which he requires from them, of his own gifts; that they should dare let the service and house of God lie dumb and naked; that they should shut up their bowels of compassion against their poor brethren, and in them venture to deny Christ himself a morsel of bread, or a mite of money; that they should neglect the obedience, profane the name, word, and worship of God, use all base and unwarrantable arts of getting, and all this out of love of that life, and greediness of that gain, which yet themselves, in their general subscription to God's truth, have confessed will either never be gotten, or at least never blessed, by such cursed courses? So prodigious a property is there in worldly things to obliterate all notions of God out of the heart of a man, and to harden him to any impudent abominations. "I speak unto thee in thy prosperity, saith the Lord, but thou saidst, I will not hear."" According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled and their heart was exalted: therefore have they forgotten me."-"Take heed, lest when thou hast eaten and art full, thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God." Therefore it is that we read of the " poor, rich in faith "," and of the "Gospel preached to the poor, and revealed unto babes x;" because greatness and abundance stops the ear, and hardens the heart, and makes men stand at defiance with the simplicity of the Gospel.

Sect. 14.-Now then that we may be instructed how to use the creature, as becometh a dead and impotent thing, we may make use of these few directions: First, have thine eye ever upon the power of God, which alone animateth and raiseth the creature to that pitch of livelihood which is in it, and who alone hath infinite ways to weaken the strongest, or to arm the weakest creature against the stoutest sinner. Peradventure thou hast as much lands and possessions, as many sheep and oxen as Job or Nabal; yet thou hast not the lordship y of the clouds: God can harden the heavens over thee; he can send the mildew and canker into thy corn, the rot and murrain into thy cattle. Though thy barns be full of corn, and thy fats overflow with new wine,-yet he can break the staff of thy bread, that the floor and the wine-press shall not feed thee,

2

s Hosea xiii. 6. t Deut. vi. 10, 11, 12, * Matt. xi. 5. 25. ν πάντες τὴν χρήσιν

exoμev deσnoríav de ovdeís. Chrysost. Hom. 2 ad

pop.

Antioch.

z Hosea ix. 2.

Though thou hast a house full of silver and gold, he can put holes into every bag, and chinks into every cistern, that it shall all sink away like a winter-torrent. God can either deny thee a power and will to enjoy it; and this is as sore a disease as poverty itself: or else he can take away thy strength, that thou shalt not relish any of thy choicest delicates: he can send a stone or a gout that shall make thee willing to buy with all thy riches a poor and a dishonourable health; and, which is yet worst of all, he can open thy conscience, and let in upon thy soul that lion which lies at the door, amaze thee with the sight of thine own sins, the history of thine evil life, the experience of his terrors, the glimpses and preoccupations of Hell, the evident presumptions of irreconciliation with him, the frenzy of Cain, the despair of Judas, the madness of Ahitophel, the trembling of Felix, which will damp all thy delights, and make all thy sweetest morsels as the white of an egg; at which pinch, however now thou admire and adore thy thick clay, thou wouldst count it the wisest bargain thou didst ever make, to give all thy goods to the poor, to go barefoot the whole day with the prophet Esay; to dress thy meat with the dung of a man, as the Lord commanded the prophet Ezekiel; to feed with Micaiah in a dungeon, on bread of affliction', and 'water of affliction for many years together'; that by these or any other means, thou mightest purchase that inestimable peace which the whole earth, though changed into a globe of gold or centre of diamonds, cannot procure. So utterly unable are all the creatures in the world to give life, as that they cannot preserve it entire from foreign or domestic assaults, nor remove those dumps and pressures which do any way disquiet it.

Sect. 15. Secondly, to remove this natural deadness of the creature, or rather to recompense it by the accession of a blessing from God, use means to reduce it unto its primitive goodness. The apostled shows us the way: "Every creature of God is good, being sanctified by the word of God, and by prayer." In which place, because it is a text, than which there are few places of Scripture that come more into daily and general use with all sorts of men, it will be needful to

a Eccles. vi. 1, 2. b Quantumlibet delectant jactantia divitiarum, et tumor honorum, et vorago popinarum, et bella theatricorum, &c. aufert omnia ista una febricula, et adhuc viventibus totam falsam beatitudinem subtrahit; remanet inanis et saucia conscientia. Aug. de Catechiz. Rud. c. 16. e Gen. iv. 7. d 1 Tim. iv. 4.

unfold; 1. What is meant by the sanctification of the creature. 2. How it is sanctified by the word. 3. How we are to sanctify it to ourselves by prayer.

Sect. 16.--For the first, The creature is then sanctified, when the curse and poison which sin brought upon it, is removed; when we can use the creatures with a clean conscience, and with assurance of a renewed and comfortable estate in them. It is an allusion to legal purifications and differences of meats, Levit. 11: "No creature is impure of itself," saith the apostle, in its own simple created nature : but inasmuch as the sin of man forfeited all his interest in the creature, because eo ipso' a man is legally dead; and a condemned man is utterly deprived the right of any worldly goods (nothing is his 'ex jure', but only ex largitate'); and inasmuch as the sin of man hath made him, though not a sacrilegious intruder, yet a profane abuser of the good things which remain; partly by indirect procuring them, partly by despising the author of them, by mustering up God's own gifts against him in riot, luxury, pride, uncleanness, earthlymindedness, &c. hereby it comes to pass, that "To the unclean all things are unclean, because their minds and consciences are defiled "f. Now the whole creation being thus, by the sin of man, unclean,—and by consequence, unfitted for human use, as St. Peters intimates, "I never eat any thing common or unclean;" it was therefore requisite that the creature should have some purification, before it was unto men allowed which was indeed legally done in the ceremony, but really in the substance and body of the ceremony by Christ, who hath now unto us in their use, and will at last for them selves in their own being, delivered the creatures from that vanity and malediction unto which, by reason of the sin of man, they were subjected, and fashion them into "the glorious liberty of the children of God "", make them fit places for the saints to inhabit, or confer upon them a glory which shall be, in the proportion of their natures, a suitable advancement unto them, as the glory of the children of God shall be unto them. The blood of Christ doth not only renew and purify the soul and body of man, but washeth away the curse and dirt which adhereth to every creature, that man useth; doth not only cleanse and sanctify his

i

8 Acts x. 14. h Rom. viii. 20, 21. Eph. v. 26.

church, but reneweth all the creatures; "behold," saith he*, "I make all things new;" and if any man be in Christ, not only he is a new creature, but, saith the apostle', "All things are become new." Those men, then, who keep themselves out of Christ, and are by consequence under the curse, As their contheir possessions likewise are under the curse. sciences, so their estates are still unclean: they eat their meat, like swine rolled up in dirt, the dirt of their own sin, and of God's malediction. So then the creature is then sanctified, when the curse thereof is washed away by Christ.

Sect. 17.-Now secondly, let us see how the creature is sanctified by the word.

6

Byword,' we are not to understand the word of creation, wherein God spake, and all things were made good and serviceable to the use of man; for sin came after that word, and defaced as well the goodness which God put into the creature, as his image which he put into man. But by word,' I understand, first in general, God's command and blessing, which strengtheneth the creature unto those operations for which they serve: in which sense our Saviour useth it, Mat. iv. 4. and elsewhere": "If ye call those gods unto whom the word of God came," that is, who by God's authority and commission are fitted for subordinate services of government under him, say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified,' that is, to whom the word of the Father, and his commission or command came, to whom the Father hath given authority by his power, and fitness by his spirit, to judge and save the world, 'Thou blasphemest, because I said I am the Son of God? 2. By that word I understand more particularly the fountain of that blessing which the apostle calls in general, 'the word of truth,' and more particularly, the Gospel of salvation;' and this word is a sanctifying word; "Sanctify them by thy truth; thy word is truth". And as it sanctifies us, so it sanctifies the creature too; it is the fountain, not only of eternal, but of temporal blessings: therefore Christ did not only say to the sick of the palsy," Thy sins are forgiven thee," but also, "Arise

k Rev. xxi. 5. 1 2 Cor. v. 17. vi. 27.37.40. Acts iv. 27. John x. 18. p Isa. xi. 2, 3, 4. Joh. iii. 34, 35. ix. 2. 9.

m Joh. x. 35, 36. n Heb, v. 5. John

• John v. 22. 27.30. Matth. xxviii. 18. Ephes. i. 13. r Joh. xvii. 17. • Matth.

and walk"; intimating, that temporal blessings come along with the Gospel; it hath the "promises, as well of this life, as that to come".-"I never saw the righteous forsaken", saith the prophet David', (suitable to that of the apostle to the Hebrews," he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee;") "nor their seed begging their bread"; that is, never so wholly by God forsaken, if they were the seed of the righteous, inheritors of their fathers' hope and profession, as to make a constant trade of begging their bread; and so to expose the promises of Christ, that they which seek the kingdom of Heaven, shall have all other things added to them, unto reproach and imputation from wicked men. Or thus, "I never saw the righteous forsaken, or their seed forsaken" by God, though they begged their bread; but even in that extremity God was present with them, to sanctify to their use, and to give them a comfortable enjoyment of that very bread, which the exigency of their present condition had constrained them to beg. Thus we see in general, that the blessing or command of God, and the fountain of that blessing, the Gospel of salvation, do sanctify the creature.

Sect. 18.-But yet neither by the blessing, nor the Gospel, is the creature effectually sanctified unto us, till it be by us apprehended with the word and promise, and this is done by faith; "for the word (saith the apostle) profited not those that heard it, because it was not mingled or tempered with faith." For faith hath this singular operation, to a particularize, and single out God and his promises unto a man's self: so then the creature is sanctified by the word, and blessing believed and embraced, whereby we come to have a nearer right and peculiarity in the creatures which we enjoy : for being by faith united unto Christ, and made one with him (which is that noble effect of faith, to incorporate Christ and a Christian together), we thereby share with him in the inheritance, not only of eternal life, but even of the common creatures: fellow-heirs we are, and co-partners with him; therefore inasmuch as God hath appointed him to be "heir of all things," as the apostle speaks, we like

1 Tim. iv. 8. u Psal. xxxvii. 25.

* Heb. xiii. 5.

y Matth. vi. 33. b Ephes. Rom, viii. 17. Heb. i. 2. 1 John i. 3. Rom. viii. 32.

■ Heb. iv. 2. ■ ágĦázei kal idiomvieîtai. in 1 Cor. Hom. 2. Chrysost.

iii. 17. Gal. ii. 20.