till persuasion pass into knowledge, and knowledge advance into assurance, and all come at length to be completed in the beatific vision, and a full fruition of those joys which God has in reserve for them whom by his grace he shall prepare for glory.

To which God, infinitely wise, holy, and just, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON VII.

A SERMON PREACHED AT THE CONSECRATION OF A

CHAPEL.

1667.

PREFACE.

AFTER the happy expiration of those times which had reformed

so many churches to the ground, and in which men used to express their honor to God, and their allegiance to their prince the same way, demolishing the palaces of the one and the temples of the other, it is now our glory and felicity, that God has changed men's tempers with the times, and made a spirit of building succeed a spirit of pulling down,- by a miraculous revolution, reducing many from the head of a triumphant rebellion to their old condition of masons, smiths, and carpenters, that in this capacity they might repair what, as colonels and captains, they had ruined and defaced.

But still it is strange to see any ecclesiastical pile, not by ecclesiastical cost and influence rising above ground; especially in an age in which men's mouths are open against the church, but their hands shut towards it; an age in which, respecting the generality of men, we might as soon expect stones to be made bread, as to be made churches.

But the more epidemical and prevailing this evil is, the more honorable are those who stand and shine as exceptions from the common practice; and may such places, built for the divine worship, derive an honor and a blessing upon the head of the builders, as great and lasting as the curse and infamy that never fails to rest upon the sacrilegious violators of them; and a greater, I am sure I need not, I can not wish.

Now the foundation of what I shall discourse, upon the present subject and occasion, shall be laid in that place in

Psalm lxxxvii. 2. — God hath loved the gates of Sion, more than all the dwellings of Jacob.

THE

HE comparison here exhibited between the love God bore to Sion, the great place of his solemn worship, and that which he bore to the other dwellings of Israel, imports, as all other comparisons do in the superior part of them, two things, difference and preeminence and accordingly I can not more commodiously and naturally contrive the prosecution of these words, than by casting the sense of them into these two propositions :

I. That God bears a different respect to places set apart and consecrated to his worship, from what he bears to all other places designed to the uses of common life.

II. That God prefers the worship paid him in such places, above that which is offered him in any other places whatso

ever.

I. As to the former of these, this difference of respect, borne by God to such places, from what he bears to others, may be evinced these three several ways:

1. By those eminent interposals of Providence, for the erecting and preserving of such places.

2. By those notable judgments shown by God upon the violators of them.

3. Lastly, by declaring the ground and reason why God shows such a different respect to those places, from what he manifests to others. Of all which in their order.

1. First of all then, those eminent interposals of the divine Providence for the erecting and preserving such places, will be one pregnant and strong argument to prove the difference of God's respect to them, and to others of common use.

That Providence that universally casts its eye over all the parts of the creation, is yet pleased more particularly to fasten it upon some. God made all the world, that he might be worshiped in some parts of the world; and therefore in the first and most early times of the church, what care did he manifest to have such places erected to his honor! Jacob he admonished by a vision, as by a messenger from heaven, to build him an altar; and then, what awe did Jacob express to it! How dreadful, says he, is this place! for surely it is no

other than the house of God. What particular inspirations were there upon Aholihab to fit him to work about the sanctuary! The Spirit of God was the surveyor, director, and manager of the whole business. But above all, how exact and (as we may say with reverence) how nice was God about the building of the temple! David, though a man of most intimate converse and acquaintance with God, and one who bore a kingly preëminence over others, no less in point of piety than of majesty, after he had made such rich, such vast, and almost incredible provision of materials for the building of the temple; but because he had dipt his hands in blood, though but the blood of God's enemies, had the glory of that work took out of them, and was not permitted to lay a stone in that sacred pile; but the whole work was entirely reserved for Solomon, a prince adorned with those parts of mind, and exalted by such a concurrence of all prosperous events to make him glorious and magnificent, as if God had made it his business to build a Solomon, that Solomon might build him an house. To which, had not God borne a very different respect from what he bore to all other places, why might not David have been permitted to build God a temple, as well as to rear himself a palace? Why might not he, who was so pious as to design, be also so prosperous as to finish it? God must needs have set a more than ordinary esteem upon that which David, the man after his own heart, the darling of Heaven, and the most flaming example of a vigorous love to God that ever was, was not thought fit to have a hand in.

And to proceed, when, after a long tract of time, the sins of Israel had even unconsecrated and profaned that sacred edifice, and thereby robbed it of its only defense, the palladium of God's presence, so that the Assyrians laid it even with the ground; yet after that a long captivity and affliction had made the Jews fit again for so great a privilege as a public place to worship God in, how did God put it into the heart, even of an heathen prince, to promote the building of a second temple! How was the work undertook and carried on amidst all the unlikelihoods and discouraging circumstances imaginable! The builders holding the sword in one hand, to defend the trowel working with the other; yet finished and completed it was, under the conduct and protection

of a peculiar providence, that made the instruments of that great design prevalent and victorious, and all those mountains of opposition to become plains before Zorobabel.

And lastly, when Herod the Great, whose magnificence served him instead of piety to prompt him to an action, if not in him religious, yet heroic at least, thought fit to pull down that temple, and to build one much more glorious, and fit for the Saviour of the world to appear and preach in. Josephus, in his 15th book of the Jewish Antiquities, and the 14th chapter, says, that during all the time of its building, there fell not so much as a shower to interrupt the work, but the rain still fell by night, that it might not retard the business of the day. If this were so, I am not of the number of those who can ascribe such great and strange passages to chance, or satisfy my reason in assigning any other cause of this, but the kindness of God himself to the place of his worship; making the common influences of heaven to stop their course, and pay a kind of homage to the rearing of so sacred a structure. Though I must confess, that David's being prohibited, and Herod permitted to build God a temple might seem strange, did not the absoluteness of God's good pleasure satisfy all sober minds of the reasonableness of God's proceedings, though never so strange and unaccountable.

Add to all this, that the extraordinary manifestations of God's presence were still in the sanctuary: the cloud, the Urim and Thummim, and the oracular answers of God, were graces and prerogatives proper and peculiar to the sacredness of this place. These were the dignities that made it, as it were, the presence-chamber of the Almighty, the room of audience, where he declared that he would receive and answer petitions from all places under heaven, and where he displayed his royalty and glory. There was no parlor or dining-room in all the dwellings of Jacob, that he vouchsafed the like privileges to. And moreover, how full are God's expressions to this purpose! Here have I placed my name, and here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein.

But to evidence, how different a respect God bears to things consecrated to his own worship, from what he bears to all other things, let that one eminent passage of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, be proof beyond all exception; in