, its contumelious using of the prophets, scorning the messengers from God that came to reprieve them; at length its fatal presages, the deadly feuds, ζηλωταὶ and σικάριοι, zealots and brothers of the sword, ploughing it up to be sowed with salt and brimstone, and all this chargeable culture and discipline cast away upon them utterly, mortifying-instead of sins and impietiesnothing but the relics of piety, and civility, and ingenuous nature; a strange pestilential fever, seizing upon their very spirits and souls; and now nothing but a Roman eagle or X. SERM. a hell, a Titus or a fiend left behind to work any reformation on them. Thus all God's thunderbolts being exhausted, His methods of discipline posed, and non-plused, and frustrated, there is nothing behind but calling in and retracting those rods, the no longer vouchsafing those thunderbolts, a news that perhaps you would be glad to hear of, a respite of punishments, but that the most ominous direful of all others, the most formidable of all God's denouncings, the last and worst kind of desertion, "Why should you be," not embraced and dandled, but "scourged and smitten any more? You will revolt more and more." [Ps.lxxxix. 30, 32.] These words will afford you these four fields of plain and useful meditation: 1. God's custom of striking sinners, and increasing stripes on them, in order to their reformation. 2. The prime proper seasons for such striking: 1. in case of revolt: 2. in case of revolting more. 3. The one only case in which striking becomes uncharitable, when the more and the more God smites, the more and the more the sinner revolts. 4. And lastly, the pitiful estate of the sinner when he comes to this, when in this case God removes smiting, for though it be an act of mercy in God, yet it is that which bodes very ill, it is an indication of the most desperate estate of the patient; "Why should you be stricken any more?" I begin first with the first,-which lies not so visible and distinguishable in the text, but is the foundation that is supposed under it, and on which all that is visible is superstructed, and that is, God's pious and charitable design in smiting sinners, and increasing stripes on them; though now, on more prudential considerations, they shall not be any more smitten. "If My children forsake My law, &c., I will visit their offences with the rod, and their sins with scourges," saith God by the Psalmist. God hath His visits for distempered [1 Cor. iv. children, not only like that of St. Paul's, "in the spirit of 21.] meekness," but also ev páßow," with the rod ;" and if that single engine of discipline will not do it, there are sharper and more behind, the flagella, or "scourges," in the plural. "in X. And this by the way of prudent medicinal process, of solemn SER M. deliberate dispensation, according to rules of art: you will presently discern it, if you but look into the nature, and causes, and process of the disease. I shall give you but one way of judging of these, by remembering you that all sin is founded in bono jucundo, in the pleasing or delighting of the carnal faculty: "every man is tempted when he is drawn [Jas. i. 14.] away of his own lust, and enticed," when his carnal pleasurable faculty, ἐξέλκει καὶ δελεάζει, draws him out of his road of piety by an amiable pleasurable lure or bait. Of this kind, if you will look into the retail, you shall find every sin in the world to be,-some law of the members, some dictate of the flesh, which is all for sensitive pleasure, a warring, a contending, arguing and pleading before the will against the adversary law of the mind, against the dictates of the honest or virtuous, of the rational or Christian, which is a pretending and contending on the other side. Three representations there were of the apple in the first sin, and every of those under this notion of pleasure. The woman saw, 1. "that it was good for food," pleasurable to the taste: 2. "a desire," (as it is in the Hebrew,) (which we render again "pleasant to the eyes:" and 3. "that it was to be desired to make one wise;" i. e., according to the same Hebrew notion, pleasurable in this, that it would make them know more than they did before, a kind of satisfaction, and so pleasure to the understanding, as you know knowledge, though it be but of trifles and news, is a most pleasurable thing. And so generally, every sin is begotten after the image and likeness of that first; the pleasures of lust, the pleasures of revenge, that huge high epicurism; the pleasures of pride, the greatest that Aristotle, or the author πеρì кóσμоν, conceived that the old heathen gods could pretend to in their recesses, their not vouchsafing to see or hear any thing but by perspectives and otacoustics; or again, the pleasures of heresy, of schism, which he that is guilty of, saith the Apostle, "is he not car- [1 Cor. iii. nal?" the pleasures of singularity, and being head of a faction, 3.] they say the hugest sensuality and voluptuousness, the most [Aristot. De Mundo, vi. 9. Hammond has misapprehended the meaning of the passage, which is a description of the palace of Ecbatana, where there were buildings so constructed with |