A Sermon by Matthew Newcomen
Isaiah 62:6,7. Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
I might fill up a large portion of the time remaining in telling you how all the Lord’s remembrancers in all the ages of the Church, under the law and under the gospel, have exemplified this truth. Thus under the law, before the captivity: Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah. Which of the Lord’s prophets have not made the establishing and beautifying of Jerusalem the burden of their prayers? During the captivity, though they had lost their urim and thummin and the fire of the sanctuary that came from heaven, yet they did not lose this holy, heavenly disposition of praying for Jerusalem. See abundant evidence of it in Ezekiel, Daniel and Mordecai; and after the captivity in Ezra and Nehemiah. And now, in the times of the gospel, the same spirit still animates God’s children and inclines their hearts still to seek the good of Jerusalem. How do the apostles in several Epistles testify to this disposition in them? Paul says to the Church in Rome: “God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers” (Rom 1:9). So also: “Making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you . . .” (Eph 1:16-17).
Yea, so much religion have the saints of God before us placed in this duty of praying for Jerusalem that they have protested against the neglect of this as a most abominable sin: “As for me, God forbid that I should sin against you, in ceasing to pray for you” (1 Sam 12:23). Nay, they have called for a curse upon themselves, if ever they should be so wretched: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning: if I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy” (Ps 137:5-6). To be silenced is one of the greatest judgements that can befall a prophet. Witness Zacharias, whose unbelief God punished with this as a pre-eminent judgement. Witness those amongst ourselves who had their mouths stopped by the violent hand of man; they know what it is to have the Word of God as a fire in their bones and have no vent for it. Yet even to this does the prophet here curse himself: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
1This sermon was preached at Westminster Abbey before both Houses of Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, on 7 July 1643, a fast day. Newcomen was a minister at Dedham in Essex. In this second part he makes application of his doctrine: “It is in a special manner the duty of God’s ministers to pray earnestly and incessantly to God that He would establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.” It has been edited.
if I do not remember to mourn for thee, to pray for thee, let me never pray more; let me never speak more if I forget to speak for thee; let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. The good Lord be merciful to every one of us and pardon all our forgetfulness of Jerusalem, whom we have as much reason to remember as ever anyone had.
For is Jerusalem not the city of God, the house of God, the delight of God, the crown of glory, the royal diadem in the hand of God? Is it not the love, the dove, the spouse, the sister, the body, the fullness, the glory of Jesus Christ? And in all these respects doth it not deserve our prayers?
And are earth and hell not up in arms against Jerusalem? Are men and devils not in league together to confound and destroy Jerusalem? “They have taken crafty counsel against Thy people, and consulted against Thy hidden ones. They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation: that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance” (Ps 83:3-4) – Gebal and Ammon and Amalek etc. And doth not Jerusalem in this respect now need our prayers?
And hath the Lord not made promises unto Jerusalem of these things we are to pray for? “I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth” (Jer 33:6). And “it shall be to Me a name of joy, a praise and an honour before all the nations of the earth” (Jer 33:9). Is the Lord not able to accomplish these promises notwithstanding all the counter-machinations of His enemies? “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure” (Is 46:10). Yet it is the Lord’s pleasure only to accomplish these things unto His Church by His people’s prayers: “Call unto Me and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not” (Jer 33:3); “I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them” (Ezek 36:37).
In the next place, this truth might serve for reproof. O with what vehemence might a man, in the name and by the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, thunder indignation and wrath from hence upon the heads of those who, though they have usurped the place of such as should be the Lord’s remembrancers, yet instead of performing the duty of this text have practised the clean contrary. Instead of praying that God would establish His Church in truth, they have endeavoured only to undermine, subvert and adulterate the truth. Their folly, as the Apostle speaks, is manifest unto all men (2 Tim 3:9). God hath unmasked them, and all that will see may see that their design was to let in such an inundation of Popery and Socinianism as should have drowned the truth of God for ever. Instead of praying that God would establish His Church in peace, they have acted the part of those unclean spirits, the frogs spoken of in Revelation 16:14, stirring up the kings of the earth to battle against the Church of God, first in Scotland, and since that in England. Did the wars of both kingdoms not have the same fuel and fomenters? And who are they but the Jesuitizing clergy of England, who, like the unclean spirit we read of in Mark 9, fearing they shall now be cast out of their long possession, rend and tear the kingdom and lay it wallowing in its blood? What shall I speak of such clergy? Instead of praying that God would make His Church a praise, they have endeavoured nothing more than to rob the Church of all that might make it praiseworthy. Instead of desiring that the Church might enjoy fullness of ordinances, they have endeavoured to strip the Church of them all, to abolish Sabbaths – to bring the delight of days, the queen of days, under the curse of Job’s birthday, “Let it not be joined to the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months”; they have endeavoured to cast preaching and praying out of the Church, to turn the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper into a sacrifice of the altar. Instead of praying that all ordinances and offices might be administered according to Christ’s rule, they would have all things in God’s house and worship done according to their own fancy.
What shall we say of such a clergy? Aristotle speaks of a little worm that is pestilently destructive to beehives; no less destructive have the greatest part of them been to the true Church of God amongst us. Against them, the Church of God may pour out such sad complaints to her Lord Jesus Christ: “The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me” (Song 5:7). Let such read their doom: their “judgement now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not” (2 Pet 2:3).
I had not turned aside to this reproof (for I look for none of this generation here this day) had it not been to provoke myself and you to a more serious and deep humiliation for those abominations of the late times. Though many of us have seen and observed even then, and some of us have felt and smarted under the violence thereof, yet few I fear amongst us have had our hearts so humbled for their iniquity as they should have been. The Lord help us so to take to heart this day our own and other men’s sins, that He may forgive our iniquities and heal our land.
The only boldness I shall assume, brethren and fathers, is but to do as much as Naaman’s servant did unto his lord, to exhort you to do what you know God would have you do: pray for Jerusalem. I am confident I might spare even this; it is your work daily. But, God having called me this day to speak unto you, for Zion’s sake I cannot hold my peace. Is it the duty of ministers in a special manner to pray incessantly that God would establish Jerusalem and make it a praise in the earth? Then let every one of us by solemn engagements to God and to His Church bind ourselves to the performance of this duty. And surely, brethren, if ever there were times that called for this duty, if ever there were men called to this duty, this is the time; we are the men.
First, for the time.
If ever there were a time that did command the most importunate and incessant prayers of all God’s ministers and people, that they should cry mightily to the Lord night and day on behalf of Jerusalem – to keep no silence and give Him no rest till He establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth – now is the time. Had I art or grace enough to present before you at this time the lively, or rather the ghastly, face of Jerusalem – the Churches of Christ Jesus – I know it would command tears and prayers from the most flinty heart in this congregation. Would that I could let you see Jerusalem like the man in the parable (Luke 10:30-35) that went down from Jerusalem, fell among thieves and was stripped by them and wounded and left half dead, while many, too many, pass by with the priest and Levite on the other side of the way, and will not see the Church’s miseries – though they cannot but see them. “Amongst all her lovers there is none to comfort her” (Lam 1:2); “Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her” (Lam 1:17). Zion spreadeth forth her hands from sea to sea, from one nation to another people, and there is none to comfort her, “there is none to guide her amongst all the sons whom she hath brought forth, neither is there any that taketh her by the hand of all the sons that she hath brought up” (Is 51:18).
O were I able to express this to the life unto you, you would say, If ever there were a time for you to bestow, as the good Samaritan, your wine, your oil, your money – nay your tears, your prayers, your blood – for the healing of the Church’s wounds, now is the time. Or could I let you see the Church, Jerusalem, as John saw her in Revelation 12, in the same condition though not in the same clothing – a woman clothed not, as there, with the sun but with a cloud, having not the moon under her feet but a globe of flames, a field of blood. Ever since the beginning of this Parliament, the Church has been now almost these three years in this pained condition, in travail, crying and pained to be delivered. And all this while, as there, the great red dragon stands before the woman to devour the child as soon as it is born. The sight of the Church in such a sad condition might force a tear from a stone, a prayer from a heartless man. But from ministers, from those that are the Lord’s remembrancers, methinks it might draw tears enough to rinse the earth from blood and prayers enough to offer violence to heaven.
But to speak plainly, I say again, if ever there were a time that did command the most importunate and incessant prayers of all God’s ministers and people, now is the time. Was there ever a time wherein the Church of God was more shaken, more in danger to have both her pillars of truth and peace broken, reduced to nothing, than at this time? The enemies of the Church have long sought to undermine the truth, but now they set an open battery against the truth. And where is our peace? It has taken to itself the wings of a dove and, forsaking earth, is fled to heaven, frightened hence with the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war and the cries of blood. We may write of our age what the Prophet Azariah said of some ages of Israel: “In those times there was no peace to him that went out, nor to him that came in, but great vexations were upon all the inhabitants of the countries. And nation was destroyed of nation, and city of city: for God did vex them with all adversity” (2 Chr 15:5-6).
Never was this poor Church and people in a more broken, distressed condition in regard of civil peace, nor scarce ever worse in regard of ecclesiastical peace. Now when there are so many swords in England and in Ireland drawn against the Protestants, why should we be at daggers drawn against one another? For the divisions of Reuben there are great searchings of heart. Holy Ridley and Hooper could never agree about black and white in times of the peace and liberty of the gospel but had many wrathful bickerings, yet in time of persecution for the gospel they could, as their own expression is, agree in red. When God came to put them together in tears and sufferings and blood, they could forget all differences of judgement then and love and live and die together as brethren.2
Do those know what spirit they are of, at such a time as this that, when all the true-hearted Protestants in England are put in one calamitous, suffering, bleeding condition, they are yet quarrelling about their own opinions, weakening the Protestant party by sub-divisions, which if united is scarce enough to withstand the common adversary. Should this be if we had not lost our peace with God? As the Holy Ghost speaks of the calamities of the Church in Judah (2 Kings 24:3), so may we say of the calamities of the Church of England: Surely at the commandment of the Lord came this upon England. The Lord grant that the following words be not verified in our time to remove England out of His sight. But we may take up the Church’s lamentation: “Thou hast removed my soul far off from peace” (Lam 3:17); yes, and as far from praise.
2Newcomen is not, of course, arguing for compromise in doctrine or practice but, as he makes clear later on, for unity in the truth.
“The crown is fallen from our head” (Lam 5:16); we are become a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn, a derision, a byword, a shaking of the head. Those few of us that adhere to the Protestant religion and cause, are represented to the world at home and abroad as sectaries and rebels, so that if ever there was a time for us to cry to God to scatter those clouds of blood, confusion and contempt that cover the face of the Church, to bring forth our judgement as the light and our righteousness as the morning, now is the time. Ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, keep no silence and give Him no rest, till He establish and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
And if ever men were called to this work, we are called to it. As ministers it belongs unto us to be the Lord’s remembrancers: to put the Lord in mind of Jerusalem. You know what order the Lord took so that the priests, the ministers of the Lord under the law, might continually remember Israel, the Church of God, unto the Lord. The high priest was to bear the names of the 12 tribes upon his shoulders, engraved in two stones – and upon his breast, engraved upon 12 stones – that he might bear them upon his heart for a memorial before the Lord continually. These stones were to be the priest’s remembrancers so that he might be the Lord’s remembrancer by praying for Israel. This type is properly applicable to Christ, who is the only High Priest of His Church; yet this may, at least by way of allusion, be applied unto ministers, for there ought to be in them the same disposition.
As Christ wept over Jerusalem, so should they; as He remembered Jerusalem, so should they; as He prayed for Jerusalem, so should they – He by way of meritorious intercession, they by way of ministerial intercession, to bear Jerusalem upon their shoulders and upon their hearts continually whenever they address themselves into God’s presence. Jerusalem is engraved upon the hand of God, and therefore it should be engraved upon the hearts of His ministers. And it is, if God has laid His hand upon their hearts. “Behold I have graven thee”, saith God to Jerusalem, “upon the palms of My hands” (Is 49:16). Look how many ministers and others there are upon whose hearts God has laid His hand. I doubt not that, as God Himself cannot forget Jerusalem because it is engraved upon the palms of His hands, so they cannot but remember Jerusalem because it is engraved upon their hearts. All you that are the Lord’s remembrancers, you that have Jerusalem written in your hearts, keep no silence and give Him no rest till He establish and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. If ever men were called to this work, ministers are.
And if ever ministers were called to this work, the more especially are you whom it hath pleased God by the authority of the honourable Houses of Parliament to call together to debate and advise of such things as may be necessary, or conducive, to the establishment of truth and peace and beauty in the Churches of Christ Jesus. Does it not then especially lie upon you to keep no silence and give the Lord no rest till He establish Jerusalem? For except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it; except the Lord reform the Church, it is to no purpose to go about to reform it; except the Lord set up the pillars of peace and truth in His Church, and put the crown of glory upon His Church, it is labour lost to endeavour it. You that are called to this great work – you of all men – ought to keep no silence and give the Lord no rest, till He establish and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
I need not tell you how many eyes and expectations there are upon this Assembly from all the parts of the kingdom, from all the parts of the Christian world. I speak it not as a matter of boasting but as a matter of lying low before the Lord this day. The eyes of all the people of God are upon you; foreign Churches have their eyes towards you, waiting to see what you will advise for the more utter extinction of Popery, and effecting of a nearer union between us and the rest of the Reformed Churches. Methinks I hear from all the corners of the land coming up to this Assembly a voice like that of the poor woman to the king upon the wall: Help, help; for the Lord’s sake help; help us to better ministers, help us to better ordinances, help us to purer worship, help us to better discipline, help us to remove those things that deter us from the Lord’s table, help our tender consciences to more liberty. And may you not answer as he did there: Except the Lord help thee, whence should I help thee? There is such corruption and confusion in doctrine, discipline and worship that it will never prosper unless the great God set His hand to this great work – the God who is able to remove the iniquity of the land in one day (Zec 3:9), and to cause the prophet and unclean spirit to pass out of the land (Zec 13:2). Yet if it should not prosper, the sin would be laid at your door and you would bear the reproach of it to all memory. Therefore there is great need to plead with God to come down and own His work: “O that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that Thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at Thy presence!” Ye among all the rest of the Lord’s remembrancers, keep no silence and give Him no rest till He establish and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
And one thing more. Put in practice what I know you have all taught others: pursue your prayers with your endeavours. What ye pray for, contend for. As ye pray that God would establish His Church in truth, so labour with united endeavours to raise up and establish the decayed truth among us, vindicating the truths of the Protestant religion from all Popish, Arminian, Socinian, Anabaptist, Antinomian and all other errors whatsoever. And as ye pray that God would establish His Church in peace, so labour to work out the Church’s peace with God by endeavouring a removal of whatever pollution or profaneness have turned God into an enemy to us. And then labour for the Church’s peace with its own members, which ye shall certainly establish if, denying yourselves and laying aside all pre-engagements to your own opinions, desires and ways, you shall consent to what upon pious debate shall be found the truth of God. I doubt not but that through His grace ye shall all do this. In your union will be laid a happy foundation of union through the whole kingdom. And then we need take no thought for the third thing, peace with our enemies: God will either subdue them under us, or make them be at peace with us. Only let neither the desire of peace with them, nor of peace amongst ourselves, bribe us to tolerate anything in the Church of God that might make Him to be at war with us.
And lastly, as ye pray that God would make the Church a praise, so endeavour also that the Church of Christ may enjoy all those liberties and ordinances that are purchased for her by the blood, and bequeathed to her in the testament, of her Lord Jesus; that all her ways may be ordered according to the rule of God’s Word; that the gospel may run and be glorified; that those two great illuminating ordinances of preaching and catechising, which are as the greater and lesser lights of heaven, may have such liberty, encouragement, maintenance, that all the earth may be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. This do, and prosper. And that you may do so, the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like minded one towards another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.