'Moses's wish is fulfilled': Jeremy Taylor on Whitsun

But in the Gospel, the spirit is given without measure; first powred forth upon our head Christ Jesus; then descending upon the beard of Aaron, the Fathers of the Church, and thence falling like the tears of the balsam of Judea upon the foot of the plant, upon the lowest of the people. And this is given regularly to all that ask it, to all that can receive it, and by a solemn ceremony and conveyed by a Sacrament: and is now, not the Daughter of a voice, but the Mother of many voices, of divided tongues, and united hearts, of the tongues of Prophets, and the duty of Saints, of the Sermons of Apostles, and the wisdom of Governours; It is the Parent of boldness, and fortitude to Martyrs, the fountain of learning to Doctors, an Ocean of all things excellent to all who are within the ship, and bounds of the Catholike Church: so that Old men and young men, maidens and boyes, the scribe and the unlearned, the Judge and the Advocate, the Priest and the people are full of the Spirit, if they belong to God: Moses's wish is fulfilled, and all the Lords people are Prophets in some sense or other.

From Jeremy Taylor's sermon 'Whitsunday of the Spirit of Grace', Part I, Sermons preached at Golden Grove being for the summer half-year, beginning on Whit-Sunday (1651).

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