Works, Book 2 · Part 2 – Section 1
THE REVERENCE OF GODS HOUSE. ECCLESIASTES 5. 1.
Look to thy foot [or feet] when thou comest to the House of God: and be more ready to obey, than to offer the sacrifice of fools; for they know not that they do evil.
SOLOMON, whom God chose to build that sacred and glorious Temple to his Name,[This Sermon was preached at S. Marie's in Cambridge, on S. Man…ias's day, Anno 1635/6.] it hath pleased his holy Spirit to make also our principal Instructor how we ought to demean our selves in such sacred places. This appears, as by that his solemn and famous Prayer made at the Dedication thereof, so also by this Scripture which I have now begun to read; the first seven verses of this Chapter, if we will rightly understand them, being wholly spent upon that argument, and containing precepts and instructions fitted to the several duties of holy worship we are to perform, both at our coming thither, and whilest we remain there.
To unfold them all, were too much for the shortness of the time allotted me: May it please you therefore to vouchsafe me your Christian patience and charitable attention, whilest I utter my thoughts upon the words I have now read. For the better and more distinct explication whereof, consider in them these two parts; An Admonition, and a Caution. 1. An Admonition of reverent and awful demeanour when we come to God's House; Look to thy foot, or feet, when thou comest to the House of God. 2. A Caution, not to prefer the secondary Service of God before the first and principal; Be more ready to obey, than to offer the sacrifice of fools; for they know not that they do evil. In the first, or Admonition, I will consider two things: 1. The Place, God's House; 2. The Duty of those who come thither, Look to thy feet. Of these in order, and first of the Place, God's House.
SECTION I.
THE House of God is the place set apart for his Worship and service, and so hath peculiar Relation unto him; wherewith being invested it becomes sacred and holy; not only whilest Divine duties are performed therein, as some erroneously affirm, but as long as it is for such use; namely, according to the nature of other Sacred things, which continue their state of separateness and sanctity, so long as that relation they have unto God (wherein this Sanctity consists) is not quite abolished.
To erect and set apart such Places as these for the exercise of the Rites of Religion, is derived from the Instinct of Nature, and approved of God from the beginning. It began not with that Tabernacle or ambulatory Temple which Moses caused to be made by God's appointment at Mount Sinai, but was much more ancient. Noah built an Altar as soon as he came out of the Ark… Abraham, Isaac and Iacob, (wheresoever they came to pitch their Tents,) erected Places for Divine worship, (that is, Altars with their septs and enclosures) without any special appointment from God. Iacob in particular vowed a place for Divine worship by the name of God's House, where he would pay the Tithes of all that God should give him, Gen. 28. 19, &c. Lo here a Church endowed. Yea Moses himself (Exod. 33. 7.) before the Ark and that glorious Tabernacle were yet made, pitched a Tabernacle for the same purpose without the Camp, whither every one that sought the Lord was to go. Eccles. 5. 1.And all this was done tanquam recepti moris, as a thing of custom, and as mankind by Tradition had learned to accommodate the Worship of their God, by appropriating some Place to that use; Nature teaching them, that the work was honoured and dignified by the peculiarness of the place appointed for the same; and that if any work were so to be honoured, there was nothing it more beseemed than the Worship and service of Almighty God, the most peculiar and incommunicable act of all other.
Nay more than this; It was believed in those elder times, That that Country or Territory, wherein no Place was set apart for the Worship of God, was unhallowed and unclean. Which, I think, I rightly gather from that Story in the Book of Iosua, of the Altar built by Reuben, Gad and the half Tribe of Manasseh upon the bank of the River Iordan; which Iosua and the Elders, as their words intimate, supposed they had done lest the land of their possession, being by the River Iordan cut off from the land of Canaan, (where the Lord's Tabernacle was) and so having no place therein consecrated to the worship of their God, might otherwise be an unclean and unhallowed habitation. Hear the words of Phinehas and the Princes sent to disswade them (Iosua 22. 19.) and judge whether they import not as I have said. If the land (say they) of your possession be *Note that our Copies of the LXX. here corruptly read foreign for foreign.unclean, then pass ye …ver unto the land of the possession of the LORD, where the LORD'S Tabernacle dwelleth, and take possession amongst us: but rebel not against the LORD, nor against us, in building you an Altar besides the Altar of the LORD your God.
Now concerning the condition and property of Places thus sanctified or hallowed, what it is; whence can we learn better than from that which the Lord spake unto Moses, Exod. 20. immediately after he had pronounced the Decalogue from Mount Sinai: Vers. 23, 24.where premising that they should not make with him gods of gold and gods of silver, but that they should make him… an Altar of earth (as namely their ambulatory state then permitted, otherwise of stone) and thereon sacrifice their burnt-offerings and peace-offerings; he adds, in all places where I record my Name, I will come unto thee, and bless thee, foreign, In every place where the remembrance or memorial of my Name shall be, or, Wheresoever that is which I have or shall appoint to be the remembrance or memorial of my Name and presence, there I will come unto thee, and bless thee. Lo here a description of the Place set apart for Divine worship: It is the Place where God records his Name, and comes unto men to bless them, Two things are here specified: The Monument, Record or Memorial of God's Name; secondly, His coming or meeting therewith men. Of both let us enquire distinctly, what they mean.
I know it would not be untrue to say in general, That God's Name is recorded or remembred in that place upon which his Name is called, or which is called by his Name, (as the Scripture speaks,) that is, which is dedicate to his worship and service: But there is some more special thing intended here; namely, the Memorial or Monument of God's Name is that token or Symbole whereby he testifieth his Covenant and commerce with men. Now although the Ark… called the Ark of the Covenant or Testimony, (wherein lay the*Heb. 9. 4. two Tables, namely the Book or Articles of the Covenant, and Manna, the Bread of the Covenant) were afterwards made for this purpose, to be the standing Memorial of God's Name and Presence with his people: yet cannot that be here either only, or specially aimed at; because when these words were spoken, it had no being, nor was there yet any commandment given concerning the making thereof. Wherefore the Record here mentioned I understand with a more general reference to any Memorial whereby God's Covenant and commerce with men was testified: such as were the Sacrifices immediately before spoken of, and the seat of them the Altar; which therefore may seem to be in some sort the more particularly here pointed unto. For that these were Rites of remembrance, whereby the Name of God was commemorated or recorded, and his Covenant with men renewed and testified, might be easily proved. Whence it is that that which was burned upon the Altar is so often called the Memorial; as in Leviticus the 2. 5. 6, and 24. chapters. Accordingly the son of Sirach tells us, chap. 45. 16. that Aaron was chosen out of all men living, to offer Sacrifices to the Lord, incense and a sweet savour, for a Memorial, to make reconciliation for his people. Add also that (Esay 66. 3.) Qui recordatur thure, quasi qui benedicat Idolo; He that (without true contrition and humiliation before the Lord) recordeth or maketh remembrance with incense, is as if he blessed an Idol: But I must not stay too long upon this.
You will say, What is all this to us now in the time of the Gospel? I answer, Yes: For did not Christ ordain the holy Eucharist to be the Memorial of his Name in the New Testament?Luke 22. 19. This (saith he) is my Body, foreign, Do this for my Commemoration, 1 Cor. 11. 24.or in Memorial of me. And what if I should affirm that Christ is as much present here as the Lord was upon the Mercy-seat between the Cherubims? Why should not then the Place of this Memorial under the Gospel have some semblable sanctity to that where the Name of God was recorded in the Law? And though we be not now tied to one only Place, as those under the Law were; and that God heareth the faithful prayers of his Servants wheresoever they are made unto him, (as also he did then:) yet should not the Places of his Memorial be promiscuous and common, but set apart to that sacred purpose. In a word, All those sacred Memorials of the Iewish Temple are both comprehended and excelled in this One of Christians; the Sacrifices, Shew-bread, and Ark of the Covenant; Christ's Body and Bloud in the Eucharist being all these unto us in the New Testament, agreeable to that of the Apostle, Rom. 3. 25. God hath set forth Iesus Christ to be our foreign through faith in his bloud, that is, our Propitiatory or Mercy-seat; for so it is called in the Greek both of the Old and New Testament; nor is the word, I think, ever used but in that sense, unless in Ezekiel 43. for the Settle of the Altar.
But you will say, This Christian Memorial is not always actually present in our Churches, as some one or other at least of those in the Law were in the Temple. I answer, It is enough, it is wont to be; as the Chair of State loses not its relation and due respect, though the King be not always there. And remember that the Ark of the Covenant was not in Ierusalem when Daniel opened his windows and prayed thitherward; yea, that it was wanting in the Holy Place (I mean that sacred Cabinet made by Moses) all the time of the second (or Zorobabel's) Temple; and yet the place esteemed notwithstanding as if it had been there.
You will yet except and say, That in the Old Testament those things were appointed by divine Law and Commandment, but in the New we find no such thing. I answer, In things for which we find no new Rule given in the New Testament, there we are referred and left to the Analogy of the Old. This the Apostle's proof taken from thence for the maintenance of the Ministers of the Gospel, 1 Cor. 9. 13, 14. [viz. Thus were they, Ergo, So God hath ordained that we] will give us to understand; likewise the practice of the Church in baptizing Infants, derived surely from the Analogie of Circumcision; the hallowing of every first day of the week, as one in every seven, from the Analogie of the Iewish Sabbath; and other the like. S. Hierome witnesseth the same in that saying of his,Al Evag…. Vt sciamus traditiones Apostolicas sumptas ex Veteri Testamento; quod Aaron & filii ejus atque Levitae in Templo fuerunt, hoc sibi Episcopi, Presbyteri atque Diaconi vendicant in Ecclesia: That we may know (saith he) that the Apostolick traditions were derived from the Old Testament; that which Aaron, his Sons and the Levites were in the Temple, the same do Bishops, Priests and Deacons claim in the Church. For we are to consider, That the end of Christ's coming into the world was not properly to give new Laws unto men… but to accomplish the Law already given,M…tt. 5. 17, 18. and to publish the Gospel of Reconciliation, through his Name, to those who had transgressed it. Whence it is that we find not the style of the New Testament to carry a form of enacting Laws almost any where; but those which are there mentioned, to be brought in occasionally, only by way of proof, of interpretation, exhortation, application, or the like, and not as by way of constitution or re-enacting. Meanwhile, lest I should be mistaken, mark well that I said not, the Old Testament was to be our Rule simply in the case mentioned, but the Analogie thereof only; that is, this regulation is to be made according to that proportion which the difference of the two Covenants and the things in them admits, and no further: the more particular application and limitation of which Analogie is to be referred to the judgment and prudence of the Church.
There comes here very fitly into my mind a passage of Clemens, (a man of the Apostolick age, he whose name S. Paul saith was written in the Book of life) in his genuine Epistle Ad Corinthios, Phil. 4. 3.lately set forth, pag. 52. foreign (saith he) foreign that is, All those duties which the Lord hath commandedus to do, we ought to do them regularly and orderly; our Oblations and divine Services to celebrate them on set and appointed times. For so he hath ordained, not that we should do them at hap-hazard and without order, but at certain determined days and times: WHERE also and BY WHOM he will have them executed, himself hath defined according to his supreme will. But where hath the Lord defined these things, unless he hath left us to the Analogy of the Old Testament.
It follows in the Text alledged, There I will come unto thee, and bless thee. In the Place where the Lord's Memorial is, where his Colours, as I may so speak, are displayed and set up, there, in a special manner, he vouchsafes his presence with the sons of men to bless them: or, to speak rotundè, where his Memorial is, there His foreign SHECINAH or foreign is, (as the Hebrew Masters term it,) that is, His GLORY.*Hermes Trism. in Afclepio. Athenag. Legat. pro Christ. Origen. contra Cels. l. 7. & 3. Euseb. Praepar. Ev. lib. 5. c. 15. The Gentiles ascribed the presence of their Gods to the places where Images and Statues were erected and consecrated for them: But such personal similitudes the God of Israel abhors, and forbids to be made unto Him; yet promiseth his presence in every place where the Memorial or Record of his Name shall be; but of his own appointment, not of man's devising. For thus, I suppose, is the Text there to be understood, and to be construed by way of Antithesis or opposition: You shall not make with me gods of silver, nor gods of gold: An Altar only of earth, or of *Exod. 20.stone, shalt thou make unto me, to offer thy Sacrifices upon. For in every place where I shall record my Name, I will come unto thee, and bless thee. And here take notice, that for this reason the Tabernacle of the Lord was called foreign The Tabernacle of meeting; not of mens meeting together, as is commonly supposed, when we translate it, Tabernacle of the Congregation; but of God's meeting there with men. I have a good author for it; for so the Lord himself gives the reason of the name in three several places of the Law, foreign, The Tabernacle of meeting, …here I will meet with you. See Exod. 29. 42. 30. 36. Num. 17. 4. and Masius in Ios. c. 18.