Heaven and earth reconciled A sermon preached at Saint Pauls church in Bedford, October.…Heauen and earth reconcil'd A sermon preached at Saint Paules church in Bedford, October.…

You have heard, how we are called Stars, I would direct the Application of this, to 3. sorts of people: Patrons, Laity, Ministers.

You haue heard, how we are called Starres, I would direct the Application of this, to 3. sortes of people: Patrons, Laitie, Ministers.

1. To speak much of Patrons,¹ you will hold it frivolous: they hear not, being absent; neither would they believe, being present: But let not sin be balked, though it be not by, to answer for it self. Many of them care not whom they present, if his Purse can speak learnedly, though his tongue ignorantly. Ignorance, Superstition, and Simony, were once proper to the Romish Sea; I know not what infortunate wind hath blown the last into our Land, and defiled the pure professors of Reformation. But you will say, there is no Simony, wherein the Minister is not one party. It is too true; woe to us the whiles: I mean not only the woe of misery, fatally forced on us by these evil days; but the woe of Judgement, which we voluntarily call on us by this wickedness. I will not speak to excuse us a t•to, sed a tanto: durum telum, necessitas: You that are the Donors, have the things consecrated to Piety and Faith, committed to you upon trust, and you have sworn it a law in your bosoms, (which you more strictly observe, then the law of your maker) that we shall buy them at your hands, or go without them. Christ threw out of the Temple, not only the buyers, but (let me say rather) the sellers: And though the Law of the Land, makes you not ⟨image 19⟩(Pares •oe•a) equal with us in the punishment; yet the Law of Heaven shall find you (Pares culpa,) in equal fault: I think, I might boldly say (under correction) you are in the greater damnation; as it had been more heinous in S. Peter to exact money of Magus, then in Magus to offer it: the reason is impregnable, you sin through a voluntary covetousness, we through extreme necessity; being constrained, either to beg with our families, or study evasions for so strict and religious a law: If we therefore be condemned as Simonists, your easiest censure, is to be esteemed Infidels. Me thinks I hear them reply; There is enough left to satisfy all, if there might be an equal division; but some have all, some nothing: To whom I will not answer, since that grave Father hath for me: Thus their Fathers have plaid the Thieves,