April 26

They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumbling-block of their iniquity.—Ezek. viii. 19.

God is the Lord of all the creatures; they are but as his several moneys, he coined them all: so much then of his image as any creature hath in it, so much value and worth it carries. Now God hath more communicated himself unto man, than unto any other creature: in his creation, we find man made after the similitude of God; and in his restoration, we find God made after the similitude of man, and man once again after the similitude of God. And now it is needless to search out the worth of the creature; our Saviour will decide the point: "What shall a man gain, though he win the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" To which of the creatures said God at any time, "Let us create it after our image?" Of which of the angels said he at any time, Let us restore them to our image again? There is no creature in heaven or earth, which is recompense enough for the loss of the soul. Can a man carry the world into hell with him, to bribe the flames, or corrupt his tormentors? No, saith the Psalmist, "His glory shall not descend after him." But can he buy out his pardon before he comes thither? No, neither; "The redemption of a soul is more precious." We know the apostle counts all things dung; and will God take dung in exchange for a soul? Certainly, beloved, when a man sow grace in the furrows of his field, when he can fill his barns with glory, when he can get bagsfull of salvation; when he can plough up Heaven out of the earth, and extract God out of the creatures; then may he be able to find that in them which shall satisfy his desires. But till then, let a man have all the most exquisite curiosities of nature heaped into one vessel; let him be moulded out of the most delicate ingredients and noblest principles that the world can contribute; let there be in his body a concurrency of all beauty and feature; in his nature, an eminence of all sweetness and ingenuity; in his mind, a conspiration of the politest and most choice varieties of all kinds of learning; yet still the spirit of that man is no whit more valuable and precious, than the soul of a poor and illiterate beggar.

Difference indeed there is, and that justly, to be made between them in the eyes of men; which difference is to expire within a few years: and then, after the dust of the beautiful and deformed, of the learned and ignorant, of the honorable and base, are promiscuously intermingled, and death hath equalled all; then at last there will come a day when all mankind shall be summoned, naked, without difference of degrees, before the same tribunal: when the crowns of kings and the shackles of prisoners, when the robes of princes and the rags of beggars, when the gallant's bravery and the peasant's russet, and the statist's policy, and the courtier's luxury, and the scholar's curiosity, shall be all laid aside: when all men shall be reduced unto an equal plea, and without respect of persons, shall be doomed according to their works. When Nero the persecuting emperor shall be thrown to hell, and Paul the persecuted apostle shall shine in glory; when the learned scribes and pharisees shall gnash their teeth, and the ignorant, and, as they term them, cursed people, shall see their Saviour. When the proud anti-christian prelatees, that dyed their robes in the blood of the saints, shall be hurried to damnation, and the poor despised martyrs, whom they persecuted, shall wash their feet in the blood of their enemies. When those punctoes and formalities, and cuts and fashions, and distances and compliments, which are now the darling sins of the upper end of the world, shall be proved to have been nothing else but well-acted vanities: when the pride, luxury, riot, swaggering, interlarded and complimental oaths, nice and quaint lasciviousness, new-invented courtings and adorations of beauty, shall be pronounced out of the mouth of God himself, to have been nothing else but glittering abominations: when the adulterating of wares, the counterfeiting of lights, the double weight and false measures, the courteous equivocations of men greedy of gain, which are now woven into the very arts of trading, shall be pronounced nothing else but mysteries of iniquity and self-deceivings: when the curious subtilties of more choice wits, the knotty questions and vain strife of words, the disputes of reason, the variety of reading, the very circle of general and secular learning, pursued with so much eagerness by the more ingenious spirits of the world, shall be all pronounced but the thin cobwebs and vanishing delicacies of a better-tempered profaneness; and lastly, when that poor despised profession of the power of Christianity, a trembling at the word of God, a scrupulous forbearance, not of oaths only, but of idle words, a tenderness and aptness to bleed at the touch of any sin, a boldness to withstand the corruptions of the times, a conscience of but the appearance of evil, a walking mournfully and humbly before God, an heroical resolution to be strict and circumspect, to walk in an exact and symmetrical holiness, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, the so much conclamated and scorned peevishness of a few silly, unpolitic, unregarded hypocrites, as the world esteems them, shall, in good earnest, from the mouth of God himself, be declared to have been the true narrow way which leadeth unto salvation; and the enemies thereof shall, when it is too late, be driven to that desperate and shameful confession, "We fools counted their life madness, and their end to have been without honor; now how are they reckoned amongst the saints, and have their portion with the Almighty!"