chised in his name, his name becomes less revered unto you, and Sanctum et terribile", Holy and reverend, holy and terrible should his name be. ye Consider the resolution that God hath taken upon the hypocrite, and his prayer; What is the hope of the hypocrite, when God taketh away his soul? Will God hear his ory? They have not cried unto me with their hearts, when they have howled upon their beds". Consider, that error in the matter of our prayer frustrates the prayer and makes it ineffectual. Zebedee's sons would have been placed at the right hand, and at the left hand of Christ, and were not heard. Error in the manner may frustrate our prayer, and make it ineffectual too. Ye ask, and are not heard, because ask amiss. It is amiss, if it be not referred to his will, (Lord if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean°7.) It is amiss, if it be not asked in faith, (Let not him that wavereth, think he shall receive anything of the Lord.) It is amiss, if prayer be discontinued, intermitted, done by fits, (Pray incessantly) and it is so too, if it be not vehement; for Christ was in an agony in his prayer, and his sweat was as great drops of blood". Of prayers without these conditions, God says, When you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes, and when you make many prayers, I will not hear you". Their prayer shall not only be ineffectual, but even their prayer shall be an abomination"; and not only an abomination to God, but destruction upon themselves; for, Their prayer shall be turned to sin13. And, when they shall not be heard for themselves, nobody else shall be heard for them: Though these three men, Noah, Job, and Daniel, stood for them, they should not deliver them"; though the whole congregation consisted of saints, they shall not be heard for him, nay, they shall be forbidden to pray for him, forbidden to mention, or mean him in their prayers, as Jeremy was. When God leaves you no way of reconciliation but prayer, and then lays these heavy and terrible conditions upon prayer, confess that though he be the God of your salvation, and do answer you, yet By terrible things doth the God of your salvation answer you. And consider this again, as in manners, and in prayer, so in his other ordinance of preaching. Think with yourselves what God looks for from you, and what you give him in that exercise. Because God calls Preaching foolishness", you take God at his word, and you think preaching a thing under you. Hence is it that you take so much liberty in censuring and comparing preacher and preacher, nay sermon and sermon from the same preacher; as though we preached for wages, and as though coin were to be valued from the inscription merely, and the image, and the person, and not for the metal. You measure all by persons; and yet, Non erubescitis faciem sacerdotis, You respect not the person of the priest, you give not so much reverence to God's ordinance, as he does. In no church of Christendom but ours, doth the preacher preach uncovered. And for all this good, and humble, and reverend example, (fit to be continued by us) cannot we keep you uncovered till the text be read. All the sermon is not God's word, but all the sermon is God's ordinance, and the text is certainly his word. There is no salvation but by faith, nor faith but by hearing, nor hearing but by preaching; and they that think meanliest of the keys of the church, and speak faintliest of the absolution of the church, will yet allow, that those keys lock, and unlock in preaching; that absolution is conferred, or withheld in preaching, that the proposing of the promises of the Gospel in preaching, is that binding and loosing on earth, which binds and looses in heaven. And then, though Christ had bid us, Preach the Gospel to every creature", yet, in his own great sermon in the mount, he had forbidden us, to give holy things to dogs, or to cast pearls before swine, lest they trample them, and turn and rend us 78. So that if all those manifold and fearful judgments, which swell in every chapter, and blow in every verse, and thunder in every line of every book of the Bible, fall upon all them that come hither, as well if they turn and rend, that is, calumniate us, the person of the preacher, as if they trample upon the pearls, that is, undervalue the doctrine, and the ordinance itself; if his terrible judg ments fall upon every uncharitable misinterpretation of that which 75 1 Cor. i. 21. 76 Lam. iv. 16. 78 Matt. vii. 6. is said here, and upon every irreverence in this place, and in this action; confess, that though he be the God of your salvation, and do answer you, yet, By terrible things doth the God of your salvation answer you. And confess it also, as in manners, and in prayers, and in preaching, so in the holy and blessed sacrament. This sacrament of the body and blood of our Saviour, Luther calls safely, venerabile et adorabile; for certainly, whatsoever that is which we see, that which we receive is to be adored; for we receive Christ. He is Res Sacramenti, The form, the essence, the substance, the soul of the sacrament; and Sacramentum sine re sacramenti, mors est", To take the body, and not the soul, the bread, and not Christ, is death. But he that feels Christ, in the receiving of the sacrament, and will not bend his knee, would scarce bend his knee, if he saw him. The first of that royal family, which thinks itself the greatest in Christendom at this day, the house of Austrich, had the first marks of their greatness, the empire, brought into that house, for a particular reverence done to the holy and blessed sacrament. What the bread and wine is, or what becomes of it, Damascen thinks impertinent to be inquired. He thinks he hath said enough; (and so may we do) Migrat in substantiam anima; There is the true transubstantiation, that when I have received it worthily, it becomes my very soul; that is, my soul grows up into a better state, and habitude by it, and I have the more soul for it, the more sanctified, the more deified soul by that sacrament. Now this sacrament, which as it is ministered to us, is but a sacrament, but as it is offered to God, is a sacrifice too, is a fearful, a terrible thing. If the sacrifices of the law, the blood of goats and rams, were so, how fearful, how terrible, how reverential a thing is the blood of this immaculate Lamb, the Son of God? And though God do so abound in goodness towards us, Ut possint injuriata sacramenta prodesse reversis, (as St. Cyprian excellently expresses it) That that sacrament which we have injured and abused, received unworthily, or irreverently, at one time, may yet benefit us, and be the savour and seal of life unto us, at another, yet when you hear that terrible thunder break upon you, 79 Bernard. Bo Alvarez de Auxil. Epist. ad Phil. iii. That the unworthy receiver eats and drinks his own damnation, that he makes Christ Jesus, who is the propitiation of all the world, his damnation; and then, that not to have come to a severe examination of the conscience before, and to a sincere detestation of the sin, and to a formed, and fixed, and deliberate, and determinate resolution against that sin, at the receiving of the sacrament, (which, alas, how few do! Is there one that does it? There is scarce one) that this makes a man an unworthy receiver of the sacrament, that thus we make a mock of the Son of God, thus we tread the blood of the covenant under foot, and despite the spirit of grace; and that for this, at the last day, we shall be ranked with Judas, and not only with Judas, as a negligent despiser, but with Judas, as an actual betrayer of the blood of Christ Jesus. Consider well, with what fearful conditions even this seal of your reconciliation is accompanied, and though you may not doubt, but that God, the God of your salvation does answer you, yet you must confess too, that it is by terrible things, that he does it. And, as it is so in matter of manners, and so in our prayers, and so in our preaching, and so in the sacrament, so is it also at the hour of our death, which is as far as we can pursue this meditation, (for, after death we can ask nothing at God's hands, and therefore God makes us no answer) and therefore with that conclusion of all, we shall conclude all, That by terrible things, the God of our salvation answers us, at the hour of our death. Though death be but a sleep, yet it is a sleep that an earthquake cannot wake; and yet there is a trumpet that will, when that hand of God, that gathered dust to make these bodies, shall crumble these bodies into dust again, when that soul that evaporated itself in unnecessary disputations in this world, shall make such fearful and distempered conclusions, as to see God only by absence, (never to see him face to face) and to know God only by ignorance, (never to know him sicuti est, as he is) (for he is all mercy) and to possess immortality, and impossibility of dying only in a continual dying; when, as a cabinet whose key were lost, must be broken up, and torn in pieces, before the jewel that was laid up in it can be taken out; so thy body, (the cabinet of 81 1 Cor. xi. 27, 29. 83 Heb. x. 29. thy soul) must be shaked and shivered by violent sickness, before that soul can go out, and when it is thus gone out, must answer for all the imperfections of that body, which body polluted it, and yet, though this soul be such a loser by that body, it is not perfectly well, nor fully satisfied, till it be re-united to that body again; when thou rememberest, (and, oh, never forget it) that Christ himself was heavy in his soul unto death, that Christ himself came to a Si possibile, If it be possible, let this cup pass; that he came to a quare dereliquisti, a bitter sense of God's dereliction, and forsaking of him, when thou considerest all this, compose thyself for death, but think it not a light matter to die. Death made the lion of Judah to roar; and do not thou think, that that which we call going away like a lamb, doth more testify a conformity with Christ, than a strong sense, and bitter agony, and colluctation with death, doth. Christ gave us the rule, in the example; he taught us what we should do, by his doing it; and he pre-admitted a fearful apprehension of death. A lamb is a hieroglyphic of patience, but not of stupidity. And death was Christ's Consummatum est, All ended in death; yet he had sense of death; how much more doth a sad sense of our transmigration belong to us, to whom death is no consummatum est, but an in principio; our account, and our everlasting state begins but then. Apud te propitiatio, ut timearis; in this knot we tie up all; With thee there is mercy, that thou mightest be feared. There is a holy fear, that does not only consist with an assurance of mercy, but induces, constitutes that assurance. Pavor operantibus iniquitatem, says Solomon; Pavor, horror, and servile fear, jealousy, and suspicion of God, diffidence, and distrust in his mercy, and a bosom-prophecy of self-destruction; destruction itself, (so we translate it) be upon the workers of iniquity; Paror operantibus iniquitatem; and yet says that wise king, Beatus qui semper Pavidus; Blessed is that man that always fears85; who, though he always hope, and believe the good that God will show him, yet also fears the evils, that God might justly multiply upon him; blessed is he that looks upon God with assurance, but upon him 83 Psalm cxxx. 4. 84 Prov. xxi. 15. 85 Prov. xxviii. 14. |
