Luke ii.

Acts viii.

as they did to Jerusalem, and tarry there eight days (for so long continued their feast), we would think the Scots and all round about us would invade our country: but if we were as earnest in religion as they were, God would defend us as he did them, and no 'enemy should hurt us. When we kept religion, we won Bullen': when we fell from it, we lost Calais.

But the great glory of all was shewed in this temple, and God declared himself to be well delighted in it, first when our Saviour Christ came and sat disputing with the doctors in it, healed the sick, preached the will of his Father, and drove out the buyers and sellers: after also, when the apostles did the like: and when the eunuch of queen Candace, moved with the glory of God and that temple, came so far off to worship there which all and other like do declare sufficiently, what opinion of God's glory was there commonly judged to be. And how God is now delighted with our assemblies, when we come to pray unto him, and hear his word, Saint Paul teaches, 1 Cor. xiv. saying, "If ye speak in a strange tongue, and an unlearned man come in amongst you, he will say ye are mad: but if ye expound that which is read, he is rebuked of all, and he will fall down, worship God, and say God is amongst you." Such an earnest defender of his glory is God, that he will give it

:

to no other and so loves he building of this his house, that Matt. xviii. if there be but two or three gathered in his name with fear and reverence of his majesty, seeking his glory and not their own, he will be amongst them.

How God hath been delighted in all ages in the building of this his spiritual house by the preaching of his gospel, the glorious deaths of all his holy martyrs from time to time do declare but now lately in England, by the cruel persecution of the bloody bishops for the maintaining of their wealth, their idolatry, and their antichrist the pope, whose hangmen they were, we all have seen it, yea, and all good

[Bullen, i.e. Boulogne. It was ceded to the English in the year 1546, as a security for the money which the French king stipulated to pay to Henry VIII. in the treaty of peace then concluded. Calais was taken from the English in Mary's reign, in 1558, after having been in their possession two hundred years. The mortification occasioned by this loss is supposed to have hastened the Queen's death. ED.]

piness is to

delighted in

he us, though and death for it.

we suffer

consciences hath abhorred their madness in burning the innocents, pulling up the dead, and have praised God for strengthening his poor creatures against all their mad rages and furious rebelling against God and man. The Almighty God grant us like grace, strength, and boldness, to offer our bodies to death without fear for the building of God's house, rather than to see it lie waste and trodden under feet! What Most hapgreater comfort can any Christians have, than in giving their have God bodies to death for the building of this house, when hears God say that he is delighted in their so doing, that he will shew his glory in them? What greater promotion can a man come to, than to be one such instrument wherein God will be delighted and shew his glory? Death of the body is grievous to the flesh, but death of the soul is a thousand times more fearful to a good man: the one is a little painful for a time, the other hath grief without end. Therefore Christ saith, "Fear not them which kill the body, Matt. x. and cannot hurt the soul; but fear him which can cast both body and soul into hell-fire." Such an earnest love should we have to the building of God's house, both the hearers and teachers, both to build and be builded by all means possible, because he is so well delighted in it; that we should fear neither loss of goods, nor yet death of body, no, nor displeasure of man, so that we may please God, and have him delighted in our doings. To please man is but a small thing; but to please God is the greatest good thing that can be: "He that honours me," saith God, "I will glorify him ;” 1 Sam. ii. and he that confesseth me before men, I will confess him Matt. x. before my Father: and he that is ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of him; and he that denies me before men, I will deny him before my Father in heaven."

v. 9. Ye have looked for much, and behold it is but little; ye The Text. have brought it into the house, and I have blowen on it. And why so? saith the Lord of hosts: because this is my house which lieth waste, and ye run every one to his own house.

The chiefest reasons to persuade an evil man to any wicked ways, be to set before him, and often to him in remembrance, how God hath been angry with

leave The evil put moved with

be rather

threaten

him, ings.

Behold.

when he did such things, and punished him as long as he lay in such forgetting of his Lord God; and also to threaten him with greater plagues, if he do continue in them still. Both these kinds of counsel doth the prophet here use, to stir them up to building of this house of God. He both sundry times calls to their remembrance the great plagues, which they suffered oft and long aforetime for not building God's house; and also bids them not think that all their sorrow was at an end, but more and greater scourges was hanging over their heads, if they would not build his house earnestly and if they ceased not to sin, God would not cease to punish them; and if they continued still not regarding the building of his house, God would continue still increasing his curses on them. Ye have been greedy desiring much, saith the prophet; ye have scraped and scratched together all ye could lay your hands on; ye have spent your money and wrought yourselves weary, thinking to enrich yourselves by such means; but behold and mark it well, and it is come but to little.

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Where the scripture uses to say, "Behold," there it tells some notable strange thing, as this is here; that their labour wasted away unprofitably, they could not tell how. That way whereby all other wax wealthy, hath done you no good; and those means which God uses to work by in other and bless them, in you it hath not gone forwards according to your expectation and looking for: yea, and that which is most marvellous, your corn and other fruits hath not only not increased in the field, but when it hath been brought into the barns, it hath consumed there, you could not tell how. A man would think his corn were sure enough when it is in the barn; (for whilst it is in the field, it is subject to many dangers, as blasting, mildews, frost-biting, thunder-beating, laid with a rain, or shaken with the wind, stolen or eaten with beasts, &c.), but even in your barns, No strength saith God, I have blowen on it. It is as easy for me (saith God) to waste it in the house, as in the field: for if I but blow on it, it is not able to stand in my sight. And as afore he said, their money fell out of the purse bottom, so now in their houses their fruits were not sure. No, lock it up in stone houses, if ye will; it is as easy for God to con

can put

away the

plague of God.

house.

sume it there, as to blow a blast with his mouth: yea, nothing shall withstand him, whatsoever ye devise, but he will take it from you: ye shall not have your pleasure by displeasing God, nor anything shall prosper with you, until ye build him his house; that is to say, maintain his pure religion, defend his honour, forsake your vain pleasures, and refrain your greedy covetousness. The defending of true religion with a good and godly life is now the true building of God's house, now commanded unto us: and that man, city, God's or country, which doth not build this house so, hath and shall have the like plagues fall on them, until they earnestly build this house of the Lord's. For as a king is stablished. in his kingdom, when his godly laws are taught and kept; and that realm is strongly builded and blessed of God, where good order is maintained: so is God's church and congregation well and surely builded, where God's word and religion is purely taught, sin punished, and virtue embraced. God can no more suffer his laws to be contemned or his honour given to idols, than kings can suffer their kingdoms to be betrayed to their enemies. For as in the whole history of the Jews' False relicommonwealth, in the book of the Judges and the Kings, common while the people lived in the fear of the Lord, kept his re- plagues. ligion given them from God, they were defended by God from all enemies round about them, were they never so many and so strong; but when they would worship God, either as they lust themselves, or not at all, or else as he did not appoint them, then they were given into the hand of the Philistines, Ammonites, Chaldees, Egyptians, &c., sometime for the space of forty years, sometime eighteen, sometime seventy, and when they were least, three years: so shall all they that build not, or pull down God's true religion, and set up the pope's, taught by man and not of God, likewise be punished, or worse, either with hunger, pestilence, sword, or blind ignorance, not knowing God, and be given up to their own lusts, without remorse of conscience or any fear of God, which is the greatest plague that can be.

gion is the

cause of

Mark out of our own chronicles what was the estate of this our realm, when we were made tributaries to the Ro- Romans. mans by Julius Cæsar, and so continued 400 years and more;

or afterward, when the Saxons divided this realm into seven Saxons.

kingdoms, drove out all or most and best of the EnglishNormans. men, and ruled as long; or when William Conqueror subdued all to himself at his pleasure: and ye shall find that the same wickedness reigned then, that was now like to have made us slaves to the pope and strangers. The rulers were ambitious dissemblers, the bishops lordly and unpreaching prelates, the people covetous, God's word unknown, and in no degree of men was there any truth. Thus for our sinful disobeying of God, not defending his true religion, have we been given into the hands of all countries round about us; to the Romans and Normans from the south, to the Saxons from the east, to the Danes and Scots from the north: what danger was of late from the west', he that would not see should have felt, if God had not holpen in time.

And lest they should think these plagues to be laid on them for some other causes, the prophet tells them in God's name here, what was the cause of all these sorrows, and should provoke also these other which follow to be poured on them, if they did not amend. "Because this my house," saith God, "lies waste," unbuilded, not regarded of you, "and ye run every one into his own house," seeking his own pleasure and profit. God will not suffer his honour to be given to any other, or any other (no, not ourselves) to be preferred beMatt. xxii. fore him. The lawyer in the gospel asking our Master Christ, which was the first and greatest commandment, when he heard this answer, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength;" he did allow it, and said that was the chiefest indeed and shall we christian men think other things to be preferred before God's will, or our own desires to be more False reli- loved and more earnestly fulfilled than God's? Nay, mark what great plagues fell on any country; and we shall see and find this to be true in all ages, that forgetting God's true religion hath pulled God's anger always most grievously upon the people. What causes the Jews at this day to be driven out of their country, their city and temple utterly destroyed, and they themselves abhorred of all men, but denying Christ to be their Saviour, and not receiving his gospel

gion hath caused all countries to be plagued.

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[The allusion seems to be to the troubles in Ireland, excited at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign by O'Neil and his followers. ED.]