Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A57957
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A funeral sermon preached at the obsequies of the right reverend father in God, Jeremy, Lord Bishop of Down who deceased at Lysburne August 13th, 1667 / by Dr. George Rust.
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Rust, George, d. 1670.
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1668
(1668)
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Wing R2362; ESTC R17604
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18,875
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46
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he plac'd him in his own Colledge of All-Souls in Oxford where love and admiration still waited upon him which so long as there is any spark of ingenuity in the breasts of men must needs be the inseparable Attendants of so extraordinary a worth and sweetness He had not been long here afore my Lord of Canterbury bestowed upon him the Rectory of Vphingham in Rutland-shire and soon after preferr'd him to be Chaplain to King Charles the Martyr of blessed and immortal memory Thus were preferments heaped upon him but still less than his deserts and that not through the fault of his great Masters but because the amplest honours and rewards were poor and inconsiderable compar'd with the greatness of his Worth and Merit This Great Man had no sooner launch'd into the World but a fearful Tempest arose and a barbarous and unnatural War disturb'd a long and uninterrupted Peace and Tranquillity and brought all things into disorder and confusion but his Religion taught him to be Loyal and engag'd him on his Prince's side whose Cause and Quarrel he alwayes own'd and maintain'd with a great courage and constancy till at last he and his little fortune were shipwrackt in that great Hurricane that overturn'd both Church and State This fatal Storm cast him ashore in a private corner of the World and a tender Providence shrowded him under her Wings and the Prophet was fed in the Wilderness and his great worthiness procur'd him friends that supply'd him with bread and necessaries In this Solitude he began to write those excellent Discourses which are enough of themselves to furnish a Library and will be famous to all succeeding Generations for their greatness of wit and profoundness of judgement and richness of fancy and clearness of expression and copiousness of invention and general usefulness to all the purposes of a Christian And by these he soon got a great reputation among all persons of judgement and indifferency and his Name will grow greater still as the World grows better and wiser When he had spent some years in this retirement it pleas'd God to visit his Family with sickness and to take to himself the dear Pledges of his favour three Sons of great hopes and expectations within the space of two or three Moneths And though he had learned a quiet submission unto the Divine Will yet the affliction touch'd him so sensibly that it made him desirous to leave the Countrey And going to London he there met my Lord Conway a Person of great Honour and Generosity who making him a kind Proffer the good man embrac'd it and that brought him over into Ireland and setled him at Portmore a place made for study and contemplation which he therefore dearly lov'd and here he wrote his Cases of Consciences A Book that is able alone to give its Author Immortality By this time the wheel of Providence brought about the Kings happy Restauration and there began a new World and the Spirit of God mov'd upon the face of the Waters and out of a confused Chaos brought forth Beauty and Order and all the Three Nations were inspir'd with a new life and became drunk with an excess of Joy among the rest this Loyal Subject went over to congratulate the Prince and People's happiness and bear a part in the Universal Triumph It was not long ere his Sacred Majesty began the settlement of the Church and the great Doctor Jeremy Taylor was resolv'd upon for the Bishoprick of Down and Conor and not long after Dromore was added to it and it was but reasonable that the King and Church should consider their Champion and reward the pains and sufferings he under-went in the defence of their Cause and Honour With what care and faithfulness he discharg'd his Office we are all his witnesses what good Rules and Directions he gave his Clergy and how he taught us the practice of them by his own example Upon his coming over Bishop he was made a Privy-Councellor and the University of Dublin gave him their Testimony by recommending him for their Vice-Chancellor Which honourable Office he kept to his dying day During his being in this See he wrote several excellent Discourses particularly his Disswasive from Popery which was receiv'd by a general approbation and a Vindication of it now in the Press from some impertinent Cavillers that pretend to answer Books when there is nothing towards it more than the very Title-Page This great Prelate improv'd his Talent with a mighty industry and mannag'd his Steward-ship rarely well and his Master when he call'd for his Accounts found him busie and at his work and employed upon an excellent Subject A Discourse upon the Beatitudes which if finisht would have been of great Use to the World and solv'd most of the Cases of Conscience that occurr to a Christian in all the varieties of states and conditions But the All-wise God hath ordain'd it otherwise and hath call'd home his good Servant to give him a portion in that Blessedness that Jesus Christ hath promised to all his faithful Disciples and Followers Thus having given you a brief Account of his Life I know you will now expect a character of his Person but I fore-see it will befall him as it does all Glorious Subjects that are but disparag'd by a commendation One thing I am secure of that I shall not be thought to speak Hyperbolies for the Subject can hardly be reach'd by any expressions For he was none of Gods ordinary works but his Endowments were so many and so great as really made him a Miracle Nature had befriended him much in his Constitution for he was a person of a most sweet and obliging Humour of great Candour and Ingenuity and there was so much of Salt and fineness of Wit and pretiness of Address in his familiar Discourses as made his Conversation have all the pleasantness of a Comedy and all the usefulness of a Sermon His Soul was made up of Harmony and he never spake but he charm'd his Hearer not only with the clearness of his Reason but all his Words and his very Tone and Cadencies were strangely Musical But That which did most of all captivate and enravish was The gaiety and richness of his Fancy for he had much in him of that natural Enthusiasm that inspires all great Poets and Orators and there was a generous ferment in his Bloud and Spirits that set his Fancy bravely a work and made it swell and teem and become pregnant to such degrees of Luxuriancy as nothing but the greatness of his Wit and Judgment could have kept it within due bounds and measures And indeed it was a rare Mixture and a single Instance hardly to be found in an Age for the great Tryer of Wits has told us That there is a peculiar and several Complexion requir'd for Wit and Judgment and Fancy and yet you might have found all these in this great Personage in their Eminency and Perfection But that which made
his Wit and Judgment so considerable was the largeness and freedom of his Spirit for truth is plain and easie to a mind dis-intangled from Superstition and Prejudice He was one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a sort of brave Philosophers that Laërtius speaks of that did not addict themselves to any particular Sect but ingenuously sought for Truth among all the wrangling Schools and they found her miserably torn and rent to pieces and parcell'd into Raggs by the several contending Parties and so disfigur'd and mishapen that it was hard to know her but they made a shift to gather up her scatter'd Limbs which as soon as they came together by a strange sympathy and connaturalness presently united into a lovely and beautiful body This was the Spirit of this Great Man he weighed Mens Reasons and not their Names and was not scar'd with the ugly Vizars men usually put upon Persons they hate and Opinions they dislike nor affrighted with the Anathema's and Execrations of an infallible Chair which he look'd upon only as Bug-bears to terrifie weak and childish minds He consider'd that it is not likely any one Party should wholly engross Truth to themselves that Obedience is the only way to true Knowledge which is an Argument that he has manag'd rarely well in that excellent Sermon of his which he calls Via Intelligentiae that God always and only teaches docible and ingenuous minds that are willing to hear and ready to obey according to their Light that it is impossible a pure humble resigned God-like Soul should be kept out of Heaven whatever mistakes it might be subject to in this state of Mortality that the design of Heaven is not to fill mens heads and feed their Curiosities but to better their Hearts and mend their Lives Such Considerations as these made him impartial in his Disquisitions and give a due allowance to the Reasons of his Adversary and contend for Truth and not for Victory And now you will easily believe that an ordinary Diligence would be able to make great Improvements upon such a Stock of Parts and Endowments but to these advantages of Nature and excellency of his Spirit he added an indefatigable Industry and God gave a plentiful Benediction for there were very few Kinds of Learning but he was a Mystes and great Master in them He was a rare Humanist and hugely vers'd in all the polite parts of Learning and had throughly concocted all the ancient Moralists Greek and Roman Poets and Orators and was not unacquainted with the refined VVits of the later Ages whether French or Italian But he had not only the Accomplishments of a Gentleman but so universal were his Parts that they were proportion'd to every thing and though his Spirit and Humour were made up of Smoothness and Gentleness yet he could bear with the Harshness and Roughness of the Schools and was not unseen in their Subtilties and Spinosities and upon occasion could make them serve his purpose and yet I believe he thought many of them very near akin to the famous Knight of the Mancha and would make sport sometimes with the Romantick Sophistry and phantastick Adventures of School-Errantry His Skill was great both in the Civil and Canon Law and Casuistical Divinity and he was a rare Conductor of Souls and knew how to Counsel and to Advise to solve Difficulties and determine Cases and quiet Consciences And he was no Novice in Mr. I. S. new Science of Controversie but could manage an Argument and make Reparties with a strange dexterity He understood what the several Parties in Christendom have to say for themselves and could plead their Cause to better advantage than any Advocate of their Tribe and when he had done he could confute them too and shew that better Arguments than ever they could produce for themselves would afford no sufficient ground for their fond Opinions It would be too great a Task to pursue his Accomplishments through the various Kinds of Literature I shall content my self to add only his great Acquaintance with the Fathers and Ecclesiastical Writers and the Doctors of the first and purest Ages both of the Greek and Latine Church which he has made use of against the Romanists to vindicate the Church of England from the Challenge of Innovation and prove her to be truly Ancient Catholick and Apostolical But Religion and Vertue is the Crown of all other Accomplishments and it was the Glory of this great Man to be thought a Christian and whatever you added to it he look'd upon as a term of diminution and yet he was a Zealous Son of the Church of England but that was because he judg'd her and with great reason a Church the most purely Christian of any in the World In his younger years he met with some assaults from Popery and the high pretensions of their Religious Orders were very accommodate to his Devotional Temper but he was alwayes so much Master of himself that he would never be governed by any thing but Reasons and the evidence of Truth which engag'd him in the study of those Controversies and to how good purpose the World is by this time a sufficient Witness But the longer and the more he consider'd the worse he lik'd the Roman Cause and became at last to censure them with some severity but I confess I have so great an opinion of his Judgment and the charitableness of his Spirit that I am afraid he did not think worse of them than they deserve But Religion is not a matter of Theory and Orthodox Notions and it is not enough to believe aright but we must practise accordingly and to master our passions and to make a right use of that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and power that God has given us over our own actions is a greater glory than all other Accomplishments that can adorn the mind of Man and therefore I shall close my Character of this Great Personage with a touch upon some of those Vertues for which his Memory will be pretious to all Posterity He was a Person of great Humility and notwithstanding his stupendious Parts and Learning and Eminency of Place he had nothing in him of Pride and Humour but was Courteous and Affable and of easie Access and would lend a ready Ear to the complaints yea to the impertinencies of the meanest persons His Humility was coupled with an Extraordinary Piety and I believe he spent the greatest part of his time in Heaven his solemn hours of Prayer took up a considerable portion of his Life and we are not to doubt but he had learn'd of St. Paul to pray continually and that occasional Ejaculations and frequent Aspirations and Emigrations of his Soul after God made up the best part of his Devotions But he was not onely a Good Man God-ward but he was come to the top of St. Peter's gradation and to all his other Vertues added a large and diffusive Charity And whoever compares his plentiful Incomes with the