By opening this place our text will receive some light. If the patriarchs had nothing to look for but what they had in this world, it had been a dishonourable thing for God to be called their God and their benefactor ; but now he hath prepared for them a city. It is called a city with allusion to the walled towns of the Canaanites, they were not great lords as the Amorites, nor }x>ssessors of towns and cities, but they had a city above.
Ohs. 1. Those that renounce the world for God's sake shall be nO' losers.
These patriarchs left their country, and wandered up and down at God's command ; they had no settled abode, but God had prepared for them a city. Le\'i had no portion among his brethren, but God vras his portion: James ii. 5, 'Hearken, my beloved brethren, hath not God
340 SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XI. [SeR. L,
chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him ? '
Ohs. '2. Heaven is fitly set forth under the notion of a city.
Heaven is expressed hy several metaphorical names in scriptiu'e. Sometimes it is called paradise, or a garden of delight : 2 Cor. xii. 4, ' How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words ; ' and that you might not think he meant an earthly paradise, he calls it ' the third heaven,' ver. 2. Sometimes it is called a house : John xiv^ 2, ' In my Father's house are many mansions.' Sometimes it is called a kinsrdom : James ii. 5, ' Heirs of the kingdom which he hath
&^
promised to them that love him.' And here it is called a city. All these notions do help one another. For the pleasantness of it, it is ■called a garden or paradise ; but because in a garden there is not a fixed abode, therefore it is called a house. But a house may be too strait for the great number of the inhabitants, and therefore it is called a city ; but a city hath not that splendour in it that a court hath, there- fore it is called a kingdom. So that for the pleasantness it is called paradise ; to note our abode and rest, a house ; for the amplitude of it, a city; for the splendour of it, a kingdom. Take it again: in a kingdom there are many that never knew one another's names, nor saw one another's faces, therefore it is called a city, to show that in heaven all the saints are neighbours, and know one another ; but then to note our constant and more entire familiarity, it is called a house ; and to note the pleasantness of it, it is called a garden or paradise. And it is notable that all these names are given to the church ; it is called a garden of spices : Cant. v. 1, ' I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse ; ' the house of God : 1 Tim. iii. 15, ' That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of (Jod, which is the church of the living God ; ' the city of God : Ps. Ixxxvii. 3, ' Glorious things are spoken of thee, 0 city of God' ; and Eph. ii. 19, ' Believers are said to be fellow-citizens of the saints, and of the household of God.' And it is called the king- dom of heaven in many places, because hei-e we are trained up for the kingdom that is above ; the church is the seminary of heaven ; here are the suburbs of the great city, where all the elect of God do meet to live and dwell for evermore.
The notion that I am to prosecute is a city. There are diverse resemblances between heaven and a city. In a city there is a multitude of inhabitants ; so Christ's people, take them all together, are a multi- tude which none can number. In a city there are plenty of all things ; so in heaven there is no lack, for there God is all in all.i
But it differs from other cities in the world in this, that there are no wars, no tumults, no confusions, as there may be here below. When the nations are represented as in a tumult, it is said, God sitteth in the heavens, in a quiet posture : Ps. ii, 4, ' He that sitteth in the heavens .shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision.' All is quiet in heaven, when all the world is in a hurry, striving against Christ. This is a city where there is no death ; in an earthly city, if a man be absent ten or twenty years, there is a new face of men and things, for all Xhings below are obnoxious to change ; but this heavenly city always
^ See the resemblances between Leaven and a city, Ver. 10.
VeR. 16.] SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XI. 341
hath the same face. There is no abiding city in a perishing world : Heb. xii. 14, 'For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.' There are no vicissitudes of night or day, calm or tempest, summer or winter, but all things are in an eternal spring of beauty and flourishing, where the inhabitants are preserved from all sin, misery, sickness, and grief. It is a city where there is no use of carpenters and masons, but ' whose builder and maker is God,' ver. 10.