2. Take heed of such hinderances of love as may attend your peculiar state and condition. I would speak to them who have the advantage of riches, wealth, honour, reputation in the world; which encompass them with so many circumstances, that they know not how to break through them to that familiarity of love with the meanest member of the church which is required of them. Brethren, know the gospel leaves all your providential advantages entirely unto you ; whatever you have by birth, education, inheritance, estate, titles, places, it leaves the entire enjoyment of them. But in things which purely concern your communion together, the gospel lays all level ; — there is neither rich nor poor, free nor bond in Christ, but the new creature. Therefore we are so expressly commanded by the apostle James, chap, ii, that we should have no particular respect in the con- gregation to persons, upon the account of outward advantages. We all serve one common Master, the same Lord ; and he is such a Lord, that when he was rich in all the glory of heaven, he became poor for our sakes. And let me beg of you that are rich to remember this common Lord and Master; and let not your outward advantages, therefore, keep you at a distance from the meanest, the poorest saint that belongs unto the congregation. If they do, your riches are your
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temptation, and your place a disadvantage; which you must labour to break through.
Something also might be said to the poorest and lowest sort, who have their temptations, too, to keep them off from the exercise of love. But I shall waive it.
S. Lastly, Take heed of satisfying yourselves, all of you, with the duties of love, without looking after the entire working of the grace of love. You here, that are joined with us this day, have had for a long time so great a light and instructor, that I doubt not but you are acquainted with all the duties of love that are required of you in your especial relations wherein you stand, and that you have been found in the practice of them. I only mind you to take heed that you be spirited with the grace of love, — that which proceeds from faith, and is acted in you by the Holy Ghost, — that which gives you delight in, and a dear esteem and valuation of the saints, and creates a cheerfulness and readiness in you for the performance of all these duties.
I thought to have given you many other directions ; but I must con- clude. If God be pleased to imprint any thing from this word upon our hearts and spirits, we shall have cause to rejoice in it. However, remember thus much, that you were begged and entreated, — as you regard the glory of God, the honour of the gospel, and the edification of this church (which of two is now become one), concerning which you must all in your places give an account, as well as I in mine, and as you have any respect unto the ministry of him whom God hath set over you, — that all be wound up in this one duty of love; which if God please to increase, and make intense among us, I no way doubt but he will prosper this day's work of our union.
SERMON XXII.1
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,; Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage, which dwell solitarily in the wood, in the midst of Carmel : let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old." — Mic. vii. 14.
It is not much I shall offer unto you from these words; yet I can- not give you a right apprehension of the mind of God in them, and what I intend from them, without a little going over the chapter from 1 This sermon was preached October 16, 1673.
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the beginning. " Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits," etc., verse 1. When the prophet says, " Woe is me," he speaks in the name of the earth, say some, as it was the seat of the church of God. I rather take it to be in the name of the church of God, of those who were truly so, in the midst of a profane but outwardly professing people. And this lamentation is with a prospect and view of the sin which was in the people, and of the misery which was coming upon them. They have both of them ever been matter of lamentation unto all that truly fear God. They cannot consider the sins and the miseries of an outwardly professing people, but every one of them ought to cry, " Woe is me! sorrow is to me; sadness of heart is to me." In respect of sin, David saith, Ps. cxix. 136, " Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because men keep not thy law." And in respect of misery and judgments, Jeremiah expresses his sense thus, chap. ix. 1, " Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daugh- ter of my people." The prophet foreseeing both these, — an overflow- ing of sin, and an overflowing of judgment, — had reason to cry, " Woe is me!" — " It is a lamentation unto me."