so thence expressed in their joint services and invocations. So He says there of them who agree upon any thing they shall ask, (ouμQwvnoovGv,) if all their hearts present and hold it up together, if they make one cry or song of it, that harmony of their hearts shall be sweet in the Lord's ears, and shall draw a gracious answer out of His hand: if ye agree, your joint petitions shall be as it were an arrest or decree that shall stand in Heaven: it shall be done for them of my Father which is in Heaven. But alas! where is our agreement? The greater number of hearts say nothing, and others speak with such wavering and such a jarring harsh noise, being out of tune, earthly, too low set, that they spoil all, and disappoint the answers. Were the censer filled with those united prayers heavenwards, it would be filled with fire earthwards against the enemies of the Church.

And in your private society, seek unanimously your own and each other's spiritual good; not only agreeing in your affairs and civil converse, but having one heart and mind as Christians. To eat and drink together, if you do no more, is such society as beasts may have: to do these in the excess, to eat and drink intemperately together, is a society worse than that of beasts, and below them. To discourse together of civil business, is to converse as men; but the peculiar converse of Christians in that notion, as born again to immortality, an unfading inheritance above, is to further one another towards that, to put one another in mind of Heaven and Heavenly things. And it is strange that men who profess to be Christians, when they meet, either fill one another's ears with lies and profane speeches, or with vanities and trifles, or, at the best, with the affairs of the earth, and not a word of those things that should most possess the heart, and where the mind should be most set, but are ready to reproach and taunt any such thing in others. What! are you ashamed of Christ and religion? Why do you profess it then? Is there such a thing, think ye, as the communing of saints? If not, why say you believe it ? It is a truth, think of it as you will. The public ministry will

profit little any where, where a people, or some part of them, are not thus one, and do not live together as of one mind, and use diligently all due means of edifying one another in their holy faith. How much of the primitive Christian's praise and profit is involved in the word, They were together [μolvμadòv] with one accord, with one mind; and so they grew; the Lord added to the church. (Acts ii. 1, 44, 47.)

Consider, 1. How the wicked are one in their ungodly designs and practices. The scales of Leviathan, as Luther expresses it, are linked together; shall not the Lord's followers be one in him? They unite to undermine the peace of the Church; shall not the godly join their prayers to countermine them? 2. There is in the hearts of all the saints one spirit; how then can they be but one? Since they have the same purpose and journey, and tend to the same home, why should they not walk together in that way? When they shall arrive there, they shall be fully one, and of one mind, not a jar nor difference, all their harps perfectly in tune to that one new song.

Having compassion.] This testifies, that it is not a bare speculative agreement of opinions that is the badge of Christian unity; for this may accidentally be, where there is no further union; but that they are themselves one, and have one life, in that they feel how it is one with another. There is a living sympathy amongst them, as making up one body, animated with one spirit; for that is the reason why the members of the body have that mutual feeling, even the most remote and distant, and the most excellent with the meanest. This the Apostle urges at large, Rom. xii. 4, and 1 Cor. xii.

14-17.

And this lively sense is in every living member of the body of Christ towards the whole, and towards each other particular part. This makes a Christian rejoice in the welfare and good of another, as if it were his own, and feel their griefs and distresses, as if himself were really a sharer in them; for the word comprehends all feeling together, feeling of joy as well as grief. (Heb. xiii. 3; 1 Cor. xii. 26.) And always, where

there is most of grace and of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, there is most of this sympathy. The Apostle St. Paul, as he was eminent in all grace, had a large portion of this. (2 Cor. xi. 29.) And if this ought to be in reference to their outward condition, much more in spiritual things there should be rejoicing at the increases and flourishing of grace in others. That base envy which dwells in the hearts of rotten hypocrites, who would have all engrossed to themselves, argues that they move not further than the compass of self; that the pure love of God, and the sincere love of their brethren flowing from it, are not in them. But when the heart can unfeignedly rejoice in the Lord's bounty to others, and the lustre of grace in others, far outshining their own, truly it is an evidence that what grace such a one hath is upright and good, and that the law of love is engraven on his heart. And where that is, there will be likewise, on the other side, a compassionate, tender sense of the infirmities and frailties of their brethren; whereas some account it a sign of much advancement and spiritual proficiency, to be able to sit in judgment upon the qualifications and actions of others, and to lavish out severe censures round about them to sentence one weak and of poor abilities, and another proud and lofty, and a third covetous, &c.; and thus to go on in a censor-like magisterial strain. But it were truly an evidence of more grace, not to get upon the bench to judge them, but to sit down rather and mourn for them, when they are manifestly and really faulty, and as for their ordinary infirmities, to consider and bear them. These are the characters we find in the Scriptures, of stronger Christians. (Rom. xv. 1, Gal. vi. 1.) This holy and humble sympathy argues indeed a strong Christian. Nil tam spiritualem virum indicat, quàm peccati alieni tractatio: Nothing truly shews a spiritual man so much, as the dealing with another man's sin. Far will he be from the ordinary way of insulting and trampling upon the weak, or using rigour and bitterness, even against some gross falls of a Christian: but will rather vent his compassion in tears, than his passion in fiery railings; will bewail

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the frailty of man, and our dangerous condition in this life, amidst so many snares and temptations, and such strong and subtle enemies.

2dly, As this sympathy works towards particular Christians in their several conditions, so, by the same reason, it acts, and that more eminently, towards the Church, and the public affairs that concern its good. And this, we find, hath breathed forth from the hearts of the saints in former times, in so many pathetical complaints and prayers for Zion. Thus David, in his saddest times, when he might seem most dispensable to forget other things, and be wholly taken up with lamenting his own fall, yet, even there, he leaves not out the Church: Psal. li. 17, In Thy good pleasure, do good to Zion. And though his heart was broken all to pieces, yet the very pieces cry no less for the building of Jerusalem's wall, than for the binding up and healing of itself. And in that cxxii. Psalm, which seems to be the expression of his joy on being exalted to the tltrone and sitting peaceably on it, yet he still thus prays for the peace of Jerusalem. And the penman of the cxxxvii. Psalm, makes it an execrable oversight to forget Jerusalem, or to remember it coldly or secondarily: no less will serve him than to prefer it to his chief joy. Whatsoever else is top or head of his joy, (as the word is,) Jerusalem's welfare shall be its crown, shall be set above it. And the prophet, whoever it was, that wrote that cii. Psalm, and in it poured out that prayer from an afflicted soul, comforts himself in this, that Zion shall be favoured. My days are like a shadow that declineth, and I am withered like grass, but it matters not what becomes of me; let me languish and wither away, provided Zion flourish; though I feel nothing but pains and troubles, yet Thou wilt arise and shew mercy to Zion: I am content; that satisfies me.

But where is now this spirit of high sympathy with the Church? Surely, if there were any remains of it in us, it is now a fit time to exert it. If we be not altogether dead, surely we shall be stirred with the voice of those late strokes of God's VOL. II. G

hand, and be driven to more humble and earnest prayer by it. When will men change their poor, base grumblings about their private concerns, Oh! what shall I do? &c., into strong cries for the Church of God, and the public deliverance of all these kingdoms from the raging sword? But vile selfishness undoes us, the most looking no further. If themselves and theirs might be secured, how many would regard little what became of the rest! As one said, When I am dead let the world be fired. But the Christian mind is of a larger sphere, looks not only upon more than itself in present, but even to after times and ages, and can rejoice in the good to come, when itself shall not be here to partake of it: it is more dilated, and liker unto God, and to our Head, Jesus Christ. The Lord, says the Prophet, (Isa. lxiii. 9,) in all his people's affliction, was afflicted himself. And Jesus Christ accounts the sufferings of His body, the Church, His own; Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? (Acts ix. 4.) The heel was trod upon on earth, and the Head crieth from Heaven, as sensible of it. And this in all our evils, especially our spiritual griefs, is a high point of comfort to us, that our Lord Jesus is not insensible of them. This emboldens us to complain ourselves, and to put in our petitions for help to the throne of Grace through His hand, knowing that when He presents them, He will speak his own sense of our condition, and move for us as it were for Himself, as we have it sweetly expressed, Heb. iv. 15, 16. Now, as it is our comfort, so it is our pattern.

Love as brethren.] Hence springs this feeling we speak of: love is the cause of union, and union the cause of sympathy, and of that unanimity mentioned before. They who have the same spirit uniting and animating them, cannot but have the same mind and the same feelings. And this spirit is derived from that Head, Christ, in whom Christians live, and move, and have their being, their new and excellent being, and so, living in Him, they love Him, and are one in Him: they are brethren, as here the word is; their fraternity holds in Him. He is the head of it, the first-born among many brethren.