A fourth volume containing one hundred and fifty sermons on several texts of Scripture…

SERMON II.

TITUS II.11. —Hath appeared unto all Men.

Use 1. LET us prize these Days of Grace. We are not apprehensive enough of the Mercy that Grace is so clearly revealed. The Gospel is the Light of the renewed World; we can no more be without the Gospel, than the World can be without the Sun: Psal. 19. David first speaks of the Sun, then of the Law, which signifies there the general Doctrine of the Scriptures. People would be in a miserable case, and all things would languish and suffer decay, if the Sun were gone; and such blackness there would be upon the new Creation, if we had not the Light of the Gospel. O how miserable were they that wanted the Light of the Sun for a few days, as in Egypt! And how barbarous and miserable should we be, were it not that Immortality and Life is brought to light by the Gospel? Tertullian saith, Gemmae à sola raritate gratiam possident, Jewels are commended for their scarceness and rareness. O we should the more seriously regard the Gospel, because God hath been so tender of revealing it; for four thousand Years in a great measure the Gospel lay hid. God kept it for a long time as a precious Secret hid in his own Bosom, and did not think the World worthy of it, till the Son of God came out from him to take our Nature, then was the Gospel discovered. Only as a King reveals his Secrets to some of his Intimates and Privy-Counsellors, and hides them from the rest of his Subjects; so God revealed it to some Prophets, and some Holy Men; and yet they had but a glimpse, and saw Christ at a distance: As when we see a Man a far off, we cannot tell his Shape, nor colour of his Clothes, nor other Circumstances, but only we see the Substance and Bulk of a Man; so they saw Christ, but it was at a distance, they could not tell the particular Circumstances of his Birth, Incarnation, Death and Resurrection, so clearly as now we can: therefore the Prophets are forced to study their own Prophecies,