A little now of the time. This was Christ's wish at this 4. The time, and Christ never speaks out of season. special interest hath this feast in it. It is votum paschale, and this is festum pacis. time: And sure, Habemus talem consuetudinem, et Ecclesia Dei; 1Cor.11.16. 'such a custom we have, and so the Church of God hath used it,' to take these words of Christ in the nature of an edict for pacification, ever at this time. That whatsoever become of it all the year beside, this time should be kept a time of peace; we should seek it and offer it-seek it of God, and offer it, each to other. There hath not, these sixteen hundred years, this day passed without a peace-offering. And the law of a peaceoffering is; he that offers it must take his part of it, eat of it, or it doth him no good. This day therefore the Church never fails, but sets forth her peace-offering;-the Body Whose hands were here shewed, and the side whence issued Sanguis crucis, "the Blood that pacifieth all things in earth and Col. 1. 20. Heaven," that we, in and by it, may this day renew the covenant of our peace. Then can it not be but a great grief -to a Christian heart, to see many this day give Christ's peace the hearing, and there is all; hear it, and then turn their backs on it; every man go his way, and forsake his peace; instead of seeking it shun it, and of pursuing, turn away from it. We "have not so learned Christ," St. Paul hath not so Eph. 4. 20. taught us. His rule it is; "Is Christ our Passover offered for 1 Cor.5.7,8. us" as now He was? Epulemur itaque that is his conclusion, "Let us then keep a feast," a feast of sweet bread without any sour leaven, that is, of peace without any malice. So to do, and even then this day when we have the peaceoffering in our hands, then, then, to remember always, but then specially to join with Christ in His wish; to put into our hearts, and the hearts of all that profess His Name, theirs specially that are of all others most likely to effect it, that Christ may have His wish, and there may be peace through the Christian world; that we may once all partake together of one peace-offering, and "with one mouth and one mind [Rom. 15. glorify God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." 6.] A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE KING'S MAJESTY AT WHITEHALL, ON THE EIGHTH OF APRIL, A.D. MDCX. BEING EASTER-DAY. my JOB XIX. 23-27. Oh that words were now written! Oh that they were written And graven with an iron pen in lead, or in stone for ever! Or, And And though after my skin worms destroy this body, I shall see I shall be compassed my skin. God in my flesh. again with Whom I myself shall see, and mine eyes shall behold, and none other for me, though my reins are consumed within me. (Or, and this hope is laid up in my bosom.) [Quis mihi tribuat ut scribantur sermones mei? quis mihi det ut exarentur in libro Stylo ferreo, et plumbi laminá, vel celte sculpantur in silice? Scio enim quod Redemptor meus vivit, et in novissimo die de terra surrecturus sum: Et rursum circumdabor pelle meá, et in carne mea videbo Deum meum. Quem visurus sum ego ipse, et oculi mei conspecturi sunt, et non alius: reposita est hæc spes mea in sinu meo. Latin Vulg.] [Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me. Engl. Trans.] V. THIS day calleth us to say somewhat of Christ's resurrection. SERM. To find Christ's resurrection in the New Testament, is no mastery. Out of many places you have thence heard of it heretofore many times, and many times may hereafter out of many places more. If it be but for variety, it will do well. not to dwell still on the New, but otherwhiles to see if we can find it in the Old. It will give us good satisfaction to see "Jesus Christ to-day and yesterday the same;" "yesterday" Heb. 13. 8. ▾ to them, "to-day" to us; to read resurget in Job, “He shall rise," as we read resurrexit in John, "He is risen;" to see their creed and ours differ but in tense, "shall rise," and "is risen," "shall" and "is," but the Redeemer all one in both. Much ado is made by your antiquaries, if an old stone be digged up with any dim letters on it. In this text I find mention of a stone to be graven, so that I shall present you this day with an antiquity, an old stone digged up in the land of Uz, as old as Job's time, and that as old as Moses; with a fair inscription, the characters of it yet legible, to prove the faith of this feast, so ancient that it began not with the Christians, the patriarchs had it as many hundred years before Christ as we are after. This text is a monument of it. And it will be never the worse welcome to us that are Gentiles, that it cometh from one that is a Gentile as Job was, and not of Jacob's line. It is the stronger for that Moses and Job, the Jew and Gentile believed it; Moses put it in his ordinary prayer, the nineteenth Psalm, as it were his Pater noster, and Job here in his creed. St. Hierome saith of Job: Nullum tam aperte post Christum, [S. Hieron. Epist. 38. quam iste hic ante Christum de Resurrectione loquitur Christi ad Pamet suâ: 'No man ever since Christ did so clearly speak of mach.] Christ's resurrection and his own, as Job did here before Christ,' "That his Redeemer liveth and shall rise again." Which is as much to say as, "He is the Resurrection and the Joh.11.25. Life;"-St. John could say no more. It is his hope, he is by it "regenerate to a lively hope;"-St. Peter could say no 1 Pet. 1. 3. more. Enters into such particulars, "this flesh," and "these eyes;"-St. Paul could do no more. There is not in all the 1Cor.15.53. Old, nay there is not in all the New, a more pregnant direct place. There is then in this monument of antiquity, a direct SERM. prophecy; or, if you will, a plain creed, of the substance of V. this feast, of his Redeemer's rising, and of his hope to rise by Him; the one positive, the other illative. There is a pathetical poem set before it; and there is a close or farewell by way of epiphonema after it, no less pathetical. The sum and division. I. II. III. 66 The two first verses we may well call the parasceue, or preparation to the feast of passover," which serve to stir up our regard, as to a mystery or matter of great moment, worthy not only to be written or enrolled in a book, but to be cut in stone; a monument to be made of it, ad perpetuam rei memoriam, "Oh that," &c. Then followeth in the third, his Redeemer and His rising, His passing over from death to life: "I know," &c., and out of it in the last, by way of inference, his own, Et quod ego, &c. set down with words so clear, and so full of caution, as in the Epistle to the Corinthians it is not fuller expressed. Upon these two, there be two acts here set down, 1. Scio, and 2. Spero. He begins with scio, for the truth, and ends with hæc mihi spes for the comfort or use of this knowledge. Graven, that it may be known; known, that it may be our hope. His it was, and ours it must be; reposita with him, reponenda with us, to be lodged and laid up in our bosoms, against we be laid into the bosom of the earth. Indeed, sculpsit in lapide is nothing without reponi in sinu, ‘Graving in stone will do no good, without laying it up in the bosom.' Job fearing it should seem, if he had but barely propounded the point following, it would have been but slenderly prepara regarded, doth enforce himself to set it down with some Job's wish. solemnity, to make the deeper impression, which I call the I. The para sceue or 66 tion." parasceue; that we might not reckon of it as a light holyday, but as a high feast. He would have the scio of it stamped in stone, as worthy everlasting remembrance, and the spero of it carefully laid up, as worthy precious account. It is as much ITim. 1.15. as St. Paul had said; "It is a faithful saying, and by all 1 Tim. 4.9. means worthy to be received;" for the scio, "faithful," for the spero, "worthy all receiving;" for the truth, to be graven in marble, for the comfort to be lodged in the bosom. For the first, thus he proceedeth. He was dying now, and seeing he must die, one thing he had he would not have die with him. It was that when he had lost all, he kept in his bosom still; when all comforters, and comforts forsook him, and, as he saith, his physicians grew of no value, he found comfort in. This he thought it was pity should perish, but though he die, it live. It was certain words; and because they had been cordial to him-had been to him, and might be to others--he desires they might remain to memory; and because writing serves to that end, they might be written. Which his wish of writing consists of three degrees, is as it were three wishes in one. it were 1. They be words; and because words be but wind his 1. That own proverb-that they might not blow away with the wind, "written." he wisheth they were written. Quis mihi tribuat, 'who will Job 6. 26. help him to a clerk, to set them down in writing?' "Writ ten in a 2. But then, he bethinks himself better. They were no 2. common ordinary matter, therefore not to be committed to book." common ordinary writing. So, they might be rent or lost; they be more worth than so. Therefore now secondly, he mends his wish; he would not have them to be barely written, but registered in a book, enrolled upon record, as public instruments, men's deeds, judicial proceeding; or, as the very word gives it, Acts of Parliament, or whatsoever is most authentical. in stone, with a pen ever." And yet, upon farther advice, he calls back that too, by a 3“Written third wish. If they were upon record, records will last long, yet even them time will injure. No ink, no parchment, but of iron for will decay with time. Now these he would have last for ever: therefore he gives over his scribe, and instead of him wisheth for a graver; no paper or parchment will serve, it must be stone, and the hardest stone, the rock. For this paper he must have "a pen of iron;"-that he wisheth too. But here is mention of lead; what is to be done with that? If we believe the Hebrews, that best knew the fashion of their country monuments, when it is graven, the graving may be choked with soil, and the edges of the letters being rough and uneven, may be worn in, or broken and so defaced; to provide for that, the graving he would have filled with lead, that so it might keep smooth and even from defacing, and full from choking up. That it bey, the last word, that is, last "for ever," to the last ages and generations to come, never to be worn, but to hold for ever. If it were the best in the world, |