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HOM. XXII. and two daughters from among them, he rained down fire and brimstone from heaven, and burnt up those scorners and mockers of his holy word. And what estimation had Christ's doctrine among the Scribes and Pharisees? What reward had he among them? The Gospel reporteth thus: The Pharisees, which were covetous, did scorn him in his doctrine. O then, ye see that worldly rich men scorn the doctrine of their salvation. The worldly wise men scorn the doctrine of Christ, as foolish. ness to their understanding. These scorners have ever been, and ever shall be to the world's end. For St. Peter prophesied, that such scorners should be in the world before the latter day.

2 Pet. iii.

1 Pet. iii.

1 Cor. i.

Luke ii.

Take heed therefore, my brethren, take heed; be ye not scorners of God's most holy word; provoke him not to pour out his wrath now upon you, as he did then upon those gybers and mockers. Be not wilful murderers of your own souls. Turn unto God, while there is yet time of mercy; ye shall else repent it in the world to come, when it shall be too late; for there shall be judgment without mercy.

This might suffice to admonish us, and cause us henceforth to reverence God's Holy Scriptures; but all men have not faith. This, therefore, shall not satisfy and content all men's minds: but as some are carnal, so they will still continue, and abuse the Scriptures carnally, to their greater damnation. The unlearned and unstable, saith St. Peter, pervert the Holy Scriptures to their own destruction. Jesus Christ, as St. Paul saith, is to the Jews an offence, to the Gentiles foolishness; but to God's children, as well of the Jews as of the Gentiles, he is the power and wisdom of God. The holy man Simeon saith, that he is set forth for the fall and rising again of many in Israel. As Christ Jesus is a fall to the reprobate, which yet perish. through their own default; so is his word, yea, the whole book of God, a cause of damnation unto them, through their incredulity. And as he is a rising up to none other than those which are God's

children by adoption; so is his word, yea, the whole HOM. XXII. Scripture, the power of God to salvation to them only that do believe it. Christ himself, the Prophets before him, the Apostles after him, all the true Ministers of God's holy word, yea, every word in God's book, is unto the reprobate the savour of death unto death. Christ Jesus, the Prophets, the Apostles, and all the true ministers of his word, yea, every jot and tittle in the Holy Scripture, have been, is, and shall be for evermore, the savour of life unto eternal life, unto all those whose hearts God hath purified by true faith. Let us earnestly take heed that we make no jesting-stock of the books of Holy Scriptures. The more obscure and

⚫ dark the sayings be to our understanding, the further let us think ourselves to be from God and his Holy Spirit, who was the author of them."

Let us with more reverence endeavour ourselves, to search out the wisdom hidden in the outward bark of the Scripture. If we cannot understand the sense and the reason of the saying, yet let us not, be scorners, jesters, and deriders; for that is the uttermost token and shew of a reprobate, of a plain enemy to God and his wisdom. They be not idle fables to jest at, which God doth seriously pronounce; and for serious matters let us esteem them. And though in sundry places of the Scriptures, be set out divers rites and ceremonies, obla tions and sacrifices; let us not think strange of them, but refer them to the times and people for whom they served; although yet to learned men they be not unprofitable to be considered, but to be expounded as figures and shadows of things and persons, afterward openly revealed in the New Testament. Though the rehearsal of the genealogies and pedigrees of the Fathers be not to much edification of the plain ignorant people; yet is there nothing so impertinently uttered in all the whole book of the Bible, but may serve to spiritual purpose in some repect, to all such as will bestow their labours to search out the meanings. These may not be condemned, because they serve not to our

HOM. XXII. understanding, nor make to our edification. But

let us turn our labour to understand, and to carry away such sentences and stories, as be more fit for our capacity and instruction.

And whereas we read in divers Psalms, how David did wish to the adversaries of God-sometimes shame, rebuke, and confusion; sometime the decay of their offspring and issue, sometime that they might perish and come suddenly to destrucPsal, exliv. tion:-as he did wish to the Captains of the Philistines: Cast forth, saith he, thy lightning, and tear them; shoot out thine arrows, and consume them with such other manner of imprecations: yet ought we not to be offended at such prayers of David, being a Prophet as he was, singularly beloved of God, and rapt in spirit with an ardent zeal to God's glory. He spake not of a private hatred, and in a stomach against their persons; but wished spiritually the destruction of such corrupt errors and vices, which reigned in all devilish persons, set against God. He was of like mind as St. Paul was, when he did deliver Hymeneus and Alexander, with the notorious fornicator, to Satan, to their temporal confusion, that their spirit might be saved against the day of the Lord. And when David did profess in some places, that he hated the wicked, yet in other places of his Psalms hè professeth that he hated them with a perfect hate, not with a malicious hate, to the hurt of the soul. Which perfection of spirit, because it cannot be performed in us, so corrupted in affections as we be, we ought not to use in our private causes the like words in form; for that we cannot fulfil the like words in sense.

Let us not therefore be offended, but search out the reason of such words, before we be offended; that we may the more reverently judge of such sayings, though strange to our carnal understandings, yet to them that be spiritually minded, judged to be zealously and godly pronounced. God therefore, for his mercies' sake, vouchsafe to purify our minds through faith in his Son Jesus Christ, and to instil the heavenly drops of his grace into our hard

stony hearts, to supple the same, that we be not HOM. XXII. contemners and deriders of his infallible word; but that with all humbleness of mind and Christian reverence, we may endeavour ourselves, to hear and to read his sacred Scriptures, and inwardly so to digest them, as shall be to the comfort of our souls, and sanctification of his holy Name: to whom, with the Son and the Holy Ghost, three persons and one living God, be all laud, honour, and praise, for ever and ever. Amen.

[graphic]

"The poor widow, that received.... Elias....was so blessed of God, that neither the meal nor the oil was consumed....but thereof both the prophet Elias, she, and her son, were sufficiently nourished." (See p. 398, and I Kings xvii. 8-66.)

AN HOMILY

OF

ALMS-DEEDS, AND MERCIFULNESS

TOWARDS THE POOR AND NEEDY.

HOM.XXIII. AMONGST the manifold duties, that `Almighty God requireth of his faithful servants, the true Christians; by the which he would that both his Name should be glorified, and the certainty of their vocation declared; there is none that is either more acceptable unto him, or more profitable for them, than are the works of mercy and pity shewed upon the poor, which be afflicted with any kind of misery. And yet, this notwithstanding, such is the slothful sluggishness of our dull nature to that which is good and godly, that we are almost in nothing more negligent and less careful than we are therein. is, therefore, a very necessary thing, that God's people should awake their sleepy minds, and consider their duty on this behalf. And meet it is, that all true Christians should desirously seek and learn, what God by his holy Word doth herein require of them; that, first, knowing their dutywhereof many by their slackness seem to be very

It

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