their returns might be safe and easy, when they came to Jerusalem upon the employments of religion. But they were not yet fit for the temple. They who brought them thither purposed their own gain, and meant to pass them through an unholy usage, before they could be made anathemata, vows to God: and when religion is but the purpose at the second hand, it cannot hallow a lay design, and make it fit to become a religious ministry, much less sanctify an unlawful action. When Rachel stole her father's gods, though possibly she might do it in zeal against her father's superstition, yet it was occasion of a sad accident to herself; for the Jews say that Rachel died in childbirth of her second son, because of that imprecation of Jacob, With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live." Saul pretended sacrifice, when he spared the fat cattle of Amalek; and Micah was zealous, when he made him an ephod and a teraphim, and meant to make himself an image for religion, when he stole his mother's money; but these are colours of religion, in which not only the world, but ourselves also are deceived by a latent purpose, which we are willing to cover with a remote design of religion, lest it should appear unhandsome in its own dressing. Thus some believe a covetousness allowable, if they greedily heap treasure with a purpose to build hospitals or colleges; and sinister acts of acquiring church-livings are not so soon condemned, if the design be to prefer an able person; and actions of revenge come near to piety, if it be to the ruin of an ungodly man; and indirect proceedings are made sacred, if they be

1 Gen. xxxi. 32.

VOL. II.

E

for the good of the holy cause. This is profaning the temple with beasts brought for sacrifices, and dishonours God, by making himself accessary to his own dishonour, as far as lies in them; for it disserves him with a pretence of religion. And but that our hearts are deceitful, we should easily perceive that the greatest business of the letter is written in postscript: the great pretence is the least purpose; and the latent covetousness or revenge, or the secular appendix, is the main engine, to which the end of religion is made but instrumental and pretended. But men when they sell a mule use to speak of the horse that begat him, not of the ass that bore him.

4. The holy Jesus made a whip of cords, to represent and to chastise the implications and enfoldings of sin and the cords of vanity. 1. There are some sins that of themselves are a whip of cords: those are the crying sins, that by their degree and malignity speak loud for vengeance; or such as have great disreputation, and are accounted the basest issues of a caitive disposition; or such which are unnatural and unusual; or which, by public observation, are marked with the signature of divine judgments. Such are murder, oppression of widows and orphans, detaining the labourer's hire, lusts against nature, parricide, treason, betraying a just trust in great instances and base manners, lying to a king, perjury in a priest. These carry Cain's mark upon them, or Judas's sting, or Manasses' sorrow, unless they be made impudent by the spirit of obduration. 2. But there are some sins that bear shame upon them, and are used as correctives of pride and vanity; and if they do their cure, they are converted into instruments of

good by the great power of the divine grace: but if the spirit of the man grows impudent and hardened against the shame, that which commonly follows is the worst string of the whip, a direct consignation to a reprobate spirit. 3. Other sins there are for the chastising of which Christ takes the whip into his own hand; and there is much need, when sins are the customs of a nation, and marked with no exterior disadvantage, or have such circumstances of encouragement, that they are unapt to disquiet a conscience, or make our beds uneasy, till the pillows be softened with penitential showers. In both these cases the condition of a sinner is sad and miserable: for it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God:' his hand is heavy, and his sword is sharp, and pierces to the dividing the marrow and the bones.' And he that considers the infinite distance between God and us, must tremble, when he remembers that he is to feel the issues of that anger, which he is not certain whether or no it will destroy him infinitely and eternally. 4. But if the whip be given into our hands, that we become executioners of the divine wrath, it is sometimes worse; for we seldom strike ourselves for emendation, but add sin to sin, till we perish miserably and inevitably. God Scourges us often into repentance; but when a sin is the whip of another sin, the rod is put into our hands, who like blind men strike with a rude and undiscerning hand, and, because we love the punishment, do it without intermission or choice, and have no end but ruin.

5. When the holy Jesus had whipped the merchants in the temple, they took away all the instruments of their sin. For a judgment is usually

the commencement of repentance: love is the last of graces, and seldom at the beginning of a new life, but is reserved to the perfections and ripeness of a Christian. We begin in fear: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: when he smote them, then they turned, and enquired early after God:" and afterwards the impresses of fear continue like a hedge of thorns about us, to restrain our dissolutions within the awfulness of the divine majesty, that it may preserve what was from the same principle begun. This principle of their emendation was from God, and therefore innocent and holy and the very purpose of divine threatenings is, that upon them, as upon one of the great hinges, the piety of the greatest part of men should turn; and the effect was answerable, but so are not the actions of all those who follow this precedent in the tract of the letter. For indeed there have been some reformations which have been so like this, that the greatest alteration which hath been made was, that they carried all things out of the temple, the money, and the tables, and the sacrifice; and the temple itself went at last. But these men's scourge is to follow after; and Christ, the prince of the catholic church, will provide one of his own contexture, more severe than the stripes which Heliodorus felt from the infliction of the exterminating angel. But the holy Spirit of God, by making provision against such a reformation, hath prophetically declared the aptnesses which are in pretences of religious alterations to degenerate into sacrilegious desires: Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?' In this

Psalm 1xxviii. 33.

2 Rom. ii. 22.

case there is no amendment, only one sin resigns to another, and the person still remains under its power and the same dominion.

THE PRAYER.

O eternal Jesu, thou bright image of thy Father's glories, whose light did shine to all the world, when thy heart was inflamed with zeal and love of God and of religion, let a coal from thine altar, fanned with the wings of the holy dove, kindle in my soul such holy flames, that I may be zealous of thy honour and glory, forward in religious duties, earnest in their pursuit, prudent in their managing, ingenuous in my purposes, making my religion to serve no end but of thy glories, and the obtaining of thy promises: and so sanctify my soul and my body, that I may be a holy temple, fit and prepared for the inhabitation of thy ever-blessed Spirit; whom grant that I may never grieve by admitting any impure thing to desecrate the place, and unhallow the courts of his abode; but give me a pure soul in a chaste and healthful body, a spirit full of holy simplicity, and designs of great ingenuity, and perfect religion, that I may intend what thou commandest, and may with proper instruments prosecute what I so intend, and by thy aids may obtain the end of my labours, the rewards of obedience and holy living, even the society and inheritance of Jesus in the participation of the joys of thy temple, where thou dwellest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, O eternal Jesu. Amen.

DISCOURSE VIII.

Of the Religion of Holy Places.

1. THE holy Jesus brought a divine warrant for his zeal. The selling sacrifices, and the exchange of