to support, and supply one another in any such occasional weaknesses. The God of heaven multiply the present joy of your parents, by that way, of making you joyful parents also; and recompense your obedience to parents, by that way, of giving you obedient children too. The God of heaven so join you now, as that you may be glad of one another all your life; and when he who hath joined you, shall separate you again, establish you with an assurance, that he hath but borrowed one of you, for a time, to make both your joys the more perfect in the resurrection. The God of heaven make you always of one will, and that will always conformable to his; conserve you in the sincere truth of his religion; feast you with the best feast; peace of conscience; and carry you through the good opinion, and love of his saints. in this world, to the association of his saints, and angels, and one another, in the resurrection, and everlasting possession of that kingdom, which his Son, our Saviour, Christ Jesus hath purchased for us, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen.

SERMON LXXXII.

PREACHED AT A MARRIAGE.

GENESIS ii. 18.

And the Lord God said, It is not good, that the man should be alone; I will make him a help, meet for him.

In the creation of the world, when God stocked the earth, and the sea, with those creatures, which were to be the seminary, and foundation, and root of all that should ever be propagated in either of those elements, and when he had made man, to rule over them, he spoke to man, and to other creatures, in one and the same phrase, and form of speech, Crescite, et multiplicamini, Be fruitful, and multiply; and thereby imprinted in man, and in

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other creatures, a natural desire to conserve, and propagate their kind by way of generation. But after God had thus imprinted in man, the same natural desire of propagation, which he had infused into other creatures too, after he had communicated to him that blessing, (for it is so said, God blessed them, and said, Be fruitful, and multiply1) till an ability and a desire of propagating their kind, was infused into the creature, there is no mention of any blessing in the creation; after God had made men partakers of that blessing, that natural desire of propagation, he takes a farther care of man, in giving him a proper and peculiar blessing, in contracting and limiting that natural desire of his he leaves all other creatures to their general use and execution of that commission, crescite et multiplicamini, the male was to take the female when and where their natural desire provoked them; but, for man, adduxit Deus ad Adam; God left not them to go to one another, but God brought the woman to the man: and so this conjunction, this desire of propagation, though it be natural in man, as in other creatures, by his creation, yet it is limited by God himself, to be exercised only between such persons, as God hath brought together in marriage, according to his institution, and ordinance. Though then societies of men do grow up, and spread themselves into towns, and into cities, and into kingdoms, yet the root of all societies is in families, in the relation between man and wife, parents and children, masters and servants: so though the state of the children of God, in this world be dignified by the name of a kingdom, (for so we pray by Christ's own institution, Thy kingdom come, and so Christ says, Ecce regnum, The kingdom of God is amongst you3) and though the state of God's children here, be called a city, a new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven, and in David, glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God', yet for all these glorious titles of city and kingdom, we must remember, that it is called a family too; the household of the faithful: and so the apostle says, in preferring Christ before Moses, that Christ as the Son was over God's house, whose house we are. So that, both of civil and of spiritual societies, the first root is a family; and of families, the

first root is marriage; and of marriage, the first root that grows out into words, is in this text; and the Lord God said, It is not good, &c.

If we should employ this exercise only upon these two general considerations, first, that God puts even his care and his study to find out what is good for man, and secondly, that God doth provide and furnish whatsoever he finds to be necessary, faciam, I will make him a helper, though they be common places, we are bound to thank God that they are so; that it is a common place to God, that he ever does it towards us, that it is a common place to us, that we ever acknowledge it in him. But you may be pleased to admit a more particular distribution. For, upon the first, will be grounded this consideration, that in regard of the public good, God pretermits private, and particular respects; for God doth not say, non bonum homini, it is not good for man to be alone, man might have done well enough so; nor God does not say, non bonum hunc hominem, it is not good for this, or that particular man to be alone; but non bonum, hominem, it is not good in the general, for the whole frame of the world, that man should be alone, because then both God's purposes had been frustrated, of being glorified by man here, in this world, and of glorifying man, in the world to come; for neither of these could have been done, without a succession, and propagation of man; and therefore, non bonum hominem, it was not good, that man should be alone. And then upon the second consideration, will arise these branches; first, that whatsoever the defect be, there is no remedy, but from God; for it is, faciam, I will do it. Secondly, that even the works of God, are not equally excellent; this is but faciam, it is not faciamus; in the creation of man, there is intimated a consultation, a deliberation of the whole Trinity; in the making of woman, it is not expressed so; it is but faciam. And then, that that is made here, is but adjutorium, but an accessory, not a principal; but a helper. First the wife must be so much, she must help; and then she must be no more, she must not govern. But she cannot be that, except she have that quality, which God intended in the first woman, adjutorium simile sibi, a helper fit for him: for otherwise he will ever return, to the bonum esse solum, it had been better for him, to have been

alone, than, in the likeness of a helper, to have had a wife unfit for him.

First then, that in regard of the public good, God pretermits private respects, if we take examples upon that stage, upon that scene, the face of nature, we see that for the conservation of the whole, God hath imprinted in the particulars, a disposition to depart from their own nature: water will clamber up hills, and air will sink down into vaults, rather than admit vacuity. But take the example nearer, in God's bosom, and there we see, that for the public, for the redemption of the whole world, God hath (shall we say, pretermitted?) derelicted, forsaken, abandoned, his own, and only Son. Do you so too? Regnum Dei intra nos; The kingdom of God is within you; planted in your election; watered in your baptism; fattened with the blood of Christ Jesus, ploughed up with many calamities, and tribulations; weeded with often repentances of particular sins; the kingdom of God is within you; and will ye not depart from private affections, from ambition and covetousness, from excess, 'and voluptuousness, from chambering and wantonness, in which the kingdom of God doth not consist, for the conservation of this kingdom? will ye not pray for this kingdom, in your private, and public devotions? will ye not fast for this kingdom, in cutting off superfluities? will ye not fight for this kingdom, in resisting suggestions? will ye not take counsel for this kingdom, in consulting with religious friends? will ye not give subsidies for this kingdom, in relieving their recessities, for whom God hath made you his stewards? weigh and measure yourselves, and spend that, be negligent of that, which is least, and worst in you. Is your soul less than your body, because it is in it? How easily lies a letter in a box, which if it were unfolded, would cover that box? unfold your soul, and you shall see, that it reaches to heaven; from thence it came, and thither it should pretend; whereas the body is but from that earth, and for that earth, upon which it is now; which is but a short, and an inglorious progress. To contract this, the soul is larger than the body, and the glory, and the joys of heaven, larger than the honours, and the pleasures of this world: what are seventy years, to that latitude, of continuing as long as the ancient of days? what is it, to have spent our time, with the

great ones of this time; when, when the angels shall come and say, That time shall be no more, we shall have no being with him, who is yesterday and to-day, and the same for ever? we see how ordinarily ships go many leagues out of their direct way, to fetch the wind. Spiritus spirat ubi vult, says Christ; The spirit blows where he will; and, as the angel took Habakkuk by the hair, and placed him where he would, this wind, the spirit of God, can take thee at last, by thy gray hairs, and place thee in a good station then. Spirat ubi vult, he blows where he will, and spirat ubi vis, he blows where thou wilt too, if thou beest appliable to his inspirations. They are but hollow places that return echoes, last syllables it is but a hollowness of heart, to answer God at last. Be but as liberal of thy body in thy mortifications, as in thy excess, and licentiousness, and thou shalt in some measure, have followed God's example, for the public to pretermit the private, for the larger, and better, to leave the narrower, and worser respects.

To proceed, when we made that observation, that God pretermitted the private for the public, we noted, that God did not say, non bonum homini, it was not good for man to be alone; man might have done well enough in that state, so, as his solitariness might have been supplied with a further creation of more men. In making the inventories of those goods which man possesseth in the world, we see a great author' says, In possessionibus sunt amici, et inimici, Not only our friends, but even our enemies, are part of our goods, and we may raise as much profit from these, as from those, it may be as good a lesson to a man's son, study that enemy, as observe that friend. As David says, Propitius fuisti, et ulciscens, Thou heardst them O Lord our God, and wast favourable unto them, and didst punish all their inventions; it was part of his mercy, part of his favour, that he did correct them. So we may say to our enemy, I owe you my watchfulness upon myself, and you have given me all the goodness that I have; for you have calumniated all my indifferent actions, and that kept me, from committing enormous ill ones. And if then our enemies be in possessionibus, to be inventoried amongst our goods, might not man have been abundantly rich in friends,