too many of us savour more like the golden sockets of the holy lights, than the bowls of the altar.

God cannot abide these ill scents. The five cities of the plains sent up such poisonous vapours to God, that he sent them down brimstone again with their fire. That, which hell is described by, is sent down from heaven; because that such hellish exhalations ascend from them, to heaven. How should the sins of Sodom not expect the judgments of Sodom! Well might the Jews fear, because they would not be serviceable caldrons unto God, that therefore they should be the flesh, and their city the caldron; Ezek. xi. 3. Well may we fear it, who have had so sensible proofs, as of the favours, so of the judgments of God: and happy shall it be for us, if we can so fear, that our fear may prevent evils. Let these pots of ours therefore send up sweet fumes of contrition, righteousness, thanksgiving, into the nostrils of God; and the smoke of his displeasure, wherewith coals of eternal fire are kindled against his enemies, shall not come forth of his nostrils against us. He shall smell a savour of rest from us; we a savour of peace and life from him: which God for his mercy's sake, and for his Son Christ's sake, vouchsafe to grant us: To whom with the Father, and the Holy Ghost, one glorious God, be given all praise, honour, and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

SERMON V.

A FAREWELL SERMON;

PREACHED TO THE FAMILY OF PRINCE HENRY, UPON THE DAY OF THEIR DISSOLUTION AT ST. JAMES'S, ON NEW YEAR'S-DAY, 1613.}

REV. XXI. 3, 4.

And I heard a great voice from heaven, saying, Behold the Tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be their God with them. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the first things are passed. And he, that sat upon the throne, said; Behold, I make all things new.

It is no wonder, if this place, as it is, for the present, the well-head of sorrow to all Christendom, have sent forth abundance of waters of tears. And, perhaps, you may expect, that, as the trumpets of our late heavy funeral-solemnity sounded basest and dolefulest, at the last; so my speech, being the last public breath of this sad dissolving Family, should be most passionately sorrowful. And surely I could easily obtain of myself,

out of the bitterness of my soul, to spend myself in lamentations; and to break up this assembly, in the violent expressions of that grief, wherewith our hearts are already broken: but I well consider, that we shall carry sorrow enough home with us, in my silence; and that it is both more hard and more necessary for us, to be led forth to the waters of comfort. And, because our occasions of grief are such, as no earthly tongue can relieve us, nor no earthly object, a voice from heaven shall do it; and a voice leading us from earth to heaven, And I heard a voice from heaven, &c.

This day is a day of note for three famous periods. First, it is the day of the dissipation of this Royal Family: then, the last day of our public and joint mourning: lastly, the day of the alteration and renewing of our state, and course of life, with the new-year. All these meet in this Text with their cordials and divine remedies: our dissipation and dissolution in these words, Behold the Tabernacle of God is with men; our mourning, God shall wipe away all tears, &c.; our change of estate, Behold, I will make all things new. I must crave leave to glide through all of these with much speed; and, for the better convenience of our discourse, through the first, last.

My speech therefore shall, as it were, climb up these six stairs of doctrine.

I. That here our eyes are full of TEARS: how else should they be wiped away? how all, unless many?

II. That these Tears are from SORROW; and this Sorrow from DEATH, and TOIL; out of the connexion of all these.

III. That God will once FREE us, both from Tears which are the Effect of Sorrow; and from Toil and Death, which are the Causes of it.

IV. That this our Freedom must be upon a CHANGE: for that the first things are passed.

V. That this Change shall be in our RENOVATION: Behold, I make all things new.

VI. That this Renovation and happy Change shall be in our PERPETUAL FRUITION OF THE INSEPARABLE PRESENCE OF GOD, whose Tabernacle shall be with men.

I. As those grounds that lie low are commonly moorish, this base part of the world wherein we live, is the vale of TEARS; Psalm lxxxiv. 6. That true Bochim, as the Israelites called their mourning-place, Judges ii. 5. We begin our life with tears; and therefore our lawyers define life, by weeping. If a child were heard cry, it is a lawful proof of his living; else, if he be dead, we say he is still-born: and, at our parting, God finds tears, in our eyes, which he shall wipe off. So we find it always, not only, many, a time of weeping, but,, of solemn mourning, as Solomon puts them together; Eccl. iii. 4. Except we be in that case, that David and his people were in; 1 Sam. xxx. 4.

(and Jeremiah says the same, in his Lamentations, of the Jews; Lam. ii. 11,) that they wept, till they could weep no more. Here are tears at our devotion; the altar covered with tears; Mal. ii. 13 tears in the bed; David watered his couch with tears; Psal. vi. 6: tears to wash with; as Mary's tears to eat; Psalm xlii. 3: tears to drink; Psalm 1xxx. 5: yea, drunkenness with tears; Isaiah xvi. 9.

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This is our destiny as we are men, but more as we are Christians, To sow in tears; and God loves these wet seed-times : they are seasonable for us here below. Those men therefore are mistaken, that think to go to heaven with dry eyes, and hope to leap immediately out of the pleasures of earth, into the paradise of God; insulting over the drooping estate of God's distressed ones. As Jerome and Bede say of Peter, that he could not weep while he was in the high priest's walls; so these men cannot weep where they have offended. But let them know, that they must have a time of tears; and, if they do not begin with tears, they shall end with them; Woe be to them that laugh, for they shall weep and if they will not weep, and shake their heads here, they shall weep and wail, and gnash their teeth hereafter. Here must be tears, and that good store.

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II. All tears; as rivers are called the tears of the sea; ), Job xxxviii. 16: so must our tears be the rivers of our eyes; Psalm cxix. 136, and our eyes fountains; Jer. x. 1. Here must be tears of penitence, tears of compassion, and will be tears of SORROW: well are those two met therefore; Tears and Sorrow for though some shed tears for spite, others for joy, as Cyprian's Martyrs, Gaudium pectoris lachrymis exprimentes; (Greg. Nis. Orat.) yet commonly tears are the juice of a mind pressed with grief. And as well do tears, and crying, and sorrow accompany DEATH; either in the supposition, or the denial. For as worldly sorrow, (even in this sense) causeth death, by drying the bones and consuming the body; so death ever lightly, is a just cause of sorrow; sorrow to nature in ourselves, sorrow to ours.

And, as death is the terriblest thing, so is it the saddest thing, that befals a man. Nature could say in the poet, Quis matrem in funere nati flere vetat? yea, God himself allowed his holy priests, to pollute themselves in mourning, for their nearest dead friends; except the high priest, which was forbidden it in figure; Lev. xxi.: and the Apostle, while he forbids the Thessalonians to mourn, as without hope, doth in a sort command their tears, but bar their immoderation. It was not without a special reference to a judgment, that God says to Ezekiel, Son of Man, Behold I will take from thee the pleasure of thy life with a plague, yet shalt thou neither mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down; Ezek. xxiv. 16.

So fit did the Jews hold tears for funerals, that they hired mourners; which, with incomposed gestures, ran up and down the

streets; Eccl. xii. 5: who did also cut and lance themselves, that they might mourn in earnest; Jer. xvi. 6. That goodnatured Patriarch, Isaac, mourned three years for his mother; as the Chinese do at this day for their friends. Jacob mourned two-and-twenty years for Joseph; and there want not some, which have thought Adam and Eve mourned a hundred years for Abel: but, who knows not the wailing of Abel-mitzraim for Joseph; of the valley of Megiddon for Josiah? And if ever any corpse deserved to swim in tears, if ever any loss could command lamentation; then this of ours, yea of this whole island, yea of the whole Church of God, yea of the whole world, justly calls for it, and truly hath it.

O Henry, our sweet prince, our sweet prince Henry, the second glory of our nation, ornament of mankind, hope of posterity, and life of our life, how do all hearts bleed, and eyes worthily gush out for thy loss! A loss, that we had neither grace to fear, nor have capacity to conceive. Shall I praise him to you, who are therefore now miserable, because you did know him so well? I forbear it, though to my pain. If I did not spare you, I could not so swiftly pass over the name and the virtues of that glorious Saint, our dear Master; or the aggravation of that loss, whereof you are too sensible; my true commiseration shall command me silence: yet I could not but touch our sore, with this light hand, though yet raw and bleeding. Death, especially such a death, must have sorrow and tears. All nations, all succession of times, shall bear a part with us in this lamentation. And, if we could but as heartily have prayed for him before, as we have heartily wept for him since, perhaps we had not had this cause of mourning.

From sorrow, let us descend to PAINS, (which is no small cause of crying and tears), as I fear some of us must. The word, howsoever it is here translated, is óvos, labour. I must confess, labour and pain are near one another; whence we say, that he, which labours, takes pains; and, contrarily, that a woman is in labour or travail, when she is in the pain of childbirth. Tears cannot be wiped away, while toil remains. That the Israelites may leave crying, they must be delivered from the brickkilns of Egypt.

Indeed, God had in our creation allotted us labour, without pain; but, when once sin came into the soul, pain seized upon the bones, and the mind was possessed with a weariness and irksome loathing of what it must do; and, ever since, sorrow and labour have been inseparable attendants upon the life of man: insomuch as God, when he would describe to us the happy estate of the dead, does it in those terms, They shall rest from their labours.

Look into the field: there you shall see toiling at the plough and scythe. Look into the waters: there you see tugging at the

oars and cables. Look into the city: there you see plodding in the streets, sweating in the shops. Look into the studies: there you see fixing of eyes, tossing of books, scratching the head, paleness, infirmity. Look into the Court: there you see tedious attendance, emulatory officiousness. All things are full of labour, and labour is full of sorrow. If we do nothing, idleness is wearisome if any thing, work is wearisome: in one or both of these, the best of life is consumed.

III. Who now can be in love with life, that hath nothing in it but crying and tears in the entrance; death, in the conclusion; labour and pain, in the continuance; and sorrow, in all these? What galley-slave but we, would be in love with our chain? what prisoner would delight in his dungeon? How hath our infidelity besotted us, if we do not long after that happy estate of our immortality, wherein all our tears shall be wiped away; and we at once FREE from labour, sorrow, and death. Now, as it is vain to hope for this till then; so, then not to hope for it, is paganish and brutish. He, that hath taxed us with these penances, hath undertaken to release us: God shall wipe away all tears.

While we stay here, he keeps all our tears in a bottle; so precious is the water that is distilled from penitent eyes: and, because he will be sure not to fail, he notes how many drops there be, in his register; Psalm lvi. 8. It was a precious ointment, wherewith the woman in the Pharisee's house, it is thought Mary Magdalen, anointed the feet of Christ; Luke vii. 37: but her tears, wherewith she washed them, were more worth than her spikenard. But, that which is here precious, is there unseasonable: then, he shall wipe away those, which here he would

save.

As death, so passions are the companions of infirmity; whereupon some, that have been too nice, have called those, which were incident unto Christ, Propassions; not considering, that he, which was capable of death, might be as well of passions. These troublesome affections of grief, fear, and such like, do not fall into glorified souls. It is true, that they have love, desire, joy in their greatest perfection: yea, they could not have perfection without them: but, like as God loves, and hates, and rejoices truly, but in a manner of his own, abstracted from all infirmity and passion; so do his glorified saints, in imitation of

him.

There therefore, as we cannot die, so we cannot grieve, we cannot be afflicted. Here one says, My belly, my belly, with the prophet; another, Mine head, Mine head, with the Shunamite's son; another, My son, my son, as David; another, My father, my father, with Elisha. One cries out of his sins, with David; another of his hunger, with Esau; another of an ill wife, with Job; another of treacherous friends, with the Psalmist: one, of