mities multiplied upon him, and his prayers neglected? If they will not, herein lies his and our final comfort, that he that is my witness, is in the highest heaven, there is no person above him, and therefore he that is my witness, is my judge too. I shall not be tried by an arbitrary court, where it may be wisdom enough to follow a wise leader, and think as he thinks. I shall not be tried by a jury, that had rather I suffered, than they fasted, rather I lost my life, than they lost a meal. Nor tried by Nor tried by peers, where honour shall be the Bible. But I shall be tried by the king himself, than which no man can propose a nobler trial, and that King shall be the King of Kings too; for he who in the first of the Revelation, is called the faithful witness, is, in the same place, called the Prince of the Kings of the earth; and, as he is there produced as a witness, so, he is ordained to be the Judge of the quick and the dead, and so, all judgment is committed to him. He that is my witness, is my judge, and the same person is my Jesus, my Saviour, my Redeemer; he that hath taken my nature, he that hath given me his blood. So that he is my witness, in his own cause, and my judge, but of his own title, and will in me preserve himself; he will not let that nature that he hath invested, perish, nor that treasure which he hath poured out for me, his blood, be ineffectual. My witness is in heaven, my judge is in heaven, my Redeemer is in heaven, and in them, who are but one, I have not only a constant hope, that I shall be there too, but an evident assurance, that I am there already, in his person.

Go then in this peace, that you always study to preserve this testification of the Spirit of God, by outward evidences of sanctification. You are naturally composed of four elements, and three of those four are evident, and unquestioned; the fourth element, the element of fire, is a more litigious element, more problematical, more disputable. Every good man, every true Christian, in his metaphysics, (for, in a regenerate man, all is metaphysical, supernatural) hath four elements also; and three of those four are declared in this text. First, a good name, the good opinion of good men, for honest dealing in the world, and religious discharge of duties towards God, that there be no injus

29 Acts x. 42.

30 John v. 22.

tice in our hands, also that our prayer be pure. A second element is a good conscience in myself, that either a holy wariness before, or a holy repentance after, settle me so in God, as that I care not though all the world knew all my faults. And a third element is, my hope in God, that my witness which is in heaven, will testify for me, as a witness in my behalf here, or acquit me, as a merciful judge, hereafter. Now, there may be a fourth element, an infallibility of final perseverance, grounded upon the eternal knowledge of God; but this is as the element of fire, which may be, 'but is not, at least, is not so discernible, so demonstrable as the rest. And therefore, as men argue of the element of fire, that whereas the other elements produce creatures in such abundance, the earth such herds of cattle, the waters such shoals of fish, the air such flocks of birds, it is no unreasonable thing to stop upon this consideration, whether there should be an element of fire, more spacious, and comprehensive than all the rest, and yet produce no creatures; so, if thy pretended element of infallibility produce no creatures, no good works, no holy actions, thou mayest justly doubt there is no such element in thee. In all doubts that arise in thee, still it will be a good rule, to choose that now, which thou wouldst choose upon thy death-bed. If a temptation to beauty, to riches, to honour, be proposed to thee, upon such, and such conditions, consider whether thou wouldst accept that, upon those conditions, upon thy death-bed, when thou must part with them in a few minutes. So, when thou doubtest, in what thou shouldst place thy assurance in God, think seriously, whether thou shalt not have more. comfort then, upon thy death-bed, in being able to say, I have finished my course, I have fought a good fight, I have fulfilled the sufferings of Christ in my flesh, I have clothed him when he was naked, and fed him when he was poor, than in any other thing, that thou mayest conceive God to have done for thee; and do all the way, as thou wouldst do then; prove thy element of fire, by the creatures it produces, prove thine election by thy sanctification; for that is the right method, and shall deliver thee over, infallibly, to everlasting glory at last. Amen.

233

SERMON XII.

PREACHED AT WHITEHALL, MARCH 8, 1621.

1 COR. XV. 26.

The last Enemy that shall be destroyed, is Death.

THIS is a text of the resurrection, and it is not Easter yet; but it is Easter eve; all Lent is but the vigil, the eve of Easter: to so long a festival as never shall end, the resurrection, we may well begin the eve betimes. Forty years long was God grieved for that generation which he loved; let us be content to humble ourselves forty days, to be fitter for that glory which we expect. In the Book of God there are many songs; there is but one Lamentation and that one Song of Solomon, nay some one of David's hundred and fifty Psalms, is longer than the whole book of Lamentations. Make way to an everlasting Easter by a short Lent, to an undeterminable glory, by a temporary humiliation. You must weep these tears, tears of contrition, tears of mortification, before God will wipe all tears from your eyes; you must die this death, this death of the righteous, the death to sin, before this last enemy, death, shall be destroyed in you, and you made partakers of everlasting life in soul and body too.

Our division shall be but a short, and our whole exercise but a larger paraphrase upon the words. The words imply first, that the kingdom of Christ, which must be perfected, must be accomplished, because all things must be subdued unto him, is not yet perfected, not accomplished yet. Why? what lacks it? It lacks the bodies of men, which yet lie under the dominion of another. When we shall also see by that metaphor which the Holy Ghost chooseth to express that in, which is that there is hostis, and so militia, an enemy, and a war, and therefore that kingdom is not perfected, that he places perfect happiness, and perfect glory, in perfect peace. But then how far is any state consisting of many men, how far the state, and condition of any one man in particular, from this perfect peace? How truly a warfare is this life, if the kingdom of heaven itself have not this

peace in perfection? And it hath it not, because there is an enemy: though that enemy shall not overthrow it, yet because it plots, and works, and machinates, and would overthrow it, this is a defect in that peace.

Who then is this enemy? An enemy that may thus far think himself equal to God, that as no man ever saw God, and lived; so no man ever saw this enemy and lived, for it is death; and in this may think himself in number superior to God, that many men live who shall never see God; but Quis homo, is David's question, which was never answered, Is there any man that lives, and shall not see death? An enemy that is so well victualled against man, as that he cannot want as long as there are men, for he feeds upon man himself. And so well armed against man, as that he cannot want munition, while there are men, for he fights with our weapons, our own faculties, nay our calamities, yea our own pleasures are our death. And therefore he is, saith

the text, The last enemy.

We have other enemies; Satan about us, sin within us; but the power of both those, this enemy shall destroy; but when they are destroyed, he shall retain a hostile, and triumphant dominion over us. But Usque quo Domine? How long O Lord? for ever? No; we see this enemy all the way, and all the way we feel him; but we shall see him destroyed; but how? or when? At, and by the resurrection of our bodies for as upon my expiration, my transmigration from hence, as soon as my soul enters into heaven, I shall be able to say to the angels, I am of the same stuff as you, spirit, and spirit, and therefore let me stand with you, and look upon the face of your God, and my God; so at the resurrection of this body, I shall be able to say to the angel of the great council, the Son of God, Christ Jesus himself, I am of the same stuff as you, body and body, flesh and flesh, and therefore let me sit down with you, at the right hand of the Father in an everlasting security from this last enemy, who is now destroyed, death. And in these seven steps we shall pass apace, and yet clearly, through this paraphrase.

We begin with this; that the kingdom of heaven hath not all that it must have to consummate perfection, till it have bodies too. In those infinite millions of millions of generations,

in which the holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity enjoyed themselves, one another, and no more, they thought not their glory so perfect, but that it might receive an addition from creatures; and therefore they made a world, a material world, a corporeal world, they would have bodies. In that noble part of that world which Moses calls the firmament, that great expansion from God's chair to his footstool, from heaven to earth, there was a defect, which God did not supply that day, nor the next, but the fourth day he did; for that day he made those bodies, those great, and lightsome bodies, the sun, and moon, and stars, and placed them in the firmament. So also the heaven of heavens, the presence chamber of God himself, expects the presence of our bodies.

No state upon earth, can subsist without those bodies, men of their own. For men that are supplied from others, may either in necessity, or in indignation, be withdrawn, and so that state which stood upon foreign legs, sinks. Let the head be gold, and the arms silver, and the belly brass, if the feet be clay', men that may slip, and moulder away, all is but an image, all is but a dream of an image: for foreign helps are rather crutches than legs. There must be bodies, men, and able bodies, able men; men that eat the good things of the land, their own figs and olives; men not macerated with extortions: they are glorified bodies that make up the kingdom of heaven; bodies that partake of the good of the state, that make up the state. Bodies, able bodies, and lastly, bodies inanimated with one soul: vegetative soul; all must be sensible and compassionate of one another's misery; and especially the immortal soul, one supreme soul, one religion. For as God hath made us under good princes, a great example of all that, abundance of men, men that live like men, men united in one religion, so we need not go far for an example of a slippery, and uncertain being, where they must stand upon others men's men, and must overload all men with exactions, and distortions, and convulsions, and earthquakes in the multiplicity of religions.

one

The kingdom of heaven must have bodies; kingdoms of the earth must have them; and if upon the earth thou beest in the way to heaven, thou must have a body too, a body of thine own, 1 Dan. ii. 32.