Part 40 (1/2)
10); for ”behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. vi. 2). But I have more to say: Mourn, O mourn with Jerusalem, all ye that rejoice for her; ”This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy: for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth” (Isa. x.x.xvii. 3): it is an interwoven time, _warped_ with mercies, and _woofted_ with judgments. Say not thou in thine heart, The days of my mourning are at an end: Oh! we are to this day an unhumbled and an unprepared people; and there are among us both many cursed Achans, and many sleeping Jonahs, but few wrestling Jacobs; even the wise virgins are slumbering with the foolish (Matt. xxv.
5): surely, unless we be timely awakened, and more deeply humbled, G.o.d will punish us yet ”seven times” (Lev. xxvi. 18, 21, 24, 28) more for our sins; and if he hath chastised us with ”whips,” he will ”chastise us with scorpions;” and he will yet give a further charge to the sword to ”avenge the quarrel of his covenant” (Lev, xxvi. 25). In such a case, I cannot say, according to the now Oxford divinity, that _preces et lachrymae_,-prayers and tears,-must be our only one shelter and fortress, and that we must cast away defensive arms, as unlawful, in any case whatsoever, against the supreme magistrate (that is, by interpretation, they would have us do no more than _pray_, to the end themselves may do no less than _prey)_; wherein they are contradicted not only by Pareus, and by others that are ”eager for a presbytery” (as a prelate(1362) of chief note hath lately taken, I should say _mistaken_, his mark), but even by those that are ”eager royalists”(1363) (pardon me that I give them not their right name: I am sure, when all is well reckoned, we are better friends to royal authority than themselves). Yet herein I do agree with them, that ”prayers and tears” will prove our strongest weapons, and the only _tela divina_, the weapons that fight for us from above: O then ”fear the Lord, ye his saints” (Psal. x.x.xiv. 9); O stir up yourselves to lay hold on him (Isa. lxiv. 7); ”Keep not silence; and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth” (Isa.
lxii. 6, 7). O that we could all make wells in our dry and desert-like hearts (Psal. lx.x.xiv. 6), that we may draw out water (1 Sam. vii. 6), even buckets-full, to quench the wrath of a sin-revenging G.o.d, the fire which still burneth against the Lord's inheritance. G.o.d grant that this sermon be not ”as water spilt on the ground” but may ”drop as the rain” and ”distil as the dew” (Deut. x.x.xii. 2) of heaven upon thy soul.
SERMON.
EZEK. xliii. 11.
”And if they be ashamed of all that they have done, show them the form of the house, and the fas.h.i.+on thereof, and the goings-out thereof, and the comings-in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the laws thereof: and write it in their sight, that they may keep the whole form thereof, and all the ordinance thereof, and do them.”
It is not long since I did, upon another day of humiliation, lay open England's disease from that text, 2 Chron. xx. 33, ”Howbeit the high places were not taken away; for as yet the people had not prepared their hearts unto the G.o.d of their fathers.” Though the Sun of Righteousness be risen, Mal. iv. 2, ”with healing in his wings,” yet the land is not healed, no, not of its worst disease, which is corruption in religion, and the iniquity of your holy things. I did then show the symptoms, and the cause of this evil disease. The symptoms are your high places not yet taken away, many of your old superst.i.tious ceremonies to this day remaining, which, though not so evil as the high places of idolatry in which idols were wors.h.i.+pped, yet are parallel to the high places of will-wors.h.i.+p, of which we read that the people, thinking it too hard to be tied to go up to Jerusalem with every sacrifice, ”did sacrifice still in the high places, yet unto the Lord their G.o.d only,” 2 Chron. x.x.xiii, 17; pleading for their so doing, antiquity, custom, and other defences of that kind, which have been alleged for your ceremonies. But albeit these be foul spots in the church's face, which offend the eyes of her glorious Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, yet that which doth less appear is more dangerous, and that is the cause of all this evil in the very bowels and heart of the church; the people of the land, great and small, have not as yet prepared their hearts unto the Lord their G.o.d; mercy is prepared for the land, but the land is not prepared for mercy. I shall say no more of the disease at this instant.
But I have now chosen a text which holds forth a remedy for this malady-a cure for this case; that is, that if we will humble our uncirc.u.mcised hearts, and accept of the punishment of our iniquity, Lev. xxvi. 41; if we be ”ashamed and confounded” (Ezek. x.x.xvi. 32), before the Lord this day for our evil ways; if we judge ourselves as guilty, and put our mouth in the dust, and clothe ourselves with shame as with a garment; if we repent and abhor ourselves in dust and ashes, then the Lord will not abhor us, but take pleasure in us, to dwell among us, to reveal himself unto us, to set before us the right pattern of his own house, that the tabernacle of G.o.d may be with men, Rev. xxi. 3; and pure ordinances, where before they were defiled and mixed; Zech. xiii. 2, He ”will cut off the names of the idols out of the land,” and cause the false prophet, ”and the unclean spirit to pa.s.s out of the land,” and the glory of the Lord shall dwell in the land, Psal. lx.x.xv. 9. But, withal, we must take heed that we ”turn not again to folly,” Psal. lx.x.xv. 8; that our hearts start not aside, ”like a deceitful bow,” Psal. lxxviii. 57; that we ”keep the ways of the Lord,”
Psal. xviii. 21, and do not wickedly depart from our G.o.d. Thus you have briefly the occasion and the sum of what I am to deliver from this text; the particulars whereof I shall not touch till I have, in the first place, resolved a difficult, yet profitable question.
You may ask, What house or what temple doth the Prophet here speak of, and how can it be made to appear that this scripture is applicable to this time?
I answer, Some(1364) have taken great pains to demonstrate that this temple, which the Prophet saw in this vision, was no other than the temple of Solomon; and that the accomplishment of this vision of the temple, city, and division of the land, was the building of the temple and city again after the captivity, and the restoring of the Levitical wors.h.i.+p and Jewish republic, which came to pa.s.s in the days of Nehemiah and Zorobabel.
This sense is also most obvious to every one that readeth this prophecy; but there are very strong reasons against it, which make other learned expositors not to embrace it.
For, 1. The temple of Solomon was one hundred and twenty cubits high, the temple built by Zorobabel was but sixty cubits high, Ezra vi. 3.
2. The temple of Zorobabel (Ezra iii. 1, 8, vi. 3, 5, 7) was built in the same place where the temple of Solomon was, that is, in Jerusalem, upon mount Moriah, but this temple of Ezekiel was without the city, and a great way distant from it,(1365) chap. xlviii. 10 compared with ver. 15. The whole portion of the Levites, and a part of the portion of the priests, was betwixt the temple and the city.
3. Moses' greatest altar,-the altar of burnt-offerings, was not half so big as Ezekiel's altar, compare Ezek. xliii. 16 with Exod. xxvii. 1,(1366) so is Moses' altar of incense much less than Ezekiel's altar of incense, Exod. x.x.x. 2 compared with Ezek. xli. 22.
4. There are many new ceremonial laws, different from the Mosaical, delivered in the following part of this vision, chap. xlv. and xlvi., as interpreters have particularly observed upon these places.(1367)
5. The temple and city were not of that greatness which is described in this vision; for the measuring reed, containing six cubits of the sanctuary, not common cubits (chap. xl. 5), which amount to more than ten feet, the outer wall of the temple being two thousand reeds in compa.s.s (chap. xlii. 20), was by estimation four miles, and the city (chap.
xlviii. 16, 35) thirty-six miles in compa.s.s.
6. The vision of the holy waters (chap. xlvii.) issuing from the temple, and after the s.p.a.ce of four thousand reeds growing to a river which could not be pa.s.sed over, and healing the waters and the fishes, cannot be literally understood of the temple at Jerusalem.
7. The land is divided among the twelve tribes (chap. xlviii.), and that in a way and order different from the division made by Joshua, which cannot be understood of the rest.i.tution after the captivity, because the twelve tribes did not return.
8. This new temple hath with it a new covenant, and that an everlasting one, Ezek. x.x.xvii. 26, 27. But at the return of the people from Babylon there was no new covenant, saith Irenaeus,(1368) only the same that was before continued till Christ's coming.
Wherefore we must needs hold with Jerome,(1369) Gregory,(1370) and other later interpreters, that this vision is to be expounded of the spiritual temple and church of Christ, made up of Jews and Gentiles; and that not by way of allegories only, which is the sense of those whose opinion I have now confuted, but according to the proper and direct intendment of the vision, which, in many material points, cannot agree to Zorobabel's temple.
I am herein very much strengthened while I observe many parallel pa.s.sages(1371) betwixt the vision of Ezekiel and the revelation of John; and while I remember withal, that the prophets do in many places foretell the inst.i.tution of the ordinances, government and wors.h.i.+p of the New Testament, under the terms of temple, priests, sacrifices, &c., and do set forth the deliverance and stability of the church of Christ, under the notions of Canaan, of bringing back the captivity, &c., G.o.d speaking to his people at that time, so as they might best understand him.
Now if you ask how the several particulars in the vision may be particularly expounded and applied to the church of Christ, I answer The word of G.o.d, the ”river that makes glad the city of G.o.d,” though it have many easy and known fords where any of Christ's lambs may pa.s.s through, yet in this vision, and other places of this kind, it is ”a great deep”
where the greatest elephant, as he said, may swim. I shall not say with the Jews, that one should not read the last nine chapters of Ezekiel before he be thirty years old. Surely a man may be twice thirty years old, and a good divine too, and yet not able to understand this vision. Some tell us, that no man can understand it without skill in geometry, which cannot be denied, but there is greater need of ecclesiometry, if I may so speak, to measure the church in her length, or continuance through many generations, in her breadth, or spreading through many nations, her depth of humiliation, sorrows and sufferings, her height of faith, hope, joy, and comfort, and to measure each part according to this pattern here set before us.
Wherein, for my part, I must profess (as Socrates in another case), _Scio quod nescio_. I know that there is a great mystery here which I cannot reach. Only I shall set forth unto you that little light which the Father of lights hath given me.
I conceive that the Holy Ghost in this vision hath pointed at four several times and conditions of the church,-that we may take with us the full meaning, without addition or diminution.
Observing this rule, That what agreeth not to the type must be meant of the thing typified, and what is not fulfilled at one time must be fulfilled of the church at another time.