And have built Temples

And have built Temples.

How is God forgotten, and they build Temples to the honor of God? You accuse us of forgetting God our Maker; what people in the world does remember God so as we do, when we are at such charges as we are at.

The word that is translated Temples, it signifies Palaces. The Church is indeed God's Palace: but note from hence, that when God is worshiped in any way but his own, then God is forgotten. Papists they set up images, and they say it is to put them in mind of God; but the truth is, they forget God in it.

Again, when men's hearts depart most desperately and furthest off from God, they are many times very forward in superstitious worship. As we know it in the primitive times, the hearts of men did close most with the power of godliness, and were more sincere in their worship; but afterwards when they came to have peace, in, and after Constantine's time when they had Temples, then they forgot God most and grew superstitious. When the Christians worshiped God in dens and caves of the earth, they remembered God more than when they had glorious Temples built for them. Men that have departed from God and have guilty consciences, they must have something to satisfy their consciences. Of late our kingdom, how desperately was it departing from God, and setting itself against all the power of godliness? But never more for building of Temples, that is, more for an outward pompous and glorious worship; but they forsook the Temples of God and persecuted them, and the saints of God that were the Temples of the Holy Ghost, they were neglected.

But what was their reason here (you will say) why is it a sin to build Temples?

I answer: first, it was in them a sin of hypocrisy.

Secondly, a sin of superstition.

A sin of hypocrisy in this, in that they would persecute those that would go to worship at the true Temple, and yet that they would bestow so much cost in building Temples of their own. And many of the ancients have many large invectives against all such as shall bestow a great deal of outward buildings, and yet let the poor saints want.

2. It was superstition in them, they would not go to Jerusalem, to the Temple that God had appointed, yet they would set up Temples of their own. There are many that hate the true Temple, and the true Church, that is, the communion of saints, yet magnify the outward buildings, as if there were no other Church but only that. So the Jews, when God would have them build his own Temple there they were slack enough: in (Haggai 2:2, 4, 9). What a deal of stir had God by his prophet to get them to build his Temple, but their own Temples they would build.

But wherein was the superstition for them to build Temples?

Thus: it is superstition for any men to put holiness in any buildings of their own. There were three things that made the Temple at Jerusalem a holy Temple; and none of them can be attributed to any other place in the world.

First, it was set apart by God, so as it was a sin to make any other use of it but holy.

Secondly, it did sanctify the very duties that were performed.

Thirdly, it was a type of Jesus Christ. There were these three things that were proper to the Temple at Jerusalem. And therefore you must learn for ever from hence, that there can be no argument drawn from the Temple at Jerusalem for the holiness of Temples now.

1. It is a superstition in any man to set apart a place so as it should be a sin to make use of it for any common thing.

2. Which is worse, and that is, for any man to set apart a place so as to think that the very place should sanctify the duty, because the Temple of Jerusalem did so: now for a man to think that his prayers are sanctified, because they are within such a building as this is, is superstition: hence a company of poor ignorant people they must go behind a pillar and pray, as if they were accepted the more because of the place. It's true, when we come and join with the Church, then our prayers are accepted, because it is in a way of ordinance. So Chrysostom cries out of this superstition, says he, Jeremiah when he stuck in the mud could pray, and Job when he was upon the dunghill, and Jonah when he was in the belly of the whale, and therefore why should we tie God's hearing of prayer to such and such places? Besides dedication, they had enchantments: Ab auguribus in augurabantur, suis augariis sanctiorum reddebantur, hoc nisi fieret, Templa esse non poterant (teste Varrone) sed aedes sacrae dicebantur. Men have been very profuse in this, both heathens and Christians, and yet I find in some stories that some of the heathens were against it, they thought God too great to be worshiped in any place, the principle itself (that God was great) was true, but that therefore he might not be worshiped in any place that had a cover over the head they thought it too much; so it was reported of Zeno the philosopher, he thought that Temples must not be built. And the Persians that worshiped the Sun, they thought that the whole world was the Temple of the Sun, and would have no other Temple. And Xerxes, the wise men persuaded him to burn all the Temples of Greece, because they would shut up God within walls, so some of the heathens had such thoughts of God, though ordinarily the heathens were very abundant in building of Temples to their false gods. And Josephus reports of Herod that he would seem to honor God by building a glorious Temple, in the fifteenth book of his Antiquity and the fourteenth chapter, the Temple that was in Christ's time it was of Herod's building, says Herod, this Temple wants sixty cubits in height of that which Solomon first built. And you know the Scripture tells, that those which saw his Temple did weep when they saw the second Temple which was built, and says Herod because it was not so glorious as the Temple of Solomon was, therefore he would build it and make it as glorious as that was, and so he laid out a great sum of money upon it in building it with white marble stones, twenty five cubits long, and eight cubits high, and about some twelve cubits broad. Thus superstitious he was. And so many have been in this way, many if they be set upon a way of their own they care not what charge they lay out, but as for those things that concern God they are slack enough.