Zerubbabels encouragement to finish the temple. A sermon preached before the honourable House of…

I will end this Caution with two Rules. First, be sure you establish nothing but what you have full, clear, and general light for. Secondly, condemn nothing, and suffer nothing to stand condemned, in which, you in your consciences are doubtful, there may be a truth: For if you should build the least Hay and Stubble, you will not ⟨p. 44⟩only suffer loss, but lay a foundation of a new rent and division in the age to come. For there is a Spirit mentioned in the Text, even the Holy Ghost, who will not rest working in mens spirits, till the whole building be rightly framed according to the pattern in every piece of it. And what ever is amiss, and not according to his mind, the light of his fire will both discover it and burn it up, which leads me to the 5. Observation, which is this:

I will end this Caution with two Rules. First, be sure you establish nothing but what you have full, cleare, and generall light for. Secondly, condemne nothing, and suffer nothing to stand condemned, in which, you in your consciences are doubtfull, there may be a truth: For if you should build the least Hay and Stubble, you will not ⟨p. 44⟩onely suffer losse, but lay a foundation of a new rent and division in the age to come. For there is a Spirit mentioned in the Text, even the Holy Ghost, who will not rest working in mens spirits, till the whole building be rightly framed according to the pattern in every piece of it. And what ever is amisse, and not according to his minde, the light of his fire will both discover it and burne it up, which leads me to the 5. Observation, which is this:

That God carries on the work of finishing his Temple, ¹[not by power nor might, but by his Spirit.] By Spirit he meaneth the holy Ghost, by a more immediate hand stirring up mens spirits unto this work; turning and convincing them of the truth, and of their duty towards it; and likewise by coincident acts of Providence, so apparently wheeling about to the effecting of it, that though might and power be brought to concur in it, yet so as his hand alone shall be seen and acknowledged in it. And thus his [Spirit] here is manifestly interpreted in the 10. ver. where it is said, that as all should see the Plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel, (the instrument of building it) so they should perceive those seven eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth: (that is, his eyes of Providence, called seven, because of their perfection) these to have so guided and managed all the affairs thereof, that all the rays and beams of Providence issuing from those eyes, might be seen to meet in the accomplishment of this, as their ultimate aim and scope. Now these seven eyes,