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A42766
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A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons at their late solemne fast Wednesday, March 27, 1644 by George Gillespie.
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Gillespie, George, 1613-1648.
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1644
(1644)
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Wing G757; ESTC R24966
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43,436
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52
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sake who through the presumption and unhumblednesse of their spirits will acknowledge no fault in any thing they have formerly done in Church matters I cannot leave this application to the Kingdome till I inlarge it a little further There are foure considerations which may make England ashamed and confounded before the Lord 1. Because of the great Blessings which it hath so long wanted Your flourishing estate in the world could not have countervailed the want of the purity and liberty of the Ordinances of Christ That was a heavie x word of the Prophet Now for a long season Israel hath been without the true God and without a teaching Priest and without Law It hath not been altogether so with this Land where the Lord hath had not onely a true Church but many burning and shining lights many gracious Preachers and Professors many notable defenders of the Protestant cause against Papists many who have preached and written worthily of practicall Divinity and of those things which most concern a mans salvation Nay I am perswaded that all this time past there have been in this Kingdome many thousands of his secret and sealed ones who have been groaning under that burthen and bondage which they could not help and have been y waiting for the consolation of Israel Neverthelesse the Reformation of the Church of England hath been exceedingly deficient in Government Discipline and Worship yea and many places of the Kingdom have been without a teaching Priest and other places poisoned with false Teachers It is z said that all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord when they wanted the Ark twenty yeeres O let England lament after the Lord untill the Arke be brought into the own place of it 2. There is another cause of this great humiliation and that is the point in the Text to be ashamed of all that you have done Sinne Sinne is that which blacketh our faces and covereth us with confusion as with a Mantle and then most of all when we may read our sinne in some judgement of God which lyeth upon us Therefore the Septuagints here in stead of being ashamed of all that they have done a read accept their punishment for all that they have done Which agreeth to b that word in the Law If then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled The Greek readeth there ashamed and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity This is now Englands case whose sinne is written in the present Judgement and graven in your calamity as c with a pen of iron and with a point of a Diamond to make you say d The Lord our God is righteous in all his workes which he doeth for we obeyed not his voice Did not the land make Idoll Gods of the Court and of the Prelaticall Clergy and feared them and followed them more then God and obeyed them rather then God so that their threshold was set by Gods threshold and their posts by Gods posts as it is said v. 7. I speak not now of lawfull obedience to Authoritie Is it not a righteous thing with the Lord to make these your idols his rods to correct you Hath not England harboured and entertained Papists Priests and Jesuites in its bosome Is it not just that now you feel the sting and poison of these vipers Hath there not bin a great compliance with the Prelates for peace sake even to the preiudice of Truth Doth not the Lord now iustly punish that Episcopall peace with an Episcopall warre Was not that Prelaticall government first devised and since continued to preserve peace and to prevent Schismes in the Church and was it not Gods iust iudgement that such a remedy of mans invention should rather increase then cure the evill so that Sects have most multiplyed under that Government which now you know by sad experience Hath not this Nation for a long time taken the Name of the Lord in vaine by a formall worship and empty profession Is it not a iust requitall upon Gods part that your enemies have all this while taken Gods Name in vain and taken the Almighty to witnesse of the integrity of their intentions for Religion Law and Liberty thus perswading the world to beleeve a lye What shall I say of the Book of Sports and other prophanations of the Lords day This licentiousnesse was most acceptable to the greatest part and they e loved to have it so Doth not the great famine of the Word almost every where in the Kingdom except in this City make the Land mourn on the Sabbath and say f I do remember my faults this day Yea doth not the Land now enioy her Sabbaths while men are constrained not only to cease from sports on that day but from labouring the ground and from other works of their calling upon other dayes What should I speak of the lusts and uncleannesse gluttony and drunkennesse chambering and wantonnesse prodigality and lavishnesse excesse of riot masking and balling and sporting when Germany and the Palatinate and other places were wallowing in blood yea when there was so much sinne and wrath upon this same Kingdome Will not you say now that for this the Lord God hath caused g your sun to go down at noon and hath turned your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation Or what should I say of the oppressions injustice cousinage in trading and in Merchandise which your selves know better then I can do how much they have abounded in the Kingdome Doth not God now punish the secret injustice of his people by the open iniustice of their enemies Doe ye not remember that mischiefe was framed by a Law and now when your enemies execute mischief against Law will you not say Righteous art thou O Lord and iust are thy iudgements One thing I may not forget and that is that the Lord is punishing blood with blood the blood of the oppressed the blood of the persecuted the blood of those who have dyed in Prisons or in strange Countries suffering for righteousnesse sake h He that departed from evill did even make himselfe a prey There was not so much as one drop of blood spilt upon the Pillory for the testimony of the Truth but it cryeth to Heaven for precious is the blood of the Saints Doth not all the blood shed in Queen Maries dayes cry And doth not the blood of the Palatinate and of Rochel cry And doth not the blood of soules cry which is the loudest cry of all God said to Cain k The voyce of thy Brothers blood cryeth unto me from the ground the Hebrew hath it thy brothers blouds which is well expounded both by the Chaldee Paraphrase and the Jerusalem Targum the voyce of the blood of all the generations and the righteous people which thy Brother should have begotten cryeth unto me I may apply it to the thing in hand The silencing deposing persecuting imprisoning and banishing of so
of the Beasts reign about the time of that Councel the end of it will fall in at this very time of curs But I dare not determine so high a point Gods work will ere it be long make a clearer Commentary upon his word Only let this bee remembred we must not think it strange if after the end of the 1260 yeares Antichrist be not immediately and utterly abolished for when that time is ended he makes warre against the Witnesses yea overcommeth and killeth them But that victory of his lasteth only three dayes and a halfe and then God makes as it were a resurrection from the dead and a tenth part of the great City fals before the whole fall See Revel. 11. 3. 7. 11. 13. Whether this killing of the Witnesses which seemeth to be the last act of Antichrists power be past or to come I can not say God knowes But assuredly the acceptable yeare of Israels Jubilee and the day of vengeance upon Antichrist is comming and is not farre off But now is there no other application to be made of this point Is all this said to satisfie curious wits or at the best to comfort the people of God Nay there is more then so it must be brought home to a practicall use As the assurance of salvation g doth not make the child of God the more presumptuous but the more humble neither doth it make him negligent h but deligent in the way of holinesse and in all the acts of his spirituall warfare so that i every man that hath this hope in him purisieth himselfe So answerably the assurance of the new Temple and of the sweet dayes to come serveth for a twofold practicall use even as David also applieth Gods promise of Solomons building the Temple 1 Chron. 22. 10. for thus hee speaketh to the Princes of Israel ver. 19. Now set your heart and your soule to seek the Lord your God arise therefore and build yee the sanctuary of the Lord God And this is beside the charge which he giveth to Solomon First then yee must set your heart and your soule to seek God forasmuch as you know it is not in vaine to seek him for this thing k When Daniel understood by books that the 70 yeares of Jerusalems desolation were at an end and that the time of building the Temple againe was at hand then he saith I set my face unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting and sackloth and ashes O let us doe as he did O let us l Cry mightily unto God and let us with all our soule and all our might give our selves to fasting and prayer Now if ever m the effectuall fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much Secondly and the more actively you must goe about the bunesse n Be yee stedfast unmoveable alwayes abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as yee know that your labour is not in vaine in the Lord What greater motive to action then to know that you shall prosper in it o Arise therefore and bee doing And so I am led upon the third and last part of the Text of which I shall speak but very little The Doctrine is this Reformation ends not in contemplation but in action The pattern of the house of God is set before us to the end it may be followed and the ordinances thereof to the end they may be obeyed p Give me understanding saith David and I shall keep thy law yea I shall observe it with my whole heart q If yee know these things saith Christ happy are yee if yee doe them The point is plaine and needeth no proofe but application Let me therefore Honourable Worthies leave in your bosomes this one point more Many of the Servants of God who have stood in this place and could do it better then I can have been calling upon you to go on in the work of Reformation O be s not slothfull in businesse and forget not to do as you have been taught Had you begun at this work and gone about the building of the House of God as your first and chiefe businesse I dare say you should have prospered better It was one cause among others why t the children of Israel though the greater number and having the better cause too did twice fall before Benjamin because while they made so great a businesse for the villany committed upon the Levites Concubine they had taken no course with u the graven Image of the children of Dan a thing which did more immediately touch God in his honour But I am confident errours of this kinde will be now amended and that you will by double diligence redeem the time I know your trouble is great and your cares many in managing the warre and looking to the safety of the kingdom yet mark what David did in such a case Behold in my trouble a sayth he I have prepared for the House of the Lord an hundred thousand talents of Gold and a thousand thousand talents of silver and of brasse and iron without weight David did manage b great wars with mighty enemies the Philistines Moabites Ammonites and Syrians beside the intestine warre made first by Abner and afterward by Absolon and after that by Sheba Notwithstanding of all this in his trouble and poverty the word signifieth both he made this great preparation for the House of God and if God had given him leave he had in his trouble built it too for you well know he was not hindered from building the Temple by the warres or any other businesse but only because God would not permit him Set before you also the example of the Iewes when the Prophets of God did stirre them up to the building of the Temple Ezra 5. 1. 2. they say not we must first build the walles of Ierusalem to hold out the enemy but the Text saith they began to build the house of God f They were not full foure years in building the Temple and finished it in the sixth yeare of Darius Now all the rest of his reigne did passe and all Xeâ—…xes reiâ—…re and much of Artaxerxes Loâ—…manus his reigne before the Walls of Ierusalem were built a for about that work was Nâ—…hemiah from the twentieth yeare of Artaâ—…s to the two and thiâ—…tieth yeare And if b great Chronologers bee not very farre mistaken the Temple was finished fourescore and three years before the Wals of Jerusalem were finished It is farre from my meaning to coole your affection to the Iawes Liberties Peace and safety of the Kingdome I desire onely to warm your hearts with the zeale of Reformation as that which all along you must carry on in the first place One thing I cannot but mention The Reverend Assembly of â—…ivines may lament as Augustine in another case Heu heu quam trade jestino Alas alas how slowly doe I