in heaven, and another thing not to be willing to follow Christ and forsake the world, if there were no such recompense. But besides, suppose it were the duty of scholars to choose this calling in the midst of all its discouragements; yet a prudent governor, who knows it to be his wisdom as well as his duty, to take the best course to advance religion, will not consider men's duty, but their practice; not what they ought to do, but what they use to do: and therefore draw over the best qualified to his service, by such ways as are most apt to persuade and induce men. Solomon built his temple with the tallest cedars: and surely, when God refused the defective and the maimed for sacrifice, we can not think that he requires them for the priesthood. When learning, abilities, and what is excellent in the world, forsake the church, we may easily foretell its ruin, without the gift of prophecy. And when ignorance succeeds in the place of learning, weakness in the room of judgment, we may be sure heresy and confusion will quickly come in the room of religion for undoubtedly there is no way so effectual to betray the truth, as to procure it a weak defender. : Well now, instead of raising any particular uses from the point that has been delivered, let us make a brief recapitulation of the whole. Government, we see, depends upon religion, and religion upon the encouragement of those that are to dispense and assert it. For the further evidence of which truths, we need not travel beyond our own borders; but leave it to every one impartially to judge, whether from the very first day that our religion was unsettled, and church government flung out of doors, the civil government has ever been able to fix upon a sure foundation. We have been changing even to a proverb. The indignation of heaven has been rolling and turning us from one form to another, till at length such a giddiness seized upon government, that it fell into the very dregs of sectaries, who threatened an equal ruin both to minister and magistrate; and how the state has sympathized with the church is apparent. For have not our princes as well as our priests been of the lowest of the people? Have not cobblers, draymen, mechanics, governed, as well as preached? Nay, have not they by preaching come to govern ? Was ever that of Solomon more verified, that servants have rid, while princes and nobles have gone on foot? But God has been pleased by a miracle of mercy to dissipate this confusion and chaos, and to give us some openings, some dawnings of liberty and settlement. But now, let not those who are to rebuild our Jerusalem think that the temple must be built last: for if there be such a thing as a God, and religion, as whether men believe it or no, they will one day find and feel, assuredly he will stop our liberty, till we restore him his worship. Besides, it is a senseless thing in reason, to think that one of these interests can stand without the other, when in the very order of natural causes, government is preserved by religion. But to return to Jeroboam with whom we first began. He laid the foundation of his government in destroying, though doubtless he colored it with the name of reforming God's worship; but see the issue. Consider him cursed by God, maintaining his usurped title by continual vexatious wars against the kings of Judah: smote in his prosperity, which was made like the dung upon the face of the earth, as low and vile as those priests whom he had employed: consider him branded, and made odious to all after-ages: and now, when his kingdom and glory was at an end, and he and his posterity rotting under ground, and his name stinking above it, judge what a worthy prize he made in getting of a kingdom, by destroying the church. Wherefore the sum of all is this: to advise and desire those whom it may concern, to consider Jeroboam's punishment, and then they will have little heart to Jeroboam's sin. SERMON V. A SERMON PREACHED AT LAMBETH CHAPEL ON THE 25TH OF NOVEMBER, 1666. UPON THE CONSECRATION OF THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD DR. JOHN DOLBEN, LORD BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. TO THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD JOHN, LORD BISHOP OF ROCHESTER, DEAN OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WESTMINSTER, AND CLERK OF THE CLOSET TO HIS MAJESTY. MY LORD, THOUGH the interposal of my Lord of Canterbury's command It for the publication of this mean discourse may seem so far to determine, as even to take away my choice; yet I must own it to the world, that it is solely and entirely my own inclination, seconded by my obligations to your Lordship, that makes this, that was so lately an humble attendant upon your Lordship's consecration, now ambitious to consecrate itself with your Lordship's name. was my honor to have lived in the same college with your Lordship, and now to belong to the same cathedral, where at present you credit the church as much by your government, as you did the school formerly by your wit. Your Lordship even then grew up into a constant superiority above others; and all your after-greatness seems but a paraphrase upon those promising beginnings: for whatsoever you are, or shall be, has been but an easy prognostic from what you were. It is your Lordship's unhappiness to be cast upon an age in which the church is in its wane; and if you do not those glorious things that our English prelates did two or three hundred years since, it is not because your Lordship is at all less than they, but because the times are worse. Witness those magnificent buildings in Christ Church in Oxford, begun and carried on by your Lordship; when by your place you governed, and by your wisdom increased the treasure of that college: and, which must eternally set your fame above the reach of envy and detraction, these great structures you attempted at a time when you returned poor and bare, to a college ! as bare, after a long persecution, and before you had laid so much as one stone in the repairs of your own fortunes: by which incomparably high and generous undertaking, you have shown the world how fit a person you were to build upon Wolsey's foundation: a prelate whose great designs you imitate, and whose mind you equal. Briefly, that Christ Church stands so high above ground, and that the church of Westminster lies not flat upon it, is your Lordship's commendation. And therefore your Lordship is not behindhand with the church, paying it as much credit and support, as you receive from it; for you owe your promotion to your merit, and, I am sure, your merit to yourself. All men court you, not so much because a great person, as a public good. For, as a friend, there is none so hearty, so nobly warm and active to make good all the offices of that endearing relation; as a patron, none more able to oblige and reward your dependents, and, which is the crowning ornament of power, none more willing. And lastly, as a diocesan, you are like even to outdo yourself in all other capacities; and, in a word, to exemplify and realize every word of the following discourse: which is here most humbly and gratefully presented to your Lordship, by Your Lordship's From St. James's, most obliged servant, ROBERT SOUTH. TITUS ii. 15. These things speak and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. IT may possibly be expected, that the very taking of my text out of this epistle to Titus may engage me in a discourse about the nature, original, and divine right of episcopacy; and if it should, it were no more than what some of the greatest and the learnedest persons in the world (when men served truth instead of design) had done before: for I must profess, that I can not look upon Titus as so far unbishoped yet, but that he still exhibits to us all the essentials of that jurisdiction, which to this day is claimed for episcopal. We are told in the fifth verse of the first chapter, that he was left in Crete to set things in order, and to ordain elders in every city ; which text one would think were sufficiently clear and full, and too big with evidence to be perverted: but when we have seen rebellion commented out of the thirteenth of the Ro mans; and since there are few things but admit of gloss and probability, and consequently may be expounded as well as disputed on both sides; it is no such wonder, that some would bear the world in hand, that the apostle's design and meaning is for presbytery, though his words are all the time for episcopacy: no wonder, I say, to us at least, who have conversed with too many strange unparalleled actions, occurrences, and events, now to wonder at any thing: wonder is from surprise; and surprise ceases upon experience. I am not so much a friend to the stale starched formality of preambles, as to detain so great an audience with any previous discourse extrinsic to the subject matter and design of the text; and therefore I shall fall directly upon the words, which run in the form of an exhortation, though in appearance a very strange one; for the matter of an exhortation should be something naturally in the power of him to whom the exhortation is directed. For no man exhorts another to be strong, beautiful, witty, or the like; these are the felicities of some conditions, the object of more wishes, but the effects of no man's choice. Nor seems there any greater reason for the apostle's exhorting Titus, that no man should despise him; for how could another man's action be his duty? Was it in his power that men should not be wicked and injurious; and if such persons would despise him, could any thing pass an obligation upon him not to be despised? No, this can not be the meaning; and therefore it is clear that the exhortation lies not against the action itself, which is only in the despiser's power, but against the just occasion of it, which is in the will and power of him that is despised: it was not in Titus's power that men should not despise him, but it was in his power to bereave them of all just cause of doing so; it was not in his power not to be derided, but it was in his power not to be ridiculous. In all this epistle it is evident that St. Paul looks upon Titus as advanced to the dignity of a prime ruler of the church, and intrusted with a large diocese, containing many particular churches under the immediate government of their respective elders; and those deriving authority from his ordination, as was specified in the fifth verse of the first chapter. And now looking upon Titus under this qualification, |