so few feet, as shall but make up thy grave? When he who was a great lord, must be but a cottager; and not so well; for a cottager must have so many acres to his cottage; but in this case, a little piece of an acre, five-foot, is become the house itself; the house, and the land; the grave is all: lower than that; the grave is the land, and the tenement, and the tenant too: he that lies in it becomes the same earth, that he lies in. They all make but one earth, and but a little of it. But then raise thyself to a higher hope again. God hath made better land, the land of promise; a stronger city, the new Jerusalem; and inhabitants for that everlasting city, us; whom he made, not by saying, Let there be men, but by consultation, by deliberation, God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness. We shall pursue our great examples; God in doing, Moses in saying; and so make haste in applying the parts. But first receive them. And since we have the whole world in contemplation, consider in these words, the four quarters of the world, by application, by fair, and just accommodation of the words. First, in the first word, that God speaks here, Faciamus, Let us, us in the plural, (a denotation of divers persons in one Godhead) we consider our east where we must begin, at the knowledge and confession of the Trinity. For, though in the way to heaven, we be travelled beyond the Gentiles, when we come to confess but one God, (the Gentiles could not do that) yet we are still among the Jews, if we think that one God to be but one person. Christ's name is Oriens, the East', if we will be named by him, (called Christians) we must look to this east, the confession of the Trinity. There is then our east, in the Faciamus; Let us, us make man and then our west is the next word, Faciamus hominem. Though we be thus made, made by the council, made by the concurrence, made by the hand of the whole Trinity; yet we are made but men and man, but in the appellation, in this text: and man there, is but Adam: and Adam is but earth, but red carth, earth dyed red in blood, in soul-blood, the blood of our own souls. To that west we must all come, to the earth. The sun knoweth his going down': even the sun for all his glory, and height, hath a going down, and he knows it. The highest cannot 1 Zech. vi. 12. Psalın civ. 19. i divest mortality, nor the discomfort of mortality. When you see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway you say, There cometh a storm, says Christ3. When out of the region of your west, that is, your later days, there comes a cloud, a sickness, you feel a storm, even the best moral constancy is shaked. But this cloud, and this storm, and this west there must be; and that is our second consideration. But then the next words design a north, a strong, and powerful north, to scatter, and dissipate these clouds: Ad imaginem, et similitudinem; That we are made according to a pattern, to an image, to a likeness, which God proposed to himself for the making of man. This consideration, that God did not rest, in that pre-existent matter, out of which he made all other creatures, and produced their forms, out of their matter, for the making of man; but took a form, a pattern, a model for that work, this is the north wind, that is called upon to carry out the perfumes of the garden, to spread the goodness of God abroad. This is that which is intended in Job"; fair weather cometh out of the north. Our west, our declination is in this, that we are but earth, our north, our dissipation of that darkness, is in this, that we are not all earth; though we be of that matter, we have another form, another image, another likeness. And then, whose image and likeness it is, is our meridional height, our noon, our south point, our highest elevation. In imagine nostra, Let us make man in our image. Though our sun set at noon, as the prophet Amos speaks; though we die in our youth, or fall in our height yet even in that sunset, we shall have a noon. this image of God shall never depart from our soul; no, not when that soul departs from our body. And that is our south, our meridional height and glory. And when we have thus seen this east, in the faciamus, That I am the workmanship and care of the whole Trinity; and this west in the hominem, that for all that, my matter, my substance, is but earth: but then a north, a power of overcoming that low, and miserable state, In imagine; that though in my matter, the earth, I must die; yet in my form, in that image which I am made by, I cannot die: and after all a south, a knowledge, that this image is not the image of angels, 3 Luke xii. 54. 4 Cant. iv. 16. • Amos viii. 9. For to whom we shall be like, but it is by the same life, by which those angels themselves were made; the image of God himself: when I am gone over this east, and west, and north, and south, here in this world; I should be as sorry as Alexander was, if there were no more worlds. But there is another world, which these considerations will discover, and lead us to, in which our joy, and our glory shall be, to see that God essentially, and face to face, after whose image, and likeness we were made before. But as that pilot which had harboured his ship so far within land, as that he must have change of winds, in all the points of the compass, to bring her out, cannot hope to bring her out in one day so being to transport you, by occasion of these words, from this world, to the next; and in this world, through all the compass, all the four quarters thereof; I cannot hope to make all this voyage to-day. To-day we shall consider only our longitude, our east, and west; and our north and south at another tide, and another gale. First then we look towards our east, the fountain of light, and of life. There this world began; the creation was in the east. And there our next world began too. There the gates of heaven opened to us; and opened to us in the gates of death; for, our heaven is the death of our Saviour, and there he lived, and died there, and there he looked into our west, from the east, from his terrace, from his pinnacle, from his exaltation (as himself calls it) the cross. The light which arises to us, in this east, the knowledge which we receive in this first word of our text, Faciamus, Let us, (where God speaking of himself, speaks in the plural) is the manifestation of the Trinity; the Trinity, which is the first letter in his alphabet, that ever thinks to read his name in the book of life; the first note in his gamut, that ever thinks to sing his part, in the choir of the Triumphant church. Let him, him have done as much, as all the worthies; and suffered as much as all nature's martyrs, the penurious philosophers; let him have known as much, as they that pretend to know, Omne scibile, all that can be known nay, and In-intelligibilia, in-investigabilia, (as Tertullian speaks) un-understandable things, unrevealed decrees of God; let him have writ as much, as Aristotle writ, or as is written upon Aristotle, which is, multiplication enough: yet he hath not learnt to spell, that hath not learnt the Trinity; not learnt to pronounce the first word, that cannot bring three persons into one God. The subject of natural philosophy, are the four elements, which God made, the subject of supernatural philosophy, divinity, are the three elements, which God is; and (if we may so speak) which make God, that is, constitute God, notify God to us, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The natural man, that hearkens to his own heart, and the law written there; may produce actions that are good, good in the nature and matter, and substance of the work. He may relieve the poor, he may defend the oppressed. But yet, he is but as an open field; and though he be not absolutely barren, he bears but grass. The godly man, he that hath taken in the knowledge of a great, and a powerful God, and enclosed, and hedged in himself with the fear of God, may produce actions better than the mere natural man, because he refers his actions to the glory of his imagined God. But yet this man, though he be more fruitful than the former, more than a grassy field; yet he is but a ploughed field, and he bears but corn, and corn, God knows, choked with weeds. But that man, who hath taken hold of God, by those handles, by which God hath delivered, and manifested himself in the notions of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; he is no field, but a garden, a garden of God's planting, a paradise in which grow all things good to eat, and good to see, (spiritual refection, and spiritual recreation too) and all things good to cure. He hath his being, and his diet, and his physic, there, in the knowledge of the Trinity; his being in the mercy of the Father; his physic in the merits of the Son; his diet, his daily bread, in the daily visitations of the Holy Ghost. God is not pleased, not satisfied, with our bare knowledge, that there is God. For, it is impossible to please God, without faith': and there is no such exercise of faith, in the knowledge of a God, but that reason, and nature will bring a man to it. When we profess God, in the Creed, by way of belief, Credo in Deum, I believe in God, in the same article we profess him to be a Father too, I believe in God the Father Almighty: and that notion, the Father, necessarily implies, a second person, a Son: and then we profess him to be maker of 7 Heb. xi. 6. heaven, and earth: and in the Creation, the Holy Ghost, the spirit of God, is expressly named. So that we do but exercise reason, and nature, in directing ourselves upon God. We exercise not faith, (and without faith it is impossible to please God) till we come to that, which is above nature, till we apprehend a Trinity. We know God, we believe in a Trinity. The Gentiles multiplied gods. There were almost as many gods, as men that believed in them. And I am got out of that thrust, and out of that noise, when I am come into the knowledge of one God: but I am got above stairs, got in the bedchamber, when I am come to see the Trinity, and to apprehend not only, that I am in the care of a great, and a powerful God, but that there is a Father, that made me, a Son that redeemed me, a Holy Ghost, that applies this good purpose of the Father, and Son, upon me, to me. The root of all is God. But it is not the way to receive fruits, to dig to the root, but to reach to the boughs. I reach for my creation to the Father, for my redemption to the Son, for my sanctification to the Holy Ghost: and so I make the knowledge of God, a tree of life unto me; and not otherwise. Truly it is a sad contemplation, to see Christians scratch and wound and tear one another, with the ignominious invectives, and uncharitable names of heretic, and schismatic, about ceremonial, and problematical, and indeed but critical, verbal controversies: and in the mean time, the foundation of all, the Trinity, undermined by those numerous, those multitudinous ant-hills of Socinians, that overflow some parts of the Christian world, and multiply every where. And therefore the adversaries of the Reformation, were wise in their generation, when to supplant the credit of both those great assistants of the Reformation, Luther, and Calvin, they impute to Calvin fundamental error, in the divinity of the second person of the Trinity, the Son; and they impute to Luther, a detestation of the very word Trinity, and an expunction thereof, in all places of the Liturgy, where the church had received that word. They knew well, if that slander could prevail against those persons, nothing that they could say, could prevail upon any good Christians. But though in our doctrine, we keep up the Trinity aright; yet God knows, in our practice we do not. I hope it cannot be said of any of us, that he believes |