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man in opprobrium naturæ, only to overlook his fellow-creatures, to upbraid them with their defects, and to discourage them with the amazing distance of the comparison. He has filled no man's intellectuals so full, but he has left some vacuities in them, that may sometimes send him for supplies to minds of a much lower pitch. He has stocked no land or country with such universal plenty, without the mixture of some wants, to be the ground and cause of commerce; for mutual wants, and mutual perfections together, are the bond and cement of conversation. The vast knowledge and ruling abilities of Moses might yet stand in need of Aaron's elocution; and he who speaks with the tongue of angels, and the greatest fluency of spiritual rhetoric, may yet be at a loss when he comes to matters of controversy, and to assert the truth against the assaults and sophistry of a subtle opponent. God indeed can, and sometimes happily does, unite both these gifts in the same person; but where he does not, let not him who can preach, condemn him who can only dispute; neither let him who can dispute, despise him who can only preach for (as we have shewn before) the church is served by both, and has equallý need of some men to speak and declare the word, and of others to defend it; it being enough, and too often more than enough, for one man to maintain what another says. In which work, the speaking part is indeed the more easy, but the defensive the more glorious.

is well for the church, that it has the rule of judgment, and a note of discrimination. There is none, who is not wilfully a stranger to the affairs of our Israel, but has had the noise and blusters of gifted brethren, and of persons pretending to the Spirit, ringing in his ears. Concerning which plea of theirs, since we all know that there are spirits both good and bad, it cannot be denied, but that in some sense they might have the spirit, such a spirit as it was, and that in a very large measure; but as for their gifts, we must examine them by the standard of those here mentioned by the apostle.

And first, for that of prophecy: these men were once full of a prophecy that the world should be destroyed in the year 1656; because, forsooth, the flood came upon the old world in that year reckoning from the creation. And again, that the downfall of Pope and Antichrist, together with that of monarchy and episcopacy, (which they always accounted as limbs of Antichrist,) should be in the year 1666. And that, because some remarkable mention is made of the number 666 in the Revelation, with many other such like predictions: the event of all which has shewn, that those men were not of God's privy council; but, on the contrary, that all their prophecies were like those of almanacks, which warn every wise body to prepare against foul weather, by their foretelling fair.

And then, for the gift of healing, let a bleeding church and state shew, how notably they were gifted that way. They played the chirurgeons, indeed, with a witness, but we never yet heard that they acted the physician; all their practice upon the body politic was with powder and ball, sword and pistol. No saving of life with those men, but by purging away the estate.

And as this may give some check to the presumption of the most raised understandings, so it should prevent the despondency of the meanest; for the apostle makes this very use of it in the 21st and 22d verses, where he would not have even the lowest and poorest member of the church to be dejected upon the consideration of what it wants, but rather be comforted in the sense of what it has. Let not the foot trample upon itself, because it does not rule the body, but consider that it has the honour to support it; nay, the greatest abilities are sometimes beholden to the very meanest, if but for this only, that without them they would want the gloss and lustre of a foil. The two talents went into heaven as easily as the five; and God has put a peculiar usefulness even into the smallest members of the body, answerable to some need or defect in the greatest, thereby to level them to a mutual intercourse of compliance and bene-request in those times, faction; which alone can keep things equal, and is indeed the very poise and ballast of society. And thus much for the second consequent. But,

Thirdly, The foregoing doctrine affords us also a touchstone for the trial of spirits: for such as are the gifts, such must be also the spirit from which they flow; and since both of them have been so much pretended to, it

And likewise, for the gift of discerning of spirits: they had their triers, that is, a court appointed for the trial of ministers, but most properly called Cromwell's inquisition, in which they would pretend to know men's hearts, and inward "bent of their spirits" (as their word was) by their very looks. But the truth is, as the chief pretence of those triers was to inquire into men's gifts; so if they found them but well gifted in the hand, they never looked any farther; for a full and free hand was with them an abundant demonstra

tion of a "gracious heart,"- a word in great

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And, moreover, for the gift of diverse tongues, it is certain, that they scarce spake the same thing for two days together. Though otherwise it must be confessed, that they were none of the greatest linguists, their own mother tongue serving all their occasions, without ever so much as looking into the fathers, who always spoke the language of the beast to such as could not understand them. Latin was

with them a mortal crime, and Greek, instead of being owned for the language of the Holy Ghost, (as in the New Testament it is,) was looked upon like the sin against it; so that, in a word, they had all the confusions of Babel amongst them without the diversity of tongues.

And then, lastly, for the gift of interpreting: they thought themselves no ordinary men at expounding a chapter; if the turning of a few rational, significant words and sentences into a loose, tedious, impertinent harangue could be called an exposition. But, above all, for their interpreting gift, you must take them upon Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Revelation; and from thence, as it were, out of a dark prophetic cloud, thundering against the old cavaliers and the Church of England, and (as I may but too appositely express it) breaking them upon the wheels in Ezekiel, casting them to the beasts in Daniel, and pouring upon them all the vials in the Revelation. After which, let any one deny it who durst, that the black decree was absolutely passed upon those malignants, and that they were all of them, to a man, sons of reprobation.

And thus, I think, I have reckoned up most of the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, and compared them with those of our late gifted brethren. Amongst all which divine gifts, I must declare, that I cannot find the gift of canting and whining, and making faces, that is, of speaking bad sense with worse looks, which yet those men used to call "the language of Canaan." Nor can I find the gift of uttering every sudden, crude, undigested thought coming over their minds, and of being impudently bold and familiar with Almighty God in prayer.

I cannot find the gift of exploding the mysteries, and peculiar credenda of the Gospel, in order to the turning Christianity into bare morality.

I cannot find the gift of accounting tenderness of conscience against law, as a thing sacred, but tenderness of conscience according to law, as a crime to be prosecuted almost to death.

In a word, I cannot find the gifts of* rebelling, plundering, sequestering, robbing churches, and murdering kings, and all this purely for the sake of conscience and religion.

These things, I say, (whether it be through the weakness of my discerning faculties, or whatsoever else may be the cause,) I cannot, for my life, find amongst the primitive gifts of the Spirit.

* Notwithstanding the sanctified character they bear in the republicans' new Gospel, namely, Ludlow's Memoirs; and in the judgment of those who like such practices, and therefore publish such books, to the manifest affront of the monarchy they live under, a strange unaccountable way, doubtless, of supporting it.

And therefore, wheresoever I do find them, let men talk never so much of inward motions and extraordinary calls of the Spirit, of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and of the public good, of moderation, and of a healing spirit, and the like; yet, long and sad experience having taught us the true meaning of all these fine and fallacious terms, I must needs say, both of them, and the spirit from which they proceed, in these words of Saint James, iii. 18, "that they descend not from above, but are earthly, sensual, and devilish." These are the names which God knows and calls them by, though schismatics and hypocrites may call them reformation. But,

Fourthly, In the fourth and last place, this emanation of gifts from the Spirit assures us that knowledge and learning are by no means opposite to grace, since we see gifts as well as graces conferred by the same Spirit. But amongst those of the late reforming age, (whom we have been speaking of,) all learning was utterly cried down. So that with them the best preachers were such as could not read, and the ablest divines such as could not write. In all their preachments they so highly pretended to the Spirit, that they could hardly so much as spell the letter. To be blind was with them the proper qualification of a spiritual guide, and to be book-learned, as they called it, and to be irreligious, were almost terms convertible. None were thought fit for the ministry but tradesmen and mechanics, because none else were allowed to have the Spirit. Those only were accounted like Saint Paul, who could work with their hands," and, in a literal sense, drive the nail home, and be able to make a pulpit, before they preached in it.

But the Spirit in the primitive church took quite another method, being still as careful to furnish the head as to sanctify the heart; and as he wrought miracles to found and establish a church by these extraordinary gifts, so it would have been a greater miracle to have done it without them.

God, as he is the giver of grace, so he is the "father of lights;" he neither admits darkness in himself, nor approves it in others. And therefore, those who place all religion in the heats of a furious zeal, without the due illuminations of knowledge, know not of what spirit they are; indeed, of such a spirit as begins in darkness, leads to it, and ends

in it.

But, certainly, we shall one day find, that a religion so much resembling hell, neither was nor could be the readiest way to heaven. But, on the contrary, that the Spirit always guides and instructs before he saves; and that, as he brings to happiness only by the ways of holiness, so he never leads to true holiness, but by the paths of knowledge.

To which Holy Spirit, together with the

Father and the Son, three Persons and one God, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON XXXVI.

THE PECULIAR CARE AND CONCERN OF

omnipotence to support them,-and that they are not the legions which they command, but the God whom they obey, who must both guard their persons and secure their regalia. For "it is he, and he only, who giveth salvation unto kings."

The words of the text, with a little variation, run naturally into this one proposition, which, containing in it the full sense of them, shall be the subject of our following discourse, namely,

That God, in the government of the world, exercises a peculiar and extraordinary proviPROVIDENCE FOR THE PROTECTION dence over the persons and lives of princes.

AND DEFENCE OF KINGS.

PREACHED AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY, Nov. 5, 1675.

"It is he that giveth salvation unto kings."-PSALM cxliv. 10.

THE greatest and most magnificent title by which God exhibits himself to the sons of men, is, that he is King of kings, and that the governors of the earth are his subjects, princes and emperors his vassals, and thrones his footstools; and consequently, that there is no absolute monarch in the world but one. And from the same also it follows, that there is nothing which subjects can justly expect from their prince, but princes may expect from God; and nothing which princes demand from their subjects, but God, in a higher manner and by a better claim, requires from them. Now, the relation between prince and subject essentially involves in it these two things,

First, Obedience from the subject to all the laws and just commands of his prince. And accordingly, as kings themselves have a sovereign over them, so they have laws over them too-laws which lay the same obligation upon crowned heads, that they do upon the meanest peasant for no prerogative can bar piety: no man is too great to be bound to be good. He who wields the sceptre, and shines in the throne, has a great account to make, and a great Master to make it to; and there is no man sent into the world to rule, who is not sent also to obey.

Secondly, The other thing imported in this relation, is protection vouchsafed from the sovereign to the subject. Upon which account it is, that as God with one hand gives a law, so with the other he defends the obedient. And this is the highest prerogative of worldly empire, and the brightest jewel in the diadems of princes, that by being God's immediate subjects, they are his immediate care, and entitled to his more especial protection that they have both an omniscience, in a peculiar manner, to wake over them, and an

The prosecution of which proposition shall lie in these four things,

First, To shew upon what account any act of God's providence may be said to be peculiar and extraordinary.

Secondly, To shew how and by what means God does, after such an extraordinary manner, save and deliver princes.

Thirdly, To shew the reasons why he does so. And,

Fourthly and lastly, To draw something by way of inference and conclusion from the whole.

Of all which in their order; and,

First, for the first of these; which is to shew upon what account any act of God's providence may be said to be peculiar and extraordinary. Providence, in the government of the world, acts for the most part by the mediation of second causes; which, though they proceed according to a principle of nature, and a settled course and tenor of acting, (supposing still the same circumstances,) yet Providence acting by them may, in several instances of it, be said to be extraordinary, upon a threefold account; as,

1st, When a thing falls out besides the common and usual operation of its proper cause. As for instance, it is usual and natural for a man meeting his enemy upon full advantage, to prosecute that advantage against him, and by no means to let him escape; yet sometimes it falls out quite otherwise. Esau had conceived a mortal grudge and enmity against his brother Jacob; yet, as soon as he meets him, he falls upon him in a very different way from that of enemies, and embraces him. Ahab having, upon conquest, got Benhadad, his inveterate enemy, into his hands, not only spares his life, but treats him kindly, and lets him go. That a brother unprovoked should hate, and a stranger not obliged should love, is against the usual actings of the heart of man. Yet thus it was with Joseph, and no doubt with many others. In which, and the like cases, I conceive, things so falling out, may be said to come to pass by an extraordinary act of Providence; it being manifest, that the persons concerned in them do not act, as men of the same principles and interests, under the

same circumstances, use to do. For interest, we say, will not lie, nor make a man false to himself, whatsoever it may make him to others.

2dly, Providence may be said to act extraordinarily, when a thing falls out beside, or contrary to, the design of expert, politic, and shrewd persons, contriving or acting in it. As when a man, by the utmost of his wit and skill, projects the compassing of such or such a thing, fits means to his end, lays antecedents and consequents directly and appositely for the bringing about his purpose; but in the issue and result, finds all broken and baffled, and the event contrary to his intention; and the order of causes and counsels so studiously framed by him, to produce an effect opposite to, and destructive of, the design driven at by those means and arts. In this case also, I say, we may rationally acknowledge an extraordinary act of Providence: forasmuch as the man himself is made instrumental to the effecting of something perfectly against his own will and judgment, and that by those very ways and methods which, in themselves, were the most proper to prevent, and the most unlikely to bring to pass, such an event. The world all the while standing amazed at it, and the credit of the politician sinking; for that nothing seems to cast so just a reproach even upon reason itself, as for persons noted for it to act as notably against it.

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1. By endowing them with a more than ordinary sagacity and quickness of understanding above other men. Kings, they say, have a long reach with their arm, but they have a farther with their mind. In 1 Kings, iv. 29, God is said to have given Solomon "largeness of heart, even as the sand on the sea-shore." And in Prov. xxv. 3, "the heart of kings" is said to be "unsearchable." In the former text the royal mind is compared to the sand on the sea-shore for compass, and in this latter it may seem to vie with the sea itself for depth. And does not this day's solemnity give us an eminent proof of this? For when this horrid conspiracy, contrived in hell and darkness, was conveyed to one of the confederates under the shelter of an equivocal writing, our apprehensive and quick-scented king presently smoked the ambiguous paper, and sounding the depths of the black intrigue, found that at the bottom of it, which few mortals besides (though of the quickest faculties) could have discovered from it, who had not had their conjectures alarmed by some glimmerings of light into that dark project before. Such a piercing judgment does God often give to these his deputies- a judgment which looks into, or rather through and through all others, but is looked into by

none.

And there is nothing that both adorns and secures a prince comparably to this discerning faculty; for by this, as by a great light kind

3dly, and lastly, Providence may be said to act in an extraordinary way, when a thing comes to pass, visibly and apparently, beyond the power of the cause immediately employed in it. As that a man dumb all his life before, should, on the sudden, speak; as it is said that the son of Croesus did, upon the sight of a murder ready to have been committed upon the person of his prince and father. That a small company should route and scatter an army, or (in the language of Scripture) that "one should chase an hundred, and an hun-ling many others, he commands the use of the dred put ten thousand to flight." That persons of mean parts, and little or no experience, should frustrate and overreach the counsels of old, beaten, thorough-paced, politicians. These effects, I say, are manifestly above the ability and stated way of working belonging to the causes from whence they flow. Nevertheless, such things are sometimes seen upon the great stage of the world, to the wonder and astonishment of the beholders, who are wholly unable, by the common method and discourses of reason, to give a satisfactory account of these strange phenomena, by resolving them into any thing visible in their immediate agents; in which case, therefore, I conceive, that the whole order and connection of these things one with another, may be reckoned an act of Providence extraordinary.

And thus much for the first general thing proposed, which was to shew upon what ac

best understandings and judgments throughout his dominions, calling them to his council, and so seeing with their eyes, apprehending and contriving with their heads; all their knowledge and experience, like rivers paying tribute to the ocean, being conveyed into, and swallowed up in, his royal breast. It is both the safety and felicity of a prince to have a wise council, but it must be his own wisdom which provides him one. Wisdom is a noble quality, and not discernible but by itself. It is art that must judge of art; and he who discovers wisdom in another, must do it by the idea he first had of it in his own brain. Now, as the first and chief external safeguard of a prince is in his council, and as it is his discerning faculty which must furnish him with this, so his next safety is in the choice of his friends; and it is the same discerning faculty which must secure him here too. For

it is this that must distinguish between friendship and flattery, the most baneful mischief that can be practised by one man upon another; and shadows do not more inseparably follow bodies, than flattery does the persons of great men. Flatterers are the bosom enemies of princes, laying trains for them, not at all less destructive than that which was discovered this day; contriving their ruin acceptably, pleasingly, and according to their own hearts' desire. Poison has frequently destroyed kings, but none has been so efficaciously mortal as that drank in by the ear. He who meets his enemy in the field, knows how to encounter him; but he who meets him at his table, in his chamber, or in his closet, finds his enemy got within him before he is aware of him, killing him with smiles and kisses, and acting the assassin under the masquerade of a counsellor or a confident-the surest, but the basest way of destroying a man.

But now, it is the prince's wisdom and discerning spirit that must be his rescue from the plots of this friendly traitor. It is a most remarkable speech of Solomon, (Prov. xx. 8,) "that the king sitting on the throne of judgment scattereth away all evil with his eye." And the nature of this evil is peculiarly such, that to discover, is to defeat it. It is a work of darkness, which the light never looks upon, but it scatters too.

Nothing is so notable in the royal bird, the eagle, as the quickness of his eye. The sight is the sense of empire and command; that which is always first, and leads the way in every great action: for so far as a prince sees, so far properly he rules; and while he keeps his eye open, and his breast shut, he cannot be surprised.

And thus much for the first way by which Providence saves and delivers princes, namely, by endowing them with a more than ordinary sagacity and quickness of understanding above other men.

2. God saves and delivers sovereign princes by giving them a singular courage and presence of mind in cases of difficulty and danger. As soon as ever the sacred oil had anointed Saul king, it is said, (1 Sam. x. 9,)" that God gave him another heart," that is, a great and a kingly spirit, raising his thoughts above the common level and designs of a private condition. And a little after, when there was a general consternation over all Israel, upon the invasion of the Ammonites, though the report of it met Saul in his former mean employment, coming from the field after his father's herd; yet it is said, in the 11th chapter of the same book, and verse 6, "that the Spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard these tidings," that is, the royal spirit, which he had received at his anointing, then began to stir and act, and flame out like itself; taking him presently from following a herd, and putting

him at the head of an army. It is incredible to consider the motion of some minds upon the sudden surprise of danger; and how much, in such cases, some will even outact themselves how much quicker their wit is to invent, and their courage to execute, than at other times. Tullus Hostilius, in the midst of a battle, surprised with the treachery of Metius Suffetius falling off with a great part of his army to the enemy, cries out to his soldiers, that it was by his order, and thereby confirmed their hearts from fainting through the apprehension of treachery, into a present and glorious victory, by their supposing it a contrived stratagem.

Next to wisdom, the greatest gift of Heaven is resolution. It is that which gives and obtains kingdoms, that turns swords into sceptres, that crowns the valiant with victory, and the victorious often with a diadem. It was answered by a neighbouring prince to one alleging a flaw in the title of Henry VII. to the kingdom of England, that he had three of the best titles to his kingdom of any prince living, being the wisest prince, the valiantest prince, and the richest prince in Christendom.

Presence of mind to get out of a plunge. and upon the sudden to unravel the knots and intricacies of a perplexed business, argues a head and a heart made for great things. It is a kind of ecstasy and inspiration, a beam of divine light darting in upon reason, and exalting it to a pitch of operation beyond its natural and accustomed measures; and perhaps there was never any person in the world remarkably and heroically great, without some such kind of enthusiasm, that is, such a mighty principle, as at certain times raised him up to strange unaccountable heights of wit and courage. And therefore, whosoever he is, who, in the strength of such a spirit, can look the most menacing dangers in the face, and when the state of all things about him seems desperate, can yet bear his great heart above despair, such an one, for the most part, makes fortune itself bend and fall down to him, difficulties vanish, and dangers fly before him; so much is victory the claim of the valiant, and success the birthright of the bold. And this is the second way by which Providence "gives salvation unto kings."

3. God saves and delivers sovereign princes, by disposing of events and accidents, in a strange concurrence for their advantage and preservation. Nothing, indeed, is or can be properly accidental to God; but accidents are so called in respect of the intention or expectation of second causes, when things fall out beside their knowledge or design. And there is nothing in which Providence so much triumphs over, and, as I may so say, laughs at the profoundest wisdom of men, as in the stable, certain knowledge and disposal of all casual events. In respect of which, the clearest

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