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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A47339	A sermon preached before the lords spiritual and temporal in the Abey-Church at Westminster, the 30th of January, 1691/2 by ... Richard Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells.	Kidder, Richard, 1633-1703.	1692 (1692)	Wing K414; ESTC R2194	11,426	34

great Sinner that indulgeth himself in that very sin which he pretends to loath Their Fathers did well or ill If they did well why should they declaim against them If ill why should they imitate them These Men are without all excuse they practice in contradiction to themselves and add to their Father's guilt the vilest hypocrisy They imitate the treachery of Judas who kissed and betrayed his Lord at the same time These Men preface their Villanies with shew of Religion and follow the worst of Men when they personate the best They are like him who proclaimed a Fast but designed by it to gain his Neighbour's Vineyard and him who plotted Treason against his Prince when he made a shew of paying his Vows to his God This is such an aggravation as added to the rest does abundantly shew the Justice of this denunciation III. I shall now proceed to the Use and Application of what hath been said with a particular Reflection upon the sad Occasion that brings us together this Day On this Day it was that our Soveraign of Blessed Memory fell by the hands of Violence and Wickedness Then was his Righteous bloud shed And tho' we gave no explicit consent to this barbarous Murther and perhaps with the Jews have said That if we had been in the days of our Forefathers we would not have been partakers with them yet all this while we may deceive our selves and others if we do not confess this Sin with great humility and abandon all propensities to so great a wickedness I shall more particularly shew you the Application of what hath been said 1. This will justifie our solemn assembling at this time We come together to deprecate God's displeasure for the innocent bloud that was this day shed And we have good cause so to do For if the Righteous bloud shed so long before might justly be required of the after-generation of the Jews this may be required of us We find that the Jews kept a Fast a long time for the slaughter of Gedaliah Zech. 7.5 with Jer. 41.1 2. called by the Prophet the Fast of the seventh Month We have greater reason for this That we consented not to the shedding this Righteous bloud will not discharge us from the Service of this day For neither did those Jews that kept that Fast consent to the Murther of Gedaliah Deut. 21. We know what the Law required in case of an uncertain Murther An Heifer was to be killed the Priests were to be present the Elders of the neighbouring City were to wash their hands and say Our hands have not shed this bloud neither have our eyes seen it Be mercifull O Lord unto thy people Israel whom thou hast redeemed and lay not innocent bloud unto thy people of Israels charge It follows So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent bloud from among you when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the Lord. This wil be our best course upon this occasion not onely to disown the fact our selves but to deprecate the Divine displeasure and pray that it may not be imputed to the Nation 2. We may learn what cause we have to be humbled for our Fathers sins and more particularly for that Wickedness committed on this day Then was the Nation stained with the Righteous bloud of an innocent and excellent Prince That bloud God will require of the principal Criminals and Accessories also of the first Offenders and their Associates The cry of innocent Bloud is loud It pierceth the Heavens and finds a direct way to the Ears of God As we would not be charged with it let us humble our selves before God The stain can be removed no other way but by Tears of Repentance and the Bloud of Jesus The Psalmist was guilty of bloud He was a Prince and might say to God Against Thee Thee onely have I sinned Ps 50. But it follows Deliver me from bloud-guiltiness O God thou God of my Salvation And Thou desirest not Sacrifice else would I give it The Sacrifices of God are a broken Spirit The Wickedness committed this day was premeditated and studied coloured with a pretence of Law and Justice practiced under the cloak of Religion and disguise of Piety It will admit of no extenuation It was an action foul and deformed cruel and barbarous without excuse or plea. He must be lost to the reason of a Man and the tenderness of a Christian whom it strikes not with horror What remains then but that we apply our selves to the Mercies of God and Merits of Christ for our atonement and expiation Nothing short of this can give us hope and nothing but our sorrow and repentance can give us the hope of this 3. Let us endeavour to cut off the entail of Curses which threaten us from our Forefathers sins We too often inherit their guilt and are infected with their vicious inclinations Let us do what we can to derive a blessing on our selves and our posterity And to that purpose let us be perswaded First To perfect our Repentance both for our Fathers and our own iniquities This is the onely way to keep off the Evils which threaten us the best Security against the Wrath to come Our timely and complete Repentance is our defence and God will do by us all as we do in this matter As we would avoid the plagues of this and the next life let us retire our selves from this World and all its amusements enter into our Closets and examin our State towards God and humbly deprecate his displeasure on account of our Fathers and our own iniquities Let us do it as frequently as we can and as fervently too There is great reason we should do thus The Wickedness committed on this day requires it from which I fear we are not yet purged our Personal sins and their circumstances of aggravation require it also We had need of our Solemn times of Repentance and Humiliation and the good improvement of them are the best preservative of our Selves and the Nation After all our guilts both National and Personal after so many and such crying Sins so great a decay of Piety and real Goodness contempt of God and Religion we must not think that a cold confessing our Sins will serve our turn we must abhor them and be greatly humbled for them Secondly Let us be exemplary in Piety and real Goodness Let us own it before all the World and promote it what we can in those under our care and influence Let us do it with all our might in our several places and as this will be the best of our titles so 't will be our surest defence Thirdly Let us run counter to the crimes of our Forefathers Let their Disobedience commend to us Fidelity and true Allegiance Their Oppression teach us Mercy and Good-will Their Bloud-guiltiness put us upon Compassion and Kindness Their Revenge direct us to Forgiveness and Forbearance And their Hypocrisy stir us up to Sincerity

am to consider how far Children are obnoxious upon account of their Father's offences For that they are concerned on account of their Father's faults is plain from the Words and from other Arguments also We find God denouncing against the third and fourth Generation of Idolaters or of them that hate Him Exod. 20. Holy Men have confessed the Sins of their Fathers Dan. 9.16 We have sinned with our Fathers Nehem. 9. we have committed iniquity we have done wickedly Ps 106.6 7. Our Fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt they remembred not the multitude of thy mercies but provoked him at the Sea even at the red Sea And God promiseth Mercy to them who confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their Fathers Levit. 26.40 Josiah was a good King but descended from Menasseh a very wicked person upon his account Judah is afflicted Notwithstanding the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah because of all the provocations that Menasseh had provoked him withall 2 Kings 29.2 This is enough to justifie our Church when she directs us to pray Remember not our iniquities nor the iniquities of our Forefathers For the better speaking to this matter First I shall shew how this is to be understood Secondly I shall consider the grounds of it First How it is to be understood that the Children are obnoxious upon the account of their Fathers Sin And that in the following particulars 1. It must not be understood of Eternal punishment A man shall not for his Father's Sins lye down in Everlasting burnings As our Fathers Faith will not let us into Heaven so neither will their Impiety shut us out We may be deprived of many Temporal blessings on their account but not of Eternal glory The Children of those that murmured and lusted in the Wilderness were admitted into the promised Land The Daughters of Zelophehad are not deprived of their Inheritance tho' their Father fell short of the good Land We shall be separately considered there according to our own deeds When the Father dyes for Treason the Son is not capitally punished unless he were an associate or complice However his Bloud be tainted or his Goods diminished his Life cannot be touched 2. Where the Children continue in their Father's crimes there is no injustice in punishing them Thus have those words Exod 20.5 been anciently understood and thus it is in the case before us Behold I send unto you Prophets and some of them ye shall kill v. 34. In this case there is no shadow of injustice And they may be said to continue in their Fathers sins who do not confess them nor repent of them who abhor them not and root not out of their Minds those faulty Principles and vicious Propensities that lead them to the same crimes There is no injustice in punishing the nocent what-ever the impulsive cause may be 3. For Temporal Evils they may be without any shadow of injustice the lot and portion of the best of Men. I say without any shadow of injustice on God's part For on Man's part there is often great injustice And tho' God makes use of Men as instruments of severity to chastise his Servants this does not excuse their fault or lessen their crime But 't is evident that a good Man may suffer greatly in this World without impeachment of the Justice or Providence of God 'T is sometimes for the good of the whole that the Righteous Man suffers and always for his own He will have a more ample reward hereafter and will not want a sufficient support here These things being premised it will not be hard Secondly To give you the grounds of this That is to shew you why the Children are many times punished or afflicted upon the score of their Father's impiety I shall speak of these with a particular respect to the Jews to whom my Text relates There are several circumstances in the case before us that do enhance the crime of the Jewish posterity 1. Their Sin was the greater because their Fathers sins as well as the many Plagues that were inflicted on them for their offences were recorded and the record of these things was preserved among them Whatever things were written afore-time were written for their warning and instruction They were not left without witness For besides their Conscience and their warning by their Prophets from time to time they had among them an account in writing of their Fathers crimes and plagues This advanceth their iniquity above the size and stature of that of their Forefathers They sinned after the greatest Warning and severest Examples To this purpose it hath been well observed that tho' Murther was forbid as a capital Crime to the Sons of Noah as well as to the Jews And there was no sacrifice of Expiation allowed for that Sin by the Law of Moses yet Cain the first Murtherer was exempted from Death by God himself He was indeed doomed to be an Exile and a Vagabond but care was taken that Cain should not be killed because in him the World had warning In after-times it was strictly provided that every Murtherer should dye the death This is applicable to our present case The Fathers of these Jews had killed the Prophets and had suffered severely for their wickedness they knew all this very well and yet after all this warning they tread in their Father's steps 2. Because they repeated the same Sins and persisted in them to the last To repeat our folly and persist in it is always a great aggravation of it 'T is some extenuation of our fault that we are surprized The liquor of the Grape hath prevailed sometime upon a righteous but unwary Man Our persisting adds weight to our guilt This was the case of these Jews they went on to persecute and destroy the Righteous as their Fathers did They fill up the measure of their iniquity and hasten their own ruine and destruction 3. They do this also under the profession of better things If we had been in the days of our Fathers we would not have been partakers with them in the bloud of the Prophets v. 30. This made their Sin the more detestable that they were guilty of the greatest cruelty when they made profession of mercy and tenderness They covered their hatred to God's living Saints by professing a great veneration for the Saints departed That 's a detestable Hypocrisy when Men shall declaim against their Fathers sins and make much of their own This does mightily enhance their guilt and call for their destruction Their iniquity is now ripe and full when they condemn and practice the same thing Their Fathers sinned greatly but they owned it These Hypocrites cloak their own malice by exclaiming against that of their Father's No sin is greater than that which is acted under the disguise of Piety No Wolf is more ravenous and formidable than he that lurks under Sheep's-cloathing He is the