scene, as this our access to Christ shall be. That hill was not so high, nor so near to the heaven of heavens, as this region of the air shall be. Nor was the transfiguration so eminent a manifestation of the glory of Christ, as this his coming in the air to judgment shall be. And yet Peter that saw but that, desired no more, but thought it happiness enough to be there, and there to fix their tabernacles. But in this our meeting of Christ in the air, we shall see more than they saw in the transfiguration, and yet be but in the way of seeing more, than we see in the air then; we shall be presently well and vet improving. The king's presence makes a village the court; but he that hath service to do at court, would be glad to find it in a lodgeable and convenient place. I can build a church in my bosom; I can serve God in my heart, and never clothe my prayer in words. God is often said to hear, and answer in the Scriptures, when they to whom he speaks, have said nothing. I can build a church at my bed's side; when I prostate myself in humble prayer there, I do so. I can praise God cheerfully in my chapel, cheerfully in my parish church, as David says, In ecclesiis, plurally, In the congregations, In every congregation will I bless the Lord; but yet, I find the highest exaltations, and the noblest elevations of my devotion, when I give thanks in the great congregation, and praise him among much people", for so methinks, I come nearer and nearer to the communion of saints in heaven. Where it is therefore said that there is no temple, (I saw no temple in heaven) because all heaven is a temple, And because the Lord God Almighty, and the Lamb, (who fill all heaven) are, (as St. John says there) the temple thereof.

So far towards that, as into the air, this text carries us, Obriam Domino, To meet the Lord. The Lord requires no more, not so much at our hands, as he does for us. When he is come

from the right hand of his Father in heaven, into the air to meet us, he is come farther than we are to go from the grave to meet him. But we have met the Lord in many a lower place; in many unclean actions have we met the Lord in our own hearts, and said to ourselves, Surely the Lord is here, and sees us, and (with 61 Rev. xxi. 22.

58 Matt. xvii. 14.

59 Psal. xxvi. 12.

60 Psal. xxxv. 18.

Joseph) How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against my God? and yet have proceeded, gone forward in the accomplishment of that sin. But there it was Obviam Jesu, obviam Christo, We met a Jesus, we met a Christ, a God of mercy, who forgave us those sins. Herein in our text, it is Obviam Domino, We must meet the Lord; he invests here no other name but that; he hath laid aside his Christ, and his Jesus, names of mercy, and redemption, and salvation, and comes only in the name of power, The Lord, the judge of quick and dead. In which judgment he shows no mercy; all his mercy is exercised in this life; and he that hath not received his portion of that mercy before his death, shall never receive any. There he judges only by our works, Whom hast thou fed, whom hast thou clothed? Then in judg ment we meet the Lord, the Lord of power, and the last time that ever we shall meet a Jesus, a Christ, a God of mercy, is upon our death-bed; but there we shall meet him so, as that when we meet him in another name, The Lord, in the air, yet by the benefit of the former mercy received from Jesus, We shall be with the Lord for ever.

First Erimus, We shall be, we shall have a being. There is nothing more contrary to God, and his proceedings, than annihilation, to be nothing, do nothing, think nothing. It is not so high a step, to raise the poor out of the dust, and to lift the needy from the dunghill, and set him with princes"; to make a king of a beggar, is not so much, as to make a worm of nothing. Whatsoever God hath made thee since, yet his greatest work upon thee, was, that he made thee; and howsoever he extend his bounty in preferring thee, yet his greatest largeness, is, in preserving thee in thy being. And therefore his own name of Majesty, is Jehovah, which denotes his essence, his being. And it is usefully moved, and safely resolved in the school, that the devil himself cannot deliberately wish himself nothing Suddenly a man may wish himself nothing, because that seems to deliver him from the sense of his present misery; but deliberately he cannot because whatsoever a man wishes, must be something better than he hath yet; and whatsoever is better, is not nothing. Nihil contrarium Deo", There is nothing truly 64 Augustine.

62 Gen. xxxix. 9.

63 Psal. cxiii. 7.

contrary to God; to do nothing, is contrary to his working; but contrary to his nature, contrary to his essence there is nothing. For whatsoever is anything, even in that being, and therefore because it is, hath a conformity to God, and an affinity with God, who is Being, Essence itself. In him we have our being", says the apostle. But here it is more than so; not only In illo, but Cum illo, not only In him, but With him, not only in his providence, but in his presence.

The hypocrite hath a being, and, in God, but it is not with God, Quia cor longe, With his lips he honours God, but removes his heart far from him". And God sends him after his heart, that he may keep him at that distance, (as St. Gregory reads and interprets that place of Esay) Redite præcaricatores ad cor", Return O sinners, follow your own heart, and then I am sure you and I shall never meet. Our Saviour Christ delivers this distance plainly, Discedite a me, Depart from me, ye cursed into everlasting fire". Where the first part of the sentence is incomparably the heaviest, the departing worse than the fire; the intenseness of that fire, the air of that brimstone, the anguish of that worm, the discord of that howling, and gnashing of teeth, is no comparable, no considerable part of the torment, in respect of the privation of the sight of God, the banishment from the presence of God, an absolute hopelessness, an utter impossibility of ever coming to that, which sustains the miserable in this world, that though I see no sun here, I shall see the Son of God there. The hypocrite shall not do so; we shall be, and be with him, and be with him for ever; which is the last thing that doth fall under ours, or can fall under any consideration.

Of St. Hierome, St. Augustine says, Qua Hieronymus nescivit, nullus hominum unquam scirit; That that St. Hierome knew not no man ever knew. And St. Cyril, to whom St. Augustine said that, said also to St. Augustine, in magnifying of St. Hierome, That when a Catholic priest disputed with a heretic, and cited a passage of St. Hierome, and the heretic said Hierome lied, instantly he was struck dumb; yet of this last and everlasting joy and glory of heaven, in the fruition of God, St. Hierome

65 Acts xvii. 28.

ee Isaiah xix. 13. 67 Isaiah XLvi. 8.

VOL. I.

68 Matt. XXV.

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would venture to say nothing, no not then, when he was divested of his mortal body, dead; for, as soon as he died at Bethlem, he came instantly to Hippo, St. Augustine's bishopric, and though he told him, Hieronymi anima sum, I am the soul of that Hierome, to whom thou art now writing about the joys and glory of heaven, yet he said no more of that, but this, Quid, quæris brevi immitere vasculo totum mare? Canst thou hope to pour the whole sea into a thimble, or to take the whole world into thy hand? And yet that is easier, than to comprehend the joy and the glory of heaven in this life. Nor is there anything, that makes this more incomprehensible, than this semper in our text, the eternity thereof, that we shall be with him for ever. For, this eternity, this everlastingness is not only incomprehensible to us in this life, but even in heaven we can never know it experimentally; and all knowledge in heaven is experimental: as all knowledge in this world is causal, (we know a thing, if we know the cause thereof) so the knowledge in heaven, is effectual, experimental, we know it, because we have found it to be so.

The endowments of the blessed, (those which the school calls Dotes beatorum) are ordinarily delivered to be these three, Visio, Dilectio, Fruitio, The sight of God, the love of God, and the fruition, the enjoying, the possessing of God. Now, as no man can know what it is to see God in heaven, but by an experimental and actual seeing of him there, nor what it is to love God there, but by such an actual and experimental love of him, nor what it is to enjoy and possess God, but by an actual enjoying, and an experimental possessing of him, so can no man tell what the eternity, and everlastingness of all these, is, till he have passed through that eternity, and that everlastingness; and that he can never do; for, if it could be passed through, then it were not eternity. How barren a thing is arithmetic! and yet arithmetic will tell you, how many single grains of sand, will fill this hollow vault to the firmament. How empty a thing is rhetoric! and yet rhetoric will make absent and remote things present to your understanding. How weak a thing is poetry! and yet poetry is a counterfeit creation, and makes things that are not, as though they were. How infirm, how impotent are all assistances, if they be put to express this eternity! The best help that I can

assign you, is, to use well Eternum vestrum, Your own eternity; as St. Gregory calls our whole course of this life, Eternum nostrum, Our eternity; quum est, ut qui in æterno, suo peccaverit, in æterno Dei puniatur, says he; It is but justice, that he that hath sinned out his own eternity, should suffer out God's eternity. So, if you suffer out your own eternity, in submitting yourselves to God, in the whole course of your life, in surrendering your will entirely to his, and glorifying of him in a constant patience, under all your tribulations, It is a righteous thing with God, (says our apostle, in his other Epistle to these Thessalonians) to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you, and to you, that are troubled, rest with us, says he there; with us, who shall be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall be with the Lord for ever. Amen.

SERMON XXV.

PREACHED to the LORDS, UPON EASTER DAY, AT THE COMMUNION. 、

[The King being then dangerously sick at Newmarket.]

PSAL. LXXXIX. 47.

What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death?

Ar first, God gave the judgment of death upon man, when he should transgress, absolutely, Morte morieris, Thou shalt surely die; the woman in her dialogue with the Serpent, she mollifies it, Ne forte moriamur, perchance, if we eat, we may die; and then the devil is as peremptory on the other side, Nequaquam moriemini, Do what you will, surely you shall not die; and now God in this text comes to his reply, Quis est homo, Shall they not die? Give me but one instance, but one exception to this rule, What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? Let * 1 Thess. i. 6.