Matt. xii. An evil minister the sacra ment or word evil. 1 Cor. xi. company soever I shall come! For except you be wiser than Salomon, or stronger than Sampson, thou shalt be overcome as they were. When thou shalt sit among papists, and hear them blaspheme thy God and praise their idolatry; how canst thou escape with a safe conscience undefiled, if thou hold thy peace? Yea, and if thou have not greater grace and learning to judge good and evil, thou shalt hear some crooked reasons which shall deceive thee, and peradventure entangle thee and bring thee from God's truth. If thou sit by, hear the truth spoken against, and will not defend it to thy power, thou art guilty to thy Lord God: for Christ saith, "He that is not with me is against me." If thou speak in God's cause, thou shalt be in danger of thy life and goods, or both. These things well considered would make them which have the fear of God in them to mark this lesson well, and fly evil company for whatsoever the evil man, who is defiled in soul, touches, it is defiled. Where the prophet saith here, that "the people and the works of their hands and all that they brought thither to offer, was defiled also," it moves this hard question: whether the evilness of the minister do defile his ministery, and God's sacraments which he ministers? First mark, that the minister, if he be a drunkard, an adulterer, or covetous, &c. he doth not hurt the strength of the sacrament which he ministers; neither yet defiles any man that receiveth at his hands: but to himself he ministers damnation, as St Paul saith, "He that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks his own damnation." But he saith, sibi ipsi, "to himself" (for so is the Greek, and not "to thee") he receives judgment. If we should flee ministers because of their sin, whom shall we then hear? for who wants sin? So in preaching, as long as they say true, hear them, though their doctrine condemn themMatt. xxiii. selves: for Christ saith, "In Moses' chair sit the scribes and Pharisees; do as they bid and teach you, but do not as they do." So he that is baptized of an evil minister, is as well baptized as he that receives it of the good, and as much doth it profit him: for else so much difference should be betwixt their baptisms, as is betwixt the goodness of the ministers; and the baptism of the better minister should ex[ Κρίμα ἑαυτῷ ἐσθίει καὶ πίνει. ED.] cel the baptism of the worse: and then might we well say, “I am Paul's, I am Apollos', and I am Cephas';" which 1 Cor. i. Paul forbids. The goodness of baptism hangs upon God who did institute it, and not on the minister which gives it. Let them look therefore, which will be so holy, that rather they will sit at home than here pray or communicate with such a minister as pleases them not, what scripture or example they follow. Esay, Jeremy, Aggeus, yea, Christ and his apostles, forsaked not Jerusalem, but diligently kept the feasts appointed by God, and offered their sacrifices according to the law; though the temple was full of evil' priests, scribes and Pharisees. As long as God's institution in his sacraments and sacrifices was kept, they did not so much respect the goodness or evilness of the minister: no more ought thou to do. communi popish Then, if the evilness of the minister do not hurt me which we may not receives the sacrament, why am I forbidden to communicate cate at with papists at their mass? Surely, not so much for the masses. evilness of the men themselves, as the wickedness of the order and thing which they minister. For when thou comest to the communion with the papists, and, according to St Paul, would eat of that bread and drink of that cup; they will neither give thee bread nor wine according to Christ's institution, (for they say the substance is changed, and there remains no bread;) but they will give thee an idol of their own making, which they call their God. They come not together according to Christ's rule, to break the bread; but they creep into a corner, as the pope teaches them, to sacrifice for the quick and the dead, to sell heaven, harrows hell, and sweep purgatory of all such as will pay. They come not to communicate with the people, but to eat up all alone. Therefore, because they have changed Christ's ordinance in his supper, broken his commandment, and set up their own device, we must not meddle with them in such things as they have done contrary to God and his word. tism, although it have many evil things blend in Their bap- Baptism of among, yet [Second edition, Civill (the c imperfect) priestes: the passage is not in the first. ED.] [Harrow: plunder or destroy. Chaucer and Spenser both speak of Christ as having harrowed hell. ED.] papists is not so evil as the mass; and yet faithful ministers are to be preferred to baptism. because they keep the substance of the sacrament, the words and fashion that Christ himself used, it is nothing so evil as their mass is: although it be as much to be abhorred of all good men as may be; and good men ought to seek as much as may be to have their children christened in a christian congregation and of a godly minister, where no such conjuring nor misuse is practised. Yet if he cannot come by such a one as he would wish, let not the christian parent think his child to be worse baptized, because the minister Ezek. xviii. is wicked: for every one shall sink in his own sin, and the father shall not die for the child, nor the child for the father, nor the minister for him which receives at him, nor he that receives for the evilness of the minister; although that minister, which so wickedly corrupts the good sacraments and holy ordinances of God, doth minister them to his own damnation and judgment. Disobedi ence to God defiles all our doings. Then, to conclude this place: the prophet here exhorts the people to the building of the temple. For although they had an altar to sacrifice on for the time, yet because they left undone that building which God sent them home to do, and willed them so straitly to do it, they brake his commandment in not building, and so were defiled with sin of disobedience. And the heart being once so defiled, all their works which came from such a defiled heart must needs be 1 Sam. xv. defiled also. When Saul was commanded by God to destroy all the Amalekites, and all that had life among them, and to spare none; he was moved with a foolish pity and covetousness, and saved the fairest and fattest cattle to sacrifice unto God but God because of his disobedience cast him and all his posterity from the kingdom; and Samuel tells him, that "obedience is better than sacrifice." Some would think it cruelness to kill the beasts which made no fault; and other would think it holiness to save for God's sacrifice the fattest and fairest: but that is not cruelness which God bids, neither is that good which he forbids, whatsoever worldly God's com- reason can say to the contrary. Therefore let us without all excuse do that which God commands, and seek no starting holes; for then we deceive ourselves. These people might allege poverty, the king's authority who forbad them to build: but nothing can defend us, where that is left undone which God mandment must be kept without excuse. : commandeth, but it is sin. And where this sin of disobedience reigns, there the man and all that he doeth is defiled. Therefore, if they would that any thing which they did or took in hand should please God, they must wash away this filthy disobedience, build this temple, and all should be well. If we would apply these things to ourselves and our times, we should with hearty repentance build God's house much more diligently than we do. And truly, although we have had great plagues, yet is there greater behind, if we do it not throughly without halting: for "the servant which knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall have many stripes." v. 15. Now consider, I pray you, in your hearts from this The text. day backward, afore one stone was laid upon another in the house of the Lord. 16. While they were so, they came to a heap of corn of 17. I have smitten you with blasting winds, and mildew, 18. Consider now in your hearts from this day backward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, from that day when the ground-work of the temple was laid, consider it (I say) in your heart. 19. Is your seed yet in the barn? or have your vineyards, fig-trees, pomegranates and olive-trees not yet flourished? from this day forth will I bless them. As The prophet calls them here to an earnest and diligent consideration of the years past, and the plagues which they suffered so many, so divers, so grievous and strange. though he should say unto them thus: Ye are too negligent in marking God's working towards you, which hath wrought so wonderful great things among you, to the intent that ye should return unto him, and be more diligent in building his God's house, which he' so straitly charged you to do. Mark them should now more diligently; for God did it to teach you your duty, if whether [He is wanting in the second edition. ED.] doings teach us, they be good or plagues. ye would have learned. God doth not only teach us by his word and writing, by prophets and preaching, but by his deeds also and working if they be good and blessings, to love and thank him for all his goodness bestowed on us such misers; and if they be sharp and painful, to bring us home again by repentance, to ask forgiveness of our faults, and beware that we no more offend him. Therefore these strange plagues which ye have suffered so many years; that the earth did not yield her fruit; your meat and drink did not feed you; your clothes did not keep you warm; your money wasted in your purses, ye could not tell how, as though it fell out of the bottom; your corn in the barns consumed, ye wist not how; yea, when it came to fanning and winnowing, a man thought in one heap he should have had twenty bushels, he found but ten, the half; and in the wine-press, where ye thought to have had fifty gallons, almost three parts lacked and were consumed, and there was but twenty gallons ;-(a good husband that hath much experience, when he comes to an heap of corn or a press of wine, will guess within a few bushels or gallons, how much is contained in the whole; but here in the corn to be deceived the half, and in the wine three parts, was very strange, and could not be but as God said before, that when it was brought into the house, We cannot he did blow it away, and so it consumed ;)—what a negligence was this to suffer such plagues so many years; and yet to be so hard-hearted, that they weighed them not, but lightly let them pass, not considering wherefore God sent them, nor what fault was in them to be amended, which provoked God's anger so grievously against them! But such blindness is in us all, that when we be under the rod, we feel it not, if God open not our eyes to see his displeasure; yea, rather of nature we murmur against his gentle corrections. worthily consider God's plagues without a special grace. Or else, if God withhold his heavy hand for a time, to try whether we will amend with little correction, before he lay on us a greater, we fall to our old fashions, and forget God, his rod, our duty, and his reverence, attributing such plagues to unseasonable weather, pestilent airs, or some evil chance, as though they came not from God. As when we had the sweat, where so many died so suddenly, that men were astonied at it, so many sick that there was not whole folks |