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PATIENCE AND CONFIDENCE

STRENGTH OF THE CHURCH.
/f,f J <^f£ /¦ Af&V ^^
A SERMON PREACHED
ON THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER,

THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
AT S. MARY'S,
And published at the wish of many of its Members.
BY THE
REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
UEGIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, CANON OF CHRIST CHUIICH,
AND LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE.
In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. Isaiah xxx. 15.

<S-N-0 x

SECOND EDITION. F.MADT\r«
OXFORD,
J. H. PARKER ; J. G. AND F. RlVlNGTON, LONDON.
1838.

BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.

TO THE
REV. JOHN KEBLE, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF POETRY, AND LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL,
WHO IN YEARS PAST
UNCONSCIOUSLY IMPLANTED A TRUTH
WHICH WAS AFTERWARDS TO TAKE ROOT,
HIMSELF THE DUTIFUL DISCIPLE
OF ITS ANTIENT GUARDIAN AND FAITHFUL WITNESS
IN WORD AND ACTION
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
THIS SERMON
IS INSCRIBED WITH EVERY FEELING
OF RESPECTFUL AND AFFECTIONATE GRATITUDE
FOR THIS AND MANY OTHER BENEFITS.

PREFACE.

Non-resistance and passive obedience, in the sense to
which they are generally limited, are but two sides of the
same doctrine, (the former speaking of it negatively, as
not opposing force to force, the latter positively, as taking
patiently whatever may be laid upon one,) and, together,
are only a particular application of a general principle. In
religion, it is faith; under misfortune, it is resignation;
under trial, it is patient waiting for the end ; amid provo
cation, it is gentleness ; amid affronts, meekness ; amid
injuries, it is endurance ; towards enemies, non-requital ;
towards railing, it is " not answering again;'' to parents, it
is filial obedience ; to superiors, respect ; to authorities,
unquestioning submission; towards Civil Government, it is
obedience upon principle, not only when it costs nothing,
(as obedience to it ordinarily does not, and so can hardly
be called the fulfilment of a duty,) but when it costs some
thing. On this, (as on almost every other subject of morals)
our standard in this superficial age is for the most part
lax and low ; not simply (as of course it ever must be)
in the selfish and profane, but in the current notions
of the day. Maxims are received as indisputable, which
betray a mixture of Heathenism with Christianity, and
which proceed upon no principle even of heathen morality.
As a warning against this, it has been wished, in the fol-

VI

lowing Sermon, to point out how deeply the principle
itself lies in Holy Scripture, how largely it extends, how
it was acted upon by the Church, in her healthy state,
and how God has uniformly blessed those who acted upon
it, and has chastised those who abandoned it. But though
the circumstances of the day required it to be illustrated
by the events, for which that day is so memorable, and that
the lesson of those events should be inculcated, it was not
intended to consider the doctrine prominently in its poli
tical bearings, much less to confine it to what politicians of
these days would consider as such. For the temptations
to offend against this law, in the extreme degree of rebel
lion, are happily very rare, while yet the principle itself
may be broken very frequently. Over-eagerness to have
what is really wrong redressed, when we are the sufferers ;
taking matters into men's own hands ; combinations to use a
moral compulsion upon Governors to abrogate what is
really oppressive; — in short, a scheming, contriving activity
of any sort, is, in itself, opposed to this principle, and
likely to tend, more or less, to its overt breach. It is
in the strong conviction that the enemies of the Church
have no power to hurt her, any more than the lions whose
mouths God had shut, while Daniel was in their den, to
hurt His Prophet, but that those over-anxious for her, or
who would help her by human contrivances, may injure
her very seriously, that the warnings held out by God's
dealings in such cases have been insisted on.
With regard to the special instance of the English revo
lution of 1688, the question is now happily one of practical
importance, only, as relates to men's feelings and prin
ciples, not to any political mode of acting. We are now
enabled by the distance of time, and God's intervening
mercies, to look at that action in its real character, without
dread of involving ourselves in practical consequences

VII

which we would gladly avoid. Now, it were absurd or
hypocrisy to suppose that the title of the present family to
the Crown is in the least affected by the character of the
Act of 1688. It were to confuse the abstract question of
the original right of succession with the Christian duty of
submission and allegiance. Our Lord bade the Pharisees
pay tribute to the Caesar, and not to prevaricate about the
origin of their right. Further, the extinction of the un
happy line which were then in possession of the throne ; —
the circumstance, that the family now placed upon it, were
not the immediate successors of that family, but came in
in a more orderly way; — their long undisputed possession of
it; — happily can leave no doubt in any mind that they are to
be acknoioledged, as well as obeyed, as " the powers that be."
If, in ordinary cases, possession for a long period constitutes
right, much more, where God's law requires men to submit
quietly to " the powers that be," without defining how they
came to be such. It was not in a legitimate way that the
Emperors, whom S. Paul and S. Peter commanded men to
obey, came to the throne, nor had they even prescription
to plead; yet, as far as the subjects were concerned, " the
powers that be were ordained of God." No one again can
doubt that our early wars with France were wrong, on the
ground that they were ambitious, covetous wars, indepen
dently of the question as to our title to the crown disputed;
they were aggressions against " the powers that be :" our
Sovereigns have admitted the principle by relinquishing
the title ; nor could any one doubt that the French were
right in obeying their then king, and opposing ours. The
contrary would be looked on as absurd. As absurd would
it be, to think that the king of Sardinia has any Christian
title to be Sovereign of this kingdom, though in the natural
order of things, the crown would have descended upon
him. It is idle, too, to argue, that but for the revolution of

vm
1688, the present family would never have been placed
upon the throne. Who knows it, or has any right to
affirm it? All we know, is, that it would not have been
there placed, in the way in which it was. But who can say
that it might not have been raised upon it in some other
way, as, indeed, that act had no apparent connection with
it? The principle, which the elevation of the present family
involves, is not the right of subjects to depose their Sove
reign, but the right of the existing authority to pass over
the individual next in succession, as disqualified, as a parent
may disinherit his son. This principle often exercised would
indeed make a monarchy almost elective, but it is a civil
question, and has no connection with the duties of subjects.
This sort of arguing about what might have been the con
sequence of a different line of action 150 years ago, is
worse than idle ; it is Atheistic ; for it implies that every
thing else must have taken the same course which it since
has, i. e. that fate, not God's Providence, governs the
world. As for those who, having been for a long period
employed in sowing disloyalty, have now discovered that
the doctrine of Non-resistance is disloyal, while one rejoices
that they can in any way propagate loyalty, (though it be
" out of envy and strife,") it were enough to answer with
the Christians against whom the like charge was made:
" We are defamed as disloyal to the Emperor; — yet
they, who had sworn ' by the genii of the Caesars,' who
had offered victims and vows for their welfare, who had
often condemned the Christians, have been found their
enemies. The Christian is the enemy of no one, much less
of the Emperor." (Tertull. ad Scap. init.) On the principles
of Non-resistance, whence is resistance or disturbance to
arise ? It is, truly, the story of " the wolf and the lamb."
But to those of more earnest mind, who recognize the
Providence of God, and believe that the tracks of past

IX
events are not blotted out by mere length of time, but that
as the Heathen Oracle said,
* "Ogxoo ttou; s<rr)v avaivufao;, ou8* ?7ri %ii(>e;,
OuSe 7ro8ef xgamvog 8e jj.ereg^eTM, eWdxe iroltTixv
Su|U.jt/.ag4/af oAe<rsi yeveyv, xal 01x01/ swravTa.
'AvSgos 8* suo'gxou ysviYj fj.eT07ri<rhv ocfj.Elvaiv.
it is, as is here urged, of practical moment, to reconsider
our own views of the deeds of our fathers, to see, if the
oath of allegiance were broken, that we bring not its
terrible progeny upon our race and name, by persisting
in " allowing the deeds of our fathers ;" not as wishing to
undo evil by evil towards man, but to efface it by re
pentance towards God : so shall that which naturally could
not be effaced, but must work on its own fearful conse
quences, be effaced by His loving-kindness whose it is to
" blot out transgressions." What has been done nationally
amiss must be by the nation repented of; and if this is
not in our power, at least we may repent of what any of
us have done individually by " calling evil, good," and
increase our peaceable submission and obedience to that
Sovereign whom God has now placed over us, not as the
instrument of man's will, but as " ordained of God." The
question, then, is to be looked upon not as a theory, but
as an earnest practical principle, involving practical conse
quences in submission to God and man.
And if any be prejudiced against the doctrine, because
it is opposed to the current notions of the day, let him
consider how much besides of valuable truth will, in a
superficial age, share the same fate. It is discarded, not
because it has been disproved, but because it is " out
of date," just as if eternal truth were a matter of Chro
nology; or as if any changes introduced by men could
annul the ordinance of God. Dean Sherlock said, shortly

before 1688, " the principles of rebellion are openly
professed and taught, and the doctrine of Non-resistance
and Passive Obedience " not confuted, but laughed out
of countenance." (Dedication to " Case of resistance to the
supreme powers stated and resolved according to the
doctrine of the Holy Scriptures," 1684.) But they who
think a duty laid down in Holy Scripture worthy their
serious thought, will do well (apart from the bias of
vulgar opinion, or the fear of possible consequences)
to review in their own consciences, how notions which
they have adopted, perhaps, because they are generally
received, can consist with the plain meaning of the Word
of God.
This may be facilitated by the study of Dean Sherlock's
book; who, for "the doctrine and practice of the Primitive
Christians," refers to " that admirable discourse of Arch
bishop Ussher, about the power of the Prince and the
obedience of the subject, which will not cost much money,
nor take up much time to read." (lb. pp. 2, 3.) Philo
sophers and politicians of the present day may be sur
prised to find, that Bp. Berkeley maintains the same
doctrine, " on the principles of reason common to all
mankind3." a Abp. Ussher's work is entitled " The power communicated by God
to the Prince, and the obedience required of the subject, briefly laid
down, and confirmed out of the holy Scriptures, the testimony of the
primitive Church, the dictates of right reason, and the opinion of the
wisest among heathen writers." It was written at the command of
King Charles I, lost, for the time, " through the negligence or un
faithfulness" of the publisher, and finally published with a preface
by Bp. Sanderson, in the reign of King Charles II. Bp. Berkeley's
work is the substance of three sermons, preached at the College Chapel;
his position is, " that there is an absolute unlimited non-resistance
or passive obedience due to the supreme civil power wherever placed
in any nation.

XI

The statements above made are altogether the same as
those formally received by the Church in the Convocation
of 1603 — 1610, in which they were " passed with one
consent." (See Bp. Overall's Convocation-Book, p. 92.)
The 28th Canon runs thus :
" If any man therefore shall affirm, either that the
subjects, when they shake off the yoke of their obedience to
their Sovereigns, and set up a form of government among
themselves, after their own humours, do not therein very
wickedly; or that it is lawful for any bordering kings,
through ambition and malice, to invade their neighbours ;
or that the Providence and goodness of God, in using of
rebellions and oppressions to execute His justice against any
king or country, doth mitigate or qualify the offences of
any such rebels or oppressing kings; or that, ivhen any
such new forms of government, begun by rebellion, are after
throughly settled, the authority in them is not of God ; or
that any who live within the territories of such new govern
ments, are not bound to be subject to God's authority,
which is there executed, but may rebel against the same ;
or that the Jews, either in Egypt or Babylon, might
lawfully, for any cause, have taken arms against any of
those kings, or have offered any violence to their persons ;
he doth greatly erre."
The Convocation-Book itself is valuable also, as clearly
and definitely tracing out the origin of Government from
the Patriarchal form, instead of assuming any original
social compact with the people. For the notion of the

Xll

social compact presupposes that the source of power came
from below, whereas it is plain in Holy Scripture that it
was derived from above. Scripture knows but of two
sources of power; 1. lawful, whereby the parental authority
of the head of the family was gradually extended with the
extension of the family, and so became patriarchal, which
was in a sense regal; 2. unlawful, that of conquest, as
Nimrod. But of any state of things wherein the people
had power in their own hands, to give it to whom they
would, and upon what conditions they would, it knows
not. " If," says Bp. Sanderson, " we will but follow the
clue of the Sacred History in the four first chapters of
Genesis, it will fairly lead us out of these labyrinths,"
[viz. whether Government or Property were first in order
of time, and whether Government were agreed upon to
secure Property, or Property was assigned by Law and
Government ; in a word, whether Government came from
above or below, was voluntarily adopted, or was the original
constitution of things, and part of the primary ordinance of
God.] " It is certain, that as soon as Adam was created,
God gave to him as an universal monarch, not only
dominion over all his fellow-creatures that were upon
the face of the earth, but the government also of all the
inferior world, and of all the men that after should be
born into the world so long as he lived ; so as whatsoever
property any other persons afterwards had or could have in
any thing in any part of the world, (as Cain and Abel, 'tis
well known, had their properties in several, and distinct
either from other,) they held it all of him, and had it ori
ginally by his gift or assignment either immediately or me
diately. Whence we may also conclude, both in hypothesi,
that Adam's government was before Cain's property ; and
in thesi, that undoubtedly government was before property.
And we have great reason to believe that after the flood

xiii
the sole government was at first in Noah, and whatsoever
either property in any thing they possessed in several,
or share in the government over any part of the world
afterward any of his sons had, they had it by his sole
allotment and authority, and transmitted the same to
their posterity merely upon that account ; without awaiting
the election or consent of, or entering into any articles
or capitulations with, the people that were to be governed
by them. Those words in Gen. x. 32. seem to import
as much, " These are the families of the sons of Noah
in their generations after their nations: and by them
were the nations divided in the earth after the flood."
And so this supposed pact or contract, which maketh such
a noise in the world, proveth to be but a squib, powder
without shot, that giveth a crack, but vanisheth into air,
and doth no execution." Preface, §. 18.
In like manner, the Church in Convocation, laid as
the basis of their statement the same historical view.
Cap. 2.
" To him that shall duly read the Scripture, it will
be plain and evident, that the Son of God having created
our first parents, and proposing to multiply their seed
into many generations, for the replenishing of the world
with their posterity, did give to Adam for his time, and
to the rest of the patriarchs, and chief fathers successively
before the flood, authority, power, and dominion over their
children, and offspring, to rule and govern them; ordain
ing by the very law of nature, that their said children
and offspring (begotten and brought up by them) should
fear, reverence, honour, and obey them. Which power
and authority before the flood, resting in the patriarchs,
and in the chief fathers, because it had a very large extent,
not only for the education of their said children and
offspring, whilst they were young; but likewise for the

xiv
ordering, ruling, and governing of them afterwards, when
they came to man's estate; and for that also it had no
superior authority, or power over, or above it on earth,
appearing in the Scriptures, although it be called either
patriarchal, regal, or imperial, and that we only term
it potestas patria: yet, being well considered, how far
it did reach, we may truly say, that it was in a sort
potestas regia; as now in a right and true construction,
potestas regia may justly be called potestas patria." And to
this it subjoined the following Canon.
" If any man shall therefore affirm, that men at the
first, without all good education, or civility, ran up and
down in woods and fields as wild creatures, resting
themselves in caves, and dens, and acknowledging no
superiority one over another, until they were taught by
experience the necessity of government; and that there
upon they chose some among themselves to order and
rule the rest, giving them power and authority so to do;
and that consequently all civil power, jurisdiction, and
authority, was first derived from the people and dis
ordered multitude ; or either is originally still in them,
or else is deduced by their consent naturally from them ;
and is not God's ordinance originally descending from
Him, and depending upon Him; he doth greatly erre."
(Can. 2.)
All the theories of the origin of Government, however
they may vary in the details of their application, or even
though they urge results opposed to what might naturally or
legitimately be inferred from their principles, may be re
ferred to these two ; that which supposes a state of nature,
(as it is called,) in which men, no ways connected with each
other, did for mutual security establish a civil govern
ment, abridging their own natural rights, and setting kings
over them on certain conditions, — the system of a " social

XV
compact;" the other, that which supposes men always to
have existed in society, as being derived from a common
origin, and the authority of the governor to have been
derived from that, originally given to the head of the
family by God, (as Abel was naturally to have been subject
to Cain, Gen. iv. 7.) the " Patriarchal system." And so
(as Bp. Sanderson above observed) all turns on this,
whether " property be supposed antecedent to govern
ment," i. e. whether men be supposed in a state of having
something of their own, (whether actual property, or with
Hobbes " a right of every man to every thing,") and thence
to have formed governments for themselves, and so the
original of government be with the people, or whether
" government be antecedent to property," i. e. established
by God in the first instance, and derived from Him. The
former of these (and so the so-called " social compact")
is obviously an unbelieving theory, (even if any who
adopted it should not have been unbelievers; Hooker,
although he employs some of its language as having been
derived from the Roman law, manifestly does not adopt
the theory itself,) and is that of Hobbes, Locke, Hume,
Gibbon, Montesquieu, and other politicians; the other
is that of the Church ; and it is remarkable, that the
latter, the religious view, though connected with the
high doctrine of Non-resistance, found no acceptance
with King James I, who wished to assist the insurgent
Netherlands; the other, although virtually subverting
authority, was a favourite with the court of King
Charles II, so that " an original power by nature in the
people was the only theme then in fashion:" (Sir R.
Filmer, Obs. on Forms of Government, p. 18.) so little do
states or statesmen often know of the principles whence
their strength is derived ! The unbelieving character of
the received theory, and wherein this unbelieving character

XVI

consisted, is again pointed out by Bp. Sanderson. " True
it is, that a mere rationalist, (i. e. in plain English, an
Atheist of the late edition,) who giveth more faith to such
heathen philosophy as affirmeth the world to have been
ab aeterno, than to divine revelation, which assureth us it
had a beginning, (and some of the great champions of
the opinion we now speak of, have given cause enough
of suspicion that they are little better,) such a one, I say,
cannot possibly get out of the circle," [since on any natural
principles, property presupposed government, and govern
ment property], " but to us who believe the Scriptures and
acknowledge a creation, the solution of both is easy."
In like manner Bp. Horsley :
" Mankind from the beginning never existed otherwise
than in society and under government. Whence follows
this important consequence, that to build the authority of
princes, or of the chief magistrate under whatever denomi
nation, upon any compact or agreement between the indi
viduals of a multitude living previously in a state of nature,
is in truth to build a reality upon a fiction." Serm.
xliv. preached before the House of Lords, on the anni
versary of the Martyrdom of King Charles I.

Some sentences are inserted in the Sermon now, which
could not be introduced into the delivery, for fear of inter
fering with a service, which was to follow.

Exod. xiv. 13.
Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the
Lwd, which He will shew to you to-day.
The history of the Old Testament is the Sun of
all other history, Christian or profane. In it, the
cloud which veils the mercy- seat, as well as the
pathways of Divine Providence, is withdrawn, and
the light from behind the cloud flashes through,
the token of the Divine presence to those who can
behold it, light to His people, although to the
Egyptians darkness. So marked, indeed, is the
analogy of the kingdoms of unseen and revealed
providence, that men must acknowledge it one way
or the other ; unless they trace it where it is less
distinct, they will lose sight of it where it is most
clear ; unless they explain what is less known by
what is declared, they will explain away what is
declared by what is obscure ; unless they make use
of the light given them where they might see, it will
be withdrawn from them where they think they see.
Twilight, in that it has a portion of light, has a
correspondence with day-break ; and whoso, when
the light is come, will not explain the indistinct
outlines which he saw, " men as trees, walking" by
the distincter and revealed forms he now beholds,
must go on to walk in the darkness which he loves
B

rather than light. They who interpret not what
men call nature by the Bible, will bring down the
Bible to the standard of nature.
This has been done of old times. This very
history of the passage of the Red sea, Josephus, it
has been wisely noticed, " in his worst spirit of
compromise," compared to an escape of Alexander;
and the modern historian of the Jews, who, with a
righteous indignation, censured Josephus, was him
self much to be blamed for the like parallels ; and
what was in his case rightly condemned, was, in an
other form, circulated as religious teaching". Whoso,
again, will not recognize the finger of God in His
providential cures, will not see it in His miraculous;
they who resolve every thing into secondary or
physical causes in the one case, and will not see
Him who is the Cause of all causes, and worketh
by all those things, whose operation meets our
senses, will lose all sense for discerning His hand,
where Scripture plainly declares it. When men
had explained away, as the mere effects of imagin
ation, cures, in modern times, out of the wonted
' These cases are adduced, not to censure the individuals ; —
the error was not theirs only, it is that of their age ; — but to
illustrate the exceeding liability to such error, whenever the
attempt is made to interest people in the Bible, on the current
principles of ordinary life, to make the characters of the Bible
interesting any how to persons of any stamp. The Society
alluded to corrected its work, yet it is instructive, that a Society
in high repute should have fallen into the error, which had
recently been so strongly condemned.

3
order of God's Providence, which, though no con
firmation of a religious system, seem to have been
personal rewards to strong personal faith, they
were ready to apply the same principle to many
of the miracles of the Gospel ; when they had
ceased to see in lunatics the power permitted to
evil spirits, they were prepared and did, as soon as
it was suggested, deny it in the dsemoniacs of the
New Testament11. And so, again, one may see the
evil of a class of illustration, derived from the Armi-
nian school, whereby all sorts of heathen sayings are
brought into parallel with Gospel teaching ; so soon
as they ceased to be regarded as the seeds of truth
which the Divine Word had scattered among the
Heathen, (as way-marks and finger-posts, looking
on to something to come, and requiringcorrection and
developement,) and were viewed as something in
dependent and substantial, they were used as inter
preters, or critics, or rivals, of Gospel truth. The
words of inspiration again are glowing language,
such as in human compositions is poetry ; but whoso
looked upon the Hebrew prophets as poets, forgot
that they were the awful messengers of the Most
High ; as they who measured by earthly principles
the actions of God's instruments, lost sight Whose
they were, and Whom they served ; he who illus
trated the law given by Moses, upon the principles
1 A controversy on this subject, which led to the disbelief
of the actual " possessions" in the New Testament, was con
fessedly the commencement of German rationalism.
b2

of ordinary legislations undermined in his Church
and people the belief that it was divine. Apolo
gists, accordingly, in every department, have sub
stituted human counterfeit for the divine reality,
by illustrations, by defending, (as they deemed,)
divine truths on human principles, by explaining
" hard sayings" through the commonplaces of ordi
nary morality, the justice of God by the expediency
of men : and on this ground, there has (as a fact)
been no more fruitful source of heresy or unbelief,
than defences of the faith.
In history, morals, poetry, legislation, philosophy,
language, physics, religion,— Heaven and Earth,
a body of clay and a spirit breathed into its nostrils
by the life-giving Spirit, stand over against each
other, and whoso lifteth not up the earthly to the
heavenly, will bring down the heavenly to the
earthly. " Homer," says even a heathend, " trans
ferred human things to the gods ; would he had
rather things divine to man !" If the body be not
spiritualized, the soul will be carnalized.
The light then of all history is God's guidance,
dim indeed often, and overlaid by the intricacy of
human policy and craftiness, yet still visible to
those who in the detail of the workmanship forget
e J. D. Michaelis on the Laws of Moses; a book which uni
formly exhibits things on the lowest and most commonplace
side, setting out on the assumption, that Moses was an ordinary
legislator. d Cicero, Tusc. i. c. 26. Fingebat haec Homerus, et hu-
mana ad Deos transferebat ; divina mallem ad nos.

5

not the Maker, nor allow themselves by the study
of the visible creature to be held down from be
holding the Invisible. Even in Heathen empires
He declares by His prophets, that " He changeth the
times and seasons : He removeth kings, and set-
teth up kings". " Even there among those who
seem to rule, He is the One Ruler. " The
Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men," (an
unseen power within man's visible kingdom, per
mitting or withholding, uniting or dissolving, giv
ing strength or bringing age upon them, and di
recting man's free-agency, like the wild uproar of
the sea, to His own ends, unseen by man His work,
but ever present with and within His work,) " the
Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and
giveth it to whomsoever He willf." Pharaoh, Cyrus,
the Assyrian, the rod of His anger ?, but " who meant
not so, neither did his heart think soh," Nebuchad
nezzar of whom God saith by Jeremiah, " I who
made the earth, the man and beast uponthe ground, —
and have given it unto whom it seemed good unto me,
and now have I given all these lands into the hand of
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, myservant, — and
all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his
son's son, until the very time of his land come, and
then many nations and great kings shall serve
themselves of him'," — these are but so many speci
mens, and instances of His universal empire, doing
« Dan. ii. 21. f Ibid. iv. 25. s Isaiah x. 5.
h Ver. 7. ' Jer. xxvii. 5 — 7-

all that is good, and ordering what is evil, so
" that the wrath of man doth but praise HimV
And this should be understood not simply of cer
tain fixed laws, whereby the rise and decay of states
are regulated, as that an enduring self-denying state
should prosper, a luxurious self-indulgent people
should decay, an upright state should acquire
might, a crafty (like Carthage) should be taken
in its own craftiness, and the like, — as if God were
separate from His Providence and His laws, and
His law were an abstraction to which He had com
mitted the government of things, and not rather
that His laws were His own continued action, dis
pensing in one uniform way His sovereign will, be
cause " in Him is no variableness, neither shadow
of turning," but still Himself, personally present
and personally measuring out to every nation its
portion according to its wrorks, in His will, whose
will is the law of things created. For so personally
doth Scripture speak, speaking universally ; " with
Him," it is written in Job1, " is strength and
wisdom, the deceived and the deceiver are His :
He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and maketh the
judges fools : He looseth the bond of kings, and
girdeth their loins with a girdle : He leadeth
princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty :
He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and
taketh away the understanding of the aged : He
poureth contempt upon princes, and weakeneth the
" Ps. lxxvi. 10. ' Chap. xii. 16 ad fin.

strength of the mighty : — He taketh away the heart
of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth
them to wander in a wilderness where there is no
way." Nay it seems one object of the relations of
the Old Testament to correct man's Atheistic way
of contemplating things, whereby he would substi
tute for the Living God some abstraction ; as law
or nature, or general Providence, or order of things,
for the Giver and Maintainer of laws and nature,
" the Lord who will provide" and order all things;
and therefore it may be, doth God, in this place of
Job and elsewhere, speak in such detail and so
vividly, shewing that not only the ends but the
means, not only the victory but the strength, not
the power to persuade, but the eloquent speech,
and the understanding of the experienced, are His,
that He giveth or withholdeth, turneth them to
foolishness or taketh them away as He will. Not
the great results only, (as men call great,) but the
smallest, most insignificant means, every step of
the countless multitudes who march along the
high way of God's Providence, is ordered by Him,
so that they should " marchm every one on his ways,
and not break their ranks, neither one thrust
another, but walk every one in his path." And
hence God's saints so often in holy Scripture con
fess, that all their power and wisdom and might
cometh from them, not in general terms only, but
01 Joel ii. 7, 8.

in particulars, that He "girdeth" them with strength,"
giveth swiftness to their feet0, " maketh them wiser
than the agedP," " teacheth their hands to war0- ;"
for this faith in God's aid and presence in details,
is the life of all belief in His General Providence,
and without, this that more general belief is little
better than an empty abstraction.
But if the history of God's dealings with the
Jewish Church are a key to His governance of
that His larger family, who had " gone away into a
far country'," to follow their own desires uncon
trolled, much more is it to the governance of the
Christian Church. For here we have not only
the general correspondence of God's sovereignty,
whereby the creatures of God's hands must either
willingly, or against their will, be under His rule,
must bear the sceptre or the rod of iron, and carry
on His ends in their preservation or destruction, by
their obedience or their perverseness, but we have
the happier lot of being His family, the kingdom
which He has chosen out of all nations to dwell in
them. The Theocracy is continued, only invisibly ;
as God dwelt before by the Shechinah in the temple,
so now the universal Christian Church is one
temple, wherein it pleaseth Him to dwell, not now
for a time — but " the Lord will abide in it for ever,"
by virtue of His own promise, " Lo! I am with you
alway, even to the end of the world."
" Ps. xviii. 33. ° Ver. 33. " Ibid. cxix. 100.
i Ibid, xviii. 34. r Luke xv. 15.

We must not think of the law or its blessings as
passed away ; our Lord forbids it ; what does not
yet remain is /wflfilled, i. e. filled up and realized,
as an outline by the substance ; the moral law
remains ; the ritual and the political had their
fulfilment in Christ and His Church ; the parti
cular Providence of the Jewish people continues on
in the Christian Church ; only in the Christian
higher far and more enduring, as the spiritual is
higher than the civil Government, the relation of
sons than that of servants, Heaven than Canaan.
" The whole kingdom of the Hebrew nation," says
S. Augustine s, " was one great prophet, because it pro
phesies of one Great One. In the actions as well as
the words of their holy men must we look for pro
phecies of Christ and His Church; but for the rest
of the nation, collectively in God's dealings with
them. ' For all these things, (as the Apostle says)
were our ensamples,'" i. e. types and images of us.
From the mutual connection of the Head and His
members, the Jewish people, wherein they image
forth our Lord, reflect also His Body, the Church,
as well as in their more direct resemblance ; nor is
it in their waywardness, or their rebellions, or their
turning back to Egypt only, that they shadow out
individuals, but in God's dealings with them, they
picture His dealings with His Church, which He
formed into one in Christ out of them and of the
Gentiles. God's dealings with them, then, not only give
' c. Faust. 1. xxii. c. 24.

10
instruction, (as any knowledge of God must,) but
are a prophecy ; peculiar situations, of the Jewish
people are prophetic warnings or encouragements ;
and it may be that a very minute correspondence
will be found between the histories of the Jewish
and Christian Church. At all events, we ought to
look to striking occasions, where God's dealings
were more visibly manifested, as grounds whereon
to build our conduct and our hopes. The passage
of the Red sea, to which the text refers, was one of
those occasions; its typical relation to the Christian
Church, S. Paul has authoritatively declared; and
S. Matthew that of the Exodus, which it completed,
with our Lord's call out of Egypt; the Song of Moses,
wherein he praised God for His mercies therein,
itself looked on and furnished the form and lan
guage of other prophecy; and its use in the Universal
Church, as a hymn of praise, shew them to have
recognized its continued Christian meaning and
application. At the very verge of that deliverance, thus
solemnly commemorated in the Jewish and Chris
tian Church, when the whole early people of God
seemed to be in a great strait, entangled in the
land, and shut in by the wilderness, the sea before
them, and behind them " all the horses and cha
riots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen and his army,"
Moses uttered the prophetic words, " Fear ye not,
stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord."
The peril was at its height, the Church seemed on
the very brink of destruction, Egypt, the emblem

11

of Antichrist, was ready to destroy, and there
was no way left, when God " made the depths of
the sea a way for His people, that the ransomed
of the Lord might pass overs."
These words, which to fleshly Israel must have
seemed so strange, and which to weak faith echo
so strangely still, contain two parts, a duty and a
blessing. They are not mere words of encourage
ment,- they impose a duty, and annex a blessing to
its fulfilment. " Quietness and confidence" were to
be "their strength." They were to "stand still," and
so should they see the " salvation of God." And this
condition of blessing runs continually through the
whole history of the Jewish and Christian Church.
As, namely, the first sin of man was trust in self
and mistrust in God, so the correction has con
tinually been, mistrust in self and trust in God.
When God has tried His chosen servants or His
chosen people, the most frequent trial perhaps has
been this, whether they would tarry the Lord's
leisure, be content to receive God's gift in God's
way, take, at least, no wrong measures for obtaining
it, hasten not, turn not to the right hand or the
left ; but " stand still," and " see the salvation of
their God." They who have stood this trial have
been eminent saints, the jewels of the Lord ; they
who have failed in this, have been like vessels,
destined for some high use, but through this one
flaw, marred in the fire which was to prove and
* Isaiah li. 10.

12
form them. Even, when unlawful means have not
been used, yet the employment of any means, until
God gave the means into the hand, were followed
by pain and grief. Thus Abram and Sarai
waited ten years for the promise, and then Abram
hearkened to the voice of Sarai, and Ishmael was
born ; Ishmael too had a blessing for Abraham's
willing faith, who resigned him, and his own hopes
in him, yet was he a grief to both Abraham and
Sarah, and to their descendants. The child, whose
birth they had wished for, themselves cast out, and
" he who was born after the flesh," in himself and
in his seed, " persecuted him who was born after
the Spirit." By faith1 Moses slew the Egyptian;
yet because this earnest zeal was not sufficiently
subdued to do God's will and His only, he was
forty years a stranger in the desert; and yet one like
unbidden act cost him the land of Canaan. Jacob
obtained the promise appointed to him before his
birth ; yet because he obtained it in way of human
device, " few and evil were the days of his pilgrim
age ;" Isaac waited twenty-one years for the fulfil
ment of the promise, and passed a peaceful life,
strangely contrasted with his son's disquiet. Israel,
in faithless fear of Ammon, asked for the king, who
had been spoken of to them in the Law ; and it
became a sin and a snare to them ; and God con
sumed them and their king". Saul waited not for
Samuel, for " fear the Philistines should come down
1 Acts vii. 23, 2.4. " 1 Sam. xii. 25.

13
upon him, and he had not made supplication unto
the Lord ;" and he was told for this first sin, " now
would the Lord have established thy throne upon
Israel for ever, but now thy kingdom shall not con
tinue, because thou hast not kept that which the Lord
commanded theex." David (of himself hasty and
jealous) evinced himself the " man after God's own
heart," in preferring rather to be " hunted like a par
tridge on the mountains," than obtain that which God
had promised him, until God should give it him.
Jeroboam, though by nature what men call able
and of a noble spirit y, by not waiting, and by
human wisdom, became guilty of rebellion, his
house was cut off, and himself became a proverb,
with the miserable title, " who made Israel (the
Lord's promised, chosen people) to sin ;" Baasha2
and Jehu were raised up by God to execute judgment
on their masters, yet because they did this, and
joined therewith policy of their own, the blood
which was righteously shed, was demanded of their
hands, and God " avenged the blood of Jezreel on
the house of Jehua;" " Asa's heart was perfect
with the Lord6," yet because he relied on the
king of Syria for that wherein he should have relied
on the Lord of Hosts, Hanani denounced God's
judgments; "Herein thou hast done foolishly;
therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars6."
" 1 Sam. xiii. 12 — 14. y See 1 Kings xi. 28. * 1 Kings
xv. 29. xvi. 17. a Hos. i. 4. b 1 Kings xv. 14.
c 2 Chron. xvi. 7 — 9-

14
The inaugural visions of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Ezekiel, in different ways, lay the same burthen
upon them, that they should be the willing spon
taneous instruments of God ; use no words of
their own, but speak every word given them by
God : as the Apostles were afterwards forbidden to
premeditate what words they should use, but were
to " speak what should be given them in that
hour'1 ;" — an exercise at once of faith and faithfulness.
And why speak of man, when He in whom our
nature was restored, as a part of the restoration of
that nature, and as an example of what should be
realized in His members, underwent man's three
fold trial " of the desire of the flesh, the desire of
the eyes, and vain-glorye," in this same wray, whe
ther He would obtain for Himself that which
was His, in any other way than that appointed ;
which, when He refused, " Satan," we are told,
had " ended all his temptation f." And He left
to His disciples the same rule, and the same
promise; "Ye shall be hated of men for my
name's sake ; but there shall not a hair of your
head perish ; in your patience possess ye your
souls s." The disciple and the Church were to be
hated like their Master and their Lord, to withstand
in the same way, by patient self-possession of their
souls, and with and through Him to stand. And,
again, " Whosoever will save his life shall lose
" Mat. x. 19, 20. Luke xii. 11, 12. e 1 John ii. 16.
' Luke iv. 13. * Luke xxi. 17 — 19.

15

it, but whosoever will lose his life for My sake
shall find it'1;" and "the meek shall inherit
the earth." Through patient suffering did the
Son obtain the heathen for His inheritance, and
the utmost parts of the earth for His possession ;
as He said', " If I be lifted up from the earth, I
shall draw all men unto Me." " It is enough for the
disciple that he be as his Master." By patient (the word
implies suffering) waiting for God, an unresisting
resistance unto blood, did the Church take root in
the whole world. It would seem as if S. Paul's
imprisonment was a hindrance to the Gospel : so,
it seems, he may have feared himself ; this was the
affliction of his bonds : but they " fell out rather,"
he writesk, " to the furtherance of the Gospel;" the
" bonds of S. Paul in Christ" carried the Gospel
into the household and court of the Caesar1, and in
all places, and gave confidence to many ; as in
later times, the captivity of Rome carried the
Gospel among the Vandals ; and Christian slaves
took captive their conquerors. The afflictions
of the Thessalonians sounded out the Gospel to
Macedonia and Achaia"1. " The signs of an Apo
stle were wrought among you," says S. Paul to
the Corinthians0, " in all endurance," as well as in
" signs and wonders and mighty deeds." The work
of an Evangelist, bequeathed by S. Paul to Timothy
and his successors, was to " watch in all things,
11 Luke ix. 24. ' John xii. 32. k Phil. i. 12 — 14.
1 v. 13. and iv. 22. "' 1 Thess. i. 6—8. " 2 Cor. xii. 12.

16
and to endure hardships "." It is a Christian pro
verb, (and proverbs become such by the frequency
of their application,) that " the blood of martyrs
was the seed of the Church :" the Gospel alone
made known that non-resistance was strength, be
cause " the strength of God was made perfect in
weakness." " The more," says Origen", " kings
and the rulers of nations and people every where
afflicted them, the more they multiplied and pre
vailed exceedingly p." The spiritual sons of the
Gospel were multiplied by the self-same means as
His chosen people in Egypt, by God's blessing on
patient submission to injury. " We are multi
plied," says Tertullian, " so often as we are mown
down by you. The blood of Christians is seedq."
And Justinr, himself a Martyr, relates how, " when
he was content with Platonism, the endurance of
Christians, and their fearlessness of death, and
every thing accounted fearful," won his first atten
tion to the Gospel. " When an ungodly man,"
says S. Chrysostom % " bears rule, persecuting us
on every side, and encompassing us with innume
rable evils, then doth our state become bright and
glorious." And not in these only, but in the more
fretting, because petty, oppressions to which they
were exposed. " We were enjoined not to strive,"
says Justin*, " but through endurance and meekness
" 2 Tim. iv. 5. ° c. Cels. vii. p. 713. ed. Ben. '• Exod. i. 12.
i Apol. c. 50. ' Apol. ii. §. 12. p. 96. ed. Ben.
¦ De S. Babyla, §. 8. ' Apol. i. §. 16. p. 53.

17
to lead all from things shameful and evil desires.
And this we can shew you in many cases, where
men, from being violent and oppressors, were
changed, being subdued either by narrow observ
ation of a neighbour's lasting endurance, or having
noted the strange patience of fellow-travellers when
defrauded, or having made trial of it in commercial
intercourse." And this the more illustrates their
conduct under deeper suffering, that they suffered,
not simply because they must suffer or deny the
faith, not because they could not resist, but because
they ought not, and so would not. God forbid that
we should so wrong the memory of the blessed
Martyrs, as to think, (as the degenerate Church of
Rome now traduces themp, lest she should seem to
act contrary to them,) that they were Martyrs
because they had not strength to resist ; they were
Martyrs, rather because they had strength not to
resist, because they had strength to resist them
selves. They " filled the world0.," (I use their own
language,) had " penetrated into every corner of
itr;" they were portions of the armies. Early as
11 " If the Christians formerly did not depose Nero and Dio-
clesian and Julian the Apostate and Valens the Arian and the like,
it was that they wanted secular strength.'' Bellarmine de Pontif.
Rom. 1. v. c. 7. He adds, " But Christians are not bound, nay,
they ought not, with evident peril of religion, p. e. in man's
sight,] to tolerate an unbelieving king.'' See others also ap.
Bp. Taylor, Sermon on Nov. 5. Works, vol. vi. p. 6 12. ed.
Heber. 'i Arnob. 1. i. p. 27- cf. p. 9, 10.
• Lactant. de M. P. c. 3. fin.

18
Tertullian the appeal was made, ' ' You s must deci
mate Carthage, if you would destroy us ; spare
thyself, if not us ; if not thyself, spare Carthage."
" No one of us," says a blessed Martyr' of the
same Church, " resists, when he is apprehended,
nor avenges himself against your injustice and vio
lence, although our people is an exceedingly nu
merous host," (nimius et copiosus.) What, then,
had the Christians turned against their destroyers,
and employed against the worn-out and enervated
luxury of the crumbling Empire that energy with
which they upheld it, had they acted instead of
suffering ? Truly then they had lost their strength,
avenged themselves on their enemies, and like
Samson perished — as to their real life. But they
" had not so learned Christ." " The weapons of
their warfare were not carnal, though mighty through
God for the pulling down of strong-holds, casting
down every high thing that exalteth itself, and
bringing into captivity every thought to the obe
dience of Christ"." They had been taught the lesson,
which the heathen Emperor, when revealed to him,
but half understood, iv tovto} viica; and women,
the ignorant, the young, mechanics, peasants, over
came the learning and the strength of the world —
by endurance; and then taught the might which they
s Ad Scap. c. 5.
' S. Cyprian, (quoted by Bp. Taylor, 1. c. p. 613.) ad Deme-
trian. p. 192. ed. Fell.
u 2 Cor. x. 4, 5.

19
had conquered, to unlearn confidence in its own might,
and that when they were weak, then were theystrongx:
they overcame by the rack, by torture, by the fury of
wild beasts, by the flames, by the red-hot iron seat,
by pincers which mangled the flesh so that there
remained scarce a vestige of the human form — not
by using them, but by enduring them ; they en
dured more than we could think human malice
could invent, or human sufferance endure : and in
truth it was not what it seemed, but Satanic malice
which invented, and Divine strength which endured,
— and so the smoke of their earthly torment went up
as a sweet savour to God, who for His Son's sacri
fice accepted this sacrifice, and their countenances
being " marred more than the sons of men," became
images of Him, " in whom the Father was well-
pleased." They who could not be overcome, over
came; passiveness and unresistingness overcame
the world; they overcame it by Him who had
overcome it, by taking up His cross, and following
Him. And as they hung upon His cross, emblems,
as it were, and shadows, yea and members of Him,
He imparted to their sufferings one part of the
efficacy of His own, and they also, by His might,
being " lifted up from the earth," drew all men — not
to themselves, but — to Him, whose witnesses they
were. " Christians," says S. Justiny, or one of his
* 2 Cor. xii. 10.
» Ep. ad Diognet. translated in Tracts for the Times, Records,
No. 15.
c 2

20

time, " abound more and more through suffering
every day. — See you not how they are cast to the
beasts, that they may be made deny their Lord, and
are not overcome? See you not how they abound,
in proportion with the increase of their sufferings?
These things seem not like the work of men ; but
they are the power of God, and indications of His
presence." And, afterwards, when the State oppressed the
Church, and upheld a blasphemous heresy against
it, it was by the same weapons that the Church
prevailed, not obeying man, when God was the
rather to be obeyed, yet suffering whatever man
could inflict. It was amid Arian persecutions,
profaner in some respects than the heathen, that the
five times exiled Saint, Athanasius the Great, up
held and transmitted to us the Catholic Doctrine,
the rich reward of the exile and persecution of
nearly half of his nearly half century's Episcopate ;
it was by readiness to submit to all things that
S. Ambrose and S. Basil retained the Churches
of their provinces for the right faith ; " he is not
liable to confiscation," answered S. Basil to the
messenger of Valensy, " who has nothing; unless
y Greg. Naz. Orat. Funeb. in Magn. Basil. §. 49. p. 807. ed.
Ben. (cf. Greg.Nyss. c. Eunom. 1. i. p. 313. ed. Morell.) Modestus
had expressed his surprise that Basil did not fear. " B. What
should I fear; what suffer? M. What? Any one of the many
things, which I can inflict. B. What are they? tell me them.
M. Confiscation, exile, tortures, death. B. If you have aught
besides, threaten me therewith; for none of these have any

21
indeed you want these worn-out rags, and a few
books, which are my whole substance. Exile I
know not, who am not bounded by place, and
neither regard this as mine, where I now live, and
yet all, wherever I may be cast, as mine, or rather
God's, with Whom I am a stranger and a sojourner.
And what hold could tortures have, when they
would find no body, except for the first stroke ? for
this alone is in your power. But death were a
benefactor, for it would bring me sooner to God,
to Whom I live, and serve, and for the most part
have died, and have of old time been hastening."
" And thus," says S. Gregory of Nyssay, " he
was set forth by God, as Elias in the time of Ahab,
and brought back all to the right way, engaging
with those under authority, combating with generals,
speaking fearlessly to kings, escaping the hold of
his assailants; as having nothing whereby they
might seize him." S. Ambrose repressed the
people who loved him, and overcame the Arian
Emperor of the world by peril of death2.
hold on me. M. How?" This explains the form of S. Basil's
answer, which is no declamation, but a simple answer to threats.
Modestus remarked that he had never so been spoken to. " B.
For perhaps you never met with a Bishop." Modestus returned
to Valens, and said, " O king, we are conquered by him who is
set over this Church. He is superior to threats, words, per
suasions. You mu6t try one of the less noble sort. Against
him, you must either use open force, or not expect him to yield
to threats." Valens yielded.
y Paneg. t. iii. p. 404. c. d.
1 " If you ask any thing of mine," was S. Ambrose's answer,
when required to cede a Church to the Arians, " such as my

22
And when they received gifts from the State, it
was not as mendicants, but as priests of the most
High God; they received them in the name of God,
not for themselves, nor as " desiring a gift, but
rather desiring fruit which might abound to the
account"" of the givers. It was by a readiness
to make sacrifices, that the riches of the Gentiles
flowed in unto them, when they seemed to be given
not to men, (who cared not for them and were
content not to receive them,) but to God, Whose
ministers they were. S. Ambrose could then
boldly and truly expostulate with Valentinian",
whom they had almost persuaded to furnish the
expenses of the heathen sacrifices, " What wilt thou
estate, my money, or whatever else of this sort, I will not
refuse, although every thing of mine belongs to the poor ; but
the things of God are not subject to the Emperor's power.
Seek ye my patrimony ? enter on it ; my person ? I will yield
it. Would ye hale me to prison or to death ? it were a joy to
me. 1 will not be fenced in by the encompassing multitude,
nor lay hold of the altar, imploring for life, but more gladly will
1 be sacrificed for the altars." Ep. 20. §. 8. And afterwards,
" I may neither yield the Church, nor is it well for thee, O
Emperor, to take it. Exalt not thyself; if thou wouldst con
tinue to reign, be subject to God. It is written, ' to God the
things of God, the Caesar's to Caesar.' Palaces belong to the
Emperor, Churches to the Priest. The public, not the sacred
walls, are committed to thee." lb. §. 1 6.
* Phil. iv. 17.
b Ep. xvii. ad Valentinian. sect. 14. p. 827- ed. Bened. A cha
racteristic saying is preserved of S. Thomas Aquinas. He found
Innocent IV. counting money. " Innoc. The Church, you see,
is no longer in the age, when she said, ' Silver and gold have I
none.' S. Thom. True, holy father ; but neither can she say
to the sick of the palsy, ' Rise up and walk.' "

23
answer to the priest when he saith to thee, The
Church seeks not thy grants, because thou hast
with grants adorned the temples of the Gentiles?
The altar of Christ rejects thy gifts, because thou
hast made an altar to idols." St. Laurence0 yielded
up his life, not the treasure of the Church, com
mitted to him, to profanation ; he took not " the
gold of the temple to give to the king of Assyria,"
and thus he saved the deposit committed to him,
and by the constancy of his death gained to himself
a greater treasure, the crown of martyrdom, and
many souls, which he won to Christ.
It is for instruction only that we may ask why
God should so have annexed the blessing of conquest
to enduring suffering, and made patience mightier
than what men call active virtues. One would not
presume to think one knew all the grounds : it may
be that they have some mysterious connection with
the sufferings of Christ, which pass our under
standing; and some such connection is indicated by
S. Paul, " filling up what remaineth of the afflic
tions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake,
which is the Church d" — as though it pleased God,
that the union of Christ and His members should
so be set forth, that as He is persecuted in His
members, so the more eminent of His saints, who
c See the history at length in Tillemont Hist. Eccl. torn. iii.
p. 16 sqq.
J Col. i. 24.

24
were more closely united with Him, knowing as
S. Paul again says, " the fellowship of His sufferings,
and being made conformable to His death6," should
shadow Him forth, by suffering in the flesh for
their brethren, emblems of His vicarious, though
not of His meritorious, death. But vicarious suf
fering may be so far well-pleasing to God, as hav
ing a communion with the sufferings of His beloved
Son, and doubtless it may make those, who are
partakers of it, more capable of the communi
cation of the merits and influence of His Passion,
wherein they have been in a manner joined, being
baptized with His baptism, and having drunk of
His cup.
Then, also, it may be needful, in the wisdom
of God, for the perfecting of His saints. As
all trial implies pain, so the trial of the most
precious vessels, it may be, is to be accomplished
by pains proportionate. It seems not without
special meaning that the analogy of gold is so often
pointed out by Scripture. God sheweth us in this
natural process an emblem of things spiritual. If
even gold, which in the end perisheth, must yet be
tried in the fire, how much more must faith, being
more precious, so be proved f.
But, besides, it is evident that so God's power
and glory is most shewn. " Then all men that see
it, shall say, This hath God done, for they shall
perceive that it is His workg." There is a natural
E Phil. iii. 10. f 1 Pet. i. 7- g Psal. lxiv. 9. Pr. B.

25
instinct, which recognizes that when things are too
intricate for man, God will interpose. Heathen
poetry speaks of a perplexity of affairs, which
claims God to interfere1'. A Jewish proverb says,
" When Israel is brought to the brick-kilns, then
cometh Moses;" a saying remarkably illustrated by
the whole book of Judges. And Scripture itself has
consecrated a like proverb, " In the mount of the
Lord shall it be seen or provided'," i. e. at the last
moment, when faith and obedience have been tried
to the uttermost, and there seemeth no help left,
and that God would indeed exact what man could
scarce endure, then would God from heaven avert
the suffering, or crown the enduring faith by His
blessing. " The Lord will provide." So Joseph
rose from the dungeon, and Daniel from the lions'
den, to rule empires for the sake of His people. The
gallows were prepared, the edict issued, the whole
scattered people of God given into their enemies'
hand ; the king passed one sleepless night, Esther
ventured her life, the people was saved, the ad
versary hanged. Sennacherib" had arrived at Nob ;
he was " shaking his hand against the mount of the
daughter of Zion;" on the morrow it was to be
destroyed; " in that night the angel of the Lord
b Nee Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus Acciderit.
Hor. de A. P. 191. and the Greek Geo; kva ^D^aw. Our pro
verb, "Man's necessity is God's opportunity," and "When
things are at the worst, they'll mend," express the same belief.
' Gen. xxii. 14.
" Is. x. 32 sqq.

26
went out; early in the morning they were all dead
corpses1." At S. Paul's first answer, " no man stood
with him, all forsook him;" then " the Lord stood
with him, and strengthened him1'."
Then, also, since man's self-will was the cause
of his fall, when he would be wiser than God, and
in his own way be as God, God would thus teach
him to submit his own will, to renounce depend
ence upon himself, to quit his own wisdom and
his own schemes, let every thing, if needs be, go
out of course, and then, " when the earth is weak and
the inhabiters thereof," it will appear that the Lord
" beareth up the pillars of it, and will say to the
ungodly, Lift not up your horn, for God is
the Judge; He putteth down one and setteth up
another1." It is a practising of our daily prayer,
" Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven,"
a realizing, a qualifying for, a practising, a foretaste,
of Heaven — to do God's will blindly, and consent
that it may be done, cheerfully, without forecasting
how it may end, whither it may lead, careful only
about this, that it be His will. It is an Angel's life
to obey unquestioning, and fits for Angelic duties
and Angelic glories.
Lastly, there is room to fear lest, mingling in
human schemes for her own security, the Church
should leave her dependence upon God, and adopt
insensibly the maxims of the world. " Resist not
evil" is a precept plain in its mode of execution,
1 2 Kings xix. 35. k 2 Tim. iv. 16. ' Ps. Ixxv.

27
though hard to fulfil ; it prescribes a difficult but a
plain track ; but, admit the principle that man
may resist evil, it is no longer easy to say where and
how resistance begins to be sin. Man cannot avoid
difficulties; they are essential to trial; he may, by
shrinking from them, substitute greater, but cannot
escape them. And this difficulty is increased by
the very immensity of the interests at stake ; all
the enormities, which have given occasion in this
respect to the enemies of God to blaspheme, have
arisen out of principles in themselves indisputable.
No one, for instance, could doubt of the superiority
of things spiritual to things temporal, or that the
office of a Bishop of Christ's flock was higher than
that of a temporal sovereign ; that the sufferings of
hell are so dreadful that any present agonies are
blessings if they prevent them ; that men will be
damned for wrong faith, as well as for unholy lives;
yet plain as these things are, out of men's misappli
cation of their duties regarding them, have arisen
deposition of kings, absolving subjects from their
oaths and allegiance, encouragement of murder,
treason, rebellion, assassination, lying, perjury,
cruelty, butchery of whole bodies at once, from
which God saved us this day. From the time that
the Church of Rome began to forsake the principles
of the Church Catholic and grasp after human means,
she began also to take evil means for good ends,
and incurring the Apostolic curse on them who
" do evil that good may come," took at last evil

28
means for evil ends. She, the Apostolic Church
of the West, consecrated by Apostolic blood, shewed
herself rather the descendant of them who slew the
Apostles, and " thought that they did God service,"
stained herself with the blood of the saints, that on
her might come all the righteous blood which was
shed within her ; even of the very Apostles, who
had shed their blood for her. There is not an
enormity which has been practised against people
or kings by miscreants in the name of God, but
the divines of that unhappy Church have abetted
or justified8. And if she so fell, well may those
8 See Bp. Taylor's learned Sermon on the Fifth of November.
He gives, as cases, the justification of the murder of Henry the
Third of France, (which the assassin indeed did on the autho
rity of the divines he had asked, p. 583, 5, it was praised by
Sixtus V. in full Consistory, p. 589, 90.) and of Henry the
Fourth, (p. 585.) The Gunpowder plot was apologized for by
Bellarmine and others, (ib. 586.) so also the Massacre of S.
Bartholomew, (see below,) and the Irish Massacre of 1641 by
Urban VIII. " whose joy thereat could not be expressed,"
(see ap. Rushworth, t. v. p. 504.) and who granted " a plenary
indulgence and remission of all their sins, to the CathoUc
warriors who were labouring to extirpate the workers of ini
quity, who infected the mass of Catholic purity with the leaven
of heretical contagion." (ibid. p. 525 sqq.) On the "deposition
of princes by the see of Rome," Bp. Taylor refers to Bellarmine
quoting " twenty-one Italians, fourteen French, nine Germans,
seven English and Scotch, nineteen Spaniards, and these all
very famous and very leading authors:" (p. 601.) on the "law
fulness of a private man to murder princes condemned of
heresy and tyranny," Bp. Taylor quotes some eminent autho
rities among them. (p. 605.)
It is, however, a remarkable but melancholy counterpart,
that, previous to the Great Rebellion, non-conformist preachers

29

" who think they stand, take heed lest they
fall." The principle then of Holy Scripture, as inter
preted by the conduct of the martyrs and the early
Church, is to await God's time, to suffer so long as
He wills, not to help ourselves — to " stand still, and
see the salvation of God." The principle of the
Romish Church was expediency ; it was a plotting,
scheming, worldly spirit, having at first God's glory
for its end, but seeking it by secular means, and at
last, in punishment, left to seek its own glory, and
to set itself up in the place of God. Nor can we
exempt other branches of the Reformation from the
same faithless spirit ; the forfeiture, for instance, of
Episcopacy by Calvin and his followers, was done
in the same spirit as the sacrifice of Saul, or the
support of the Ark by Uzzah whom God slew ;
they acknowledged that he was to be anathema-
maintained, that " for defence of religion, and reform of the
Church, it is lawful to take arms against the king:" (Dugdale's
Late Troubles, p. 73.) as did the Socinian Hoadly, that " we
are only forbidden to resist good governors:" and the Statute of
1 W. and M. st. II. c. 2. §. 9- which not only excludes from the
inheritance of the crown " any one who should be reconciled to,
or hold communion with, the see or Church of Rome, profess
the Popish religion, or marry a Papist," but declares " the people
in such case absolved from their allegiance," strangely agrees with
the principles of the Church of Rome; for, as Bp. Taylor
argues in this case, " it is plain that killing a prince is a
certain consequent of deposing him, unless the prince — be
bound not to resist, and as really give over his kingdom quietly,
as he is bound. For if any of these should fail, there can be
but very slender assurance of his life." (p. 60S.)

30
tized '' who might have Episcopacy, and had it not ;
but they could not ; and, with Saul, they offered
the unbidden sacrifice, and with Uzzah touched the
Ark of God's presence, lest it should fall, mistrust
ing God's power to raise it up. And so now the
Church of Rome, who was Queen among the
nations, is brought down to the dust under the
nations, and is in bondage with her children; and
Geneva, which boasted of the purity of its doc
trinal reformation, has been the seat of a worse
Antichrist. It is not (God knoweth) in any spirit of boast
againt those branches, some of which were grafted
in before us, but still in encouragement and
warning, that I would notice, that herein also
our Church followed the principles of the Church
Catholic, and with her had her portion. She alone
of all the reformed Churches was purified in the
fire, and purged by the blood of martyrs, and had
the evidence of affliction that she was a beloved
child and no bastard. And her general conduct
h " Let there be such a Hierarchy, in which Bishops shall in
such wise be raised up, as not to refuse to be subject to Christ,
depend on Him, as their only Head, and refer themselves to
Him. Then I would confess that they are worthy of any
anathema if any shall be found, who shall not shew to it
reverence and the most implicit obedience." Calvin de necessitate
reformandae Ecclesiae v. fin. Opp. t. viii. p. 60. ed. Amstel. This
and passages from other foreign Reformers are quoted by Bishop
Hall, Episcopacy by divine right, p. 1. sect. 2. who mentions
that this passage of Calvin is quoted with approbation by
Chamier de membris Eccl. iv. 1 .

31
has been true to her first principles, to render to
Caesar the things that were Caesar's, and to God
the things that are God's ; to do nothing against
the command of God, but to suffer every thing
which the Caesar may require. It was thus that
the seven Bishops mainly checked James's tyranny,
refusing to do, but submitting to suffer, what
was unlawful ; it was thus that even in the Great
Rebellion men cheerfully took the spoiling of their
goods; it was thus that in events familiar to us, the
members of this place', at different periods, suffered
what was unlawful, rather than compromise their
principles ; — and we cherish their memories.
The two events, for which we keep this day as
an annual thanksgiving to God, together, strikingly
illustrate these principles. 1. That we may safely
leave things to God. 2. That there is great risk,
that man, by any impatience of his, will mar the
blessing which God designs for His Church.
In the plot, from which this day is named, God
had permitted things to come to the uttermost;
every preparation was made, every scruple removed;
a Romanist k had given the answer, that, for so great
a benefit to the Church, Romanists too might be
sacrificed; the innocent might be slain, so that the
guilty majority escaped not; the last feeling of
humanity, as one would have thought, that to mem-
1 In the times of the Great Rebellion and under James II.
k Garnet the Jesuit priest.

32
bers of their own Church, was extinguished. The
secret was entrusted to but few, had been kept for
a year and a half, although all the Romanists in
England knew that some great plot was being
carried on, and were praying for its success; infe
rior plots had been forbidden by Rome, lest they
should mar this great one ; no suspicion had been
excited, and there was nothing left to excite sus
picion, when God employed means the most un
likely, put, just at the last, one lurking feeling of
pity for one person in the breast of but one, so that
a dark hint was given to that one: and He caused
him who gave it, to miscalculate the character of his
own brother-in-law, or entrust him with more than
he was aware; then He placed fear in that other's
breast, so that, through another and distant fear, he
shewed the letter which contained this dark hint ;
then, when the councillors despised the anony
mous hint, as an idle tale, He enlightened the
mind of the monarch, to discover the dark say
ing, which to us it seems strange that any before
hand should have unravelled. Yet to see more of
this mystery of God's providence, and how He
weaves together the intricate web of human affairs,
and places long before the hidden springs of things,
one must think also, how He ordered that one of
these few conspirators should be intermarried with
one of the few Romanist peers, and so desired to
save him ; and how by the conspiracy from which
God had shielded the Monarch's early life, He

33
quickened his sense of the present danger; so that
while men were marrying, and giving in marriage,
and strengthening themselves by alliances, God
was preparing the means whereby this kingdom
should be saved against the will of those so em
ployed; and while men were plotting against a
sacred life, God was laying up in the Monarch's
soul the thought, which Himself should hereafter
kindle to save it. Verily, " a man's heart deviseth
his way, but the Lord directeth his steps8." " The
ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and
He pondereth all his goings ; His own iniquities
shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be
holden with the cords of his sinsV The words of
the Psalmist, selected for this day's service, find a
striking completion in this history0. " Godd hid
him from the secret counsel of the wicked, from
the insurrection of the workers of iniquity — they
encourage themselves in an evil matter ; they
commune of laying snares privily ; they say, Who
shall see them ? they search out iniquities ; they
accomplish a diligent search ; the inward thought
of every one of them, and the heart, is deep : but
God shall shoot at them with an arrow ; suddenly
shall they be wounded ; so they shall make their
own tongue to fall upon themselves."
1 Prov. xvi. 9-
" lb. v. 21, 22.
c See Barrow's Sermon on this text and day. Serm. xi.
d Ps. lxiv. 2 sqq. D

34

But it yet more illustrates the teaching, and is
an argument of encouragement to our Church,
how God in two neighbouring countries permitted
plots as atrocious to be accomplished. To human
sight it is as strange that the massacre of S. Bar
tholomew should have been perpetrated, as that we
should have escaped. The circumstances of that
massacre even remind one of that destruction which
extorted from the Heathen poet the confession, that
it could not have been accomplished, " si fata Deum,
si mens non lseva fuisset." The chiefs, on whom it
fell, were men, the wisest of their ageil, practised in
avoiding surprises, alive to treachery, taught caution
by their profession ; yet neither past treachery, nor
present oft-repeated warnings b, nor the half-com
pleted assassination of the chief0, as a herald of the
" e. g. the Admiral Coligny.
b Coligny was warned by very many both by word of mouth
and letter. Thuanus, 1. Iii. p. 805. " He was especially warned
sharply in a letter, of the decree of the Papists, that faith was
not to be kept with heretics, of the queen's Italian guile, and
the king's profaneness, hypocrisy, and cruelty from his youth :
a conversation of the king with his mother was reported, in
which he had boasted of his playing his part to the queen of
Navarre, and had sworn frequently to her, that he would bring
themallinto her toils." (ib.806.) And again, by those of Rochelle,
who, on being civilly put off, applied to the king of Navarre,
but in vain ; a play was enacted, in which the Protestants were
represented as cast into Hell, which " some interpreted ill," so
that F. Earl of Montmorency left Paris." (lb. 808.)
c The Admiral. The shot came from the house of a Canon,
preceptor of the Duke of Guise, and the assassin was connected
with him. Coligny recognized it as the fruit of his reconcilia-

35

impending massacre, nor the forebodings of one'1
" Dei jussu non unquam creditus," nor the know
ledge that their enemies, who had feigned a retreat,
were still hard by", nor the menaces reported to
them by their spies from those whom they were
trusting', nor the bringing them together like sheep
for the slaughter^', nor the setting a well-known
enemy as a guard to their chief'1, nor the com-

tion with him ; yet remained secure in Paris." Continuat. de
Fleuri H. E. 1. clxiii. §. 5. " The tragedy," said the Vidame de
Chartres, " having begun with the wounding of Coligny, would
soon end with the massacre of the rest ; he therefore advised to
quit Paris instantly." (lb. §. 12.)
d The Vidame de Chartres.
e The princes of Guise, who feigned a rupture with the king;
" but it was known that they had not left Paris." (lb. §. 13.)
' " Some Romanist courtiers, seeing the Calvinists leave the
Church of Notre-Dame, not to hear the Mass at the marriage
of the king of Navarre, had told them that their scruples would
not last long ; their spies had heard from the servants of Charles
de Gondy, the king's Chamberlain, that more blood than
wine would be spilled at that marriage." (lb. §. 12. from De
Thou, 1. Iii. p. 813.)
e " The king had made the greater part of the Protestant
nobles and gentry lodge near the admiral. The captains of the
quarters had orders speedily to mark the lodgings, to take in
writing the names of those who professed Calvinism, and to
collect them as much as possible in the neigbourhood of Co
ligny ; and H. M. said very loud, that every body might hear,
that he forbad any Catholic to approach that neighbourhood,
and would have any, who contravened this order, fired upon."
(lb. §. 15.) " These and other indications," adds De Thou,
" and the reports every where whispered, had sufficed to warn
the Protestants, if they had not been infatuated." (p. 814.)
b Cosseins, one of the greatest enemies of the admiral.
D 2

36
mencing tumults ' could wake them from the death-
sleep of security which was to end in the sleep of
death. " Instamus tamen immemores csecique."
" Surely," says Solomon, " in vain the net is
spread in the sight of any birdk;" unless, adds Job,
" God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath
He imparted to her understanding1." The devisor of
the two plots was in both cases the same, papal Rome;
she justified"1 that which failed, and Gregory XIII. or
dered, and himself attended, a procession and thanks
giving for that which succeeded"; both proposed the
1 " The admiral supposed that the tumults arose only from
the people stimulated by the Guises, and that they would retire
so soon as they saw the guard under the orders of Cosseins
placed at his gate to defend him ; he was not undeceived, until
he learnt that his first gate had been forced, and that a musket
had been fired in his court." (lb. §. 20.) " A little before,"
says De Thou, p. 815, "observant persons had noticed that
armed men were running to and fro in the city and round the
Louvre; that the people were excited, threats every where
heard, and thence they anticipated what would be ; but. Coligny
only sent to inform the king, who assured him he had nothing
to fear. At the same time, Teligni was told, that porters were
carrying arms into the Louvre ; but he despised the report,
blamed such suspicions as needless, and forbad to inform Co
ligny of them."
k Prov. i. 17-
' Job xxxix. 17.
"' See above, p. 28.
" lb. §. 40. Gregory also " struck some medals to perpetuate
its memory ; on one side of which was himself, on the other
an angel holding a cross in one hand, and a sword in the other,
exterminating heretics, and especially the admiral." " This he
did," we are told, " regarding only the benefit which he ima-

37
same thing, the advancement of Romanism by the
extinction of heretics; the one was carried on
secretly, the other almost openly: of the one there
were no intimations beforehand; in the other, they
were frequent : the one seemed secure, being in
trusted to a few; the other was in the hands of
many: in the one, he on whom the execution
depended, shrunk from sin so dreadful ; Charles the
Ninth, like Ahab whom Jezebel his wife stirred up,
hesitated to the very last, and was ready to retract0;
in the other they had no compunctions, or had
stifled them. The depth of guilt in the massacre of
St. Bartholomew, (if any thing,) seemed the more to
call down the avenging interference of God , through
the multiplied hypocrisy and perjuries whereby it
was carried on?; yet the one, which every thing
gined must result from it to the Catholic religion in France."
lb. from the Tre'sor Chronol. du P. de S. Romuald in fol.
p. 661.
" " The queen, even at midnight, fearing lest the king, whom
she thought she perceived still fluctuating and hesitating at the
atrocity of the guilt, should change, went to his bedchamber,
whither Anjou and others, and Guise, presently repaired, as
agreed on. Then they relate, that after a long conversation to
and fro, the king, when hesitating, was rebuked by his mother,
for that by the delay he was letting slip so fair an occasion of
subduing his enemies. At which speech, the king being of a
very savage spirit and accustomed to shed blood, was fired, as
being charged with cowardice, and gave orders for its execution.
The queen, taking advantage of this impulse, lest he should
relax, if an interval were given, hastened the signal, which
was to have been given before day-break." De Thou, p. 81 6.
>' Especially on the part of Charles the Ninth. It was per-

38
earthly combined to overthrow, succeeded ; the
other, which every thing tended to ensure, failed.
" Verily, there is a God that judgeth the earth."
" Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the
great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known;"
and it is Thou who " leddest Thy people like a
flock a," though by human hand. Far be it from us
to say that we understand God's counsels ; why in
the one case He sent warnings, yet allowed the plot
to be completed; in the other He sent none, but
Himself destroyed it; He seemed to " take His rest,
and to consider in His dwelling-place, like a clear
heat upon herbs, like a cloud of dew in the heat of
harvest," [as it were, Himself maturing and bringing
about their devices,] " but afore the harvest, when
the bud wras perfect, and the flower become the
ripening grape, He cut off the sprigs — and took
away, and cut down the branches13 :" but this we
must see, that those who were delivered (though
not for their own merits) were passive, and that it
was all God's hand; while the foreign Protestants,
who perished, were an active, busy, scheming body,
with worldly wisdom; and again we must with
thankfulness acknowledge that it was the English
Church whom God so preserved.
mitted, but avenged. His mother survived all her children
but one, who was slain shortly afterwards, and she who had
" made mothers childless," was " childless among women," her
family extinct.
* Ps. lxxvii. 19, 20.
"Is. xviii. 4, 5.

39
Yet even our much-distinguished and blessed
Church has not been secure, when she forgot
wherein " her great strength lay." In Ireland, for
a time, she mingled her counsels with those of a
different reformation", joined in turbulent proceed
ings against her earthly sovereign, and sunk her
peculiar character in the cabals of earthly politics.
Towards her Romanist fellow-subjects she preserved
gentleness and peace, and they had been remarkably
favoured11. Yet " God brought fire out of the house
of Abimelech to devour the men of Shechem ;"
her evil towards Charles He requited upon her
own head from those whom she trusted, and among
whom she dwelt securely. In this case, again, all
things human combined to discover the plot, and in
human sight its concealment seemed inexplicable0;
' " The British Protestants, transplanted in Ireland, having
every moment before their eyes all the horrors of popery, had
naturally been carried into the opposite extreme, and had uni
versally adopted the highest principles and practices of the
puritans. Monarchy, as well as the hierarchy, was become
odious to them ; and every method of limiting the authority of
the crown, and detaching themselves from the king of England,
was greedily adopted and pursued." Hume, Hist. c. 55, who
proceeds to mention some of their measures against their king.
6 Sir J. Temple (an Irish Privy-Councillor), Irish Rebellion,
p. 14, 15, 81. Declaration of Commons concerning the rise of
the Grand Rebellion in Ireland, July 25, 1643, ap. Rushworth,
p. iii. vol. ii. p. 346. Hume 1. c. Lord Orrery ap. Nalson,
Impartial Collection, vol. ii. p. 535.
c " First, I must needs say, howsoever I have observed in
the nature of the Irish such a kind of dull and deep reserved-
ness, as makes them with much silence and secresie to carry on
their business: yet I cannot but consider with great admiration
how this mischievous plot, which was to be so generally at the

40
but again all the hints were neglected'1 ; the plot
had been from six Jto eight years in prepara
tion' ; it was well known in England, Spain, and
other foreign countries'; intimations were given to
the king, and by him communicated?, but neglected
by those whose lives were threatened ; revealed at
last by one of the religion which was to be extir
pated, but only when too lateh ; the means of its
execution were put into men's hands by those pro
fessedly most hostile to them' ; and a massacre,
same time, and at so many several places acted, and therefore
necessarily known to so many several persons, should without any
noise be brought to such maturity, as to arrive at the very point
of execution, without any notice or intimation given to any two
of that huge multitude of persons who were generally designed
(as most of them did) to perish in it." Temple, p. 16, 17-
The Long Parliament, to exculpate itself, and as a pretext for
their rebellion, dared to ascribe the plot to our martyred
Charles ; but their statement of the utter unlikelihood of the
plot in itself is illustrative. See Declaration of the Commons, ap.
Rush worth, 1. c. v. fin. See also Letter of Irish Council, ap.
Nalson, p. 5 1 6.
cl Temple, p. 17. Nalson, ii. p. 519.
* Temple, p. 67.
' Testimony of the Popish priests named in Temple, p. 67.
B By his Embassadors in Spain; see Rushworth, p. Q408.]
Nalson, ii. p. 565.
h Temple, p. 18 sqq.
1 The 8,000 men of the army raised by Strafford, which the
Long Parliament detained and turned loose upon Ireland.
Hume 1. c. The Roman Catholic members joined in preventing
their being sent abroad, as the king wished, on the plea that
they might become disaffected, if they served with the Spa
niards. Nalson, ii. 565. It is mentioned in Lord Macguire's
account as one of the encouragements to the rebellion. lb. 544.
Hume names also as a ground, that " the Catholics assisted by
the Protestants, had so diminished the royal prerogative, and

41
more horrible perhaps in its details of cruelty11
than afiy other upon record, fell unabated upon this
portion of our Church ; for " their Rock had sold
them, and the Lord had shut them up1."
And now we may perhaps the more readily learn
our lesson from that other event, for which we this-
day render to God thanksgiving, the arrival on
this day of him who became William III. Man's
sin is no hindrance to thankfulness for God's
mercy ; rather, the more we sinned, the more
should we be thankful to God for not giving us over
to our sins, for making that, as it now ism, at last
legitimate to us and our duty, which in our fore
fathers was sin, yea, and for the chastisements with
which He has visited our sins. The arrival of
William was in itself, on God's part, a blessing ;
it was not, we may trust, on that of the Prince, a
guilty act ; at all events we may separate the
mercy of God from the sin of man ; it prevented
further acts of tyranny on the part of James ; it
probably saved the nation from the miseries of
the power of the lieutenant, as would much facilitate any con
spiracy." k " By the computation of the priests themselves that were
present, and principal actors in all those tragedies, and were
directed by some chief rebels of Ireland to take this computa
tion, 154,000 Protestants, men, women, and children, were
massacred between Oct. 23, and March 1." Declaration of
Commons, 1. c. The atrocious details are given at length by
Sir J. Temple, p. 84 sqq. as attested upon oath. He computes
the whole number destroyed at 300,000, men, women, and
children. P. 6.
1 Deut. xxxii. 31. m See Preface, p. vi sqq.

42
anarchy and civil war, which but for his arrival,
had men pursued the same course, might have
followed, and in this the Church and nation might
have been grievously injured ; and for this and for
the preservation of our Church amid this con
vulsion, we have great cause of thankfulness.
Further, it seems that their sin was not wilful, that
they no more foresaw that they should end in
dethroning the son™, than Cromwell thought at first
of murdering the father ; it may be too that our
forefathers in a degree deceived themselves, and
persuaded themselves, that because they did not
formally dethrone their sovereign, they were not
guilty of rebellion ; and it may be also that God,
in His mercy, may have accepted this their shame,
whereby they shrunk from their own act, and so
mitigated His judgments : but it were in us but
hypocrisy to use these pleas, and justify the action
of our forefathers ; to say, that when a sovereign
retreats from his kingdom before an advancing
foreign army, his servants arrested, and his guards
displaced, he is other than deposed; that they who
join herein are not guilty of rebellion ; and that
they who in a self-called convention made the prince
"' The decision to appoint a king rather than a regent was
carried only by two votes in the House of Lords; and that, in
the absence of those, who (as the Primate) held the whole
meeting illegal. The revolution was obviously accomplished
finally, by the refusal of William to accept of any thing short
of the Crown, and the dread of consequent anarchy : i. e. they
adopted a measure, which they would gladly have avoided,
but which their first wrong steps forced upon them.

43
of Orange king, did not act against their allegiance
to the sovereign, to whom they had plighted their
faith. The misconduct of one justifies not the sin
of another ; David, though of God anointed, lifted
not his hand against him, who had been once
anointed by God, though now his princely spirit
was taken from him, and " an evil spirit from the
Lord came upon him";" and so, while we thank
God, we should humble ourselves, and pray Him,
not to remember our sins, or the sins of our fore
fathers. It is not without an apparent Providence that
these two events are so brought together upon the
same day; the one, in which, without his own merit,
man was passive, and God delivered him from
extremest peril ; in the other, where, had men like
our Bishops and a Confessor of this place", remained
passive under the shadow of God's wings, the
tyranny had passed over, man interposed schemes
of his own ; they did that, which their Lord upon
the cross was taunted to do, but did not ; p they
" saved themselves;" and so they were permitted to
mar the good purpose of God. I say, " mar;" for
though God has been abundant in mercy, no one can
have traced the state of our Church and nation, since
that second rebellion, without seeing God's judg-
" 1 Sam. xvi. 14 sqq.
0 Hough, President of Magdalen College.
" " What did He teach thee, in that He hung there, in that
He would not come down, but endurance amidst taunts, but
that thou shouldest be strong in Thy God." S. Aug. Enarr.
in Ps. lxx. Serm. i. §. 11.

44
ments, though tempered with mercy. Let any one
ask when was the golden age of our Divines ? All
will say, the reign of Charles II., when their passive
virtues had been called out, and they exercised by
suffering. The last century every one as readily
condemns as the deadest and shallowest period of
English theology, and of the English Church. And
this could be traced (were this the place) to the
line which men took in resisting James's evil. The
State feared and hated the Church, which it cause
lessly suspected ; it could not understand that men
might on principle object to the act which set
the Sovereign on the throne, and yet upon prin
ciple obey, yea teach others cheerfully to obey, the
Sovereign whom God had permitted to be so placed.
It ejected a valuable portion of her members,
the Nonjurors ; divided, and so weakened her ; cut
off from her one element of teaching ; gave her
Bishops for secular endsq, and profaned her offices
to strengthen secular parties ; wilfully corrupted
her, and stirred up enemies against her and our
Holy Faith r. As clearly could it be shewn that
the present storm, which lowers around our Church
and State, is but a drawing out of the principles
of what men have dared to call the " glorious
revolution ;" as that revolution (though in this
'' On the gradual usurpation of the Ministers of the Crown
in the disposal of the higher offices of the Church, see a series
of papers in the British Magazine, beginning from Feb. 1837.
' See " Remarks on the benefits of Cathedral Institutions,
and on Clerical Education," p. 124 — 128. ed. 2.

45
portion of our country by God's mercy without
bloodshed, as indeed, besides His other mercies
He generally restrains men in a second revolution,
by an implanted instinct, from renewing the
miseries of the first) was the sequel9 and result of
the first rebellion. The name given to the act of
1688 is no question of words; the service of this day
evinces the feeling of the Church that it is not in
different to God, how we look back upon His deal
ings with our forefathers : if we would not be
partakers with other men's sins, we must disavow
them ; while we boast of- them, we make ourselves
sharers in them ; if we would cut off the curse
entailed by the fathers upon the children', we must
disclaim the act which has entailed it ; we should
thankfully acknowledge God's " undeserved mer
cies," not glory in our fathers' sins, so may He
exempt us from the impending chastisement.
Not so our Church, who in her most solemn
service, acknowledges unto God, that kings " have
His authority," that they "are His ministers;" or in
the service of the day, as far as it may be regarded
as her voice, she speaks of " the wisdom and justice
of God's Providence," and we acknowledge it to be
such that James's evil fell upon his own head, that
» The lax principles, which had gained ground through the
first rebellion, are strongly noticed, in the interval before 1688,
in the writings already referred to, by Bp. Sanderson (especially
§. xix.) and Dean Sherlock.
' See Bp. Taylor's Sermon, " The Entailed Curse cut off."

46
all his unrighteous acts hurt himself ; but she speaks
not of our glory, but of "God's great and undeserved
goodness." And again, the Homily on Rebellion
seems by its very words prophetically to have
denounced the measure wherein men now glory.
" Had Englishmen," these are its words", " at that
time known their duty to their prince set forth in
God's word, would natural subjects have rebelled
against their sovereign Lord the king ? Would
English subjects have taken part against the king
of England and Englishmen with the French [one
need but change the nation] king and Frenchmen ?
Would they have sent for and received the Dauphin
of France with a great army of Frenchmen into the
realm of England ? Would they have sworn fidelity
to the Dauphin of France, breaking their oath of
fidelity to their natural lord the king of England,
and have stood under the Dauphin's banner dis
played against the king of England ? Would they
have expelled their sovereign lord the king of Eng
land out of London, the chief city of England?"
The parallel ceases ; if the Homily condemned
the hard terms placed upon king John, much more
would it the refusal of all terms to king James.
The excuse that James was a bad king, in the
sentiments of the Homily, but throws back the sin
u Homily against Wilful Rebellion, pt. vi. p. 545. ed. Oxf.
1822. A Rubric for this day enjoins, that "if there be no
Sermon, one of the six Homilies against rebellion shall be
read."

47
higher. " Shall subjects," it says", " obey valiant,
stout, wise, and good princes, and contemn, disobey,
and rebel — against undiscreet and evil governors ?
God forbid ! — shall the subjects both by their wicked
ness provoke God, for their deserved punishment,
to give them an undiscreet or evil prince, and also
rebel against him and withal against God, who for
the punishment of their sins did give them such a
prince ?" — And then it lays up, as it were, for
future use, the remedy I have now been insisting
on. " If y we will have an evil prince (when God shall
send such a one) taken away, and a good in his
place, let us take away our wickedness, which pro-
voketh God to place such a one over us, and God
will either displace him, or of an evil prince make
him a good prince, so that we first will change our
evil into good — Else for subjects to deserve through
their sins to have an evil prince and then to rebel
against him, were double and treble evil, by pro
voking God more to plague them. Nay let us
either deserve to have a good prince, or let us
patiently suffer and obey such as we deserve."
The Homily seems prophetically to have traced the
line, on which we ought to have trodden, the bless
ings which promised to follow it, and the evils
which, ensued from forsaking it. And for the pre
tence of religion, as the Romish alone hitherto had
been upheld by such means, it says% " what a religion
" Homily against Wilful Rebellion, pt. i. p. 511.
¦ lb. p. 512. * lb- pt- iv- p- 534, 5.

48
it is, that such men by such means would restore,
may easily be judged ; even as good a religion
surely, as rebels be good men and obedient subjects,
and as rebellion is a good mean of redress and
reformation, being itself the greatest deformation a of
all that may possibly be."
Not so, again, the early Church ; they resisted
not evil ; the whole city of Alexandria petitioned
Julian to retain their Bishop, the saintly Athanasius,
but rebelled not; the Christians of Gaul invited not
the Barbarians to interfere and save them ; the
Christians held the balance of the Empire in their
hands, yet even then took the fiercest of the ten
persecutions patiently ; the Christians of Persia im
plored not the Christian Emperors of Rome to in
terfere with armed force against those into whose
hands God had given them to try them ; " they were
tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might
* Montaigne has a passage remarkably according with the
language and sentiments of the Homilies, Essais, 1. iii. c. 12.
After denying that there could be any evil in a government, which
should be cured by a drug so deadly, he says, " What impiety
is it, not to look for, from God, any aid simply His, and without
our cooperation. I often marvel, whether among so many, who
trouble themselves with these necessities of the State, there
was ever one, of intellect so weak, as to be in good earnest
persuaded, that he was promoting a reformation by the worst of
deformations ; that he was advancing towards his own salvation,
by the most direct causes which we have of a most certain
damnation, that overthrowing the state, magistracy, and the
laws, under the guardianship of which God has placed him —
he can render any aid to the all-holy tenderness and justice of
the Divine Law."

49

attain a better resurrection," and so in God's good
time, the giant statue crumbled in its very base,
and the stone cut out without hands " filled the
earth." Not so, lastly, holy Scripture, which that Church
well understood. If slaves were to obey " fro ward
masters," much more, argues our Homily \ ought
subjects " sharp and rigorous princes." Scripture
bids us obey princes " not only for wrath but for
conscience sake ;" it knows not our subtle distinc
tions of " social compact0;" it bids us peremptorily
" 1. c. pt. i. p. 509.
r This is, in these days, assumed as an axiom, as men's wont is,
when they give themselves little pains to understand their own
principles: the strong contrary statements of Bishop Sanderson
may cause some to re-consider their views. "As for those in the
next place that would derive the original of all Government from
the People by way of pact or contract : it may suffice to say,
that they take that for granted which never yet was proved,
nor (I dare say) will ever be proved while the world standeth,
either from Scripture, Reason, or History. Jus gladii, the
right and power of the sword (which is really the Sovereign
Power) belongeth, we know, to kings, but it is by the ordinance
of God, not the donation of the people : for he beareth the
sword (St. Paul telleth us) as God's minister, from Whom he
received it ; and not as the people's minister, who had no
right to give it because they never had it themselves. If any
shall say they had, the proof lieth on their part, to shew how
they came by it ; whether God gave it them, or they took it
themselves. If God gave it them, let it be made appear when
and where the first grant was made; let some evidence be
produced to justify the claim, or at least some credible testi
mony, or frequent presumption to render it probable that there
was some such thing done, though the records be lost. If none
of all this can be done, it remaineth, that if they had it, they

50

obey kings, and what kings'1 ? what compact, not
with their subjects, but with human nature itself,
had not Caligula and Claudius and Nero broken ?
and it may be God gave the Roman Empire such
prodigies of wickedness then, that Christians might
have no excuse to rebel. No one can doubt but
that S. Paul would have taken his lot with our
outcast Bishops ; and if this be so obvious that one
dare scarcely put the case from this place, how
dare we call that " glorious" which he would have
condemned ? Had it been glorious, " to God's name
should have been the praise, for His mercy and
truth's sake;" but now since it was men's act, they
take to themselves the glory, when all was God's
" undeserved mercy," and glory in their shame.
Rather let us take to ourselves the shame, and give
to God the glory, for not having " dealt with us after
our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities;"
let us thank Him for His " great and undeserved
mercies."
took it. And if they so did, it was saucily and sacrilegiously
done at the first; and by our Saviour's presage, (Matt. xxvi. 52.)
like enough to prosper with them accordingly at the last."
Bishop Sanderson's preface to Archbishop Usher's Power of
the Prince, sect. 15. After which he proceeds to expose several
of the difficulties involved in the assumption.
11 " This (1 Tim. ii. 1, &c.) is S. Paul's counsel. And who, I
pray you, was prince over the most part of Christians when
God's Holy Spirit by S. Paul's pen gave them this lesson?
Forsooth Caligula, Claudius, or Nero ; who were not only
no Christians but pagans, and also either foolish rulers, or
most cruel tyrants." Homilies, ib. p. i. p. 513.

51
If ever these lessons were of moment, they
seem likely to be so now, and we have reason to
thank God for His Providence in so connecting the
events of these two days, that their commemoration
should be a yearly warning to us, in a way which
they who appointed the latter festival6 thought
not of. What times are coming upon the earth,
we knowr not, but the general expectation of per
sons of all characters in all nations is an instinct im
planted by God to warn us of a coming storm. Not
one nation only, but all ; not one class of thinkers, but
all ; they who fear and they who hope, and who fear
and hope things opposite ; they who are immersed
in their worldly schemes, and they who look for
some " coming of God's kingdom ;" they who
watch this world's signs and they who watch for
the next, alike have their eyes intently fixed on
somewhat which is coming, though whether it be
the vials of His wrath, or the glories of His king
dom, or whether the one shall be the herald to the
other, none can tell. They who can calculate what is
likely, speak of it ; they who cannot,/eeZ its coming :
the spirits of the unseen world seem to be approach
ing to us, and " awe comes on us, and trembling,
which maketh all the bones to shake f," " all nations

e It was appointed not by, but rather against, the Church,
and used as an instrument of oppression to her, a snare to the
consciences of her ministers, and a political test against men
who would have yielded a peaceable obedience.
'Jobiv. 14, 15.

52
are shaken?;" the sound, which for these many years
has been heard and spoken of from this place \ has
been waxing louder and louder, and spreading
wider : there is " upon the earth distress of na
tions, with perplexity ; men's hearts failing them
for fear, and for looking after those things which
are coming upon the earth'." Times of trouble
there have been before ; but such a time in which
every thing every where tends in one direction, to
one mighty struggle of one sort, of faith with in
fidelity, lawlessness with rule, Christ with Anti
christ, there seems never to have been till now.
The ancient images of Antichrist are growing old,
and decaying ; and a more fearful Antichristian
power, that of popular lawlessness, which maketh
its will its God, and will own neither God nor man
but its own rule, seems to be held in, not by the
weak threads of human rule, which it would snap "as
flax burnt by the fire," but by the Almighty power
of God, discovering His might by human weak-
8 Haggai, ii. 7-
11 The writer recollects in younger years, how, before any
overt public act had taken place, such as must force upon
men's minds the expectation of further changes, persons were,
in this place, warned that evil times were coming, that the
clouds were gathering, that there was a diseased tone in the
public feeling, a distempered appetite; and these warnings
became the more impressive, as they came from persons of
different character, and who had derived their impressions
from different sources. Now we are become accustomed to
our evils, and what then was regarded by sound judges as a
symptom of disease, is now regarded as a common thing.
1 Luke xxi. 25, 26.

53
ness. They are " fig-tree signs ;" whether " our re
demption" indeed " draweth nigh," and this long
warfare of this world be at last almost accom
plished, or whether it shall be but some fuller
image of that long longed-for coming, which shall
be revealed, we cannot tell ; enough for us that we
have signs that God is more than heretofore visit
ing the earth, and that Satan more than heretofore is
let loose upon it; that persons must and are taking
their sides more decisively with Christ or with
Belial. Whether then this fearful conflict burst in our
days, or when we are withdrawn, let those who
live to share it, or any portion of it, recollect that
our strength is to " fear not, stand still, and wait
for the salvation of God." God hath shewn great
mercies to our Church, as on this day, and those
greater than to any other nation ; trust we Him.
Even now He seems, contrary to His dealings with
all other nations, to have checked the wayward
ness of our course, and though we had done things
displeasing in His sight, to be restoring us from
the feverish sickness, wherein we had fallen, and
bid us " go our way, and sin no more, lest a worse
thing happen unto us." It is our duty indeed, as
they did of old, to warn men of the great sin and
danger of sacrilege, or apostasy, or interfering with
the Church of God, or polluting her offices, or in
difference and promoting error, lest we be guilty
of the blood of others, if we warn them not ; and
in all lawful ways permitted to us, we are bound

54
to extend truth, diffuse right principles, as well
as adorn them in our lives ; but this done, re
collect we, that our armour is not like that of the
Romish Church, " the wisdom of this world, which
shall come to nought," earthly activity and worldly
schemes, but humiliation, acknowledgment of our
past sins, prayers, fasting, watching, endurance,
submission to men, and patient tarrying for God.
Let the Church use these, use the Psalms and the
prayers put into her hands, and her mouth, use
them not as forms but as realities, realize to herself
that a great contest is going on between the dragon
and the woman in the wilderness, and that prayers
are the arms of the saints ; feel that the welfare of
each, his spiritual privileges, are bound up in the
welfare of the whole Church, but that, besides, he
ought to love the whole for herself, as the spouse
and body of Christ : recollect that " the hearts of
kings are in His rule and governance," and that He
" stilleth the madness of the people ;" pray, as our
Church with the antient Church does, twice each
day, " for the whole world, for kings and all that
are in authority" — and they who seem to be
hurrying on things with rapidity so fearful, will
be found but to be bound around the wheels of
God's Providence, not leading events but dragged
along by them, to accomplish by their self or
free-will " whatsoever His hand and His counsel
determined before to be doneV " Surely the
wrath of man shall praise Thee ; the remainder
'' Acts iv. 28.

56
of wrath shalt Thou restrain." God warneth us by
the very swiftness with which all things are moving
around us, that it is He who is impelling them ;
man cannot impart such speed, nor rouse the winds
from the four quarters of the heavens, nor bring
men's varying wills towards one uniform result ;
and therewith He warns us to beware how we
attempt to guide, what He thus manifestly is
governing. As the trial of our faith is increased by
the greatness of the interests at stake, so is it
lightened by God's more visible presence, which
would awe us into confidence and quiet. The
" Egyptians are behind" us, but the " pillar of the
cloud" is between us and them. He will " remove
the chariot wheels" of the enemy, though it drive on
never so furiously. Those things only can be marred,
which we ourselves mar. He would have us do
our plain duty quietly, suffer evil, if needs be,
patiently, and then await the end, placing our
confidence not in our own strength, nor in the wis
dom or numbers of any secular party, but in Him.
And let the young especially remember, that it
is not by giving vent to their feelings, but by
restraining them ; not by blaming others, (in doing
which they could scarcely avoid sin,) but by school
ing themselves, by meekness, by self-command, by
quietness, by peaceableness, by disciplining them
selves, and by acting under discipline, by sub
mitting to authority, even when they see not
presently the reason, by acting, in their petty
occasions, on faith, that they may best prepare

56
themselves for whatever duties, in the great army of
their God, it may please Him hereafter to call
them to.
In brief, then, we may not be over-anxious even
about holy things, such as the deliverance of the
Church from unjust thraldom or from spiritual dis
advantages. God allowed His chosen people to lie
in bondage 400 years, and not till the set time was
come, did He judge that power which enthralled
them ; and when afterwards He delivered them for
their sins to Nebuchadnezzar, " they were to seek
the peace of the city whither He had caused them
to be carried captive, and after 70 years to be
visited1." They " stood still" till Cyrus came,
they invited him not, helped him not, but he
acknowledged that " their God, the King of heaven,
had given him all the kingdoms of the earth, and
given him in charge to build His temple at Jeru
salem m." God is visibly working, and preparing the
army, which " shall be willing in the day of His
power " ;" but it is His day, His army, His power,
and He must " give the word °." As of old the feet
of the image were crumbling, the world was growing
old, institutions were dissolving, but the people of
God might not put a finger thereto, but " a stone
cut out of the mountain without hands smote it, and
brake it in pieces ;" so must it be now : whether it
please God to breathe fresh life into the old institu-

' Jerem. xxix. 7, 10. "' Ezra i. 2. " Ps. ex. 3.
• Ps. lxviii. 11.

57

tions of the world, or whether " He take away their
breath, and they return to their dust," it must be His
doing, not man's ; what God doth, that is well
done ; we might mingle " hay, straw, and stubble"
with His work, which in the day of trial will not
abide. " O tarry thou the Lord's leisure; be strong,
and He shall comfort thy heart11:" "though it
tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it
will not tarry'1." " O Lord God of hosts, blessed is
the man that putteth his trust in Thee ! r"
p Ps. xxvii. 16. ' Hab. ii. 3. r Ps. lxxxiv. 13.
O Lord, we beseech Thee to keep Thy Church
and household continually in Thy true religion ;
that they who do lean only upon the hope of Thy
heavenly grace, may evermore be defended by Thy
mighty power; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen s.
¦ Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany.

HE END.

BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.

3 9002 '

6