The works of James Pilkington.

Contents

PAGE

Biographical Notice of Pilkington i

Exposition upon the Prophet Haggai (1560, 1562) 1

Preface

the Prophet spake and wrote it, and I for my part and poor ability have declared it; I doubt not, but the good should be stirred by God's Spirit more earnestly to seek God's glory, and the froward should be afraid of God's plague, and ashamed stubbornly to strive against the truth continually.

The state of religion in these our miserable days is much like to the troublesome time that this prophet lived in: God grant that after many grievous storms it may take like root in us, as it did then in them ! After the long captivity of God's people in Babylon, God gave them gra-

Ezrai. cious king Cyrus, which set them at liberty and sent them home to build God's house : so after our long Romish slavery God raised us up good kings, which restored us God's book that long had been buried, and loosed us from the bondage of strange gods, foreign powers, cruel hypocrites, and wicked idols. And as after that short freedom

Esther i. under good Cyrus ensued the cruelty of Hainan, for negligently handling God's building; and not long after mild

Mace. i. Ester, came bloody Antiochus for their falling from God: so for our talking gospel, and not worthily walking nor following it, under our gracious late Josias, crept out a swarm of Romish wasps, stinging to death all that would not worship their gods, nor believe their doctrine.

God for his mercy's sake grant, that now for our unthankful coldness in God's cause under our mild Ester burst not out again bloody Antiochus with his whelps, justly to avenge our cold slackness in God's religion and insensible dulness. God's word is never offered and given in vain, or

2 cor. ii. to use at our pleasure : but it works either salvation in them that hear, believe and follow it, or else condemnation in them that proudly despise it, sturdily rebel, or forgetfully do hear, and unthankfully receive his mercies. Therefore as after a storm follows a calm, and after winter comes

PREFACE. .>

summer ; so now, where God hath given a breathing time, (lest our weakness had not been able to have borne his heavy displeasure any longer,) let us earnestly apply our work, while we have time; for the night will come when no man shall be able to work.

If this be true (as it is most true indeed) that every deed of our Saviour Christ is our instruction ; and also that what things soever are written, they be written for our Rom. xv. learning, as St Paul teacheth ; let us call to remembrance, what zeal and earnest love our Saviour Christ especially shewed in building his Father's house, and restoring the true understanding of the scriptures from the superstitious glosses of the Scribes and Pharisees, and also what a fervent desire of promoting Cod's glory our fathers have shewed afore us, that we may be good scholars of our schoolmaster Christ Jesus, and obedient children, walking in the steps of our fathers. Our Lord and Saviour Christ, coming joim ii.

Luke mx.

into the temple and rinding it full of buyers, sellers and changers, was grieved to see God's house so misused, gat a whip and drove them all out, saying, " My house is a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves:1'' so surely all Christians, which unfeignedly bear the name of Christ, and zealously love the building of his house, would gladly see sin punished, and lament that the whip of God's discipline is not shaken in God's house to the driving out and confusion of all greedy thieves, which if they cannot get in at the door by lawful means, will climb in at the window, and for a little money will sell the bodies and souls of Christ's sheep, and make Cod's house the pope's market place. But as she that had so much work to do, that she could not tell where to begin, sat her down and left all undone : so I say, worldly-wise men see so many things out of order in God's house, and so little hope of redress, that

Zeal in correcting sin is godly.

6 PREFACE.

they cannot tell which to correct or amend first, and therefore let the whip lie still, and every man to do what him lust, and sin to be unpunished.

And not only this evil reigns, but the world is come to such a dissolute liberty and negligent forgetting of God, that men sleeping in sin need not so much a whip to drive any out of the church, (so few come there,) but they need a great sort of whips to drive some few thitherward. For come into a church on the sabbath day, and ye shall see but few, though there be a sermon ; but the ale-house is ever full. Well worth the papists therefore in their kind : for they be earnest, zealous and painful in their doings; they will build their kingdom more in one year with fire and fagot, than the cold gospellers will do in seven. A popish summoner, spy, or promoter will drive more to the church with a word to hear a latin mass, than seven preachers will bring in a week's preaching to hear a godly sermon. If this be not true, remember the late days of popery, and see who durst offend him that ware a shaven crown. Who looked so high then, but he would give place to a priest's cap ? and now who regards the best preacher ye have ? 0 what a condemnation shall this be to all such as have the whip of God's correction in their hand, to see the wicked so diligent and earnest in their doings to set up antichrist ; and christian rulers and officers of all sorts, having the whip of correction in their hand both by God's law and the prince's, so coldly behave themselves in setting up the kingdom of Christ, that neither they give good example themselves in diligent praying and resorting to the church, nor by the whip of discipline drive others thitherward ! Where appears in any Christians, in these our days, this earnest zeal of Christ, to promote God's glory by such correction, that we may say we be his followers? I fear rather that Christ, of whom we

PREFACE.

more talk, than diligently follow or earnestly love, for this cold slackness that he sees in us will say unto us, "Because ye be neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of Rev. Hi. my mouth." Woe be to that realm where God is compelled to take the whip in hand to punish sin, because the rulers will not ! great shall be the plague thereof. Phinees turned Num- xxvaway God's anger from his people, because so zealously he avenged God's quarrel, and punished that wickedness which other winked at. David, seeing God's glory defaced, and his enemies so contemptuously to forget the law of the Lord, was so grieved that he said, " the earnest love that he psai. cxix. bare toward God made him to pine away, because his enemies had forgotten the word of God." Elias fleeing from cruel Jesabel, threatening to kill him because he had destroyed Baal's priests, lived in wilderness, desired he might 1 Kinss xix die, for he was weary of his life to see how many were fallen to idolatry, and how few (or none, as he thought) worshipped truly the living God. Though Jehu was an evil man otherways, yet God gave him a worldly blessing, and commended him for his earnest zeal in rooting out the posterity of Achab, pulling down Baal and his sacrificing 2 Kinss x. priests, making a common jakes of the house where they worshipped him. St Paul, seeing the Corinthians rather rejoicing than lamenting or punishing that filthiness committed among them, that one of them had defiled his step- ' Cor- vmother, writes unto them, rebukes them all sharply, because they did not correct him, and wills them all to assemble themselves in the name of God, to excommunicate and give him to Satan that had done this wickedness, not to eat and drink with him, that he might be ashamed, repent and amend. So, whereas this great zeal and love toward God and his house building stands either in correcting evil and lamenting the defacing of God's glory, or else in wishin and s

PREFACE.

doing good thereto, and furthering it to our powers ; for the first part to be earnestly followed, these few examples shall serve ; for the other there be so many, that it is harder to tell where to end, than where to begin.

Moses in the wilderness, willing to make a tabernacle and

place where the people should resort to worship their God,

Zeal to pro- had the princes and people so liberal to offer and bring to

pleases him. tne making thereof gold, silver, precious stones, silk, purple,

Exod. xxxv. hair, iron, brass and timber, of all sorts such plenty, that they would have given more than needed. David, earnestly desiring to build a house for the Lord, (if God would have suffered him,) left his son Salomon so great plenty of all things necessary to that building in a readiness, that he finished that costly building in seven years. Good king Cyrus restored again to God's people all that covetous Nabucho1 had robbed from them: Cyrus, Darius, Artaxerxes, and his princes gave out of their treasures to the building

Eiravi. \ii. of the temple and maintenance of their sacrifices according to the law of Moses sufficiently, that they might pray for the king, his children, and the commonwealth. Constantinus the first, worthily called Magnus, a christian emperor, gave great liberty to the bishops and other ministers. Justinianus, Theodosius, Carolus Magnus, Ludovicus Pius, &c, augmented and increased the same with lands and laws. This zeal and earnest love to build God's house and

wr are un- punish sin was in our fathers : this liberality was in princes

like our 1 J r

fathers. anj rulers, that understood not God's benefits and mercies so plentifully as we do. They pacified Gods wrath incorrecting sin, and we provoke his plagues with heaping up of sin. They were grieved and Aveary of their lives, when they see God's enemies despise his word; we wink and cloke it, we laugh and smile at it, and think it not [} Nabucho: Nabuehodonozor, or Nebuchadnezzar. Ed.]

PREFACE. D

to be a fault. They were offended if wickedness were unpunished, and the party not ashamed that sinned ; and we be offended if any man go about to see it punished, or the offender ashamed. They were liberal in giving, relieving and maintaining the ministry ; we are greedy in snatching and plucking away from them. They were ready to defend with privileges the ministers, that they should not be withdrawn from doing their duty ; and we bind them to such clogs that they cannot do their duty : they restored all that was taken from them ; and we study daily how to get more from them. When I compare these doings together, and see how good success the one had, and God's church was gloriously builded that way, both under the law and the gospel ; it makes me to quake, when I look what shall fall upon us, going so far clean contrary Avay. Surely both they and we go not in the right way. The Lord for his crucified Christ's sake, which came down from the bosom of his Father to teach us to build him a house here, that afterward we might reign in glory with him there, grant us all, in all degrees from the highest to the lowest, such an earnest simple love to the true building of his house, as the prophet here teaches us, that uprightly we might walk the right way that he hath gone afore us.

If the prince and nobility will maintain that honourable estate that God hath called them to, and avoid the bondage of foreign powers ; if the bishops and clergy will feed God's people with the lively food of our souls, God's doctrine and discipline, and not with man's inventions; if the people will truly serve God and obey their prince, flee from idolatry, and escape God's plagues ; let us jointly together earnestly abhor popery, correct sin, turn unto the Lord, delight in his word, reverence his ministers, be diligent in prayer, that we may be lively stones, meet for his building,

PREFACE.

and become the temples of the Holy Ghost, where he with the Father and the Son, three persons and one God, may dwell and be praised1.

I. P L. C. D2

My earnest love to God hath pined me away, because my enemies have forgotten thy words. Psalm cxix.

I have been earnestly zealous for the Lord God of hosts, because they have forsaken thy covenant. 1 Kings xix.

P In the first edition, 1560, it is added:

Among many other things that I, a poor workman in God's house, would have said to encourage other workmen, and specially .those that should be the chief builders and pillars of his church, these few things at this time shall serve, because the printer makes haste, and I have not leisure.

James Pylkynton, Maister of S. John's Colledge in Cambridge, to the readers.

Then follow the two verses quoted above. Ed.]

f8 These letters need explanation. In the first edition, on the title page immediately after the passage from Numbers, followed the initials, I. P. L. C. and the Preface was signed by the Author as Master of St John's College, Cambridge. See the preceding note. Here we find, in the second edition, the Preface signed like the title page of the former edition, only with the addition of D. — the Author having in the mean time removed from the Mastership of St John's to the Bishoprick of Durham. It seems therefore, the initials are to be interpreted : James Pilkington, Lancastriensis, (he was a native of Lancashire,) Cantabrigiensis, Dunelmensis. Ed.]

THE PROPHET AGGEUS3