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SERMON CV.

PREACHED AT WHITEHALL.

EZEKIEL XXXiv. 19.

And as for my flock, they eat that, which ye have trodden with your feet, and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet.

THOSE four prophets, whom the church hath called the great prophets, Esay, and Jeremy, Ezekiel and Daniel, are not only therefore called great, because they writ more, than the lesser prophets did, (for Zechary, who is amongst the lesser, writ more than Daniel who is amongst the greater) but because their prophecies are of a larger comprehension, and extent, and, for the most part, speak more of the coming of Christ, and the establishing of the Christian church, than the lesser prophets do, who were more conversant about the temporal deliverance of Israel from Babylon, though there be aspersions of Christ, and his future government in those prophets too, though more thinly shed. Amongst the four great ones, our prophet Ezekiel is the greatest. I compare not their extraction and race; for, though Ezekiel were de genere sacerdotali, of the Levitical and priestly race; (and, as Philo Judæus notes, all nations having some marks of gentry, some calling that ennobled the professors thereof, (in some arms, and merchandise in some, and the arts in others) amongst the Jews, that was priesthood, priesthood was gentry) though Ezekiel were of this race, Esay was of a higher, for he was of the extraction of their kings, of the blood royal. But the extraordinary greatness of Ezekiel, is in his extraordinary depth, and mysteriousness, for this is one of those parts of Scripture, (as the beginning of Genesis, and the Canticles of Solomon, also are) which are forbid to be read amongst the Jews, till they come to be thirty years old, which was the canonical age to be made priests; insomuch, that St. Gregory says, when he comes to expound any part of this prophet, Nocturnum iter ago, that he travelled by night, and did but guess at his way. But, besides that many of the obscure places of the prophets are more open to

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us, than they were to the ancients, because many of those phecies are now fulfilled, and so that which was prophecy to them, is history to us, in this place, which we have now undertaken, there never was darkness, nor difficulty, neither in the first emanation of the light thereof, nor in the reflexion; neither in the literal, nor in the figurative sense thereof; for the literal sense is plainly that, that amongst the manifold oppressions, under which the children of Israel languished in Babylon, this was the heaviest, that their own priests joined with the state against them, and infused pestilent doctrines into them, that so themselves might enjoy the favour of the state, and the people committed to their charge, might slacken their obedience to God, and surrender themselves to all commandments of all men; this was their oppression, the church joined with the court, to oppress them; their own priests gave these sheep grass which they had trodden with their feet, (doctrines, not as God gave them to them, but as they had tampered, and tempered them, and accommodated them to serve turns, and fit their ends, whose servants they had made themselves, more than God's) and they gave them water to drink which they had troubled with their feet, that is, doctrines mudded with other ends than the glory of God; and that therefore God would take his sheep into his own care, and reduce them from that double oppression of that court, and that church, those tyrannous officers, and those over-obsequious priests. This is the literal sense of our text, and context, evident enough in the letter thereof. And then the figurative and mystical sense is of the same oppressions, and the same deliverance over again in the times of Christ, and of the Christian church; for that is more than figurative, fully literal, soon after the text, I will set up one shepherd, my servant David, and I will raise up for them a plant of renown; which is the same that Esay' had called A rod out of the stem of Jesse, and Jeremiah had called A righteous branch, a king that should reign and prosper. This prophecy then comprehending the kingdom of Christ, it comprehends the whole kingdom of Christ, not only the oppressions, and deliverances of our forefathers, from the heathen, and the heretics in the Primitive church, but that also which touches us more

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nearly, the oppressions and deliverance of our fathers, in the reformation of religion, and the shaking off of the yoke of Rome, that Italian Babylon, as heavy as the Chaldean. We shall therefore at this time fix our meditations upon that accommodation of the text, the oppression that the Israel of God was under, then, when he delivered them by that way, the reformation of religion, and consider how these metaphors of the Holy Ghost, The treading with their feet the grass that the sheep were to eat, and the troubling with their feet the water that the sheep were to drink, do answer and set out the oppressions of the Roman church then, as lively as they did in the other Babylon. And so, having said enough of the primary sense of these words, as they concern God's Israel, in the first Babylon, and something by way of commemoration, and thankfulness, for God's deliverance of his Israel, from the persecutions in the Primitive church, insist we now, upon the several metaphors of the text, as the Holy Ghost continues them to the whole reign of Christ, and so to the Reformation.

First, the greatest calamity of those sheep in Babylon, was that their own shepherds concurred to their oppression. In Babylon they were a part, but in Rome they were all; in Babylon they joined with the state, but in Rome they were the state. St. Hierome notes3 out of a tradition of the Jews, that those loaves which their priests were to offer to the Lord, were to be of such corn as those priests had sowed and reaped and threshed, and ground, and baked all with their own hands. But they were so far from that at Babylon, and at Rome, as that they ploughed iniquity, and sowed wickedness, and reaped the same; and (as God himself complains) trod his portion under foot"; that is, first, neglected his people, (for God's people are his portion) and then whatsoever pious men had given to the church, is his portion too, and that portion they had trodden under foot; not neglected it, not despised it, for they collected it, and audited it providently enough, but they trod it under foot, when that which was given for the sustentation of the priest, they turned upon their own splendour, and glory, and surfeit: Christ will be fed in

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3 Mal. i. 7.

• Job iv. 8.

5 Jer. xii. 20.

the poor that are hungry, and he will be clothed in the poor that are naked, so he would be enriched in those poor ministers that serve at his altar; when Christ would be so fed, he desires not feasts and banquets; when he would be so clothed, he desires not soft raiment fit for kings' houses, nor embroideries, nor perfumes; when he would be enriched in the poor churchman, he desires not that he should be a sponge, to drink up the sweat of others, and live idly; but yet, as he would not be starved in the hungry, nor submitted to cold and unwholesome air in the naked, so neither would he be made contemptible, nor beggarly in the minister of his church. Nor, was there in the world, (take in Turkey, and all the heathen; for they also have their clergy) a more contemptible and more beggarly clergy than that of Rome; I speak of the clergy in the most proper sense, that is, they that minister, they that officiate, they that execute, they that personally and laboriously do the service of the church. The prelacies, and dignities of the church, were multiplied in the hands of them, who under pretext of government, took their ease, and they that laboured, were attenuated and macerated, with lean, and penurious pensions. In the best governed churches there are such dignities, and supplies without cure of souls, or personal service; but they are intended for recompense of former labours, and sustentation of their age, of whose youth, and stronger days, the church had received benefit. But in the Roman church these preferments are given almost in the womb; and children have them not only before they can merit them, but before they can speak for them; and they have some church-names, dean, or bishop, or abbot, as soon almost as they have any Christian names. Yea, we know many church dignities, entailed to noble families, and, if it fall void, whilst the child is so incapable, it must be held for him, by some that must resign it, when it may, by any extent of dispensation, be asked for him. So then the church joined with the state, to defraud the people; the priest was poorly maintained, and so the people poorly instructed. And this is the first conformity between the two Babylons, the Chaldean and the Italian.

Pursue we then the Holy Ghost's purpose and manner of implying, and expressing it the food ordained for sheep, grass.

In which make we only these two stops, that the sheep are to eat their grass super terram, upon the ground; and they are to eat it sine rore, when the dew is off. First, upon the ground; that is, where the hand of God hath set it; which for spiritual food is the church. In hard winters we give sheep hay, but in open times open grass. In persecutions of tyrants, in interdicts of antichristian bishops, who sometimes out of passion, or some secular respect shut up church doors and forbid service, and sacraments, to whole cities, to whole nations, sheep must live by hay, God's children must relieve themselves at home, by books of pious and devout meditation; but when God affords abundant pastures, and free entrance thereunto, God's sheep are to take their grass upon the ground, God's grace at the church. Impossibile est eum corrigere, qui omnia scit: It is an impossible thing to correct him, that thinks he knows all things already. As long as he will admit counsel from another, he acknowledges the other, to know more than he; but if he thinks, he knows all before, he hath no room for farther instruction, nor love to the place where it is to be had. We read in the Eastern histories, of a navigable river, that afforded all the inhabitants exportation, and importation, and all commerce. But when every particular man, to

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serve his own curiosity, for the offices of his house, for the pleasures of his gardens, and for the sumptuousness of grots and aqueducts, and such water-works, drew several channels, infinite channels out of this great river, this exhausted the main channel, and brought it to such a shallowness, as would bear no boats, and so, took from them the great and common commodities that it had afforded them. So if every man think to provide himself divinity enough at home, for himself and his family, and out of laziness and singularity, or state, or disaffection to the preacher leave the church unfrequented, he frustrates the ordinance of God, which is, that his sheep should come to his pastures, and take his grass upon his ground, his instructions at his house at church. And this we could not do in the Roman church, where all our prayers, and all God's service of that kind, were in a language, not only not understood by him that heard it, but for the most part, not by him that spoke it, it is not of their manifold,

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