train them to abide with him, but
there was a secret power that went from him, that chained them to him
inevitably, "Lord, whither shall we go from thee, for thou hast the words
of eternal life?" O! that was an attractive virtue, a powerful conserving
virtue, that went out of his mouth. We heard him, say they, and we never
heard any speak like him, not so much for the pomp and majesty of his
style, for he came low, sitting on an ass, and was as condescending in his
manner of speech as in his other behaviour, but because "he taught with
authority." There was a divine virtue in his preaching. Some sparkles of a
divine Spirit and power in his discourses broke out from under the
plainness and simplicity of it, and made our souls truly to apprehend of
him what was sacrilegiously attributed in flattery to a man "the voice of
God, and not of man." We heard him so many years speak familiarly to us,
and with us, by which we were certainly persuaded he was a true man and
then we heard him in his speeches open the hidden mysteries of the kingdom
of heaven, revealing the will of the Father, which no man could know, but
he that was with the Father, and came down from him. We heard him
unfolding all these shadows and coverings of the Old Testament, expounding
Moses and the prophets, taking off the veil, and uncovering the ark and
oracles and "how did our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us
and opened to us the scriptures?" We heard him daily in the synagogues
expound the scriptures, whereof himself was the living commentary. When he
read them, we saw the true exposition before our eyes.

Now, my beloved, you may be admitted to hear him too for the sum of the
living words that came from the "Word of life" are written. His sermons
are abridged in the evangelists, that you may read them and when you read
them, think within yourself, that you hear his holy mouth speak them. Set
yourselves as amongst his disciples that so ye may believe, and believing,
may have eternal life, for this end are they written, John xx. 30, 31.

Sermon IV.

1 John i. 1, 2.--"Which we have heard and seen," &c.

There is a gradation of certainty here. Hearing himself speak, is more
than hearing by report, but an eye-witness is better that ten ear
witnesses, and handling adds a third assurance, for the sense of touching
gives the last and greatest evidence of truth. It is true, that the sense
is properly correspondent to sensible things,