Thomas Fuller (1608–1661)

From Fear of losing the Old Light, a Sermon preached in Exeter

AND now I am to take my final farewell of this famous city of Exeter. I have suffered from some for saying several times, that I thought this or this would be my last sermon, when afterwards I have preached again. Yet I hope the guests are not hurt, if I bring them in a course more than I promised or they expect. Such would have forborne their censures had they consulted with the Epistle to the Romans. In the fifteenth chapter, verse 33, the apostle seems to close and conclude his discourse, ‘Now the God of Peace be with you all, Amen.’ And yet presently he beginneth afresh and continueth his epistle a whole chapter longer. Yea, in the sixteenth chapter, verse 20, St. Paul takes a second solemn vale, ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, Amen;’ and, notwithstanding, still he spins out his matter three verses farther, till that full and final period, verse 27, ‘To God only wise be glory through Jesus Christ for ever, Amen.’ Thus loath to depart is the tune of all loving friends: the same I may plead for myself, so often taking my farewell, wherein if any were deceived, none I am sure were injured.

Now this is all: the Rabbins have a conceit that manna relished so to the palates of the Jews just as the eater thereof did fancy or desire. Consult with yourselves, and wish your own spiritual and temporal conveniences, wish what you will, for body, soul, both; you, yours, your private, the public; confine not your happiness with too narrow measure of your own making. And my constant prayer to God shall be, that he would be pleased to be to you all in general, each one in particular, that very thing which you for your own good do most desire, Amen.

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