the author of the Ordinary Gloss. "To believe in God through Jesus Christ, is, by believing to love him, to adhere to him, to be united to him by charity and obedience, and to be incorporated into Christ's mystical body in the communion of saints." I conclude this with a collation of certain excellent words of St. Paul, highly to the present purpose: "Examine yourselves, brethren, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves." Well, but how? "Know

ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" There is the touchstone of faith. If Jesus Christ dwells in us, then we are true believers; if he does not, we are reprobates, we have no faith. But how shall we know, whether Christ be in us or no? St. Paul tells us that, too; "If Christ be in you, the body is dead, by reason of sin; but the spirit is life, because of righteousness."" That is the Christian's mark, and the characteristic of a true believer; a death unto sin, and a living unto righteousness: a mortified body, and a quickened spirit. This is plain enough; and by this we see what we must trust to. A man of a wicked life does in vain hope to be saved by his faith; for indeed his faith is but equivocal and dead, which, as to his purpose, is just none at all; and therefore let him no more deceive himself. For, that I may still use the words of St. Paul, “This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works." For such, and such only, in the great scrutiny for faith in the day of doom, shall have their portion in the bosom of faithful, Abraham.

Ο

THE PRAYER.

I.

O eternal God, fountain of all truth and holiness, in whom to believe is life eternal; let thy grace descend with a mighty power into my soul, beating down every strong hold and vainer imagination, and bringing every proud thought, and

I Credere in Deum est credendo amare, credendo diligere, credendo in eum ire, et membris ejus incorporari.-Gloss. Ord. in Rom. 4.

m 2 Cor. xiii. 5.

n Rom. viii. 10.

• Titus, iii. 8.

my confident and ignorant understanding, into the obedience of Jesus. Take from me all disobedience and refractoriness of spirit, all ambition, and private and baser interests; remove from me all prejudice and weakness of persuasion, that I may wholly resign my understanding to the persuasions of Christianity, acknowledging thee to be the principle of truth, and thy word the measure of knowledge, and thy laws the rule of my life, and thy promises the satisfaction of my hopes, and an union with thee to be the consummation of charity, in the fruition of glory. Amen.

II.

Holy Jesus, make me to acknowledge thee to be my Lord and Master, and myself a servant and disciple of thy holy discipline and institution; let me love to sit at thy feet, and suck in with my ears and heart the sweetness of thy holy sermons. Let my soul be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, with a peaceable and docile disposition. Give me great boldness in the public confession of thy name and the truth of thy Gospel in despite of all hostilities and temptations. And grant I may always remember, that thy name is called upon me, and I may so behave myself that I neither give scandal to others, nor cause disreputation to the honour of religion; but that thou mayest be glorified in me, and I by thy mercies, after a strict observance of all the holy laws of Christianity. Amen.

III.

O holy and ever-blessed Spirit, let thy gracious influences be the perpetual guide of my rational faculties; inspire me with wisdom and knowledge, spiritual understanding, and a holy faith; and sanctify my faith, that it may arise up to the confidence of hope and the adherences of charity, and be fruitful in a holy conversation. Mortify in me all peevishness and pride of spirit, all heretical dispositions, and whatsoever is contrary to sound doctrine; that when the eternal Son of God, the "author and finisher of our faith," shall come to make scrutiny, and an inquest for faith, I may receive the promises laid up for them that

believe in the Lord Jesus, and wait for his coming in holiness and purity: to whom, with the Father and thee, O blessed Spirit, be all honour and eternal adoration paid, with all sanctity, and joy, and eucharist, now and for ever. Amen.

SECTION XI.

Of Christ's going to Jerusalem to the Passover, the first time after his Manifestation, and what followed, till the Expiration of the Office of John the Baptist.

1. IMMEDIATELY after this miracle Jesus abode a few days in Capernaum, but because of the approach of the great feast of passover, he ascended to Jerusalem; and the first public act of record that he did was an act of holy zeal and religion in behalf of the honour of the temple. For divers merchants and exchangers of money made the temple to be the market and the bank, and brought beasts thither to be sold for sacrifice against the great paschal solemnity. At the sight of which, Jesus, being moved with zeal and indignation, "made a whip of cords, and drave the beasts out of the temple, overthrew the accounting tables, and commanded them that sold the doves to take them from thence." For his anger was holy, and he would mingle no injury with it; and therefore the doves, which, if let loose, would be detrimental to the owners, he caused to be fairly removed; and published the religion of holy places, establishing their sacredness for ever, by his first Gospel-sermon that he made at Jerusalem. "Take these things hence: make not my Father's house a house of merchandise; for it shall be called a house of prayer to all nations." And being required to give a sign of his vocation (for this being an action like the religion of the zealots among the Jews, if it was not attested by something extraordinary, might be abused into an excess of liberty), he only foretold the resurrection of his body after three days' death, but he expressed it in the metaphor of the temple: "Destroy this temple, and I will build it again in three days. He spake of the temple of his body ;" and they

understood him of the temple at Jerusalem; and it was never rightly construed till it was accomplished.

2. At this public convention of the Jewish nation, Jesus did many miracles, published himself to be the Messias, and persuaded many disciples, amongst whom was Nicodemus, a doctor of the law, and a ruler of the nation: "he came by night to Jesus," and affirmed himself to be convinced by the miracles which he had seen; for " no man could do those miracles, except God be with him." When Jesus perceived his understanding to be so far disposed, he began to instruct him in the great secret and mysteriousness of regeneration, telling him "that every production is of the same nature and condition with its parent; from flesh comes flesh and corruption, from the Spirit comes spirit, and life, and immortality; and nothing from a principle of nature could arrive to a supernatural end; and therefore the only door to enter into the kingdom of God, was water, by the manuduction of the Spirit; and by this regeneration we are put into a new capacity of living a spiritual life in order to a spiritual and supernatural end.”

3. This was strange philosophy to Nicodemus; but Jesus bade him not to wonder: for this is not a work of humanity but a fruit of God's Spirit, and an issue of predestination. For the Spirit bloweth where it listeth,' and is, as the wind, certain and notorious in the effects, but secret in the principle and in the manner of production. And therefore this doctrine was not to be estimated by any proportions to natural principles or experiments of sense, but to the secrets of a new metaphysic, and abstracted separate speculations. Then Christ proceeds in his sermon, telling him there are yet higher things for him to apprehend and believe; for this, in respect of some other mysteriousness of his Gospel, was but as earth in comparison of heaven. Then he tells of his own descent from heaven, fortells his death and ascension, and the blessing of redemption, which he came to work for mankind; he preaches of the love of the Father, the mission of the Son, the rewards of faith, and the glories of eternity; he upbraids the unbelieving and impenitent, and declares the differences. of a holy and corrupt conscience, the shame and fears of the one, the confidence and serenity of the other." And this is the sum of his sermon to Nicodemus, which was the fullest

of mystery and speculation, and abstracted senses, of any that he ever made, except that which he made immediately before his passion; all his other sermons being more practical.

4. From Jerusalem, Jesus goeth into the country of Judea, attended by divers disciples, whose understandings were brought into subjection and obedience to Christ, upon confidence of the divinity of his miracles. There his disciples did receive all comers, and baptized them, as John at the same time did; and by that ceremony admitted them to the discipline and institution, according to the custom of the doctors and great prophets among the Jews, whose baptizing their scholars was the ceremony of their admission. As soon as John heard it he acquitted himself in public, by renewing his former testimony concerning Jesus; affirming him "to be the Messias, and now the time was come that Christ must increase, and the Baptist suffer diminution; for Christ came from above, was above all, and the sum of his doctrine was that which he had heard and seen from the Father, whom God sent to that purpose, to whom God had set his seal, that he was true who spake the words of God, whom the Father loved, to whom he gave the Spirit without measure, and into whose hands God had delivered all things; this was he whose testimony the world received not." And that they might know not only what person they slighted, but how great salvation also they neglected, he sums up all his sermons, and finishes his mission with this saying; "He that believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not on the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him."a

5. For now that the Baptist had fulfilled his office of bearing witness unto Jesus, God was pleased to give him his writ of ease, and bring him to his reward upon this occasion. John, who had so learned to despise the world and all its exterior vanities and impertinent relations, did his duty justly, and so without respect of persons, that as he reproved the people for their prevarications, so he spared not Herod for his; but abstaining from all expresses of the spirit of scorn and asperity, mingling no discontents, interests, nor mutinous intimations with his sermons, he told Herod, "it was not

a John, iii, 36.