160 An Admonition to all Ministers Ecclesiastical. it shall be well done to spend your time to consider well of such chapters beforehand, whereby your prudence and diligence in your office may appear; so that your people may have cause to glorify God for you, and be the readier to embrace your labours, to your better commendation, to the discharge of your consciences and their own. THE TABLE OF HOMILIES ENSUING. 1. Of the right use of the Church, &c. 2. Against peril of Idolatry. Three Parts. 3. For repairing and keeping clean the Church. 4. Of Good Works. And first of Fasting. Two Parts. 5. Against Gluttony and Drunkenness. 6. Against excess of Apparel. 7. An Homily of Prayer. Three Parts. 8. Of the place and time of Prayer. Two Parts. 9. Of Common Prayer and Sacraments. 10. An Information for them which take offence at certain places of holy Scripture. Two Parts. 11. Of Alms deeds. Three Parts. 12. Of the Nativity. 13. Of the Passion. For Good Friday. Two Homilies. 14. Of the Resurrection. For Easter Day. 15. Of the worthy receiving of the Sacrament. Two Parts. 16. An Homily concerning the coming down of the Holy Ghost. For Whitsunday. Two Parts. 17. An Homily for Rogation Week. Four Parts. 18. Of the state of Matrimony. 19. Against Idleness. 20. Of Repentance and true reconciliation unto God. Three Parts. 21. An Homily against Disobedience and wilful Rebellion. Six Parts. AN HOMILY OF THE RIGHT USE OF THE CHURCH OR TEMPLE OF GOD, THE FIRST PART. WHERE there appeareth at these days great slackness and negligence of a great sort of people in resorting to the church, there to serve God their heavenly Father according to their most bounden duty; as also much uncomely and unreverent behaviour of many persons in the same, when they be there assembled; and thereby may just fear arise of the wrath of God and his dreadful plagues hanging over our heads for our grievous offence in this behalf, amongst other many and great sins which we daily and hourly commit before the Lord: therefore, for the discharge of all our consciences and the avoiding of the common peril and plague hanging over us, let us consider what may be said out of God's holy book concerning this matter; whereunto I pray you give good audience, for that it is of great weight, and concerneth you all. Although the eternal and incomprehensible Majesty of God, the Lord of heaven and earth, Matt. xi. 25 whose seat is heaven and the earth his footstool, cannot be enclosed in temples or houses made with man's hand, as in dwellingplaces able to receive or contain his Majesty; (according as is evidently declared of the Prophet Esay, and by the doctrine Isai. Ixvi, 1 : of St. Stephen and St. Paul in the Acts of the Acts vii. 48, 49; and xvii. 1 Kings viii. 27: 2 Chron. 18, 19. 17. you? Apostles, and where king Salomon, who builded unto the Lord the most glorious temple that ever was made, saith, Who shall be able to build a meet 6; and vi. or worthy house for him? if heaven, and the heaven above all heavens, cannot contain him, how much less can that which I have builded! and further confesseth, What am I, that I should be able to build thee an house, O Lord? but yet for this purpose only it is made that thou mayest regard the prayer of thy servant and his humble supplication; much less then be our churches meet dwellingplaces to receive the incomprehensible Majesty of God:) and indeed the chief and special temples of God, wherein he hath greatest pleasure, and most delighteth to dwell and continue in, are the bodies and minds of true Christians and the chosen people of God; (according to the doctrine of the holy Scripture, declared in the first Epistle to the Corinthians: 1 Cor. iii. 16, Know ye not, saith St. Paul, that ye be the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God doth dwell in if any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which ye are: Thid. vi, 19, and again in the same Epistle: Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost dwelling in you, whom ye have given you of God, and that ye be not your own? for ye be dearly bought: glorify ye now therefore God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's) and therefore, as our Saviour John iv. 23, Christ teacheth in the Gospel of St. John, they that worship God the Father in spirit and truth, in what place soever they do it, worship him aright; for such worshippers doth God the Father look for: for God is a Spirit; and those which worship him must worship him in Spirit and truth, saith our Saviour Christ: yet, all this notwithstanding, the material church or temple is a place appointed, as well by the usage and continual examples expressed in the Old Testament as in the New, for the people of God to resort together unto, there to hear God's holy word, to call upon his holy Name, to give him thanks for 20. 24. |