if Israel play the harlot, yet oh why will Judah sin? If the poor seduced souls of foreign subjects, that have been invincibly noursled up in ignorance and superstition, whose woeful case wo do truly commiserate with weeping and bleeding hearts, be carried hood-winked to those hideous impieties, which if they had our eyes, our means, they would certainly detest, shall the native subjects of the Defender of the Faith, who have been trained up in so clear a light of the Gospel, begin to cast wanton eyes upon their glorious superstitions; and, contrary to the laws of God and our Sovereign, throng to their exotical devotions? What shall we say? Increpa, Domine: Master, rebuke them. And ye, to whom God hath given grace to see and bewail the lamentable exorbitances of their superstitions, settle your souls in the noble resolution of faithful Joshua, I and my house will serve the Lord. Stand fast in the liberty, wherewith Christ hath made you free.

Hath the Gospel of God freed us from the worship of stocks and stones; from the mis-religious invocation of those, who, we know, cannot hear us; from the sacrilegious mutilation of the blessed sacrament; from the tyrannical usurpations of a sinful vice-god; from the dangerous reliance upon the inerrable sentence of him, that cannot say true; from the idle fears of imaginary purgatories; from buying of pardons, and selling of sins; shortly, from the whole body of damnable antichristianism? and shall our unstable mouths now begin to water at the onions and garlic of our forsaken Egypt? Ŏ Dear Christians, if ye love your souls, if ye fear hell, Stand fast in this liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free.

What mercy soever may abide well-meaning ignorance, let the wilful revolter make account of damnation. I cannot, without yearning of bowels, think of the dear price, that our holy forefathers staked down for this liberty of the Gospel; no less than their best and last blood. And shall we, their unthrifty progeny, lavish it out carelessly, in a willing neglect; and either not care to exchange it for a plausible bondage, or squander it out in unnecessary differences?

Do but cast your eyes back upon the fresh memory of those late flourishing times of this goodly kingdom, when pure religion was not more cheerfully professed, than inviolably maintained: how did we then thrive at home, and triumph abroad! How were we then the terror, the envy of nations! Our name was enough to affright, to amate an enemy. But now, since we have let fall our first love, and suffered the weak languishments and qualms of the truth under our hands, I fear and grieve to tell the issue.

Oh then, suffer yourselves, O ye Noble and Beloved Christians, to be roused up from that dull and lethargic indifferency, wherein ye have thus long slept; and awake up your holy courages for God, and his sacred truth. And, since we have so many com

fortable and assured engagements from our pious Sovereign, Oh let not us be wanting to God, to his Majesty, to ourselves, in our utmost endeavours of advancing the good success of the blessed Gospel of Christ. Honour God with your faithful and zealous prosecutions of his holy truth, and he shall honour you; and, besides the restoration of that ancient glory to our late-clouded nation, shall repay our good offices done to his Name, with an eternal weight of glory in the highest heavens: To the possession whereof, he, that hath ordained us, in his good time mercifully bring us, for the sake of the Son of his Love, Jesus Christ the Just: To who.n, with the Father, and the Holy Ghost, one Infinite God, be given all praise, honour, and glory, now and for Amen.

ever.

SERMON XXVII.

SALVATION FROM AN UNTOWARD GENERATION:

ONE OF THE SERMONS PREACHED TO THE LORDS OF THE HIGH COURT OF PARLIAMENT, IN THEIR SOLEMN FAST, HELD ON ASH-WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1629;* AND, BY THEIR APPOINTMENT PUblished.

BY THE BISHOP OF EXETER.

ACTS II. 37, 38. 40. .

Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their hearts, and said to Peter and the rest of the Apostles, Men and Brethren, what shall we do? Then said Peter unto them, Repent and be baptised, &c. And with many other words did he testify, and exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.

WHO knows not, that Simon Peter was a fisher? that was his trade both by sea and land: if we may not rather say, that as Simon he was a fisherman, but as Peter he was a fisher of men he, that called him so, made him so.

And, surely, his first draught of fishes, which, as Simon, he made at our Saviour's command, might well be a true type of the first draught of men, which, as Peter, he made in this place: for

*The date of the year is not given in the folio, but I have ventured to add it, as the Ashwednesday which fell on February 18, was in the year 1629; or, 1628, as perhaps the Bishop would call it, the Church of England then beginning the year on March 25. See Notes to the Dates of Sermons XXVIII. and XXXV.-PRATT.

as then the nets were ready to crack, and the ship to sink with store; so here when he threw forth his first drag-net of heavenly doctrine and reproof, three thousand souls were drawn up at once.

This Text was as the sacred cord, that drew the net together; and pulled up this wondrous shoal of converts to God. It is the sum of St. Peter's Sermon; if not at a Fast, yet at a general Humiliation, which is more and better: for wherefore fast we, but to be humbled and, if we could be duly humbled without fasting, it would please God a thousand times better, than to fast formally without true humiliation.

Indeed, for the time, this was a Feast, the Feast of Pentecost; but, for the estate of these Jews it was dies cinerum, a day of contrition, a day of deep hunger and thirst after righteousness; Men and Brethren, what shall we do? Neither doubt I to say, that the festivity of the season added not a little to their humiliation like as we are never so apt to take cold, as upon a sweat; and that wind is ever the keenest, which blows cold out of a warm coast. No day could be more afflictive, than an Ashwednesday, that should light upon a solemn Pentecost: so it was here.

Every thing answered well. The Spirit came down upon them, in a mighty wind; and, behold, it hath rattled their hearts together the house shook in the descent; and, behold, here the foundations of the soul were moved: fiery tongues appeared: and here their breasts were inflamed: cloven tongues; and here their hearts were cut in sunder. The words were miraculous, because in a supernatural and sudden variety of language; the matter divine, laying before them both the truth of the Messiah, and their bloody measure offered to that Lord of Life.

And now, Compuncti cordibus; They were pricked in their hearts. Wise Solomon says, The words of the wise are like goads and nails: here they were so. Goads, for they were compuncti, pricked: yea, but the goad could not go so deep, that passeth but the skin: they were nails, driven into the very heart of the auditors, up to the head: the great master of the assembly, the divine Apostle had set them home; they were pricked in their hearts. Never were words better bestowed. It is a happy blood-letting, that saves the life this did so here. We look to the sign commonly in phlebotomy: it is a sign of our idle and ignorant superstition. St. Peter here saw the sign to be in the heart; and he strikes happily: Compuncti cordibus; They were pricked in their hearts, and said, Men and Brethren, what shall we do?

Oh, what sweet music was this to the Apostle's ear! I dare say none but heaven could afford better. What a pleasing spectacle was this anguish of their wounded souls! To see men come, in their zealous devotions, and lay down their moneys, the price of their alienated possessions, at those apostolic feet, was nothing to this, that they came, in a bleeding contrition, and prostrated their penitent and humbled souls at the beautiful feet of the messengers of peace, with Men and Brethren, what shall we do?

Oh when, when shall our eyes be blessed with so happy a prospect? How long shall we thunder out God's fearful judgments against wilful sinners? How long shall we threaten the flames of hell to those impious wretches, who crucify again to themselves the Lord of Life, ere we can wring a sigh or a tear from the rocks of their hearts or eyes? Woe is me, that we may say too truly, as this Peter did of his other fishing, Master, we have travailed all the night, and have caught nothing. Surely, it may well go for night with us, while we labour and prevail not. Nothing? not a soul caught? Lord, what is become of the success of thy Gospel? Who hath believed our report, or to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? O God, thou art ever thyself: thy truth is eternal: hell is where it was. If we be less worthy than thy first messengers, yet what excuse is this to the besotted world, that, through obduredness and infidelity, it will needs perish? No man will so much as say with the Jews, What have I done? or, with St. Peter's auditors, What shall I do?

O foolish sinners! shall ye live here always? care ye not for your souls is there not a hell, that gapes for your stubborn impenitence? Go on, if there be no remedy, go on, and die for ever; we are guiltless: God is righteous: your damnation is just. But, if your life be fickle, death unavoidable, if an everlasting vengeance be the necessary reward of your momentary wickedness; oh turn, turn from your evil ways, and, in a holy distraction of your remorsed souls, say, with these Jews, Men and Brethren, what shall we do?

This from the general view of the occasion; we descend to a little more particularity.

Luke, the beloved physician, describes St. Peter's proceeding here much after his own trade, as of a true spiritual physician; who, finding his countrymen, the Jews, in a desperate and deadly condition, gasping for life, struggling with death, enters into a speedy and zealous course of their cure.

And, first, he begins with the chirurgical part; and, finding them rank of blood, and that foul and putrified, he lets it out: compuncti cordibus.

Where we might shew you the incision, the vein, the lancet, the orifice, the anguish of the stroke. The Incision, compuncti ; they were pricked. The Vein, in their hearts. Smile not now, ye Physicians, if any hear me this day, as if I had passed a solecism, in telling you these men were pricked in the vein of the heart: talk you of your cephalica, and the rest; and tell us of another cistern, from whence these tubuli sanguinis are derived: I tell you again, with an addition of more incongruities still, that God and his divine physician do still let blood in the median vein of the heart. The Lancet is the keen and cutting reproof of their late barbarous crucifixion of their Holy and most Innocent and Benign Saviour. The Orifice is the ear; when they heard this. Whatever the local distance be of these parts, spiritually the ear

is the very surface of the heart; and whosoever would give a medicinal stroke to the heart, must pass it through the ear, the sense of discipline and correction. The Anguish bewrays itself in their passionate exclamation, Men and Brethren, what shall we do?

There is none of these, which my speech might not well take up; if not as a house to dwell in, yet as an inn to rest and lodge in. But I will not so much as bait here: only, we make this a thoroughfare to those other sacred prescriptions of saving remedies, which are Three in number.

The first is, Evacuation of sins by a speedy REPENTANCE, μeravoeîte. The second, the sovereign Bath or Laver of Regeneration,

BAPTISM.

The third, dietetical and prophylactical receipts of wholesome CAUTION; which I mean, with a determinate preterition of the rest, to spend my hour upon: Save yourselves from this untoward generation.

But, ere I pitch upon this most useful and seasonable particularity, let me offer to your thoughts the speedy application of these gracious remedies. The blessed Apostle doth not let his patients languish under his hand, in the heats and colds of hopes and fears; but, so soon as ever the word is out of their mouths, Men and Brethren, what shall we do? he presently administereth these sovereign receipts, Repent; be baptized; save yourselves. In acute diseases, wise physicians will lose no time: only delay makes some distempers deadly. It is not for us, to let good motions freeze under our fingers. How many gleeds have died in their ashes, which, if they had been speedily blown, had risen into comfortable flames! The care of our zeal for God must be sure to take all opportunities of good. This is the Apostle's Kaip dovλevew, serving the time; that is, observing it not for conformity to it when it is naught; (fie on that baseness: no; let the declining time come to us upon true and constant grounds, let not us stoop to it in the terms of the servile yieldance of Optatus his Donatists, Omnia pro tempore, nihil pro veritate :) Not, I say, for conformity to it; but for advantage of it. The emblem teaches us to take occasion by the forelock; else we catch too late. The Israelites must go forth and gather their manna so soon as it is fallen: if they stay but till the sun have reached his noon-point, in vain shall they seek for that food of angels. St. Peter had learnt this of his Master: when the shoal was ready, Christ says, Laxate retia: Luke v. 4: what should the net do now in the ship? When the fish was caught, Christ says, Draw up again: what should the net do now in the

sea?

What should I advise you, Reverend Fathers and Brethren, the princes of our Israel, as the doctors are called Judges v. 9, to speak a word in season? What should I presume to put into