First, We find here the form and fashion of a house; in which the parts are very much diversified one from another. There are, in a formed and fashioned house, doors, windows, posts, lintels, &c.; there is also a multitude of common stones in the walls of the house. Such a house is the visible ministerial church of Christ, the parts whereof are partes dissimilares,—some ministers and rulers; some eminent lights; [pg 6-027] others of the ordinary rank of Christians,—that make up the walls. If God hath made one but a small pinning in the wall, he hath reason to be content, and must not say, Why am not I a post, or a corner-stone, or a beam? Neither yet may any corner-stone despise the stones in the wall, and say, I have no need of you.
Secondly, The Prophet was here to show them “the goings out of the house, and the comings in thereof.” These are not the same but different gates, it is plain: “When the people of the land shall come before the Lord in the solemn feasts, he that entereth in by the way of the north gate to worship, shall go out by the way of the south gate, &c., he shall not return by the way of the gate whereby he came in,” Ezek. xlvi. 9. And that not only to teach us order, and the avoiding of confusion, occasioned by the contrary tides of a multitude, but to tell us farther, “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God,” Luke ix. 62. We must not go out of the church the way that we came in (that were a door of defection), but hold our faces forward till we go out by the door of death.
Thirdly, The text hath twice “all the forms thereof,” which I understand of the outward forms and of the inward forms, which two I find very much distinguished by those who have written of the form and structure of the temple. The church is exceedingly beautified, even outwardly, with the ordinances of Christ, but the inward forms are the most glorious: “For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you,” Luke xvii. 21; and it “cometh not with observation,” ver. 20; “The king's daughter is all glorious within;” yet even “her clothing is of wrought gold,” Psal. xlv. 13. When the angel had made an end of measuring the inner house (Ezek. xlii. 15), then he brought forth Ezekiel by the east gate, which was the chief gate by which the people commonly entered, and measured the outer wall in the last place. God's method is first to try the heart and reins, then to give to a man according to his works, Jer. xvii. 10. So should we measure, by the reed of the sanctuary, first the inner house of our hearts and minds, and then to measure our outer walls, and to judge of our profession and external performances.
Lastly, The Prophet is commanded to write in their sight “all the ordinances [pg 6-028] thereof, and all the laws thereof;” for the church is a house not only in an architectonic, but in an economic sense. It is Christ's family governed by his own laws; and a temple which hath in it “them that worship,” Rev. xi. 1, it hath its own proper laws by which it is ordered. Alioe sunt leges Coesarum, alioe Christi (saith Jerome[1387]),—Caesar's laws and Christ's laws are not the same, but divers one from another. Schoolmen say,[1388] that a law, properly so called, is both illuminative and impulsive: illuminative, to inform and direct the judgment; impulsive, to move and apply the will to action. And accordingly there are two names in this text given to Christ's laws and institutions: one[1389] which importeth the instruction and information of our minds; another,[1390] which signifieth a deep imprinting or engraving (and that is made upon our hearts and affections), such as a pen of iron and other instruments could make upon a stone. It is not well when either of the two is wanting; for the light of truth, without the engraving of truth, may be extinguished; and the engraving of truth, without the light of truth, may be obliterate.
All these I shall pass, and only pitch upon two doctrines which I shall draw from this second part of the text: one concerning the will of God's commandment, what God requireth of Israel to do; another concerning the will of God's decree, what he hath purposed himself to do.
The first is this: “God will have Israel to build and order his temple, not as shall seem good in their eyes, but according to his own pattern only which he sets before them,” which doth so evidently appear from this very text, that it needeth no other proof; for what else meaneth the showing of such a pattern to be kept and followed by his people? Other passages of this kind there are which do more abundantly confirm it.
The Lord did prescribe to Noah both the matter, and fashion, and measures of the ark (Gen. vi. 14-16). To Moses he gave a pattern of the tabernacle, of the ark, of the mercy-seat, of the vail, of the curtains, of the two altars, of the table and all the furniture [pg 6-029] thereof, of the candlestick and all the instruments thereof, &c. And though Moses was the greatest prophet that ever arose in Israel, yet God would not leave any part of the work to Moses' arbitrement, but straitly commandeth him, “Look that thou make them after their pattern, which was showed thee in the mount,” Exod. xxv. 40. When it came to the building of the first temple, Solomon was not in that left to his own wisdom, as great as it was, but David, the man of God, gave him a perfect “pattern of all that he had by the Spirit,” 1 Chron. xxviii. 11-13. The second temple was also built “according to the commandment of the God of Israel” (Ezra vi. 14), by Haggai and Zechariah. And for the New Testament, Christ our great Prophet, and only King and Lawgiver of the church, hath revealed his will to the apostles, and they to us, concerning all his holy things; and we must hold us at these unleavened and unmixed ordinances which the apostles, from the Lord, delivered to the churches: “I will put upon you (saith he himself) none other burden: but that which ye have already hold fast till I come,” Rev. ii. 24, 25.
I know the church must observe rules of order and conveniency in the common circumstances of times, places, and persons; but these circumstances are none of our holy things,—they are only prudential accommodations, which are alike common to all human societies, both civil and ecclesiastical, wherein both are directed by the same light of nature, the common rule to both in all things of that kind, providing always that the general rules of the word be observed: “Do all to the glory of God,” 1 Cor. x. 31; “Let all things be done to edifying,” 1 Cor. xiv. 26; “It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak,” Rom. xiv. 21; “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. To him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean,” Rom. xiv. 5, 14.
The text giveth some clearing to this point: There is here showed to the house of Israel a pattern of the whole structure, and of the least part thereof, and all the measures thereof; yet no pattern is given of the kind, or quantity, or magnificence of the several stones, or of the instruments of building. The reason is, because the former is essential to a house, the latter accidental,[1391] [pg 6-030] the former, if altered, make another building; the latter, though altered, the building is the same: therefore where we have in the text “the forms thereof,” the Septuagint read ὑποστασιν αὐτοῦ,—the substance thereof.
But to clear it a little farther, I put two characters upon those circumstances which are not determined by the word of God, but left to be ordered by the church as shall be found most convenient. First, They are not things sacred, nor proper to the church, as hath been said. They are of the same nature, they serve for the same end and use, both in sacred and civil things; for order and decency, the avoiding of confusion and the like, are alike common to church and commonwealth. Secondly, I shall describe them as one of the prelates hath done, who tells us,[1392] that the things which the Scripture hath left to the discretion of the church are those things “which neither needed nor could be particularly expressed. They needed not, because they are so obvious; and they could not, both because they are so numerous, and because so changeable.”