seeming the true Spouse of Christ, who is ever like herself, Columba perfecta, yea, perfecta columba, a true Dove for her quiet

Innocence.

For us, let our Dove-ship approve itself in meekness of suffering; not in actions of cruelty. We may, we must delight in blood; but the blood shed for us, not shed by us. Thus let us be Columba in foraminibus petre; Cant. ii. 14. a Dove in the clefts of the rock: that is, in vulneribus Christi, In the wounds of Christ, as the Gloss; in the gashes of him, that is the true Rock of the Church. This is the way to be innocent, to be beautiful, a dove, and undefiled.

II. The PROPRIETY follows; My Dove. The kite, or the crow, or the sparrow, and such like, are challenged by no owner; but the Dove still hath a master. The world runs wild; it is fere na'ure: but the Church is Christ's; domestically, entirely his : My Dove; not the world's, not her own.

Not the world's: for, If ye were of the world, saith our Saviour, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you; John xv. 19.

Not her own so St. Paul; 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20. own, for ye are bought with a price.

Ye are not your

Justly then may he say, My Dove. "Mine, for I made her;" there is the right of Creation: "Mine, for I made her again;" there is the right of Regeneration: "Mine, for I bought her;" there is the right of Redemption: "Mine, for I made her mine;" there is the right of spiritual and inseparable Union.

O God, be we thine, since we are thine. We are thine by thy merit: let us be thine in our affections, in our obedience. It is our honour, it is our happiness, that we may be thine. Have thou all thine own. What should any piece of us be cast away, upon the vain glory and trash of this transitory world? Why should the powers of darkness run away with any of our services, in the momentary pleasures of sin? The great King of Heaven hath cast his love upon us, and hath espoused us to himself in truth and righteousness; Oh then, why will we cast roving and lustful eyes upon adulterous rivals, base drudges? Yea, why will we run on madding after ugly devils? How justly shall he loath us, if we be thus shamefully prostituted? Away then with all our unchaste glances of desires, all unclean ribaldry of conversation: let us say mutually, with the blessed Spouse, My Beloved is mine, and I am his; Cant ii. 16.

My Dove: mine, as to love; so to defend. That inference is natural, I am thine, save me. Interest challenges protection. The hand says, "It is my head; therefore I will guard it:" the head says, "It is my hand; therefore I will devise to arm it, to withdraw it from violence:" the soul says, "It is my body; therefore I will cast to cherish it:" the body says, "It is my soul; therefore I would not part with it." The husband says, Bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; and therefore Ján, he makes much of her;

Eph. v. 29. And, as she is desiderium oculorum, the delight of his eyes to him; Ezek. xxiv. 16: so is he operimentum oculorum, the shelter of her eyes to her; Gen. xx. 16. In all cases, it is thus. So as, if God say of the Church Columba mea, My Dove, she cannot but say of him, Adjutor Meus, My Helper. Neither can it be otherwise, save where is lack, either of love or power. Here can be no lack of either: not of love; he saith, Whoso toucheth Israel toucheth the apple of mine eye: not of power; Our God doth whatsoever he will, both in heaven and earth.

Band you yourselves therefore, ye bloody Tyrants of the World, against the poor despised Church of God: threaten to trample it to dust; and, when you have done, to carry away that dust upon the soles of your shoes: He, that sits in heaven, laughs you to scorn; the Lord hath you in derision. O Virgin daughter of Sion, they have despised thee: O daughter of Jerusalem, they have shaken their heads at thee. But whom have ye reproached and blasphemed? And against whom have ye exalted your voice, and lift up your eyes on high? Even against the Holy One of Israel, who hath said, Columba mea, My Dove.

Yea, let all the spiritual wickednesses in heavenly places, all the legions of hell troop together, they shall as soon be able to pluck God out of his throne of heaven, as to pull one feather from the wing of this Dove. This Propriety secures her: she is Columba mea, My Dove.

III. From the Propriety, turn your eyes to the best of her properties, UNITY.

Let me leave arithmeticians disputing whether unity be a number. I am sure, it is both the beginning of all numbering numbers, and the beginning and end of all numbers numbered.

1. All PERFECTION rises hence, and runs hither; and every thing, the nearer it comes to perfection, gathers up itself the more towards unity as all the virtue of the loadstone is recollected into one point.

Jehovah our God is one from him, there is but one world, one heaven in that world, one sun in that heaven, one uniform face of all that glorious vault: the nature of the holy Angels is one and simple, as creatures can be: the Head of Angels and Saints, one Saviour; whose blessed Humanity, if it carry some semblance of composition, yet it is answered by a threefold union of one and the same subject, a double union of the Deity with the Humanity, a third union of the Humanity in itself. So that, as in the Deity there is one essence and three persons; in Christ, is one person, and three essences united into that one.

If from heaven we look to earth, from God to men; we have but one earth, one Church in that earth, one king in that Church, and, for us, one deputy of that king, one sceptre, one law of both; one baptism, one faith; Cor unum, viam unam and all these make up Columbam unam, one Dove.

It would perhaps be no unnecessary excursion, to take hereupon occasion to discourse of the perfectest form of Church-govern

ment; and to dispute the case of that long and busy competition betwixt monarchy and aristocracy. Ingenuous Richier, the late eye-sore of the Sorbonne, hath made, methinks, an equal arbitration, That the State is monarchical, the Regiment aristocratical. The State, absolutely monarchical in Christ, dispensatively monarchical in respect of particular Churches; forasmuch as that power, which is inherent in the Church, is dispensed and executed by some prime ministers like as the faculty of seeing, given to the man, is exercised by the eye, which is given for this use to man. And if, for the aristocratical Regiment, there be in the native Senate of the Church, which is a General Council, a power to enact Canons for the wielding of this great body, (as more eyes see more than one,) yet how can this consist without Unity? Concilium is not so much a concalando, as Calepine hath mistaken, as a conciliando, or, as Isidore, à ciliis oculorum, which ever move together. In this aristocracy there is an unity; for, as that old word was long since, Episcopatus unus est, cujus à singulis in solidum pars tenetur. In a word, no regiment, no state can have any form, but deformity, without Unity.

2. Neither is there more Perfection than STRENGTH in Unity. Large bodies, if of a stronger composition, yet, because the spirits are diffused, have not that vigour and activity, which a well-knit body hath in a more slender frame. The praise of the invincible strength of Jerusalem was not so much in the natural walls, the hills round about it, as in the mutual compactedness within itself. And Solomon tells us, it is the twisted cord that is not easily broken. The rule of Vegetius, that he gives for his best stratagem, is, that which our Jesuits know too well, to set strife where we desire ruin. Our Saviour says that of every city, which one said anciently of Carthage, That division was the best engine to batter it: A city divided cannot stand. On the contrary, of every happy Church, of every firm State, is that verified, which God speaks, in the whirlwind, of Leviathan's scales, una uni conjungitur; One is joined to another, that the wind cannot pass between them: they stick together, that they cannot be sundered; Job xli. 16, 17.

3. That there is Perfection and Strength in Unity cannot be doubted; but how agrees this Unity to Christ's Dove, his Church? It shall be thus absolutely in patria, at home;" but how is it in vid, “in the passage?" Even here it is ONE too: NOT DIVIDED;

-NOT MULTIPLIED.

(1.) To begin with the Former. It hath been a stale quarrel, that hath been raised from the divisions of the Christian world, worn threadbare even by the pens and tongues of Porphyry, Libanius, Celsus, Julian: and, after them, Valens the emperor, was -puzzled with it, till Themistius, that memorable Christian Philosopher, in a notable Oration of his, convinced this idle cavil, telling the emperor, "He should not wonder at the dissensions of Christians that these were nothing, in comparison of the differences of the Gentile Philosophers, which had above three hundred several opinions in agitation at once: and that God meant, by this variety

St.

of judgments, to illustrate his own glory; that every man might learn so much more to adore his Majesty, by how much harder it is rightly to apprehend him." The justice of this exception eth been confessed and bewailed of old, by the ancient Fathers. Chrysostom shall speak for all: Deridiculo facti sumus et Gentibus et Judæis, dum Ecclesia in mille partes scinditur; "We are made a scorn to Jews and Gentiles," saith he, "while the Church is torn into a thousand pieces."

Little do these fools, that stumble at these contentions, know the weight of St. Paul's Oportet, There must be heresies. Little are they acquainted with God's fashions in all his works. Hath he not set contrary motions in the very heavens? Are not the elements, the main stuff of the world, contrary to each other, in their forms and qualities? Hath he not made the natural day to consist of light and darkness? the year of seasons contrarily tempered? Yea, all things, according to the guess of that old philosopher, er lite et amicitia? And shall we need to teach God how to frame his Church? Will these wise censurers accuse the heavens of misplacing, the elements of mistemper, or check the day with the deformity of his darkness, or upbraid the fair beauty of the year with icicles and wrinkles? or condemn that real Friendship, that arises from debate? If the wise and holy Moderator of All Things did not know how, by these fires of contradiction, to try men, and to purify his truth, and to glorify himself, how easy were it for him to quench them, and confound their authors! Can they commend it in a wise Scipio, that he would not have Carthage, though their greatest enemy, destroyed, Ut timore libido premeretur, libido pressa non luxuriaretur, "That riot might be curbed with fear," as St. Austin expresses it; and shall not the most wise God have leave to permit an exercise to keep his children in breath, that they be not stuffed up with the foggy unsound humours of the world? When these presuming fools have stumbled, and fallen into the bottom of hell, the Spouse of Christ shall be still his Dove, in the clefts or scissures of the rocks; and she shall call him her Roe, or young hart, by, upon the hills of Division; Cant. ii. 17.

But yet, when all is done, in spite of all dissentions the Church is Columba una, one Dove. The word is not more common, than equivocal whether ye consider it as the aggregation of the outward, visible, particular Churches of Christian professors; or as the inward, secret, universal company of the Elect; it is still One.

To begin with the Former. What is it here below, that makes the Church one? One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism. One Lord; so it is one in the Head: One Faith; so it is one in the Heart: One Baptism; so it is one in the Face. Where these are truly professed to be, though there may be differences of administrations and ceremonies, though there may be differences in opinions, yet there is Columba una: all those are but diversely-coloured feathers of the same Dove. What Church therefore hath One Lord, Jesus Christ the Righteous, One Faith in that Lord, One Baptism into that Faith, it is the One Dove of Christ. To speak more short, One

Faith abridges all. But what is that One Faith? What, but the main fundamental doctrine of religion necessary to be known, to be believed unto salvation? It is a golden and useful distinction, that we must take with us, betwixt Christian Articles and Theological Conclusions. Christian Articles are the principles of religion necessary to a believer; Theological Conclusions are schoolpoints, fit for the discourse of a divine. Those Articles are few and essential: these Conclusions are many, and unimporting (upon necessity) to salvation either way. That Church then, which holds those Christian Articles both in terms and necessary consequences, as every visible Church of Christ doth, however it vary in these Theological Conclusions, is Columba una. Were there not

much latitude in this Faith, how should we fetch in the antient Jewish Church to the unity of the Christian? Theirs and ours is but one Dove; though the feathers, according to the colour of that fowl, be changeable. It is a fearful account then, that shall once be given before the dreadful tribunal of the Son of God, the only Husband of this one Church, by those men, who, not like the children of faithful Abraham, divide the Dove; multiplying Articles of Faith according to their own fancies; and casting out of the bosom of the Church those Christians, that differ from their either false or unnecessary conclusions. Thus have our great Lords of the Seven Hills dared to do, whose faction hath both devoured their charity and scorned ours; to the great prejudice of the Christian world; to the irreparable damage of the glorious Gospel of our Lord Jesus. The God of Heaven judge in this great case, betwixt them and us: us, who, firmly holding the foundation of Christian Religion in all things according to the Ancient, Catholic, Apostolic Faith, are rejected, censured, condemned, accursed, killed, for refusing their gainful novelties. In the mean time, we can but lament their fury no less than their errors; and send out our hopeless wishes, that the seamless coat might be darned up by their hands that tore it. From them, to speak to ourselves, who have happily reformed those errors of theirs, which either their ambition or profit would not suffer them to part with; since we are one, why are we sundered? One says, "I am Luther's for Consubstantiation:" another, "I am Calvin's for Discipline:" another, "I am Arminius's for Predestination:" another," I am Barrow's or Brown's for Separation." What frenzy possesses the brains of Christians, thus to squander themselves into factions? It is indeed an envious cavil of our common adversaries, to make these so many religions. No; every branch of different opinion doth not constitute a several religion were this true, I durst boldly say, old Rome had not more deities than the modern Rome hath religions. These things, though they do not vary Religions and Churches, yet they trouble the quiet Unity of the Church. Brethren, since our religion is one, why are not our tongues one? Why do we not bite in our singular conceits, and bind our tongues to the common peace?

But if, from particular visible Churches, (which perhaps you