SATAN THE Leader in chief to all who resist THE REPARATION OF SION.

April 27, 2021James Dodson

As it was cleared in a Sermon to the

Honourable House of Commons at their

late solemn fast, Feb. 28, 1643.

By ROBERT BAYLIE, Minister at Glasgow.

Published by Order of the House of Commons.

Micah 6. 9. and 7. 8, 9.

The LORD’s voice crieth unto the City, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name, hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me. I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.

London, Printed for SAMUEL GELLIBRAND, at the

Brazen Serpent in Paul’s Church-yard, 1643.

Die Mercurii 28, Feb. 1643.

It is this day Ordered by the Commons House of Parliament, that Mr. Rous do from this House give thanks unto Master Baylie, for the great pains he took in the Sermon be preached this day at the entreaty of this House, at St. Margaret’s Westminster, it being the day of publick Humiliation: and to desire him to print his sermon. And he is to have the like privilege in Printing of it, as others in like kind usually have had.

H. Elsynge Cler. Parl. D. Com.

I appoint SAMUEL GELLIBRAND to Print this Sermon.

ROBERT BAYLIE.

For the Right Worshipful, his

much honoured friend, Mr. Rous,

one of the Members of the Honourable

House of COMMONS.

Right Worshipful,

These late times have produced many great and sensible changes in many, both matters and persons: I must acknowledge the power of time, that mighty changeling, over my mind also. Some four years ago, it was my wish, and very passionate desire, then publickly expressed, to have had that favor of your honourable House, as once to speak in their audience: notwithstanding, the other day, when, in their Honour’s name, you did offer to me that singular courtesy, how unwilling I was to entertain it, my own heart doth know fully, and you in a part can bear witness. Verily, my former desires to speak when I could not be heard, were no greater than my present to keep silence, when I was required to speak.

As I would have been very glad in so honourable an Audience to have said nothing, so when your entreaty, in so great a Name, had necessitated me to speak something, I could have wished that what then was said, might have passed away without any farther notice: but being it was your desire that what then was spoken should now go abroad, esteeming it unfit to dispute any of your Commands, in this also you shall have me obedient.

Be pleased therefore to receive what you required of me, the notes of that poor Sermon, without any addition at all, and without any change considerable: it is well if it find in the eyes of others when read, that patience and respect which it had in your ears at the first hearing.

I know the matter itself is above any just contempt, for it is not mine, but the Spirit of God’s, speaking to the Churches: that of it which belongeth to me, the managing of these divine truths, and their Application to the auditor, I leave to the benign construction of every reader: entreating his belief, it was my sincere intention, with so great simplicity and clearness as I was able, to speak a word in season to every soul, to let out from the fountains of Scripture the streams of consolation on the dry and parched ground, to send down from the Lamps of the Word, the Rays of divine Light, for direction in these dark and misty days: by the terrors of the Lord to persuade some, to smite with the rod, with the Sword of the Spirit, the secure souls of our sleeping friends, to awaken them; and of our too watchful enemies, to pull them with fear (but yet with all compassion) out of the snare of Satan, wherein now they lie captive at his will.

The text led me by the hand to that most seasonable consideration, that in all quarrels about the building or rebuilding of a Church, the chief and principal parties are Christ and the Devil; men are but inferior and subservient agents to these two Princes: it is most certain, That side which is for truth, for piety, for justice, must in the end triumph: for it is utterly impossible, that the Dragon and all his Angels, though for a time and a long time, they maintain the fight, should ever prevail over Michael the Arch-Angel and his followers.

These extraordinary Commotions, whereby not our Kingdom alone, but the most of the neighboring Nations, are at this very hour so terribly shaken, we trust they shall prove preparations for a glorious work. At the building of a Royal Palace, where much rubbish is to be removed by many hands, where timber, stones, and other materials, are to be brought together, and set in the work by a multitude of diverse craftsmen, no marvel if in that place, for a time, there be much noise and stir, much commotion, and some confusion also.

Doubtless, ere long, the scene of this world must be closed, the Man of Sin [i.e., the Pope] must be beaten from the Stage, which long he hath possessed; the Rebellion must be removed from Jacob, and the Iron sinew taken out of the neck of Israel: the fulness of the Gentiles must be brought in with them, that both may mourn after Christ their common Savior. The shaking of the Heavens and Earth are the Lord’s Prefaces and Prologues, his antecedent acts, which must be followed with such joyful conclusions. When we are most tossed with Tempests, when we are most likely to be split upon the rocks of desperate dangers, then would we cast up within the vail the holy anchor of this hope, the strong cable of this confident expectation.

In the subservient discourse I glance at one point which I wish were well weighed by all who truly mind the prosperity of the work in hand: Durst I have taken the boldness of prefacing to the whole House, as indeed I was loath to presume it, having already by the length of my sermon, taken from them so much of their precious time, it would have been all, or at least my main purpose, to have proposed to their Honours, and pressed that one consideration, which now, forsooth, is become so trivial and common in the mouth of everyone, that it seemeth to be rare in the heart, and real sense of many; I mean these extraordinary and unexpected delays of setting up the Government of God in his House.

The ordering of the State and Kingdom, how necessary soever, ought not to precede the settling of the church; in this, the interest of God, in that, the interest of man is chiefest: if any could be so impious as to avow their postponing of God to the world, yet they would do well to be so wise as not to mar their own ends, by the misorder of their proceedings. Except the Lord build the house of a Kingdom, the industry of the wisest men is for little purpose: and how shall the Lord concur with men in building their state, when men are so careless of his honour and service, as not to build his Church? Nehemiah laid not a stone in the wall of the City, until Zerubbabel had set the capstone on the wall of the Temple.

It cannot without injury be denied, that the endeavours of this noble Senate, for the House of God, have been greater than any Parliaments we ever read of in this Land: that notwithstanding their excessive labors, the work is not yet near an end, it must be imputed to all others, rather than to them.

That most reverend, learned, and pious Assembly of Divines [i.e., the Westminster Assembly], on whose shoulders the task of Religion is principally devolved, cannot in any Justice be charged with neglect of duty herein: they have so many, and so notable witnesses of their daily indefatigable labors, that no honest mouth will be bold to fasten the least slander of this fault upon them.

How then cometh it to pass, that the wheel of the Lord’s Chariot should move with so slow a pace? This is it which all the godly far and near, do vehemently desire to be taken in the most serious thoughts of every religious member of either House. It passeth, I confess mine and every common understanding, to hit upon the true and full cause, and the solid remedy of this great evil, whereof the world doth see and proclaim, the sad and sensible effects.

By this wearisome procrastination to erect the Discipline of God, that so the Laws of the Gospel might be really execute; it cometh to pass, that millions of men and women, live as they list [desire], in Blasphemy and Drunkenness, Chambering [sexual immorality] and Wantonness [without sexual restraint], Strife and Envy, Ignorance and Impiety, without the control of any spiritual correction.

Beside these open vices, which like a flood without the opposition of any bulwark, carry down to hell such a multitude of souls; there is another more subtle device of Satan whereby daily many thousands are destroyed: Heresies, and Schisms, under the color of Truth, and more than ordinary devotion, eat like a gangrene, and canker, run like a pest [i.e., plague], from city to city, to the overspreading of the whole land, without all possibility of remedy, so long as Christ’s Discipline is holden out at doors [i.e., withheld].

How can it be, but the loss of so many thousands, so many millions of poor souls, which profaneness and error, daily doth destroy, should not cry to Heaven for judgment against them, be who they will, who for what respect soever, are retarders, or but faint promovers [promoters] of the Lord’s Ordinance, the only spiritual, the only proper remedy of all these heavy evils?

There be some who care for none of these things, the loss of souls, the flourishing of Satan’s Kingdom, the defiling of Christ’s Crown in the dust, toucheth not so much as the utmost skin of their carnal heart; let such worldlings beware they feel not sooner than they expect, the civil inconvenience, which to them alone is considerable of that matter whereof we speak. For what I pray should hinder numbers of our people rooted in profaneness upon occasion, if they were tempted, to desert the cause of Religion, and side with the enemy for our ruin: can constancy be certainly expected, where piety its only bottom cannot be found. Also what disturbance may be wrought in the state by the multitudes of Heretical and Schismatical people, habituated by long custom in their ways of error; it is no difficult matter for wise men to prognosticate, who either from story or experience, are acquaint with the ordinary course of human affairs.

These and many other the like lamentable fruits of the too too long Anarchy of this Church, are a matter of daily discourse to many, but of great sadness and heaviness of heart, to the children of God: a remedy of them none doth expect, out of Heaven, from any but the wisdom and zeal of this high Court.

To these who have no experience of the many strong invisible impediments, whereby the motion of all publick good works use to be retarded, it seemeth a prodigy [wonder], that the reparation of this Church should stick so long in the way: especially when they consider that no Protestant Church to this day, did ever stay the half of the time in purging the whole body of religion, in doctrine, worship, discipline and all, as this land hath already spent on some few points of discipline alone. It seemeth they were encompassed with as many, and great difficulties in their action, as we are in ours: consider when we will, Germany or France, Scotland or Holland, we shall find the hands of their Reformers were fewer and weaker, for all worldly strength, and their opposers, whether ye speak of Princes or Clergy, or Nobles, or People, were more and more potent than ours this day: however, we have little reason to pretend difficulties from any of these quarters: by the mercy of God these two bygone years [i.e., 1641-2], neither Prince, nor Papist, nor Prelate, nor any open Malignant have been able in the least degree, to stop the wished Reformation: Such an imputation during the named time, cannot be charged upon any of them: whatever may be said of their will, yet the good hand of our God hath circumscribed their power within so narrow a line, that for any resistance of theirs, it was fully in our hands, to have set up whatever Church-policy [government] we had found meetest [most fitting], in the most, and best parts of the Kingdom.

I do verily think, if any Church in the World had taken our present course, they should have found it exceeding hard, ever to have attained to their wished end: if England, either in Edward, or Elizabeth’s days: if Scotland, either in their first or second Reformation, had suspended over all their Kingdoms the exercise of any Reformation, till every puntillo [punctilio, or fine detail] thereof had been scholastically debated, in the face of an assembly; til every dissenter, over and over, had made to the full, against every part of every proposition, all the contradiction, his wit, his learning, his eloquence, was able to furnish him: it seemeth apparent, that these tedious delays had casten them so open, and given such pregnant advantages to the enterprises of their active adversaries, as easily they had been surprised, and all their designs crushed before they had ended half their consultations, or so much as begun their practise; and who knoweth what all this prodigal expense, and spinning out of precious and irrecoverable time, may produce.

Certainly, this method of proceeding, cannot bring us to any quick issue. If these points of government, or worship, or doctrine, which yet are before us, be handled as these that are behind us, which in themselves are far less considerable than many of the former: if every opponent must be heard upon every point, to object, to reply, to double, to triple his exceptions (as I know no reason why it must not be so, if we proceed in an equable pace, and our motions to come, be of a length proportionable to these that are past). This course, I say, if constantly kept, cannot but hold us in hewing of our stones more than a week [7] of years, before we can begin to lay so much as the foundation of our buildings.

But I must hold, for unaware and insensibly, my pen has run beyond the bounds of an epistle: your more than ordinary benignity did invite me to that liberty; it is our comfort, when either, the mentioned, or any other inconvenience begins to discourage us, that God has put in that Supreme Court, men of your zeal, wisdom, and experience; by whose deep prudence and industrious action, what to us seems desperate, can quickly be remedied to the full satisfaction of all, whose understanding, and affections permit them to be capable to reason. Thus praying God to assist every man of your mind and temper, that so this afflicted Church and State, may come in God’s due time to a happy end of all the present troubles, I rest.

Your Worships to be commanded,

ROBERT BAYLIE.

A SERMON

Preached before

The Honourable House

OF

C O M M O N S,

At the publick FAST,

Feb. 28, 1643.

ZECHARIAH 3, verse 1, 2.

And he shewed me Joshua the high Priest, standing before the Angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.

And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan, even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem, rebuke thee: Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?

The wise Preacher observes well that there is no new thing under the Sun, that there is nothing whereof truly it can be said, it is altogether new: but the most strange accidents of our days have been already of old time which was before us. This wise observation was one of the pillars whereupon Solomon settled his spirit when it was much vexed with the sense of the extreme vanity, and unutterable labor, which he had felt and seen under the Sun even in his days, which were more than ordinarily prosperous. This consideration will be very proper for these people or persons, who after a long prosperity are afflicted with a sudden and unexpected calamity: while their spirit is new and unacquainted with such a variation, it is filled with grief, with fear and amazement; but when they find that no other thing hath befallen then what often before hath been, and often afterward will fall out; in place of these griefs, fears, amazements, patience, contentment and hope, (much better guests) begin to possess the soul.

Doubtless to our first parents the darkness of the first night was somewhat strange, persons who had never seen anything but the light of the day, when the shadows of the night first did encompass them, could not be without some apprehension: yet when at the back of a number of nights they had seen the day spring of the morning light constantly to arise; the darkness of the blackest nights was passed over without fear, and in so great security, as the light of the fairest days. To men who have always lived upon land when first they set to sea, the winds, waves, and storms, are exceeding terrible; but when they are a little beaten with the experience of tempests, their fears do change into resolution and courage. It is of no small use to remember that those things which vex most our spirit, are not new, but have already been in times before our days.

Unto this ground of courage against the vanities and vexations of this life, the Preacher adds another much more strong. Whatsoever God doeth it shall be forever, nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it; for God doth it that men should fear before him, and God requireth that which is past. All these things which now are, which have already been, and again shall be hereafter, are not only managed and guided by the good hand of our God but also are so acted by him, that creatures can neither add unto, nor diminish from these works of justice and mercy which the Almighty arm of the most High doth daily work on the earth for this end, that men may acknowledge and fear, may love and trust in his holy Name.

The children of God in this land on whom the present war [i.e., the English Civil War, which began in 1642] hath brought very heavy affliction, and who yet are afraid for sadder consequences, cannot but be encouraged, if they believe that all these fearful accidents are wrought by the hand of their gracious Father in his deep wisdom and great justice. That as the counsels of the best men have not diminished any of them, so the plots of the most malicious have added nothing to the measure which his hand hath mete [measured] out. Neither hereafter by all the activity of our enemies, men or devils, shall any more trouble be brought upon us, than that which the Lord our God by his own hand shall bring on.

Also that no other miseries shall ever befall us then such as in former times God hath brought about to very happy ends and blessed conclusions: for God now doth require nothing but what is past, the acts of his providence in our days are but repetitions of his ancient proceedings. Were the Lord now to begin to guide the world, we might seem to have reason for fear for the issue of many difficult passages. When a hard piece of work is put in the hand of an apprentice for the first assay of his skill, the beholders are justly afraid for a miscarriage in his young and unexperienced hand; but when the worker is an old master of Craft, none are afraid but his cunning hand can act again what so oft it hath wrought to the contentment of all the beholders. Were our God a novice in the great art of governing the world, and of the Church in the bosom thereof; had he to this day never given any proof of his infinite wisdom, power, and goodness, in turning about the most terrible accidents to the welfare and joy of his Saints; we might indeed be amazed whenever we feel ourselves sinking in the dangers wherein the practices of our enemies oft do plunge us over head and ears: but the Lord having given in times past so many documents of his uncontroverted skill and most certain will to bring about all human affairs, as to his own glory, so to the real good of all that love him, it would be in us an impious and inexcusable uncharitableness to suspect the end of any work which he hath begun, much less of this great Reformation now in hand, whose foundation God hath laid, whose walls he hath so far advanced, whose gracious and beautiful capstone in his time must be set on, maugre [in spite of] all opposition.

These two considerations are very fit to under-prop a weak mind in its fainting under the weight of griefs and fears, but behold a third, which if not removed makes both the former without all use and fruit. There is no remembrance of former things, neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. However it be most true that all our present troubles of Church and State, be no other but the self-same which in former times have befallen the people of God, and which oft the hand of God hath wrought to a happy conclusion: yet our forgetfulness, our ignorance and inconsideration makes all these accidents, and God’s providence about them to be in vain and fruitless unto us, as if never such matters had been.

For the remedy of this great evil, the main cause of many minds perturbation and disquietness this day, to help us to know and remember what hath been of old, our merciful Father beside other very profitable histories in human writs, hath made for us a perfect register in his holy Scripture of the ancient passages of his providence, wherein as in a glass we may behold the clear image of our days, and by a judicious comparing of what we read, with what we feel, by a wise paralleling of times with times, we may attain to such patience and comfort in our worst days, as will support us with hope and confidence of a glorious deliverance from all our present affliction.

For this end it is that we have read in your honourable audience this portion of the Prophet Zachariah: for as in the whole prophesy, so especially in this third chapter he sets down a register of the estate of old Israel in his days, so like to our times that we may justly take the one for a type, a pattern, a lively image of the other. The people of God after a long captivity in Babel [Babylon], after many years oppression both in religion and civil liberties, at last by the hand of God were delivered: their Babylonish tyrants, too strong for their weak hands to deal with, in a sudden were overthrown by the hand of God, so that afterwards these oppressors were never able to stand: the poor captives returned freemen in great joy to Jerusalem, with full hope to set up quickly both their temple and city, to restore without any impediment both their church and state to the ancient glory: but incontinently they were troubled with so many enemies both at home and abroad, that they gave over the work begun, and for too long a time fainted in a pitiful despair to get either their temple or city rebuilded: so great were their crosses and insuperable their difficulties in their intended and joyfully begun reparation of that ruined Church and Kingdom; notwithstanding when all hands were hanging down and all knees were feeble, when a hopeless fainting had stupified and taken away the wonted care of the publick, from the hearts both of their Princes, Priests and people, the Lord in mercy wakened them by the ministry of two new Prophets, Haggai and Zachariah, whereby he put again in all their spirits so vigorous a life, that they set upon the work with such a magnanimous and zealous resolution as nothing could withstand them to the very end and perfection of their endeavours, they never rested till both the temple and wall of the city were fully accomplished.

The vision set down in this chapter, was one of these heavenly messages whereby that undaunted courage was inspired in the breasts of that otherwise languishing and discouraged people; you may divide it in three parts: in the first you have the great impediments of all their designs for the reparation of their Church and State.

In the second the removing of these impediments. In the third, the ground and cause of their removal.

The first two parts are intertext and woven in together from the beginning to the eighth verse: the great impediments of all their endeavours were not men, but spirits; were not foreign, but homebred enemies; not others, but themselves: Satan stood at Joshua’s right hand to resist him: Joshua was clothed with soul garments, with his own manifold sins, and the sins of the people, whom he represented before God: these sins were the fountain of all the opposition they found from any man; many enemies there were to the Work of God in the midst of Israel, many in the neighboring countries many in the court of the King of Persia; but the Leader of all these was a malignant spirit, a powerful Devil, so malapert and impudent as to oppose Joshua before the face of Christ himself. Yet neither men nor devils were their principal enemies; the great sins that notwithstanding all their troubles the people still did commit, were the strength of the Devil, whereby he stopped most the progress of the great and gracious work in their hand.

As for the second part, the removal of all the named obstructions, this was in the favor of God, first in rebuking the Devil that was insatiable in malice; who not content with all the fire of tribulation wherein that poor Church and Kingdom was already made like a charcoal, a brand, a burnt stick taken out of the fire, did farther assay to burn them to ashes, and without pity went about to destroy them all utterly. 2. That stronghold of Satan the sins of the Priests and People is broken down; the mercy of the Lord freely pardons all their transgressions. Neither this only, but a third blessing is granted, the graces of the Spirit are poured out upon them for Sanctification; the soul garments are pulled off, and change of new glorious garments is put on. In the fourth place, a gracious Covenant is made with Joshua for two things, 1. His continuance in service before God in the temple while he lived, next for a place when he died among the Angels who stand in heaven before the throne of God.

In this is the great comfort of the repairers of Sion, of all the sincere friends of Jerusalem, that albeit for a time they have strong and dangerous wrestlings with men and Devils, they be oft vexed with the guilt of bygone transgressions, with the strength of present corruptions, with the fear of future mis-accidents in life, in death: yet at last in all these they become more than conquerors, the Devil by the mouth of Christ is chased away from further molesting them, the spots of sin are washed off, as if they never had been on, the strength of corruption is abated, they are clothed and made beautiful with the graces of the Spirit, they are assured of perseverance and God’s acceptation of continual service at their hand; they have the Lord’s Protestation that after all their labors for his honour, the welfare of his Church and their mother country, they shall be translated to an evangelic felicity, to stand before the celestial throne, enjoying the face of God and all the fulness of joy thence flowing: when others, the opposites of the work of God, the retarders of the building of the temple and city, shall be rebuked with Satan their leader, and cast with him into that utter darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The true procurer of all these favors was Christ the Messiah to come, spoken of in the third part from the eight verse to the end.

Joshua and his companions were wondered at as mad fools, who would venture their peaceable and quiet estate in Babel [Babylon] with the hazard of a long and dangerous voyage to the desolate Land of Judea, and when they came there would not rest in ease, but without fear of provoking the great king of Persia, without regard of plottings within by false friends, of open arms without by professed foes, not considering their own weakness nor the greatness of the enterprise of building a temple, of fortifying a city, went on with courage: this by some was derided, by others wondered at: yet themselves understood very well what they were doing, The Lord of hosts was with them, their help was in the name of the Lord.

Michael their Prince was a mediator for them at the throne of God, though yet he was not born, yet in his divine nature he did execute the office of an intercessor for them with the Father, and the time did draw near when he was to be brought forth as a branch: then he did lurk and lie hid within the veil of heaven as a root under the ground, yea the stock of Jesse whence he was to take flesh, was a withered tree in a dry land: yet he was to spring out of it as a branch which from a small twig was to become a great bulk, wherein all the plants of God behooved to be grafted, that by his fatness they might flourish in the Courts of the Lord and bring forth their fruit in due season.

This branch was that stone which Joshua did lay in the foundation of the second temple: for Christ is the rock whereupon the Church is builded so firmly that the ports of hell may well assault, but shall not prevail against it; he is a stone with seven eyes, not a dead, blind stone, but living and seeing, filled with the Spirit of providence, able to foresee with a multitude, with a great and perfect number of eyes, all the dangers which can befall that house, and every living stone therein which is builded upon him; he is a carved and engraven stone polished and adorned by the hand of the Father with all the perfection of divine beauty: in which the carvings of his flesh by the wounds of his cross, the agonies of his Spirit, wherewith it pleased the Father to bruise him, are not of the least consideration; for from these chiefly flow the two great blessings, Pardon and Peace, wherewith the chapter is closed. The Father for the sake of the passion of Christ put away the sins of the Land, and that in on day: for the sacrifice of the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world was of another nature from these under the Law; these though continually offered, could never make the comers thereto perfect, but he by one offering hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Hence flows a full and perfect peace, they who had been long vexed with a cruel and bloody war, by the Prince of peace are reconciled with God, for their sins in one day being removed by that one sacrifice, the wrath of the Father was satisfied: Peace with God brings inward peace of conscience that passeth understanding; and also peace with men so much as the Lord findeth expedient, when a man’s ways pleaseth the Lord he maketh his very enemies to be at peace with him: the branch that sprang from the stem of Jesse makes the wolf and the Lamb to dwell together, the Leopard to lie down in peace with the kid, the lion to eat straw with the ox, the sucking child to play on the hole of the Asp, the weaned child to lay his hand safely on the cockatrice den: and these me who have been spoiled of all, and banished from their habitations, to return to their homes, and quickly so to prosper there, that they can call their neighbors, as of old, to feast and be glad with them under their vine and fig-tree, without the fear of any enemy, being safe and secure under the shadow of the Branch, the Prince of peace.

So the vision of this chapter, which began with great trouble and danger, ends with as great peace and joy. Satan in the entry, with the assistance of sin, vexing the Church with all the opposition his strength and craft was able to make: Christ in the end by his passion and Spirit defeating Satan and sin, closeth the Church’s warfare with a happy peace. All these things will be grounds to intelligent minds of many sweet meditations in these times of perplexity; but leaving the rest, we will stand on the two first verses.

In the first whereof we have the great impediment of Sion’s reparation; in the second, the powerful removal of that impediment. The former, for memory and order, may be divided into three; First, the information of it, he shewed unto me: this strong opposition which Satan made to the work was secret, till God by his Angel opened the eyes of the Prophet Zachariah to behold it. Secondly, its time; when Joshua was standing before the Angel of the Lord. Thirdly, its matter; Satan stood on his right hand to resist him. Consider these three in order: their sense, the doctrines arising from them, and the uses of these doctrines.

In the first, three things must be understood: The Informer; the ways of his Information; and the person informed. This he who informs, by the most ancient Greek and Latin interpreters is expressed by the Lord, but our translators adhere to the original, and justly omit that addition to the Hebrew text; for by adding to the words, they diminish from the sense. Doubtless the Lord was the giver of all these visions to the Prophet, but beside the operation of God, and ministry of Angels is here employed: the Angels are ministering spirits to the Church and all the Saints, as for many good uses, so for this in special, to reveal and declare the will of God to his servants the Prophets. That in this place not the Lord only, but also his Angel, is understood, appears by the beginning of the next chapter, The Angel that talked with me, and awakened me, came again; so in this preceding Revelation he had been with the Prophet, and shewed him the vision.

Consider further, from the first chapter, verse 9, that Zachariah had to do with three kinds (so to speak) of Angels; one particularly deputed to him for his information, designed oft by this phrase, The Angel that talked with me; a second, called, a man sitting on a red horse in the bottom of the valley among the myrtle-trees; a third, called, horsemen on red, white, and speckled horses, coming and going as the second Angel employed them in his errands: our words must be understood of the first, for the second was Christ, the Angel before whom Joshua here stands, who in the first chapter, when there is none to help the Church, is mounted on the back of his red fiery horse, though he appear not, but lie in ambush in the bottom among the trees, ready in his season to make eruption with his Army of the third Angels, to fight against the wicked oppressors of his poor people.

The next word imports the way of information, He shewed unto me; in the original, he made me see: it was in the night, as it clear from the first chapter, verse 8. I saw by night, and behold: the eyes of his body were closed, but his imagination was open, so the Angel spoke in him, as it is in the original, not to him, in audible sounds to his ear: the Angel framed the species (as they are called) of these things, which are the objects of hearing or seeing, or any outward sense within the Prophet’s imagination. This was an ordinary way how God of old did communicate himself to the Prophets, by dreams and visions, Num. 12. 6. sometimes immediately by himself alone; sometimes also by the ministry of Angels; by this means a blind man, a ministry of Angels; by this means a blind man, a sleeping man, may see: So Abraham, though in a deep sleep, is said to see and hear; Peter in a trance saw the sheet full of beasts; Paul, though blind, did see Ananias. Though God alone, who searches the heart and the reins, hath power to work immediately on the understanding, yet Angels, both good and evil, when God either permits or directs them, have power to work immediately on the inward senses of men and beasts, as well sleeping as waking, and to print upon their fancy all these objects, which use to be transmitted from any of the outward senses.

As for the third word, the person informed [Me,] it is the Prophet Zachary. There be many Zacharies in Scripture, and which is considerable, there be two who are called the sons of Barachiah; the one of whom Christ says, that he was slain between the Porch and the Altar, the son of Jehoiada the high Priest, called also Johanan and Barachiah; another Zachary the son of Barachiah is our Prophet, styled a young man, the grandchild of Iddo; that he was not slain betwixt the Porch and the Altar, many reasons do prove, which for shortness I omit: this is he who by another name is called, Matt. 27. 9. Jeremy the Prophet; except you will read that place of Matthew, with the Syriac Translator, without the word Jeremy, for it is hard to admit the corruption of the Original Text, by the negligence of the Transcribers, mistaking the contracted word ι̅ϱ̅ᴕ [ιερεμιου] for ζ̅ϱ̅ᴕ [ζαχαριου], as some will have it; and it is harder, with Origen and Jerome, to admit any apocrypha parts of the Prophet Jeremy, now not extant; and hardest of all, with Augustine, to grant a mnemonic error, a slip of memory in the holy Evangelist.*

From these words thus expounded I draw but one doctrine, That God discovers and makes open to the eye, the most secret plot against his work, and his servants about it: as here, what the devil himself is acting in greatest privacy against Joshua, is made open. Wicked men have many deep conspiracies against God and his people; Satan joins his craft to their counsels, when the deeps of Satan are joined to the depths of crafty men, whose heart of itself is very profound, the plot is digged as deep as hell; the plotters become secure, and are not feared for any discovery; they say in their heart, Who sees us? yet the Lord sees, and brings all to light for their shame: Isa. 29. 14[-16]. The wisdom of their wise men shall perish: woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who sees us? Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay. The wise men of this world, by their hid and deep policies, are confident to deceive their simple neighbors, by the greatness of their wit to turn all his light discovers their deepest and darkest mines, by his power he breaks in pieces as a potter’s vessel their subtlest devices: Dan. 2. 22. He revealeth deep and secret things, he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him: Prov. 15. 11. Hell and destruction are before the Lord, how much more the hearts of the children of men? Job 12. 22. He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out of light the shadow of death.

In the Scriptural proof you see a clear reason of the point, the judgment of God upon the profound politicians of this world, who by their wit, assisted with Satan’s cunning, assay to dig their projects so deeply under the ground, as the shallow wits of other weak men cannot reach them; but behold, the plague of God upon their projects, his light shines in their darkness, he draws up their designs, though as deep as hell; he brings out all their devices, and lays them before the eyes of the Sun, for the contrivers utter disgrace.

Another reason is, the goodness of God to his people: the hellish plots of the wicked are to blow them up on a sudden, Psal. 64. They commune to lay snares privily, they say, Who shall see us? their thoughts are very deep, that they may shoot suddenly at the upright in heart. The Lord marks all this wickedness, for he is the watchman of Israel who never slumbers: his silly sheep would soon be catched, but his all-seeing eye, to which every creature is naked, is always employed for their custody: The seven eyes of the Lord run through the earth to search all the counsels taken against the Church, his eyes pierce the thoughts and reins of the craftiest foxes, not a word in any man’s tongue but he knoweth it altogether, and their thoughts afar off: he found means to discover to David, and to turn into mere folly the counsel of Ahithophel, once wise as an Angel, though after wickedly crafty as a Devil: all the devices of Syria were made open to the King of Israel, no word could be spoken in the bedchamber of the King of Syria, but Elisha could tell it in Samaria.

The use of this doctrine is, first, for thankful acknowledgment: who hath discovered to us the manifold most mischievous designs of the enemy, these most secret and deeply contrived counsels, for the overthrow of our religion, the destruction of our Parliaments, the enslaving of our persons and posterity? who hath brought out these works before the eyes of the world? None but that God; who here by his Angel doth demonstrate to the eyes of his Prophets, the most secret practices of the Devil himself against Jerusalem. A catalogue of these discovered plots would be printed on the table of our hearts, for the continual praise of the merciful discoverer.

A second use is for faithful dependence: we know not what our adversaries this very hour are working underground: this we know, that they are restless in their contrivings, like the sea whose motion is perpetual, not as the heavens for carrying about of light unto the world, but for defiling of the earth by casting up always upon it new dirt and tangle [confusion]: like Satan their leader who cannot sit still, but goes ever to and fro on the earth, seeking whom he may devour, beginning ever some new plot where an old one ends. It is good for us to have our recourse by faith to him, to have our dependence upon him who is acquainted with all their consultations: when they dig much deeper than we can reach them, were it to the very hell, our God is there to see and hear all that is amongst them: we would still be praying that he would bring out their works of darkness, that by him we may be saved from their snares, and carried by their pits, that by his providence we may always escape the nets of these fowlers.

A third use is for advertisement of all, to be very wary of secret contrivances against that cause which they have sworn to maintain: let all remember that the seven eyes of the Lord are ever upon them in the darkest of all their ways; they speak not the word, they write not the letter in their most secret chambers, which the Lord cannot bring abroad to the ears of the whole Isle [of Britain] for their perpetual shame: the miscarriage of others should be thy instruction; wilt thou go on in a way of thine own for the hurt of those who are engaged against the enemies of religion and justice? wilt thou also correspond in a blind and secret way to undermine upon never so fair pretexts this poor distressed state? God shall find thee out, and as many already have made themselves infamous, thy shame likewise shall be proclaimed to this and after ages, so much the greater as the evident judgments of God upon many, have not diverted thee from running on to thy own ruin. Some like Balaam though an Angel from heaven would discharge them from joining with Moab against Israel, yet upon the deceiving hopes of wealth and preferment will go on though they should lose in the end both their life and salvation.

The last use is for wise diligence to have that abolished, which yet in God’s mercy is covered from the eyes of the world: not to speak of public miscarriages against the church or state, whereof possibly some, of whom there is no suspicion, may be as guilty as others who publicly are crucified with deserved infamy: but to hold upon personal faults, thou knowest not how soon the Lord may bring forth not only to the light of his own countenance, but to the eyes of the world thy secret wickedness. This is a day wherein thou mayest get a cloak to cover thy nakedness, that thy shame may never be seen: judge thyself and thou shall not be judged; confess with hearty sorrow, and the Lord shall be just to forgive; lay hold on that sacrifice whose blood washes away the spots of sin; hunger and thirst for that grace and Spirit of Christ, that mortifieth corruptions: lest if after this day’s repentance, sin reign in thee, seven worse spirits enter into thee, and the Lord bring forth not only before this world but which is much worse before man and angels in the great congregation for thy everlasting shame, all the works of these devils in thee which now lie hid to the eyes of men.

So much for the first part, the information and discovery: the matter discovered follows, and first the time or action wherein Joshua was employed when Satan did resist him, he was standing before the Angel of the Lord: for the exposition of these words consider, first, who was this Joshua the high Priest; secondly, who this Angel; thirdly, what this standing. For the first, this man was Joshua or Jesus the son of Jozadak, the high Priest, who returned with the captives from Babel [Babylon], who set up the altar upon the bases before the temple was builded, who did join with Zerubbabel the Prince and supreme Magistrate of the Jews in founding and perfecting the temple: these two were the two olive trees, which did contribute the golden oil of all the gifts which God bestowed on them, in advancing the work of the Lord about the State and Church of Israel. Sundry of the ancients will have this Jesus to be Christ our Saviour, but this is a conceit so inconsistent with scripture and many reasons that it needs no confutation.

This Joshua was a Priest, for before the death of Christ the special employment of God’s ministers was to offer up those sacrifices, which were types and signs of that great oblation of the Lamb of God in a true proprietary: but when the body came the shadows removed; whosoever would have the ministers of the Christian Church to be truly Priests, would by that means bring back the pedagogy of Moses, would set up the Antichristian sacrifice of the Mass, denying in deed as the Apostle oft reasons, that Christ is yet come, or hath offered a sufficient sacrifice for our redemption. Joshua was the high Priest, Christ is the Lord of his own house, to order it every day according to his pleasure: in the New Testament he hath appointed all his ministers to be brethren and equal, none to be high or a Prince above these of his order: but in the Old Testament the policy is diverse, for there by the express command of God twenty-four Princes the heads of the families of Aaron are set over the rest of the Priests to rule and govern them, and over them all one great and high Priest the chief of the house of Aaron was a type of Christ.

This Angel of the Lord is Christ the Son of God, the patron of the Church against Satan, he who in the first chapter sends out a number of Angels as his servants, Michael the Prince who stands for the children of Israel, the Prince of Angels, who with his Angels fights against the Dragon and his Angels, styled by Jude the Archangel. Christ is called an angel, not for his nature, for he took not upon him the nature of Angels, but the seed of Abraham: but for his office; the Father sent him as a messenger to be a mediator of the new Covenant, Mal. 3. 1. The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come into his temple, even the Angel of the Covenant, called by Moses the Angel of the Lord’s presence, the face of God the Angel in whom God’s name did dwell: he it was who wrestled with Jacob, who dwelt in the bush, he that appeared to Joshua with a drawn sword; this great Angel is the Creator of all the Angels, and he in whom they have their subsistence, Col. 1. 16, he is the Prince and head of the Angels, even as Mediator: not for redeeming them from any sin, which they never had, but for confirming them in grace, which they might have lost as their companions did, who left their first habitation: for to confirm them in their created happiness, he has put them in that body whereof he is head, and set them in one society with the Saints, making them fellow-citizens of the same Jerusalem with faithful men; for we come to the company of innumerable angels, & to the spirits of righteous men made perfect. This Angel in the first chapter, appears as a man riding upon a horse, and oft times elsewhere in a human shape, for his delight was always with the children of men. And for his more familiar conversing with men often he put on the likeness of that nature, which in the fulness of time he was to take on, never more to be laid down: the body wherein he appeared before the incarnation, sometimes was real, created for the performance of such an human action, and annihilate at that action’s end; sometimes only apparent, as here where all is but a vision in the night time, which yet doth nothing hinder the truth of the prophesy.

Joshua his standing was the gesture of his worship and prayer. The Priests and Levites when they offered their sacrifices at the altar, or prayed publicly for the people, commonly they stood, Deut. 18. 5. The Lord hath chosen the Priest to stand to minister before the Lord, Psal. 135. 2. Ye that stand in the house of the Lord, Neh. 9. 2. They stood and confessed their sins, and verse 5, Stand up and bless the Lord. Hence Elijah, 1 Kings 17. 1, and others elsewhere who did most frequently worship the Lord, use this phrase, The Lord before whom I stand. We take then this standing of Joshua, for the gesture of his worship, prayer and sacrifice for himself and the people in these times of desolation. Some take it of his standing, as a criminal before the tribunal of God, where Satan did accuse him of his sins; this is not incongruous, though it be needful to take it first of his worship, for that was his end to approach unto God, and being in this action, Satan comes on him to oppose and accuse.

At this time the temple was not built, the altar of incense was not erected, the ark of God before which the high Priest wont to stand, was no more to be found, yet Joshua had set up the altar of burnt offerings before it he might stand, as also in all other his public or private devotions.

His standing before the Angel was not idolatry, for this Angel was Michael, one like God, ever equal to the Father, the Angel of God’s face and presence; the object of adoration, as well as the Father and Holy Ghost: this is the Angel of whom it is said, Heb. 1. 6. Let all the Angels of God worship him.

From this portion thus expounded, we observe for doctrine, first, the posture of God’s children in the time of public dangers and miseries: they stand before the Lord, supplicating for Sion’s welfare, as Joshua does in this place: the temple was lying desolate, Jerusalem was an heap of rubbish, their fair hopes of Reformation were blasted, the enemies of their church and state were so potent with the great King, that by all worldly appearance, they could never be able to wrestle through their present miseries. In this case, good Joshua will not despair, he betakes himself to his God, and stands before him, praying and waiting from his omnipotent hand for help and assistance to carry on, against the opposition of men and devils, that work which at God’s direction they had begun, but incontinent had found to exceed by much their strength to perfect.

For this duty there are many reasons; first, it has always been the practice of the Saints, Daniel chapter 9, for the desolations of Sion lies in sackcloth and ashes, crying in verses 16, 17, O Lord, I beseech thee that thy anger and fury may be turned away from this City Jerusalem, and cause thy face to shine on thy sanctuary that is desolate for the Lord’s sake, Ezek. 9. 8. While they were slaying them and I was left, I fell on my face and cried, Ah, Lord God, wilt thou destroy all the residue of Israel in thy pouring out of thy fury on Jerusalem? Jer. 18. 20. Remember I stood before thee to speak good for them, and to turn away thy wrath from them. David in the midst of his private agonies, Psal. 51, forgets not the public? Do good in thy good pleasure unto Sion, build up the walls of Jerusalem. Moses lies at the feet of God and wrestles by prayer to divert wrath from the camp of Israel, he holds up his hands on the mount unto God for the people when they were in fight with Amalek, Isa. 62. 1, For Sion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake, I will not rest, till the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth. When Sion is under a cloud of trouble, when the darkness of affliction overshadows Jerusalem, the godly cannot rest, they cannot keep silence, but importune their God for the light of a glorious deliverance.

A second reason, this practice of the Saints is according to the will of God, Ezek. 22. 30. I sought for a man that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, Isa. 62. 6. I have set watchmen on thy walls, O Jerusalem, who shall never hold their peace day nor night, ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence and give him no rest till he establish and make Jerusalem a praise on the earth.

A third reason, this duty hath the promise of a blessing both public and private. Unto the Elders and Priests while they are assembled, Joel 2. For fasting and prayer is laid out not only the goodness of God in general that he is gracious and merciful slow to anger and of great kindness repenting him of the evil; but particularly in the 18[th verse], they are assured he will hear their prayer, and answer it, he will have pity upon the afflictions of his people, and be zealous for their deliverance.

Besides the public benefit, the careful practice of this duty procures much private good: when the salvation of Jerusalem breaketh forth as a lamp, every inhabitant shall not be partaker of her joy. Sundry shall see it and not taste of it, as that Prince of Samaria: when it shall be well with the Church, it may be ill with them. As ravenous beasts and thieves after their roving up down in the darkness of the night at their pleasure, when the morning light doth arise, they take them to their dens and caves wherein oft they are hunted to their death. However, these who now stand mourning for Sion, shall rejoice in her joys when they come, they shall eat the fruit of their present labors, the tears they now sow in sorrow, shall then be reaped in joy. See an excellent promise of this, Isa. 66. 10[-14]. Rejoice for joy with Jerusalem, all ye that mourn for her, that ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations, that ye may milk out and be delighted with the abundance of her glory: ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem, and when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb.

Sometimes it pleaseth not God to relent his anger towards the public, yet it goes well in private with the practicers of this duty: the mourners for Jerusalem, Ezek. 9, are marked by the Angel and saved on the day of destruction. Noah and Lot who vexed their righteous souls for what they heard and saw among their wicked neighbors, get themselves and their families preserved in the day of vengeance: lamenting Jeremiah, and for his cause his servant Baruch, and friend Ebedmelech are well entreated by the hand of the most cruel enemy; yea, when the wrath of God is greatest, when Noah, Job, and Daniel are not able to save either son or daughter, yet they shall deliver themselves & have their own soul for a prey.

Another reason, the neglect of this duty is a dangerous provocation: when the glory of God goes from the Cherub to the City, and from thence to the mountain, when the Lord goes to his place that he may be sought after early, and in his going makes frequent stands, looking back if any will follow and lay hold upon him that he may return; if so be that none take notice or care of his removal, it much increaseth his anger: this is one of the complaints of Isaiah, Isa. 64. 7. There is none that calleth on thy name, that stirreth up himself to lay hold on thee: this is made a great cause of the public calamity, Ezek. 42. I sought for a man to stand in the gap for the land, but I found none, therefore have I poured out my indignation upon them, I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: and however God should be good to the public, yet it shall not go well with the private contemners of this duty, be they more or fewer, be they high or low. Public men, whose peculiar duty is to meet the Lord, and stand in the gap, when they see the floods of his wrath coming down to overwhelm the people of their charge, if they run away like foxes to their holes, being careful for nothing but to provide for their own heads, woe and vengeance from God is denounced against them, Ezek. 13. 4. O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the desert, who have not gone up to the hedge, neither made up the gaps for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord: therefore in the third verse, Woe unto them, and in the ninth, they shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel. What extreme woe is it to be blotted out of the book of life, to be deleted out of the catalogue of the people of God. Neither only public men, but the meanest of the people are plagued for the neglect of this duty, Isa. 22. 12. In that day the Lord did call to weeping and mourning, but behold, joy and gladness, the slaying of oxen, the killing of sheep, and drinking of wine; this iniquity shall not be purged from you till you die, saith the Lord.

The use of this Doctrine is for your encouragement, to go with all diligence in the present work of humble supplication: you see God is well pleased with this labor, it hath been the exercise of all the Saints on the like occasion it is the Lord’s special command, he hath annexed to it most comfortable promises, and to the neglect of it very fearful threats: only let the work be done with diligence and constancy; to do the work of the Lord negligently procures a curse: wherefore this day when thou standest before the Angel, in all the bent sail of thy spirit, offer to God the sacrifice of thy contrite and broken heart; Let thine eyes run down with tears night and day, for the great breach and grievous blow wherewith the virgin daughter of thy people is already broken; that notwithstanding the rivers of blood already shed the anger of the Lord is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still; that as yet there is no appearance of any cancelling of that Commission which the Lord hath given to the sword, to bathe itself in the blood of men, without number of all ranks and estates. These judgments outward and visible, are the causes of great mourning; but the sins of the land, that have drawn them from the hand of God, are more lamentable; yet the greatest cause both of lamentation and fear, is that great impenitency and contempt of repentance which appears in the most of men: though the idolatries, the adulteries, the bloodshed, the rapines, the ignorance of God, the profane contempt of the gospel, and many other crying crimes of this land, be evident to the eye of all; though the great wrath of God be revealed from heaven, in his most heavy judgments upon the midst, and all the corners of this poor country; yet too few do strike upon their thigh, to be grieved for what they have done; not to speak of the madness of our enemies, whose heart is plagued with induration, their court, their clergy, their misled people, running on in their wonted ways, as the horse to the battle. If we will look upon ourselves, we shall find that hardness of heart, that carnal and stupid security, doth lie upon the spirits of too many. It were very good for the people of God to set before their minds the causes of that heavy wrath, which long has lien upon these dominions, especially to search out the grounds of provocation which most nearly concern themselves, to make a diligent inquiry of those sins which have been committed within their doors: with the lamp of the Word, and the greater light of the Spirit, to go through all the corners of thy own conscience, and whatever causes of wrath thou findest there. To lay them all out in an humble conscience, earnestly supplicating for mercy in Christ’s blood, for amendment by the power of the sanctifying Spirit, deprecating wrath, and these fearful effects of it, which this day are visible upon the estates, upon the bodies, upon the souls, of many thousands of people.

This duty also would be performed with constancy and perseverance: thou must stand in this posture of prayer, till that cloud be pierced and dissolved, wherein God long has wrapped himself, that our prayers should not pass through it; thine eye must trickle down and not cease, without intermission, until the Lord look down and behold from heaven. The mourning and separation of the fifth and seventh month must continue all the years of Sion’s captivity; when the Lord brings it back, then, and not before, can Jacob rejoice, and Israel be glad; when the Lord shall be good to Sion, and build up the walls of Jerusalem, then may we sit down under our vine and fig tree, to eat of the fat, and drink of the sweet: but till then, tears should run down like a river day and night, we should give ourselves no rest, the apple of our eye should not cease; we should arise and cry out in the night, in the beginning of the watches our hearts should be poured out like water before the face of the Lord, and our hands lifted up to him for the life of our children, our husbands, our fathers, our brethren, our most beloved friends, who all very quickly may be in hazard, if the hand of the Lord be stretched out still.

Everyone would be careful conscientiously to use this means, for hereby the meanest may be profitable to the distressed and languishing public. When monies are wanting, none are able to supply but the rich; when errors and schisms are to be beaten in pieces by the hammer of the truth of God, none can be serviceable but the learned; when state divisions are to be cured, none can help but the wise; when battles are to be sought, none can appear to purpose but the courageous and strong: but for the duty in hand, which makes more for the curing of our present evils, then all that either wealth, or wit, or learning, or strength is able, by it, I say these may do notable service who have a very small or no portion in any visible gift; even poor, simple, unlearned, weak women, if they have the Spirit of prayer and will set themselves to wrestle with God, they may help to remove the obstructions and further the cure of the public miseries: when all the wealth, wit, learning, force of the kingdom cannot promove the breadth of an inch, our wished ends: everyone must try and examine his own practice of this most needful duty to be grieved or comforted according to their performance and care herein.

A second doctrine from the former ground, in all our approaches to God we must stand before the Angel, Christ the Angel of the covenant must be interposed betwixt God and the soul: for he is the only way, none can come to the Father but by him, the keys of the house of David are laid on his shoulder, he is the only door: by a wrong door or a right door if fast locked there is no entrance, through him we have both an access to the Father, Eph. 2. 18. We have boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way, Heb. 10. 20.

The reason of this is, first, the wisdom and goodness of our God, who when man by the fall was banished from his presence and could have no more immediate fellowship with him, hath appointed a mid-man for reconciliation to stand betwixt him & man, that the friendship which could not immediately be kept, might be renewed & continued by such a mediation: 1 Tim. 2. 5. There is one God and one mediator betwixt God and man, the man Christ Jesus; Heb. 8. 6. He is the mediator of a better covenant which was established upon better promises. However, we have promises that God will be our God, and will receive us as his people that he will remember our sins no more, that he will give us an eternal inheritance; yet in him only it is that we have any right to any of these promises, for he only is the mediator of that covenant, Heb. 9. 15.

A second reason, when we come alone to our God we cannot be welcome, we are so defiled with the guilt of bygone sins, while we live sin lives in us: and betwixt the holy pure eyes of God, and our sinfulness, there is so great a contrariety, that if these two should meet without some interposition, the justice of God would be a consuming fire to us. Whenever therefore we are bold to draw near to him, it is necessary to have this Angel standing betwixt us, to cover our sins, to divert wrath: by the sacrifice of his soul for sin to purchase friendship, by the sprinkling of his blood to extinguish the flames of wrath.

A third reason, whoever will stand before God who is to speak to that Majesty, who is to walk or have any fellowship with him, must in some measure be like him, holy as he is holy, for without holiness none can see his face, such of ourselves we are not, we are like to our Father old Adam, till we become engrafted in a new stock, till Christ become to us a head, it is he that sends down into us as living members the influence of his Spirit, which begins, continues, and increaseth in us that life, that light, that love which makes us like our heavenly Father & partakers of the divine nature: of ourselves we cannot think a good thought, it is he that works in us to will and to do; without him we can do nothing: out of him we are but lifeless, sapless, withered branches, fit for nothing but the fire, but in him we are the trees of righteousness, bringing forth all manner of fruit in due season.

The use of this doctrine is, first, for our information of the true cause why much of our devotion is fruitless: oftimes we draw near to God but have no access; we cry and call at the door of heaven. But there is no hearing, no opening, no answer: the reason is, we have mistaken our way, we have gone to the wrong door, we have run ever alone, in the vehemency of our own spirit, in the fervor of our natural desires: we have forgotten our Mediator, and gone to the Father without the Son; or if we have begun to take him with us, at once, as foolish children we have run before our guide. No wonder, then, we be disciplined for that error, that Christ is permitting us to assay how much we can do of ourselves without him, we feel our labors lost, our prayers in vain; no marvel there cometh, no voice, no message, no fire from heaven on our sacrifice, to give us any assurance of our acceptation; God will not shew himself well pleased with us for anything we do, when we come without the Son, in whom alone he is well pleased.

A second use is for direction: hold fast to Christ in all thy ways, especially in thy approaches to God, most of all in thy solemn prayers on such a day as this: set Christ betwixt thee and God, let all be offered up by his hand, he is thy only Priest: no man was permitted under the law, to offer his own sacrifice, all was put in the Priest’s hand, who laid all upon the altar: Christ is the true altar which sanctifieth and maketh acceptable all that is laid on him. When we draw near to God by him, he covereth all our infirmities, he supplieth all our defects, he enableth all who seek their life in him to do every duty in such a way as is well-pleasing in the sight of God; he taketh all our desires and prayers in his hand, putteth them in his golden censer, he kindleth them with his own fire, and perfumeth them with the incense of his own merits that so dressed, they may have a sweet savor in the nostrils of the Father.

A third use is for caution: in our magnifying of Christ, beware of an old trick of the devil, which of late he hath resumed, and by it done more mischief than ever. Grace and wantonness in themselves are most opposite, yet Satan striveth to conjoin them, to turn the grace of God into wantonness: it is no new thing to adore Christ in shew, while you buffet him in truth. There is a generation of people who under the color of magnifying the free grace of God, of setting Christ in his throne, of advancing a Gospel way, of crying down nature, and legal righteousness: with these glorious shows, and pleasant words they are misled by a spirit of delusion to patronize profanity, to grieve and extinguish the Spirit of grace, to scoff at repentance and sorrow for sin, to foster the fruits of the flesh, to bring in the highest degree of all wickedness, an indolence of mind, a reprobation of spirit; when a man has committed all wickedness with greediness to be nothing grieved for it, as if the Spirit of the just Lord were nothing offended with it. Among the many devils, who very boldly this day are walking up and down the land, this is one of the worst, albeit masked with the fairest shews of piety and reason. Who magnifies not the Lord Jesus, let him be Anathema maranatha; let Jesus be all in all to thy soul, make him alone, thy Righteousness, thy Sanctification, thy Redemption: but for all that, beware to divide Christ from his Spirit, his death from his life, his blood from his grace: separate not faith from repentance, dash out none of thy Lord’s commandments so long as thou livest; wert thou never so holy, thou hast need from thy heart to beg pardon for thy sins: whosoever will neglect repentance must perish, whoever will have true comfort must be a mourner. Christ curseth them that laugh now, and no laughter more devilish than in the act of sin: he blesseth them that mourn now, and no mourning in a child of God more pious than for the offending of God, and grieving of his Spirit by sin.

I thought to have laid open other stratagems of Satan, by occasion of the words in hand, and pointed at some other very dangerous errors, where with lately this land was overgrown, and which to this day are not altogether evanished: first, that idolatry of the Papists, in their standing before Angels and Saints for intercession, before images for adoration: further no Papist ever went, and thus far, Court-Divines here were wont to preach and print.

2. That wickedness of Arminius, denying the commerce of the Israelites with the Angel of the Covenant, taking away the knowledge of Christ from the very Patriarchs and Prophets, that however Christ speak expressly of Abraham’s seeing of his day, & rejoicing therein, yet the Lord must have the open lie, and Abraham’s both sight and joy must go no further than to his son Isaac, the type of Christ; they must be terminate in the shadow, and not go through to the substance. It is the less wonder that this man and his followers should steal Christ out of the law, since under the Gospel they really remove him from the hearts of the people, putting free-will in the place of grace, and instead of our justification by Christ, would teach us that old fundamental error of the Papists, justification by works, and inherent righteousness, to wit, by faith as a work in us. Strange that any Protestant Divines should yet stumble upon that infamous stone.

3. That horrible wickedness of the Socinians, denying the Angel of our text to be Christ, because he had no being before his conception; denying his incarnation, abolishing his divine nature, blaspheming the Trinity: a wonder that so foul a spirit should ever have gotten entrance in any famous Divine, or other man of note in this Isle, except this were an hour of darkness, wherein all sorts of devils are crept out of their dens, and walk so familiarly with men, that they become bold now to speak of petitioning authority for a toleration, that so this poor kingdom, not only in these times of confusion, but forever should be to the mall a place of quiet habitation.

A fourth of these, who press on us the office of a proper Priest, to offer up in a sacrifice upon the altar the present body of Christ, not caring to bring back with open face into our Church that grossest abomination of Popery, the unbloody the sacrifice of the Mass.

The fifth of these, who from the high Priest of the Old Testament would infer a pontiff, and an ecclesiastic Prince in the new, by this means, not only bringing back the types and figures of Aaron, the pedagogy of Moses; but also with the Papists (the authors of this argument) re-inducing a Diocesan Bishop, and a Patriarch above him, with a pope above all, as Aaron was above the other Priests. How far this is against the grounds of the Gospel, may be seen by the most simple in these three plain reasons. First, Christ hath made all the officers of the New Testament, who are of the same order, to be equal, all to be Brethren, none to be a Prince, or in any degree of superiority above his fellows. This is not controverted in the three extraordinary officers, no Apostle above an Apostle, no high Evangelist above a low one, no Prophet superior to a Prophet. This is also granted in 3 of the ordinary officers, no Deacon above a Deacon, no Elder above an Elder, no Doctor above a Doctor. That the like is in the seventh officer, that no Pastor is a high and a great one above a small and a low Pastor; the rule of proportion, and the analogy of things in the same kind, will make it clear. Secondly, the nature and essence of episcopacy, puts the power of ordination in the hand of one man, expressly against the apostle, 1 Tim. 4. 14. where ordination is put into the hands of many, for it is called the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery: however, diverse expositions of the word Presbytery are brought by some, yet no man can expound it of one Bishop.

3. The nature of Episcopacy puts all the ecclesiastic jurisdiction of a whole diocese in the hand of one man; but Christ, Matt. 8, gives it to many, Tell the Church: none ever did expound the Church of one Bishop, except some Papists, who understand it of the Pope.

With a good conscience, therefore, have your Honours rooted up and cast out of the Church that evil tree, which God never did plant; what further also shall be found necessary for the full extermination of that cursed weed, if an ordinance were requisite to be added to the former bills, or what else the heart of good people can require for their full security, from the return of the least degree of that Popish government, it is fully expected from your piety and zeal.

What some pleads for the antiquity of this wicked weed, I wish they would answer ingenuously, if any more antiquity was ever alleged by any for Bishops, then is confessed by all of monks and friars, of hermits and nuns, for abbots and priors: also if it can be said with any colour of truth, that more hurt did ever come to this Church and State by the one, then now is seen and felt from the other. And if England did never repent to this day for altering the old laws and casting out of their church and state these former locusts, what greater reason can be imagined they shall have ever to repent the putting of Bishops and their dependencies out of their laws and land? All your brethren of the reformed Churches after almost a hundred years experience have oft rejoiced but never grieved, for banishing that degree of Antichristianism. It cannot be denied but that episcopacy is such a supporter of Papacy, that where the one falls, the other cannot stand. Pluck up but this one weed in the Antichristian Kingdoms over sea, let bishops only be removed from Italy, and Spain, Germany and France, as they are from Britain, the Pope can no more stand thereafter than a head can without its body or limbs: the maxim is certain and demonstrable, no Bishop, no Pope.

The third part of the first verse contains the opposition made to Joshua, while he stands before the Lord to advance the interrupted work of Sion’s reparation, Satan is at his right to cross all his designs. Three words here are to be expounded: who is this Satan; what is his standing on Joshua his right hand; and how he resists him.

Satan is one of the names of that great Angel who left his first habitation, by sinning against his Creator, and therefore with other Angels his followers, was cast down from the heaven to the lower world to be reserved in chains of darkness to the day of judgment, when he is to be bound straiter and to be cast into the fire prepared for him and his Angels. In the meanwhile, he has some liberty in his chain and prison, he goes always to and fro and walks in the earth, seeking whom he may devour; he flies in the air spying his prey, ever intent to assault mankind, and above all, the most godly: for his opposition and hatred (which gives him the name of Satan) is most against God, and for his cause, against his children, especially Christ, whose heel he bruised in his temptations and cross: this is he who in Rev. 12. 9, is called the Dragon, the old Serpent, the devil and Satan who with his Angels did fight against Michael and his Angels: this was the wicked spirit who tempted Evah [Eve], who vexed Job, who stirred up David to number the people, who entered into Judas, and here sets upon Joshua.

The next point is his standing upon Joshua’s right hand: I will pass a number of allegories, which sundry of the ancients bring upon this phrase, it seems without any mystery to imply an opposition open, but cautelous [cautious, or wary]: I say open, for Satan lurks not, he standeth not behind Joshua his back, but comes up to his side, and there appears a professed and avowed enemy; yet cautelous, for he chooses the place of advantage; the right hand is the instrument of action, it manages the sword, and every weapon: so, who stands upon the right hand, hath the place of advantage.

The third word is to resist him; this was the end why Satan stood in such a place, the more easily to cross and resist all the good designs of Joshua, that whatever he did or said, to God or man for advancing the work of the Temple, or any part of the Churches welfare, he by his craft and might did assay to countercarve it, and make it fruitless.

That which here is brought by some of Satan his accusing of Joshua, we do not deny it as one of the means whereby he did cross the high Priest: for he is stiled a devil, an accuser, a calumniator, who is ever accusing the Brethren to God, as he did Job, sometimes falsely, and sometimes truly, but ever calumniously, because ever upon malice. The particular accusation is not expressed in the text, yet the Chaldee paraphrasts put that in their targum on this place, which is most likely. That Satan pleaded against Joshua, as a man who ought not to be heard of God, or receive any assistance from him for the building of Sion, since he and the rest of the people were clothed with the soul garments of sin, especially that one, of suffering his children to marry strange women. The marrying with idolaters was so grievous and dangerous a sin, that it made Ezra lament very heavily before God: Joshua his tolerating of this fault in his children, was a matter of a just accusation, and might have hindered the fruit of his prayers, and all his endeavours for Sion.

For doctrine observe, that the great and chief leader of all who oppose the Reformers of a Church or State, is the Devil.

Joshua and Zerubbabel in their repairing of the ruins of the Church and Kingdom of Israel, had opposites of many kinds and conditions, Ezra 1. At the first founding of the temple, there appeared against them (at the beginning secretly, and then openly). First, the common people of the land, the Samaritans, the brethren of our Cassandrian mixed professors, half idolaters, half Israelites: with them joined the rulers of the provinces, Rehum the Chancellor, and Shimshai the Scribe, also the bribed courtiers of the King; and at last the King himself: this opposition did so prevail, that the building was marred for many years. When the work again was set on by the motion of Haggai and Zachariah, that same profane multitude, and their governors, Tatnai and Shethar-Boznai did oppose; yet by the help of God the temple was finished.

Afterwards they went to build the wall of Jerusalem: for this is the holy and happy order of the people of God in their building; to begin with the temple, and then to go to the city, to perfect the temple before they lay a stone in the wall of Jerusalem. It is preposterous to begin with the State, and end with the Church; that order pleaseth not God, it is not suitable to his honour, and will not be blessed by him.

However, so soon as Nehemiah began to make up the wall, there was about him a swarm of enemies to hinder his progress, Tobiah, Sanballat, Geshem, and not only these profane foreigners, but also many among themselves that professed friendship: many of the nobles of Judah kept correspondence by letters with the enemies, and that in a way well near avowed, and open. Sundry of the Priests and Prophets were plotted against the work: some women also are noted for malignant instruments, by name the Prophetess Noadia is registered to her perpetual infamy, for her correspondence with the enemy, in prejudice of the good work in hand.

Many plots were set on foot to discourage the people of God, and make them faint in their labor, when the building was near an end; but one was most likely to prevail, a friendly treaty propounded, by Sanballat to Nehemiah pretending an union of counsels, and an accommodation; but intending to kill Nehemiah, that the reparation of Jerusalem, wherein he was the prime agent, should be interrupted by his death, and quite given over. This plot was assayed once, twice, thrice, four times, but without success; for it was the wisdom of Nehemiah to distrust them, and never for any persuasion, for any terror, to enter into conference with them, while the wall was once perfected; and then the adversaries perceiving without further hesitation, the hand of God in the work they opposed, sat down in despair, and gave over their enterprises.

All these oppositions from so many diverse sorts of persons, were clear to the eye of all; yet when God will discover to the eye of the Prophet, the great and main hinderer of the work in hand; he sets all other aside, and points at Satan alone, standing on the right hand of the chief workers, to cross and resist them. It is clear then, that in all the opposition we feel to the welfare, either of Church or State, Satan is he on whom the eyes of the godly wise would principally be fixed.

The reason of this Doctrine, is this, Satan is the head, the prince, the father, the god of all the enemies of the Church, Gen. 3. 15. I will put enmity betwixt thee and the woman, betwixt her seed, and thy seed. The fountain of all the enmity of the wicked against the Church, is here made the Serpent, deriving his malice to men, as to his seed and posterity. The wicked in their malicious actions against Christ and his Church, are reputed the children of Satan, and work according to the nature of their father: You are of your father the devil, the lusts of your father you will do. When the wicked are not ready enough to follow the motions of Satan against the Church, as children to be directed by their father’s advice, then like a prince or tyrant doth he drive them, as captive slaves, to commit mischiefs: for this, Eph. 2. 2. he is called the Prince of the power of the Air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, 2 Tim. 2. 26. The wicked are in the snare of the devil, taken captive by him at his will: he is the god of this world: when servants do the command of their masters, what subjects or children are set upon by their prince or father, what is done by members by the motion of the spirit that animates and moves them, all these actions must be ascribed chiefly unto their principal agents.

A second reason is, the interest of Satan in the confusions of a Church and State is greatest: interest, advantage, loss, make persons active: when a State is confounded, and a Church in trouble, there is no restraint of idolatry, of heresies, of schisms, of drunkenness, blasphemies, oppressions, or any villainy, wherein the dominion and glory of Satan is openly demonstrate: but when the times of licentious liberty come to an end; when by the mercies of God, the outward State is settled; the execution of good laws banisheth away these abominations; the outward kingdom of Satan is restrained and broken: but when with the State, the Church also is settled, when the Gospel in its full liberty, purity, and power is set up, then the strongest castles of Satan are invaded, Christ entereth the inmost cabins of the heart, and subdueth every imagination to his knowledge, and reformeth not only the outward man, but by bringing his heavenly light and life to the soul, maketh the heart humble, chaste, wise, spiritual, and so subject to the Spirit of Christ, that Satan gets no more peace in any room of his former possession? No wonder then, that this crafty spirit foreseeing these evident losses, and clear disadvantages which the settling of a Church and State will certainly bring upon him, he assay with all his might to continue disorder and confusion, for in these lies the strength of his kingdom.

The use of this doctrine is, 1. For affrighting of all these who oppose Reformation of Church or State, beholding from hence what spirit leadeth them: For it is clear, that not they only, who upon the conscience of their mis-deserving to save themselves from the legal punishment of their crimes, or otherwise blinded by avarice and ambition, upon desire and hope of these profits and places whereof they despaired in regular times, for these base ends have been prime counsellors in the first conceiving of this lamentable rupture betwixt the Prince and his best subjects; but also all they, who either openly have divided from us in siding with that evil faction, or remaining among us in person, by their means or counsels do oppose the building of the temple, and the rearing up the walls of Jerusalem: the leader of all these opposites appeareth to be that most malignant spirit, the devil. We deny not that sundry of these men for their opinions and practices wherein they differ from us, may have very strong and plausible arguments; yet they would remember that Satan oftimes, by strong delusions, maketh his followers believe lies. We grant also, that sundry of the elect children of God, before their calling, in the days of their ignorance, may be withdrawn to serve the devil, in the most wicked employments against God; Father, forgive them, (saith Christ of many of his crucifiers) for they know not what they do. Yea, for a time, the very regenerate, and these who otherwise walk with God, by the violence or subtlety of a tentation, may be driven to a very evil way, and may engage themselves in the worst services of Satan, and oppose in their desires, counsels and actions the most blessed works of God. Christ admonished the chiefest of his Apostles, that they knew not of what spirit they were: and to Peter he saith plainly, that the devil, from his mouth, did tempt him to spare himself; which was no other, then to give over the work of man’s redemption.

However, all these things may be, yet all who are in the actual service of Satan, against God, have great reason of fear, for their present condition: if God come upon thee in thy act of resisting his servants in his work, his hand may suddenly dash thee in pieces, as it hath done many already, like a potter’s vessel. How fearful a thing is it to be serving the devil! what can men expect for their wages, except they recover themselves out of his bonds, wherein now they lie captive like galley-slaves, but a part with their master forever in his horrible person? O if the eyes of men were opened, to behold the face of their master: a clear sight of that ugly leader, would doubtless move many to lay down their weapons, and with great grief for miscarriages past, to set themselves to redeem the time, with all diligence to employ heart, hand, means, and all God hath given them, for the furtherance of the building of Sion, which too long, by Satan’s powerful conduct, they have endeavoured to retard.

A second use is for compassion thus far, on the worst of our opposites, as to take them but for inferior instruments, acted and driven on by a mighty leader: let the edge of our sharpest anger be turned from them, on him: these his blindfolded instruments we should heartily pity, and pray for, remembering the like nature and weakness in ourselves, which had not the grace of God preserved us against temptations, might have made us ready to have given up our wit, our will, our hands, our means, and all, to have resisted the work of God, and furthered the work of Satan, as much as any of the most active malignants. It is good to have a meek and compassionate spirit towards persons who have succumbed to a tentation; considering ourselves, lest we also be tempted and overtaken in the same or a worse fault. The apostle gives us hope, that sundry who oppose themselves to God, being instructed in meekness, may peradventure get repentance, to acknowledge their pernicious ways, and to recover themselves from the snare of the devil, though for a time they be taken captives by him at his will.

A third use is, for continual watchfulness. The Prince and General of our opposites is a restless spirit, who will never give over his malicious contrivings: readily he may change his instruments, but never his design: when old instruments become blunt and unserviceable, or when they break in his hand, he can cast them by, and take up new ones, more dangerous than the former: though all present and past plots were discovered to the bottom, and fully prevented, yet there remaineth in that prime adversary a wit to device many more, and these sevenfold worse than any yet we have heard of: we would never be secure, having to do not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, with spiritual wickedness in higher places. Against spirits spiritual weapons must be used: did we strive only with the craft and force of men, we might hope by wisdom and policy to countermine their plots, and by just arms to over-power and suppress their oppression: but our chief party being Satan, we must put on the armor of God, the shield of Faith, the helmet of Hope, the breastplate of Righteousness; and, above all, that Catholic weapon of prayer. In these combats, the weakest may do greatest services: many, who cannot go to the fields for fighting, to the houses for counsel, to the assembly for disputation, yet may hold up their hands on the mountain with Moses, may wrestle with God as Jacob, may stand before the Angel with Joshua, and by the means of the Angel get Satan our prime enemy defeat: when Goliath the captain doth fall, the rest of the Philistines his followers will not long stand. However, this Church and State, in these days of darkness, are most helped by them who set their faces truly to seek the Lord for the land, in fasting and praying, with faith and sanctification: one of these is more precious than a thousand others, who, notwithstanding all their fighting and disputing for the common cause, do continue to grieve the good Spirit of God, to strengthen the hand of Satan against us, going on, after all these public humiliations, in their wonted course of security, neglecting the mortification of their secret lusts, and all careful walking with God in the spirit of their mind, to any true pleasing.

A second observation might be made on this passage, that Satan his invasion of the godly is most in their worship, and specially in their prayers for the public; as here he resisteth Joshua, when he is standing before God to petition for the ruined estate of Sion.

No wonder the people of God, at these solemn times of public supplications, fall short of their intended services; that their hearts come not up to their desires in the acts of worship; that vageing [wandering, like a vagrant] of mind, hardness of heart, fruitlessness of hearing, lie hardest then upon them: the reason is, Satan’s special attendance at these occasions above any. The ravenous birds wait upon Abraham only at his sacrifice; the fowls go out with the sower to pick up the good seed, to make the word and the worship unprofitable. Our heart of itself is very earthly, carnal, dead, and vain; yet besides all its inward malignity, Satan by his temptations, strives to inspire it at these holy times with so much of his supernatural wickedness, as he is able. It should add to our grief, when our sensible miscarriage in so holy an exercise demonstrateth, not only the presence of a devil with us, but also his prevalence over us for our great hurt: also it is a matter of singular comfort when we get grace to discharge ourselves of these solemn services, in some measure acceptably: when with a spirit enlightened, enlivened, enflamed, melted from above, we get our souls poured out before God, for the public sins, and public distresses: when with an holy, an honest, and vigorous bent-sail of spirit, we have begged mercy, and what else we conceive needful for ourselves and others: when in an attentive and faithful heart, we receive the heavenly seed of the Word, and feel ourselves thereby strengthened to walk in the ways of God, to mourn for, and fight against the corruptions of our heart, and life. This is a matter of joy for this cause among others, that hereby we obtain a sensible victory over that strong spirit, who hath not been able, as oft at other times, to deprive us of the comfort and fruit of the worship. Christ who at such a time maketh thee clearly victorious over Satan, shall shortly make thee to triumph, and tread him under thy feet.

A third observations might here also be pointed at, if time did not strait; Satan his special malice is against Joshua the high priest; his special enmity is against the servants of God’s house; the messenger of Satan buffeteth Paul; it was Peter and the apostles that Satan sought to winnow, and sift as wheat.

The reason is, they are the Pastors of God’s flock; when the shepherd is stricken, the flock will be scattered: they are the stewards of God’s house; if the steward become unfaithful, the children of the family will be in danger of starving: they are the officers of God’s army; if the leaders and standard-bearers fall, the soldiers will soon be put to the flight: they are the light of the world, if the lamps be extinguished, the house sitteth in darkness, and the shadow of death: they are the salt of the earth, if they become unsavory, the people are in danger to become a polluted and unsavory sacrifice.

Great care would be had for the assistance and comfort of the servants of God’s house; the people would bear them in their hearts before God, and pray for the abundance of the Spirit of grace upon them: the grace of God on the Pastors, turneth to the benefit of the people; the ointment poured on the head of Aaron dropped down to his feet, and drenched the lowest borders of his garment: when the Lord clothes his priests with righteousness, and salvation, then do all the saints shout aloud for joy: the people not only by their prayers to God would assist and hold up the weary hands of their Pastors, as Aaron and Hur did the hands of Moses; but also, by their loving countenance, their liberal maintenance, their ready obedience, would give them all encouragement, Heb. 13. 17. The watch for your soul; obey them therefore, that they may do their work with joy, and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you. When most of the day, and much of the night they have been with God on the Mount for your welfare; when much of their time hath been spent in combating with Satan for the safety of your soul, is it meet that they should be grieved, or their hands weakened by your neglect of them, or miscarriage towards them?

Doubtless it will be the special care of this religious and wise Senate, to establish such orders in all this land for the house of God, that his ministers shall be encouraged to set themselves with all cheerfulness about the salvation of the people’s souls: your Honours will so provide it, that the Pastors shall have nothing to do but with God and with souls, and with devils, to hold off by their spiritual weapons these roaring lions from their flocks: questionless your pieties will procure so much due respect, and so honourable a maintenance for every servant of God in this land, that without disquietness of mind, or solicitude for the things of this world, they may wait wholly on their spiritual charges: the pagan princes of old, the Turkish this day, the ancient Popish Parliaments, and the late prelatical, have demonstrate their care for that which they esteemed the service of their God: it will be very far from this most hopeful of all Parliaments, for which the Lord hath already done so many and so great things, which also for time to come hath so much need of the special assistance, and singular help of God, that they should in this so natural, so reasonable, so Christian a duty towards the servants of God, be any ways lacking. Most wisely, and with all reason, have they procured the lamps of the house of God to be set in such posture, as their light may best shine to the use of men: stars, though otherwise great, and full of light, if they move in too high a sphere, become either invisible, or of an obscure and bad light, for little use to men below upon earth: the Pastors of God’s house, when they stand too high in worldly pomp above the people, their light in so great a distance vanisheth, and scarce is visible to men so far below them. Yet it would be carefully considered, that the lights of the house of God be not too much brought down, and set too low; to put them under a bushel, to set them under the feet of the family, were to mar their shining, and hinder the communication of their light.

Above all, great care would be used, that when the superfluity of oil which did choke and extinguish, rather than maintain the light of some lamps, shall be diverted unto better employment, nevertheless that no candle of God, in any part of this land, be permitted to languish, much less to die for want of so much oil as is requisite for a convenient subsistence. But a word to wise men, and half a word of this kind to men so religious, and zealous for the house of God, is enough.

So much for the impediments which Satan made to the reparation of Sion: now follows their removal, in the which are three things, 1. A Preface, The Lord said unto Satan. 2. The mean whereby these impediments were removed, and that opposition quashed, Christ’s cursing of Satan, or his prayer to the Father to rebuke and repress him. 3. Two reasons of this rebuke, 1. Jerusalem’s election, then her great sufferings. For shortness, we shall only give a brief paraphrase of all the words together, without long exposition. And for doctrine, we shall touch but on some few observations, which for use we shall remit to your own meditation.

As for the preface, the Lord said unto Satan: angels and devils communicate with God, and one with another, not by speeches, for language requires bodily instruments, which these spirits want: but as they apprehend every object without senses, so they express what they have apprehended without language, in a way above our human nature, which we do not understand. However, in this place, and elsewhere oft, whereby way of vision the communication of one spirit with another is represented, for our apprehension all is set down in speeches, as the ordinary way wherein men communicate their thoughts one to another.

The Lord said unto Satan: he who before was called an Angel, is here named the Lord, even Christ, as we shewed before, the Lord and Creator of all, the heir (even as he is man) of all; for there is one God, and one Lord, the man Jesus, to whom the Father hath given a Name above all names, and hath set all things under his feet, principalities and powers themselves to be his servants, and he their Lord and God.

The matter of his speech is an invocation of the Father to reprove Satan: the Lord speaketh to the Lord, the Son of the Father: so the words of the Psalm are to be taken, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand: and that of Genesis, The Lord rained down fire upon Sodom from the Lord. The Son leadeth to the Father, as to the fountain of the Godhead, and all divine ordinances; which importeth no diversity of essence, substance, or matter in the Trinity, but only a distinction of Persons, and an heavenly Order in these Persons, as in Being, so in Operation; the Father being the first, the Son the second, the Spirit the third; but all equally infinite in Glory, Power, Eternity, and all divine attributes; in these there is no inequality, no posteriority among them: this now is to be believed from diverse Scriptures, but not to be thoroughly understood, till afterwards, when we shall see God, as we are seen of Him.

The rebuking of Satan imports not only a bitter and sharp reproof of his malice, to his confusion and shame, but also a restraint and cohabitation of his power, by the merciful and strong hand of the Father. This is repeated, because of Christ his zeal to Jerusalem’s welfare, and his detestation of Satan’s wicked designs against her.

The first reason of that reproof is, the Lord’s choosing of Jerusalem to be the place of his worship, and habitation of his Church: Satan had the rest of the earth for his service; but, not content herewith, that one place which the Lord’s Election had reserved for his own little flock, the malice of that unreasonable spirit would not leave to God.

The other reason, that same one place, that one poor people which God had chosen out of all the families of the earth to be his peculiar treasure, had been cast in the fiery furnace of heavy tribulation, and was but lately drawn out of the fire; that merciless spirit the devil, nothing satisfied with all the miseries of Jerusalem, went about to procure her utter destruction, and burning down to ashes, that so on the whole earth there should have been left none at all to serve the Lord: but Christ remembering his Election, and having compassion upon their former sufferings, defendeth their cause, poureth shame on the malice of Satan, restraineth his power, chaseth him away, that he may no longer retard the welfare of his people.

From the preface, observe the great patience and long-suffering of Christ; he holdeth his peace long, and when he speaketh at last to Satan, it is but to rebuke him. This evil spirit had seduced and destroyed the souls well-near of the whole world, he standeth here before the Lord for to swallow up the small remnant: did not such horrible wickedness require a present destruction from the Lord’s hand? and not a reproof only from his mouth.

Consider well the Lord his way of proceeding with all the wicked, both men and devils: there is a time appointed for their full destruction, and till that day come, the Lord holdeth his peace; if he break out in words or deeds against them, it is but in a small degree of wrath, in comparison of what is following. Satan is reserved in chains till the last day, where he is to be bound, and cast in the lake: one of these spirits could say unto Christ, Art thou come to torment us before the time? When the wicked are most proud and insolent, God laugheth at them, for he seeth their day is coming; the day of their vengeance, the year of recompense, the morning, the hour of their calamity.

All of us would consider the state of our soul, the abominations which conscience telleth us we are guilty of: think them not forgotten with God, though he keep silence, and permit us to go on in the ways of our own heart, without trouble; or if he reprove, it is but by his Word; now and then in the publick Ministry chopping upon the slippery and half dead heart: you see in this place he dealeth no otherwise with the very devil; but be persuaded there is a time coming for a more severe reckoning. The seventh of Ezekiel is often to be read by a secure people, the sixth verse, An end is come, the end is come, it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come, the morning is come upon thee, the time is come, the day of trouble is near, and not the sounding of the mountains: in that one verse the coming of the day of vengeance is five or six times proclaimed: happy are these who make use of the day of their merciful visitation: the Lord hath been wonderfully good to us; the war [i.e., the civil war] hath taken away the estates of many thousands, the sword hath bereaved many of their lives, we are yet safe; but can we tell how long? manage well this happy day of grace, humble your soul before the Lord, make peace with him without further delay; mourn for your known faults; set yourselves to amend the evil of your doings, that you may be spared in the fearful day of the Lord’s wrath, when the sword of the field, the famine and pestilence of the city, may make havoc of people without number. Blessed are they, who after so many warnings from the mouth of God in his Word, from the hand of God in his works, have learned at last to be wise for their own great good.

Upon the reproof, observe first, the only way to remove all impediments and oppositions to the reparation of a Church and State, is Christ his intercession with the Father against the devil. That which hindered Joshua and Zerubbabel to build the temple, to fortify Jerusalem, was that active spirit, which moved and stirred up all the malignant instruments that appeared against them: the Jews till this time were never able to overcome their enemies; but behold, so soon as Christ taketh the work in hand, so soon as he rebuketh and restrained Satan the principal enemy, incontinent all the inferior instruments on earth, all these malignant men and women did fail and succumb, they were no more able to trouble God’s people in their work.

This is the ground of our hope and comfort, in the midst of so huge difficulties as this day on all sides beset us, how shall our Sion be gotten builded? when we look to the opposers, their strength is exceeding great, a mighty faction of declared Papists, a great number of Episcopal Clergy, and people openly joining with Papists against us, and both avowedly supported by sovereign authority: also a multitude of sects, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Separatists, and others, pushed on by a deluded conscience, to oppose with all their skill, with all their might, all solid Reformation: beside all the former, a great number in all ranks and estates, profane and loose persons, exceeding unwilling to behold the settling of any order which may control them with any power in their wonted licentiousness.

Concerning the walls of Jerusalem, the establishing of justice and peace in the civil state; with what insuperable difficulties this work is compassed, woeful experience doth teach. A mighty faction of lawless men, who have drawn away, partly by persuasion, and partly by force, a great part of the people, the greatest part of the nobles, and sovereign authority itself: this faction of itself very potent, is also supported with the help that foreign friends are able to afford: and, which is more than all yet named, and more terrible than all flesh and blood, we have to do with principalities and powers, who act and guide, with all the craft and force they are able, our human adversaries: and, which is yet the greatest strength of all, the grievous sins of the land, which provoke the Lord God to be on the side of our enemies, men and devils, to strengthen their arm against us.

The sight of these mountains of impediments would discourage the stoutest heart, if above them all we did not see our merciful high priest entreating the Father for the remission of our sins, for the rebuking of Satan, with all vehemency: the favor we know the Son hath with the Father, will make him obtain all his desires. Surely, when these are obtained, when the sins of the land remitted, and Satan restrained, all other impediments will soon be removed: when the soul is separate from the body, the members languish, and cannot more stir: when Christ hath confounded Satan, men his instruments will quickly either be persuaded, or forced to reason: it is in vain to deal with men, so long as a malignant spirit be stopped: our first and main labor would be with Christ, to restrain Satan, for he is the life that vegetates, he is the spirit that stirs up all our opposites both in Church and State.

Observe again how Christ in his debate with Satan, hath recourse to the Father, that he would rebuke him, the Son honoureth the Father, he seeketh not his own glory, but the honour of the Father, the Father and the Son are one, for all these three that witness in Heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, are one true God; yet this is the Order of the divine Persons, that the Father is the first, the Son and the Spirit are both from him, the Son from eternity begotten of him, the Spirit from eternity proceeding from him and from the Son.

So long as the veil of flesh covereth the eyes of our soul, we must not inquire too curiously in this unsearchable mystery: Elias wrapped his face in his mantle when the Lord passed by him: God will not be gazed upon, he dischargeth it expressly under the pain of death. The malapert and irreverent boldness of sundry divines, subjecting to the soul feet of their idle speculations, the deepest and most inaccessible mysteries of the holy Trinity, is justly plagued with evident and foolish error: their eyes who will gaze on the sun in the noon day, cannot but be dazzled; and if that madness continue, blindness and excæcation [a making blind] unavoidable will follow: faith here, if anywhere, is the mother of modesty, the companion of simplicity and reverence; it setteth us limits at the foot of the mountain in a far distance, which we must not break through: when we do behold with the most open face, the Godhead, we must be looking on our glass; the eye must never wander from the spectacles of the Word: only what we see of God, let it be holden fast against all contradiction. Worship the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; one true God, three truly distinct Persons, whereof the Father is the first, the Son the second; this Person alone is incarnate, uniting in the fulness of time to his divine Person, the nature of man: the Holy Ghost is the third, and yet all three are equal in glory, in eternal, and every divine attribute.

Hold fast in thy mind these plain catechetic scriptural notions of God: beware to make to thyself an idol in thy brain, to frame a false, erroneous and unwritten conception of the true God: if thou worship the Trinity as three diverse gods, thou becomest a pagan, abolishing, by the multitude of gods, the unity of the divine nature: if thou apprehend God so much one, as not three Persons, thou turnest Turk, a Jew, an old Arian and Macedonian heretic; and, which is all these in one, a Socinian, a real Atheist: for it is Christ’s own conclusion, who honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father, which hath sent him. The neglect, the contempt, the denial of any one Person, reflecteth alike on all the three, and the whole Godhead.

A third observation upon the reproof, if time did permit, would be the holy and gracious practice of Christ in his honest zeal; he bringeth no false, no railing accusation against the devil himself; the farthest he goeth against this arch-enemy, is to commit him to God to be rebuked: lies, calumnies, railings against the devil are inexcusable, and would not be countenanced: it is a foolish policy, and a profane zeal, to advance the cause of God by the arts of the devil: lying calumnies, malicious bitterness, are hellish weapons; a gracious hand must not take them up, were it against their very author: the arsenal of God is not so unprovided of lawful arms, his quiver not so disfurnished of his own arrows, that we need go borrow from Ashkelon or Gath, from hell itself, these poisoned darts, dipped in the venom of asps, in the blood of that old serpent, the father of lies, the great calumniator from the beginning.

A fourth observation; God rebuketh Satan before his final destruction; his children in this are heirs to their father; after a little time, death will put all the wicked in a full possession of their inheritance; their souls first; and after the resurrection, their bodies also shall be placed in these lakes of fire: but before, they are to be enfeoffed and seized; they are to have the earnest of their fathers portion; they are to be rebuked of God, their secret wickedness is to be brought to light, their well-covered villainies to be proclaimed on the house tops; shame and confusion to be poured on their faces; their malice and violence is to be restrained, their pushing horns to be hammered off, by the carpenters; Satan and they will be cooped up within so narrow a circle, and be bound with so short a chain, that all may understand they are rebuked of God.

Also it would be a comfortable consideration to meditate on the zeal of Christ for Sion, against all her enemies: he speaketh here as a man in a passion, repeating and ingeminating his angry words, the Lord rebuke thee, even the Lord rebuke thee: the Lord proclaimeth the sounding of his bowels, before he got flesh; the tenderness of his compassion towards the Church, before his incarnation. Certainly, the sympathy of his heart, and his fellow feeling with us in all our afflictions, is not now diminished, but rather (if possible) increased after his experimental knowledge of the earth, in his own person, of these evils which Satan and wicked men inflict upon the godly.

From the reasons which the Lord useth for Satan’s reproof, we may behold the devil his end, and intention in molesting of Joshua; the thing he seeketh is the overthrow of Jerusalem. Satan driveth most at the eversion of the publick; therefore the preservation of the publick ought to go nearest our heart: many seek their own things, and not these of Jesus Christ; they mind themselves much more, then either Church or State. This self-wisdom is foolish, for if the ship wherein thou sailest, be drowned, what will become of thy goods; if the house wherein thou art locked, be burnt, how shall thy life be saved.

From the first reason the choosing of Jerusalem observe, that Election is a principal ground of comfort against all Satan's temptations. True, the difference is wide betwixt a national and personal Election, betwixt the choice of Jerusalem, or any other place to be the seat and habitation of the Church; and betwixt the Election of persons to grace and glory; this I may not stand to clear, only strive to make our personal Election sure; for upon the grounded assurance thereof, we come to a glorious confidence, that no creature, neither Satan, nor the world, nor conscience, nor any other shall ever be able to confound us? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s Elect? It is God that justifieth: who is he that condemneth: it is Christ that died. One of the sweetest private fruits of such a day’s exercise, is to get our calling, and our Election sealed: verily, a penitent soul who thoroughly hath mourned for sin, and fled to Christ for mercy; who hath gotten of his Spirit for a real and sincere beginning of a thorough sanctification, and amendment in everything, which either within or without hath been amiss: a soul this far proceeded in grace, useth to receive the stamp of the Spirit; the inward unction and witness, that they are the Sons of God, Elect, and called; who shall be glorified, after they have suffered awhile, to such an entrance useth to be ministered abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of Christ.

From the last reason, take but some few brief notes. Jerusalem the Church of God, and Joshua the chief member of it for the time, were like a stick half burnt in the fire of the Babylonish Captivity: out of that fire they were pulled in God’s mercy, to be preserved against all the malicious assaults of Satan, and his instruments. From hence you see that best beloved people of God, by the devil and wicked men, may be brought exceeding low, and so near to utter destruction, as a stick burning in the fire, is to ashes: so it was with Israel in Egypt, in Babel, and oft elsewhere. We therefore in our most desperate cases, must not despair; the burning bush will not be consumed, God hath promised to be with us, in fire and water: one like the Son of man walketh in the fiery furnace with the three children. When to the eye of the world our condition is most desperate, when sense maketh us cry out, my strength and my hope is perished from the Lord, they have cut of my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me; yet faith will quickly correct sense, and make us subjoin; it is good for a man to have hope, and quietly to wait for salvation of the Lord; and when we are lying among the pots, to wait for the time, when we shall be as the wings of the dove, covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.

Secondly, consider the exceeding great terror of God, when he is angry, his wrath burneth like fire; it maketh the green tree to be like a burnt stick, what will it do to the dry; it maketh the most godly to become like a bottle in the smoke; it drieth up their strength like a potsherd; it turned their moisture into the draught of summer, knowing the terror of the Lord be persuaded to make peace with him in time; venture not on his hot displeasure. The tasting of the forbidden apple will cost thee wonderful dear, though (which yet in the act of sin, without madness cannot be supposed) thou should be certain to escape hell.

Thirdly, the Church here is a brand pulled out of the fire, a firebrand to burn her enemies to ashes, it is exceeding unhappy to be an instrument of the Church’s trouble. Though God be angry with his people, and he be very just in casting them in the fiery furnace of his wrath, yet woe to all these who are bellows, or fuel to that fire, who do vex the Church in anyway. Our prophet Zachary in his twelfth chapter sheweth, that to all these who had taken up Jerusalem and the people of God, to cast them away from their habitation, as a stone out of a sling. To all these, I say, Jerusalem became a heavy, and a burdensome stone, to cut and to crush them in pieces. Her neighbors thought to have swallowed her down quick, and to have drunk her oft as a potion of sweet wine; but she becometh to them a cup of trembling, a draught of poison, which maketh them tremble, stagger, and fall without rising; and which is the metaphor of our text, the people of God become a torch of fire in a sheaf, to devour all their enemies round about, on the right hand and on the left.

Nebuchadnezzar’s image, when the little stone did fall upon its feet, was not only broken all to pieces, but also made like the chaff, and was carried away so violently by the wind, that no place was found for any part thereof: all the persecutors of the Saints have miscarried for this cause, above any other: the greatest monarchies and kingdoms that have been upon the earth, are vanished, and no relics of them appear this day. None who are wise will touch the people of the Lord, for they are the apple of God’s eye, the hurt whereof he cannot but avenge. It is extreme[ly] dangerous to be employed by God himself in the chastising of his children; for usually when the Lord returneth in mercy to embrace his chastised child, the rods of his anger, and staves of his indignation are cast in the fire, till they be burnt to ashes.

Lastly, consider the merciful reasoning of the angel: Jerusalem is a brand well-near consumed in the fire of God’s wrath, and therefore ought to be pitied, and freed from further trouble. How extremely contrary is this to Satan’s logic, and his instruments’ conclusions? they add affliction to the most afflicted; they press most the godly, when they find them weakest, and on the brink of ruin; we have their language in Ps. 71. 11. God hath forsaken him, persecute and take him, for there is none to deliver him: it is then when they say, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel be no more in remembrance. Long sufferings, and extreme misery are to Satan and wicked men provocations of further persecution; but to God they be arguments of favor and deliverance: hence it is, that the godly lay out before the face of God in their mourning their sufferings to the full, as most pregnant incitements to compassion: behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger; under the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon Jerusalem. The Lord alloweth us to spread out before him all the matter of our present grief, and of our future fears, hereby, as it were, to stir up the compassionate bowels of his mercy: we would be crying to him, not only to pull the tree of our Church and State out of that fire which hath already burnt up very many branches, and is like, if not quickly quenched, to go the very root; but further we would be earnest for that burnt stick, when it is pulled out of the flame, that the dews of heaven, and the sunshine of divine favor, may fall so plentifully upon it, that it may yet again flourish, and bring forth fruits better and more abundant than ever, and it may become a pleasant and fruitful vine, under whose shadow we all may lie down in peace, enjoying the blessings of God, and singing with a loud voice his praises for our deliverance from all our present afflictions.

FINIS.

tags Robert Baillie

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SATAN THE Leader in chief to all who resist THE REPARATION OF SION.

April 27, 2021James Dodson

As it was cleared in a Sermon to the

Honourable House of Commons at their

late solemn fast, Feb. 28, 1643.

For the Right Worshipful, his

much honoured friend, Mr. Rous,

one of the Members of the Honourable

House of COMMONS.

A SERMON

Preached before

The Honourable House

OF

C O M M O N S,

At the publick FAST,

Feb. 28, 1643.

FINIS.

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SATAN THE Leader in chief to all who resist THE REPARATION OF SION.

April 27, 2021James Dodson

As it was cleared in a Sermon to the

Honourable House of Commons at their

late solemn fast, Feb. 28, 1643.

For the Right Worshipful, his

much honoured friend, Mr. Rous,

one of the Members of the Honourable

House of COMMONS.

A SERMON

Preached before

The Honourable House

OF

C O M M O N S,

At the publick FAST,

Feb. 28, 1643.

FINIS.