return) that the serpent brought in, that was induced upon man by him, and his temptation. So that when we are living dust here he eats us, and when we are dead dust too, in the grave, he feeds upon us, because it proceeds from him both that we die, and that we are detained in the state of exinanition, and ingloriousness, in the dust of the earth, and not translated immediately to the joys of heaven, as but for him, we should have been. But as, though he do feed upon our living dust, that is, induce sicknesses, and hunger, and labour, and cold, and pain upon our bodies here, God raises even that dust out of his hands, and redeems it from his jaws, in affording us a deliverance, or a restitution from those bodily calamities here, as he did abundantly to his servant, and our example, Job, so, though he feed upon our dead dust and detain our bodies in the disconsolate state of the grave, yet, as the Godhead, the divine nature did not depart from the body of Christ when it lay dead in the grave, so neither doth the love and power of God, depart from the body of a Christian, though resolved to dust in the grave, but, in his due time, shall re-collect that dust, and re-compact that body, and re-unite that soul, in everlasting joy and glory. And till then, the serpent lives; till the judgment, Satan hath power upon that part of man; and that is the serpent's life, first to practise our death, and then to hold us in the state of the dead. Till then we attend with hope, and with prayers God's holy pleasure upon us, and then begins the unchangeable state in our life, in body and soul together, then we begin to live, and then ends the serpent's life, that is, his earnest practice upon us in our life, and his faint triumph in continuing over our dust. That time, (the time of the general resurrection) being not yet come, the devils thought themselves wronged, and complained that Christ came before the time to torment them; and therefore Christ yielded so much to their importunity, as to give them leave to enter into the swine. And therefore, let not us murmur nor over-mourn for that, which as we have induced it upon ourselves, so God shall deliver us from, at last, that is, both death, and corruption after death, and captivity in that comfortless state, but for the resurrection. For so long we are to be dust, and so long lasts the serpent's life,

30 Matt. viii. 29,

Satan's power over man; dust must he eat all the days of his life.

In the mean time, (for our comfort in the way) when this serpent becomes a lion, yet there is a lion of the tribe of Judah", that is too strong for him. So, if he who is serpens serpens humi, the serpent condemned to creep upon the ground, do transform himself into a flying serpent, and attempt our nobler faculties, there is serpens exaltatus, a serpent lifted up in the wilderness 3* to recover all them that are stung, and feel that they are stung with this serpent, this flying serpent, that is, these high and continued sins. The creeping serpent, the grovelling serpent, is craft; the exalted serpent, the crucified serpent, is wisdom. All your worldly cares, all your crafty bargains, all your subtle matches, all your diggings into other men's estates, all your hedgings in of debts, all your planting of children in great alliances; all these diggings, and hedgings and plantings savour of the earth, and of the craft of that serpent, that creeps upon the earth but crucify this craft of yours, bring all your worldly subtlety under the cross of Christ Jesus, husband your farms so, as you may give a good account to him, press your debts so, as you would be pressed by him, market and bargain so, as that you would give all, to buy that field, in which his treasure, and his pearl is hid, and then you have changed the serpent, from the serpent of perdition creeping upon the earth, to the serpent of salvation exalted in the wilderness. Creeping wisdom, that still looks downward, is but craft; crucified wisdom, that looks upward, is truly wisdom. Between you and that ground-serpent God hath kindled a war; and the nearer you come to a peace with him, the farther ye go from God, and the more ye exasperate the Lord of hosts, and you whet his sword against your own souls. A truce with that serpent, is too near a peace; to condition with your conscience for a time, that you may continue in such a sin, till you have paid for such a purchase, married such a daughter, bought such an annuity, undermined and eaten out such an unthrift, this truce, (though you mean to end it before you die) is too near a peace with that serpent, between whom and you, God hath kindled an everlasting war. A cessation of arms, that

31 Rev. v. 5.

33 Numbers xxi. 9.

is, not to watch all his attempts and temptations, not to examine all your particular actions, a treaty of peace, that is, to dispute and debate in the behalf and favour of a sin, to palliate, to disguise, to extenuate that sin, this is too near a peace with this serpent, this creeping serpent. But in the other Serpent, the crucified Serpent, God hath reconciled to himself, all things in heaven, and earth, and hell. You have peace in the assistance of the angels of heaven, peace in the contribution of the powerful prayers, and of the holy examples of the saints upon earth, peace in the victory and triumph over the power of hell, peace from sins towards men, peace of affections in yourselves, peace of conscience towards God. From your childhood you have been called upon to hold your peace; to be content is to hold your peace; murmur not at God, in any corrections of his, and you do hold this peace. That creeping serpent, Satan, is war, and should be so; the crucified Serpent Christ Jesus is peace, and shall be so for ever. The creeping serpent eats our dust, the strength of our bodies, in sicknesses, and our glory in the dust of the grave: the crucified Serpent hath taken our flesh, and our blood, and given us his flesh, and his blood for it; and therefore, as David, when he was thought base, for his holy freedom in dancing before the ark 3, said he would be more base; so, since we are all made of red earth, let him that is red, be more red; let him that is red with the blood of his own soul, be red again in blushing for that redness, and more red in the communion of the blood of Christ Jesus; whom we shall eat all the days of our life, and be mystically, and mysteriously, and spiritually, and sacramentally united to him in this life, and gloriously in the next.

33

In this state of dust, and so in the territory of the serpent, the tyrant of the dead, lies this dead brother of ours, and hath lain some years, who occasions our meeting now, and yearly upon this day, and whose soul, we doubt not, is in the hands of God, who is the God of the living. And having gathered a good gomer of manna, a good measure of temporal blessings in this life, and derived a fair measure thereof, upon them, whom nature and law directed it upon, (and in whom we beseech God to bless it) hath

33 2 Sam. vi, 14.

303 also distributed something to the poor of this parish, yearly, this day, and something to a meeting for the conserving of neighbourly love, and something for this exercise. In which, no doubt, his intention was not so much to be yearly remembered himself, as that his posterity, and his neighbours might be yearly remembered to do as he had done. For, this is truly to glorify God in his saints, to sanctify ourselves in their examples; to celebrate them, is to imitate them. For, as it is probably conceived, and agreeably to God's justice, that they that write wanton books, or make wanton pictures, have additions of torment, as often as other men are corrupted with their books, or their pictures: so may they, who have left permanent examples of good works, well be believed, to receive additions of glory and joy, when others are led by that to do the like: and so, they who are extracted, and derived from him, and they who dwelt about him, may assist their own happiness, and enlarge his, by following his good example in good proportions. Amen.

SERMON CXXIX.

PREACHEd at st. DUNSTAN'S.

LAMENTATIONS iii. 1.

I am the man, that hath seen affliction, by the rod of his wrath.

You remember in the history of the passion of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus, there was an Ecce homo, a showing, an exhibiting of that man, in whom we are all blessed. Pilate presented him to the Jews so, with that Ecce homo, Behold the man1. That man upon whom the wormwood and the gall of all the ancient prophecies, and the venom and malignity of all the cruel instruments thereof, was now poured out; that man who was left as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground, without form, or beauty, or comeliness, that we should desire to see him, as the

1 John xix. 5.

2 Isaiah Liii. 2.

prophet Esay exhibits him; that man who upon the brightness of his eternal generation in the bosom of his Father, had now cast a cloud of a temporary and earthly generation in the womb of his mother, that man, who, as he entered into the womb of his first mother, the blessed Virgin, by a supernatural way, by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, so he vouchsafed to enter into the womb of her, whom he had accepted for his second mother, the earth, by an unnatural way, not by a natural, but by a violent, and bitter death, that man so torn and mangled, wounded with thorns, oppressed with scorns and contumelies, Pilate presents and exhibits so, Ecce homo, Behold the man. But in all this depression of his, in all his exinanition, and evacuation, yet he had a crown on, yet he had a purple garment on, the emblems, the characters of majesty were always upon him. And these two considerations, the miseries that exhaust, and evacuate, and annihilate man in this life, and yet, those sparks, and seeds of morality, that lie in the bosom, that still he is a man, the afflictions that depress and smother, that suffocate and strangle their spirits in their bosoms, and yet that unsmotherable, that unquenchable spirit of adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father, that still he is a Christian, these thorns, and yet these crowns, these contumelies, and yet this purple, are the two parts of this text, I am the man, that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. For, here is an ecce, behold; Jeremy presents a map, a manifestation of as great affliction, as the rod of God's wrath could inflict; but yet it is Ecce homo, Behold the man, I am the man, he is not demolished, he is not incinerated so, not so annihilated, but that he is still a man; God preserves his children from departing from the dignity of men, and from the sovereign dignity of Christian men, in the deluge, and inundation of all afflictions.

And these two things, so considerable in that ecce homo, in the exhibiting of Christ, that then when he was under those scorns, and crosses, he had his crowns, his purples, ensigns of majesty upon him, may well be parts of this text; for, when we come to consider who is the person of whom Jeremy says, I am the man, we find many of the ancient expositors take these words prophetically of Christ himself; and that Christ himself who says,