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for the Lord. Hath any man true Piety and Devotion? let him, like a flaming brand, enkindle the next. Thus, thus shall we approve ourselves the sons of that Infinite and Communicative Light. Thus shall we so have fellowship with the God, who is Light; that, shining like him and from him here in grace, we may shine with him hereafter above in everlasting glory which the same God grant to us, for the sake of the Son of his Love, Jesus Christ the Righteous: To whom, with Thee, O God the Father, and Thy Blessed Spirit, One Infinite and Incomprehensible Lord, be given all praise, honour, and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

SERMON XXXIII.

THE MISCHIEF OF FACTION, AND THE

REMEDY OF IT.

LAID FORTH IN A SERMON BEFORE HIS MAJESTY, IN THE COURT-YARD AT WHITEHALL, ON THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT, 1641.

BY JOSEPH EXON.

PSALM 1x. 2.

Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof, for it shaketh.

My Text is a complaint; and a suit: a complaint of an evil; and a suit for a remedy: an evil deplored; and an implored redress.

The evil complained of is double: the concussion or unsettlement of the state of Israel; and the division of it. For, it hath been the manner of the prophets, when they would speak high, to express spiritual things by the height of natural allusions; fetched from those great bodies of heaven, sea, earth; the most conspicuous and noted pieces of God's Almighty Workmanship.

It were to no purpose to exemplify, where the instances are numberless. Open your Bibles where you will, in all the Sapiential or Prophetical books, your eyes cannot look beside them.

And thus it is here. I suppose no man can be so weak, as to think David intends here a philosophical history of earthquakes; although these dreadful events, in their due times and places, are worthy of no less than a prophet's, either notice or admiration, But here, it is not in his way. It is an analogical, moral, or political earthquake, that David here speaks of: and so our usual and ancient Psalter Translation takes it well; while, for , the Earth, it reads the Land, by a just synecdoche; and, for making the Earth to tremble, reads moving the Land; and, for broken, reads divided; and, for breaches, sores: so as, by comparing of both translations, the Earth is the Land; the tremblings are the violent motions of it, whether by way of action or passion; the divisions thereof are breaches; and those breaches, sores; which the hand of God both makes and heals.

Shortly, then, here is, first, An EARTHQUAKE, such as it is; se

condly, The EFFECTS of that Earthquake; breaches, or sores: thirdly, The AUTHOR of both; Thou hast made the Earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: fourthly, The REMEDY of both: with the Author of it; Heal thou the sores, or breaches; and, lastly, the Motive of the remedy; for it shaketh.

The Text falls into these parts so naturally, that there is none of you, who hear me this day, but were able to divide it for me: which I shall desire to follow, with all perspicuous brevity, and profitable enforcement.

I. And, first; hear and consider, that the motions of the distempers or public calamities of states, are EARTHQUAKES; either, or both for this earthquake is either out of a fear or sense of judgment, or out of the strife of contrary affections; the one we may call a Passive, the other an Active earthquake.

1. Earthquakes, we know, are strange and unnatural things. There is no part of all God's great creation save the earth, that is ordained for rest and stability. The waters are in perpetual agitation of flux and refluxes: even when no wind stirs, they have their neap and spring tides. The air cannot stand still, while the heavens whirl about. The heavens, or any part of them, never stood still, but once, since they were made. But the earth was made for fixedness and stability. Hence ye find so oft mention of the foundations of the earth: and the stile of it is, nescia moveri, The earth that cannot be moved; and, that stands fast for ever. And, therefore, for the earth to move, it is no less prodigy, than for the heavens to stand still.

Neither is it more rare, than formidable. If we should see the heavens stand still but one hour, we should, as we well might, expect a dissolution of all things: neither hath it less horror in it, to feel the earth stagger under us. Whose hair doth not start up at this trepidation? And, the more a man knows, the more is his astonishment. He hangeth the earth upon nothing; saith Job; xxvi. 7. For a man to feel the earth, that hangs upon nothing, but as some vast ball in the midst of a thin yielding air, totter under him; how can his soul choose, but be possessed with a secret fright and confusion? Methinks, I tremble but to think of such a trembling.

Such are the distempers and public calamities of states, though even of particular kingdoms: but, so much more as they are more universal, they are both unnatural and dreadful. They are politicly unnatural: for, as the end of all motion is rest, so the end of all civil and spiritual agitations is peace and settledness. The very name of a State implies so much: which is, we know, a stando; from standing, and not from moving. The man riding upon the red horse which stood among the myrtle trees; Zech. i. 11. describes the condition of a peaceful government: Behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest. And Micah. They shall sit still every man under his vine and fig tree, and none shall make them afraid; Micah iv. 4. Particular men's affairs are like the clouds: public government is as the earth. The clouds are always in motion: it were strange for any of them to stand still in one point of the air; so it were to see pri

vate men's occasions void of some movings of quarrels or change. The public state is or should be as the earth, a great and solid body, whose chief praise is settledness and consistence. Now, therefore, when public stirs and tumults arise in a well ordered Church or Commonwealth, the State is out of the socket: or, when common calamities of war, famine, pestilence seize upon it; then, the hearts of men quake and shiver within them; then, is our prophet's earthquake, which is here spoken of: Thou hast made the earth to tremble.

1. To begin with the PASSIVE MOTIONS, OF PUBLIC CALAMITIES; they are the shakings of our earth. So God intends them: so must we account them, and make use of them accordingly. What are we, I mean all the visible part of us, but a piece of earth? Besides, therefore, that magnetical virtue, which is operative upon all the parts of it, why should or can a piece stand still, when the whole moveth?

Denominations are wont to be, not from the greater, but the better part; and the best part of this earthen world is man: and, therefore, when men are moved, we say the earth is so; and, when the earth in a generality is thus moved, good reason we should be so also. We must tremble, therefore, when God makes the earth to do so. What shall we say then to those obdured hearts, which are no whit affected with public evils? Surely, he were a bold man, that could sleep, while the earth rocks him; and so were he, that could give himself to a stupid security, when he feels any vehement concussations of government, or public hand of God's afflictive judgment. But it falls out too usually, that, as the philosopher said in matter of affairs, so it is in matter of calamities, Communia negliguntur. Men are like Jonas in the storm, sleep it out, though it mainly concern them: surely, besides that we are men, bound up each in his own skin, we are limbs of a community; and that body is no less entire and consistent of all his members, than this natural: and no less sensible should we be of any evil that afflicts it. If but the least toe do ache, the head feels it; but, if the whole body be in pain, much more do both head and feet feel it. Tell me, can it be, that, in a common earthquake, any house can be free; or, is the danger less, because the neighbours' roofs rattle also? Yet, too many men, because they suffer not alone, neither are singled out for vengeance, are insensible of God's hand: surely, such men, as cannot be shaken with God's judgment, are fit for the centre, the lowest parts of the earth, where there is a constant and eternal unrest; not for the surface of it, which looks towards a hea ven, where are interchanges of good and evil.

It is notable and pregnant, which the prophet Isaiah hath: hear it, all ye secure hearts, and tremble. In that day did the Lord of Hosts call to weeping, and mourning, and baldness, and girding with sackcloth; and, behold, joy and gladness, slaying of oxen, and killing of sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine. And what of that? Surely, this iniquity shall not be purged till you die, saith the Lord God of Hosts. What shall we say to this, Honourable and Beloved?

Wherefore hath God given us his good creatures, but that we should enjoy them? Doth not Solomon tell us, there is nothing better than that a man should eat, and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labour? Eccl. ii. 24. And why is God so incensed against Israel for doing what he allows them? Know then, that it is not the act, but the time, that God stands upon. Very unseasonableness is criminal: here and now, comforts are sins: to be jovial, when God calls to mourning; to glut our maw, when he calls to fasting; to glitter, when he would have us sackclothed and squalid; he hates it to the death: here we may say with Solomon, Of laughter thou art mad, and of mirth what is this thou doest? He grudges not our moderate and seasonable jollities: there is an Ope-tide by his allowance, as well as a Lent. Go thy ways: eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart, for now God accepteth thy work. Lo, God's acceptation is warrant enough for our mirth. Now, may his saints rejoice and sing; but there is a time to mourn, and a time to dance. It was a strange word, that God had to the prophet Ezekiel, That he would take away from him his wife, the comfort of his life, and yet he must not mourn: but, surely, when he but threats to take away from us the public comforts of our peace and common welfare, he would have us weep out our eyes; and doth no less hate that our hearts should be quiet within us, than he hates that we should give him so just cause of our disquiet. Here the prophet can cry out, Quis dabit capiti meo aquas? And how doth the mournful prophet now pour out himself into Lamentations; How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Sion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel! Lam. ii. 1. Oh, that our hearts could rive in sunder, at but the dangers of those public judgments, which we have too well deserved, and be less sensible of our private concernments! then should we make a right use of that dreadful hand of God, of whom our prophet here, Thou hast made the earth to tremble.

2. This for the Passive earthquake of Public Calamities: now for the ACTIVE, OF PUBLIC STIRS AND TUMULTS: with these the land is moved too: and this quaking is so much more unnatural, for that men are here the immediate troublers of themselves; whereas, in the other, they are moved by the immediate hand of God.

And here, alas, what shall we say to those men, that take pleasure in the embroiling of states? that, with Nero, can sing to see the city on fire? that love to dance upon a quaking earth? yea, that affect to be actors in these unkindly motitations? That great mathematician braggart could vainly say, "Give me a place where to set my foot, and I will move the earth," That, which that proud engineer would do by art, these men will do by wickedness: that, and more; for they will be moving that earth, which they cannot but tread upon,

I remember Georgias Agricola, who when I was a young man was noted for the most accurate observer of these under-ground secrets of nature, tells us, most probably, that the secondary and immediate cause of an earthquake is a certain subterraneous fire;

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