When I shall receive the congregation, (or, when I shall take a convenient time,) I will judge according unto right. The earth is dissolved (or, melted), and all the inhabitants thereof; I bear up the pillars of it A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE HIS MAIESTY, On Tvesday the nineteenth of Iune, at Wansted. Anno Dom. 1621. By D. LAVD Deane of Glocester, one [THE occasion of this first Sermon was the Birth-day of King James the First, (see p. 15,) marked as a red-letter day in the Prayer-book of 1604. The extracts from Laud's Diary, preceding and following its delivery, may be here cited : "Anno 1621.-The King's gracious speech unto me, June 3 [Sunday], concerning my long service. He was pleased to say: He had given me nothing but [the deanery of] Gloucester, [November 1616,] which he well knew was a shell without a kernel. June 29. His Majesty gave me the grant of the Bishopric of St. David's, being St. Peter's day." There is no allusion to the preaching of this Sermon in the Diary: on Feb. 17, 1621-1622, this entry occurs :-"I preached at Westminster. All my former sermons are omitted." Laud had previously preached before the King: "his good friend and patron, Bishop Neile, then being of Rochester, had procured him a turn before the King at Theobald's, on the 17th of September, 1609; and by the power and favour of the same man, being then translated unto Lichfield, he was sworn one of His Majesty's Chaplains in Ordinary on the third of November, anno 1611." (Heylyn's Life of Laud, p. 59.) This Sermon is noticed in a letter from Mr. Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, preserved in Nichols's Progresses of King James, vol. iii. p. 671, "Herewithal I send you a Sermon of Dr. Laud's on the King's Birth-day, because it is after the manner of the Bp. of Winchester [Andrewes]'s preaching, and because it somewhat touches the idle conceit of Serjeant Finch's book of "The Calling of the Jews."" (See p. 16.) Wanstead was a hunting-seat, in the forest of Waltham. The estate, which first became a royal possession in the reign of Henry VIII., had passed from Dudley, Earl of Leicester, through various hands, to Charles Blount, Lord Montjoy, who was created Earl of Devonshire, and died in 1606. It was this nobleman who was married by Laud, then his chaplain, to the Lady Rich, in the year 1605, in this very chapel at Wanstead. The Earl had previously cohabited with Lady Rich, and had five children by her before she was divorced from her husband. This unhappy affair- "this accident at Wanstead," as Heylyn (p. 52) apologetically styles it,-disgraced the Earl with the King, and he died of grief before the end of the next year; and Laud's penitence for his error by keeping an annual fast on the Feast of S. Stephen, the day on which he celebrated this discreditable marriage, is well known. The chapel at Wanstead, therefore, must on the occasion of this sermon have suggested painful and humiliating recollections to the preacher. One of Ussher's sermons, preached before the King at Wanstead, is printed.-Morant (History of Essex) speaks of "the estate of Wanstead coming to the Crown again, but by what means we are not informed:" it escheated in 1606 on the death of the Earl of Devonshire without legitimate issue. (See Nichols's Progresses, &c. vol. ii. p. 154, and vol. iii. p. 483.) It was subsequently granted by James I. to Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who is said, by Camden, (Annals), "to have presented Wanstead to the King, after a splendid entertainment given there." In this case, it seems that King James, soon after, granted the estate to Sir H. Mildmay, Master of the Jewel Office (Nichols, iii. 553). Other accounts state, that he became possessed of it by purchase from Villiers; at any rate, Mildmay seems to have entertained the King there on one of his frequent and extensive Progresses, when this sermon was preached. By Mildmay, as one of the regicides, Wanstead was again forfeited to the Crown in King Charles the Second's time.] SERMON I. PREACHED BEFORE HIS MAJESTY, ON TUESDAY, JUNE 19, at wansteAD, A.D. 1621. [Ed. 1651.] PSALM CXxii. 6, 7. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; let them prosper that love thee. thy palaces. 2, 3. I. cxxii.] 1, 9. THE ark of the Lord was brought out of the house of SERMON Obed-edom the Gittite, with music and great joy, into Jerusalem, and there placed. The learned are of opinion, that 2 Kings David composed this psalm, and delivered it to be sung 7. [Sam.] vi. at this solemnity. Before this, the ark was in Gibeah, a high 2 Kings place in the city Baalah of Judah, otherwise called Kirjath- [Sam.] vi. jearim. But now the presence of it made the City of David, Josh. xv. 9. domicilium religionis, the house of religion, as well as regni, of the kingdom. It is domus Dei, the house of religion, God's house (ver. 1, and the last of this psalm). And it is [Ps. the house of the kingdom too: for there is the seat of judgment, and there is the house of David. And it is fit, very Ver. 5. fit it should be so;-the Court, and the great Temple of God's service together; that God and the King may be neighbours :—that as God is always near to preserve the King, so the King might be near to serve God: and God and the King cannot meet in Jerusalem without a solemnity. Now this psalm was not fitted by David for the people only, when the ark was brought to, and placed in, Jerusalem; but also for their coming at their solemn feasts to Jerusalem, Exod. to which they were bound thrice a year by the Law. LAUD. B 2 For xxiii. 17 I. Ver. 1. SERMON then, some think, they sung this psalm, either in their journey as they came up; or else on the steps as they ascended a to the Temple. So the coming to the Temple was always with joy, and they were glad when the solemnity came. At this joy the psalm begins: "I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord." Glad they were, but no vanity in the mirth. For as they went up with joy, ver. 1; so did they with prayer here at ver. 7; and the prayer is for the peace of Jerusalem. Ver. 7. 2 Kings 2 Kings 13. Ezra iii. 1, 2. Why, but in David's time the temple was not built; and how then this psalm composed by him for this solemnity? Yes, well enough; (1.) for though the Temple was not then built, yet the Tabernacle was then up, according to which pattern the Temple was to be built. So all the service was there; and therefore the solemnity too. Beside, (2.) the eye of the prophet was clear, and saw things farther off than the present. For first, (1.) it is evident, qui non videbat, prævidebat: David that saw not the Temple built, foresaw that it was to be built by his son and so fitted the psalm both to a present Tabernacle and a future Temple. And it is not improbable, but that he saw farther; (2.) or if he did not, the Spirit of God did; and so fitted his pen, that the same psalm might serve the Jews at their return from Babylon, to re-edify the ruins of both City and Temple; for then the people assembled "as one man" to Jerusalem, and kept their wonted ceremonies. Nay, I make no question but that he saw farther yet. (3.) For what should hinder the prophet, but that he might look quite through the Temple, which was but the figure, or shadow, and so see Christ, His Church, and Kingdom, at the end of it ? So the psalm goes on for both Jew and Christian; Temple, and Church; that ye, as well as they, might pray for the peace of Jerusalem," and that "they may prosper that love it." 66 The words contain two things; (I.) an exhortation both to princes and people, to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem;" (II.) and the prophet's own prayer for it, "Let them prosper that love thee: peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces." |