place, but because it rescues him from the magistrate, so thou comest to church, not because God is here, but that thy being here may redeem thee from the imputation of profaneness. At last Nathan came; David did not send for him, but God sent him; but yet David laid hold upon God's purpose in him. in him. And he confesses to God, he confesses to the prophet, he confesses to the whole church; for, before he pleads for mercy in the body of the Psalm, in the title of the Psalm, which is as canonical Scripture, as the Psalm itself, he confesses himself plainly, A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

Audiunt male viventes, et quærunt sibi patrocinia peccandi®; we hear of David's sin, and we justify our sins by him; Si David, cur non et ego? If David went in to a Bathsheba, why may not I That father tells you why, Qui facit, quia David fecit, id facit, quod David non fecit, He that does that, because David did it, does not do that which David did; Quia nullum exemplum proposuit, For David did not justify his sin, by any precedent example; so that he that sins as David did, yet sins worse than David did; and he that continues as unsensible of his sin, as David was, is more unsensible than David was; Quia ad te mittitur ipse David', For God sends Nathan to thee, with David in his hand; he sends you the receipt, his invitations to repentance, in his Scriptures, and he sends you a probatum est, a personal testimony how this physic hath wrought upon another, upon David.

And so having in this first part, which is the consideration of the persons in our text, God and David, brought them by Nathan's mediation, together, consider we also, for a conclusion of this part, the personal applications, that David scatters himself upon none but God, tu me, and he repeats it, do thou purge me, do thou wash me.

Damascene hath a sermon of the assumption of the blessed Virgin, which whole sermon is but a dialogue, in which Eve acts the first part, and the blessed Virgin another; it is but a dialogue, yet it is a sermon. If I should insist upon this dialogue, between God and David, tu me, tu me, do thou work upon me, 7 Augustine.

6

Augustine.

it would not be the less a profitable part of a sermon for that. For first, when we hear David in an anhelation and panting after the mercy of God, cry out, Domine tu, Lord do thou that that is to be done, do thou purge, do thou wash, and may have heard God, (thereby to excite us to the use of his means) say, Purget natura, purget lex, I have infused into thee a light and a law of nature, and exalted that light and that law, by a more particular law and a clearer light than that, by which thou knowest what is sin, and knowest that in a sinful state thou canst not be acceptable to me, Purget natura, purget lex, Let the light of nature, or of the law purge thee, and rectify thyself by that; do but as much for thyself, as some natural men, some Socrates, some Plato hath done, we may hear David reply, Domine tu, Lord put me not over to the catechising of nature, nor to the pedagogy of the law, but take me into thine own hands, do thou, thou, that is to be done upon me. When we hear God say, Purget ecclesia, I have established a church, settled constant ordinances, for the purging and washing of souls there; Purget ecclesia, Let the church purge thee, we may hear David reply, Domine tu, Alas Lord, how many come to that bath, and go foul out of it? How many hear sermons, and receive sacraments, and when they return, return to their vomit? Domine tu, Lord, except the power of thy Spirit make thine ordinance effectual upon me, even this thy Jordan will leave me in my leprosy, and exalt my leprosy, even this sermon, this sacrament will aggravate my sin. If we hear God say, Shall I purge thee? Dost thou know what thou askest, what my method in purging is, that if I purge, I shall purge thee with fire, with seven fires, with tribulations, nay, with temptations, with temporal, nay, with spiritual calamities, with wounds in thy fortune, wounds in thine honour, wounds in thy conscience, yet we may hear David reply, tu Domine; as the people said to Joshua, God forbid we should forsake the Lord, we will serve the Lord; and when Joshua said, You cannot serve the Lord, for he is a jealous God; and if ye turn from him, he will turn and do you hurt, and consume you after he hath done you good; the people replied, Nay, but we will serve the Lord; so whatsoever God threatens David of afflictions and

Josh. xxiv, 16.

tribulations, and purgings in fire, we may hear David reply, Nay but Lord, do thou do it, do it how thou wilt, but do thou do it: thy corrosives are better than other's fomentations; thy bitternesses sweeter than other's honey; thy fires are but lukewarm fires, nay, they have nothing of fire in them, but light to direct me in my way; and thy very frowns are but as trenches cut out, as lanes that lead me to thy grave, or rivers or channels, that lead me to the sea of thy blood. Let me go upon crutches, so I go to heaven; lay what weight thou wilt even upon my soul, that that be heavy, and heavy unto death, so I may have a cheerful transmigration then. Domine tu, Lord do thou do it, and I shall not wish it mended.

me,

And then when we hear David say, Domine me, Lord purge

wash me, and return four times in this short text, to that personal appropriation of God's work upon himself, purge me, that I may be clean, wash me, that I may be whiter than snow, if we hear God say (as the language of his mercy is, for the most part, general) as the sea is above the earth, so is the blood of my Son above all sin; congregations of three thousand, and of five thousand were purged and washed, converted and baptized at particular sermons of St. Peter, whole legions of soldiers, that consisted of thousands, were purged in their own blood, and became martyrs in one day. There is enough done to work upon all; examples enow given to guide all; we may hear David reply, Domine me, Nay but Lord, I do not hear Peter preach, I live not in a time, or in a place, where crowns of martyrdom are distributed, nor am I sure my constancy would make me capable of it if I did, Lord I know, that a thousand of these worlds were not worth one drop of thy blood, and yet I know, that if there had been but one soul distressed, and that soul distressed but with one sin, thou wouldst have spent the last drop of that blood for that soul; blessed be thy name, for having wrapped me up in thy general covenants, and made me partaker of thy general ordinances, but yet Lord, look more particularly upon me, and appropriate thyself to me, to me, not only as thy creature, as a man, as a Christian, but as I am I, as I am this sinner that confesses now, and as I am this penitent that begs thy mercy now. And now, beloved, we have said so much towards enough of the

persons, God and David; the access of David to God, and the appropriation of God to David, as that we may well pass to our other general part, the petitions which David in his own and our behalf makes to God, Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean, wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

In this, the first is a great work, that which we translate, purge me. And yet how soon David is come to it? It is his first period. The passage of a spirit is very quick, but it is not immediate; not from extreme to extreme, but by passing the way between. The evil spirit passes not so; no good soul was ever made very ill in an instant, no, nor so soon as some ill have been made good: no man can give me examples of men so soon perverted, as I can of men converted. It is not in the power of the devil to do so much harm, as God can do good; nay, we may be bold to say, it is not in the will, not in the desire of the devil to do so much harm, as God would do good; for illness is not in the nature of the devil; the devil was naturally good, made, created good. His first illness was but a defection from that goodness; and his present illness is but a punishment for that defection; but God is good, goodness in his nature, essentially, eternally good; and therefore the good motions of the Spirit of God work otherwise upon us, than the temptations of the evil spirit do. How soon, and to what a height came David here? He makes his petition, his first petition with that confidence, as that it hath scarce the nature of a petition: for it is in the original, Thou wilt purge me, thou wilt wash me, thou hadst a gracious will, and purpose to do it, before thou didst infuse the will and the desire in me to petition it. Nay, this word may well be translated not only thou wilt, but by the other denotation of the future, Thou shalt, thou shalt purge me, thou shalt wash me, Lord I do but remember thee of thy debt, of that which thy gracious promise hath made thy debt, to show mercy to every penitent sinner. And then, as the word implies confidence, and acceleration, infallibility, and expedition too, that as soon as I can ask, I am sure to be heard; so does it imply a totality, an entireness, a fulness in the work; for the root of the word is peccare, to sin, for purging is a purging of peccant humours; but in this conjugation in that language, it hath a privative signifi

cation, and literally signifies expectabis; and if in our language, that were a word in use, it might be translated, thou shalt un-sin me; that is, look upon me as a man that had never sinned, as a man invested in the innocency of thy Son, who knew no sin. David gives no man rule nor example of other assurance in God, than in the remission of sins: not that any pre-contract or election makes our sins no sins, or makes our sins no hinderances in our way to salvation, or that we are in God's favour at that time when we sin, nor returned to his favour before we repent our sin; it is only this expectation, this unsinning, this taking away of sins formerly committed, that restores me; and that is not done with nothing; David assigns, proposes a means, by which he looks for it, hyssop, Thou shalt purge me with hyssop.

The fathers taking the words as they found them, and fastening with a spiritual delight, as their devout custom was, their meditations upon the figurative and metaphorical phrase of purging by hyssop, have found purgative virtues in that plant, and made useful and spiritual applications thereof, for the purging of our souls from sin. In this do St. Ambrose, and Augustine, and Hierome agree, that hyssop hath virtue in it proper for the lungs, in which part, as it is the furnace of breath, they place the seat of pride and opposition against the truth, making their use of that which is said of Saul, That he breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord'. And by this interpretation, David's disease that he must be purged of, should be pride. But except, as the schoolmen, when they have tired themselves in seeking out the name of the sin of the angels, are content at last for their ease to call it pride, both because they thought they need go no farther, for, where pride is, other sins will certainly accompany it; and because they extended the name of pride to all refusals and resistances of the will of God, and so pride, in effect, includes all sin; except, I say, the fathers take pride in so large a sense as that they would not prescribe hyssop to purge David's lungs, for his disease lay not properly there; they must have purged his liver, the seat of blood, the seat of concupiscence; they must have purged his whole substance, for the distemper was gone over all. And to this

9 Acts ix. 1.