Zeal for God’s House Quickened, by Oliver Bowles. 1643.

Zeal for God’s House Quickened. Or, A Sermon Preached before the Assembly of Lords, Commons, and Divines at their solemn fast July 7, 1643. In the Abbey Church at Westminster. Expressing The Eminencie of Zeale requisite in Church Reformers, by Oliver Bowles, Pastor of Sutton in Bedfordshire.

But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you.
~ Galatians 4:18

And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.
~ John 2:17

(The following was sourced from the original, written in old English.)

The Prophet Malachi, prophecying concerning the Lord Christ, that he should in due time come to visit his Church, sets him out as a Refiner, as a Purifier of silver, tells us that he should purifie in speciall the Sonnes of Levi, purge them as gold and silver, that they might offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousnesse. And as an accomplishingment of this prophecy, the same Lord Christ gives a specimen, in the story immediately preceding my Text, by that heroicall fact of his in whipping the buyers and sellers out of the Temple (an evill which the Priests for their gaine had fomented.) I call it an heroical fact, for that it was done by a speciall spirit, in its kinde not imitable by us. The which act of the Lord Jesus being carried on with an eminent and remarkable zeale and magnanimity gave the Disciples an occasion of calling this to minde, The zeale of thy house hath eaten me up. Of which zeale we have a remarkable discovery in these particulars.

1. In the weaknesse of the meanes whereby he did both attempt and effect the work; in that the persons but few in comparison, and those despicable in the eyes of the world, Christ and his Disciples, not armed with any weapons that might carry dread and terrour with them, at most but with a whip made of a few small cords, which probably were scattered by the Drovers which came thither to sell their cattell; and to some of them with his voice only, he said to the money changers, Take these things hence, and it was done.


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