Dispute down the Errors and live down the Vices and undeifie the Gods of the Heathen world That they should conquer without a force and irresistibly winn the most peevish Natures not only to part with their oldest Customs and Religions But to exchange them for a Beleif that He was a Saviour who had been crucified and He Immortal who had dyed and He a God who had suffer'd and He an Innocent who had suffer'd between the Vilest Malefactors Nay farther yet that they should throughly convince the richest and the proudest and the most sensual sort of men that even the Yoak of Christ was pleasant his Burden strengthing and to be hang'd upon the Crosse a Degree of Honour That their Enemies were to be lov'd and Themselves hated That * Poverty Disgrace and Death itselfe were not only the Lot and Portion but the Desirables and Pleasures of the very bestmen I say that this should be brought about by Twelve of the plainest Country-People four whereof were clearly Fishermen and one a Publican and the rest in all appearance no whit better than their Mates every one a Galilean and so contemptible for his Country as well as for his Calling shew's convincingly to the world however ignorant or obdurate that by how much the baser the meanes were by so much the greater was the miracle The great Deformity of the Instruments was a Foyle unto the Agent This very stumbling Block had a Vertue whereby to keep men from falling If our modern Lay-Preachers who do pretend to Inspiration could shew but one of of those many Apostolical Gifts and make us see their new Light by letting us hear some new Tongues too I mean such Tongues as they never studied 'T were pity but Both our Universities should rise up to them in fear and Reverence And we should certainly be as ready to kisse their Feet as now we are to shake the Dust from off our own for a Testimony against them The Case with Them would be much the same that here it was with the new Apostles the very snare and the Scandal of whose Rusticity shew'd he Divinity of the Influx by which they acted Never did Omnipotence appear so glorious and Triumphant as then when it was perfected in so much weaknesse How did they thunder with their Doctrins and how did they lighten with their miracles How did they soften mens Hearts by promises as by gentle showers And how controul them by Threats as by mighty Winds You may see in this Chapter the Effects of all four of their miracles their Doctrins their Promises and their Threats The People marvell'd at the first v 7. They were Heart-struck at the Second v 37. They rejoyced at the third v 41. And fear came upon them at the fourth v 43. It could not be by a common power that Paul a Prisoner at the Barr was able to fright the grim Iudge who sat at Liberty on the Bentch when having reason'd to him a while concerning Temperance and Righteousness and Iudgement to come it presently follows that Faelix trembl'd Who though a very stout Heathen was yet but one and so not worthy to be nam'd whilst we are speaking of the Energie which God had put into the preaching of these Apostles For the Apostle St. Peter through the Conviction of the Spirit who open'd the Ears and the Hearts of men did convert at one Sermon three thousand Souls and five thousand at another § 6. Lord the different Effects of Preaching in those Times and These one Sermon was then sufficient for the Conversion of many Thousands But how well were it now if a Thousand Sermons might be effectual for the Conversion of any One when did you ever see an Auditorie so affected with a Sermon as not to be able to contein from crying out in a kind of extasie like the Disciples in this Chapter Men and Brethren what shall we do who goes now adayes to the Casuist for the searching and launcing and cleansing of a Conscience which even Gasp's for a little ease from the acute sense it hath of a Sinfull Plethorie Is it that in a Kingdom all the Consciences of men are so clear and calme Or that there are heardly any Consciences in a whole Kingdom to be troubled Is it because there are no scruples of tender Souls to be resolv'd Or rather because the Souls of men are seldome so tender as to be scrupl'd let them that commonly hear Sermons but are not pricked in their Hearts like the men in this Chapter who heard St. Peter be allow'd to be the Iudges as well as Partyes in the Case whether their Consciences are so clean as not to need being rub'd or else so callous as not to feel § 7. If we impartially consider that since the most of mens Devotion hath been thrust up into the Pulpit and that they have placed their publick worship not in their Hearts and Knees but in their Eares and Elbowes posting up and down from one Sermon to another and possibly too with as much Superstition as the Votaries of Rome to the several Reliques of their Saints thinking God is best serv'd when they goe farthest to a Sermon as the Pilgrims of Rome to an holy Sepulchre And giving accompt when they come home not of the Sermon but of the Man as if their haunting of the Church were not to learn but censure to take large Notes of his Look and Gesture not so much observing what as how he taught them perhaps offended with his memorie because too short perhaps with his Periods because too long perhaps they stumble at his Youth and then they say he does but prate perhaps at his Age and then they listen as to a Doatard If he is plain he preaches slovenly And if he is solid he preaches 〈◊〉 If he is not plain he is too Witty and if not solid he is too light If he is illiterate he is not fitt for so great a calling And if he is learned he is as little fitt for so plain a people Is the Sermon very excellent then he preaches Himselfe Or is it but ordinary they can read as good at home I say whoever shall but consider that since the Businesse of Religion has commonly been at this pass the Brains of men bave been busied but their Lives have not been better'd And the frequency of Preaching hath made more Preachers not more Christians than heretofore As he will find a prodigious Difference both in the Preaching and Hearing the word of God betwixt what it was when Christianity was in its Cradle And what it is at this Instant whilst it is going into its Grave So he will find the guilty Cause of so great a difference to be partly in Them that do Preach the Word and partly in Them that do hear it Preach't So far they are from being fill'd with the Holy Ghost that all the former do not speak with other Tongues nor do the later all hear
forth in its native Lustre And it appears by Magna Charta that all the Rights of the Church are the chiefest Liberties of the Subject To be but capable of the Honour the double Honour of the Clergy to wit the Reverence and the Revenue is an eminent part of the Layman's Birthright I pray be pleased to consider what is not every day observ'd That all the Dignities and Endowments which do belong unto the Church at once by the Statutes of God and Man are so many Rights which appertain to your childrens children I must not here be thought to forsake my Text For it ye compare it with the Context especially from the first to the eighth verse of this Chapter ye will see the great fitness of all I say and that my Text cannot be satisfied unless I say it For he that saith in this place by the Spirit of God Let every soul be subject to the higher Powers does also say by the same Spirit Obey them that have the Rule over you who have spoken to you the word of God and who do watch for your souls as those that must render an Accompt And the Interest of the former is so entwisted with the later That till our Bishops receive their Right though we are glad to have our King we may rationally fear we shall not hold him For ask I beseech you of the days that are past and ask from the one side of heaven to the other if ever there were any such thing as This that a King could be happy without a Bishop Lord What an Epocha will it make in our future Kalendars when men shall reckon from this Year as from the Year of Restitution But then like that which Saint Peter mentions Acts 3. 21. The Restitution is to be general as well to God as to the People And ye will find in Magna Charta which does deserve to be imprinted in all your memories That all the Rights of the Church were entirely granted unto God They were granted unto God and that for ever Now of so sacred a force is the word For ever That if a Statute shall be made against the Liberties of the Church The Law of the Land hath provided against that Statute And by an Anticipation declares it Null Shall I guess at the cause of so great a Caution It seems to be as for other Reasons so in particular for This Because to alter that Government was as well against the Kings Oath as against the Oathes of both Houses which swore the Right of his Supremacy as well in all Ecclesiastical as Civil causes Besides that in the Judgment of the most eminent in the world for depth of knowledge in holy things The order of Bishops is by Divine Institution And if 't is so in good earnest it will be dangerous to deal with the Laws of Christ as we read Agesilaus once dealt with those of Lacedaemon which he pretended onely to abrogate that he might not break them But whether so or not so a thing in Being and Debate is to pass for good until the Dispute shall be fairly ended And if an Errour must be adventur'd on either hand Religion tells us it ought to be upon the Right Would any know why I insist on such a subject in such a place my Reasons for it are plainly These First I insist on such a subject because my Text as I said does exact it of me And because 't is my duty at least to wish That the day breaking forth may be full and lasting That the Repentance of the Nation may be impartial and so to our SOVERAIGNS RETURN there may be added his Continuance in Peace and Safety I say in Safety not more to his Person than his Posterity Nor in Safety for a season so long as men are well humour'd but so long as the Sun or the Moon endures And then for you of this Place who are an honourable part of the English Nation That which I take to be your Duty I think is your Interest to indeavour The most I am pressing on you is this That ye will labour for the means of your being happy If ye think ye cannot be happy with the establishment of the Prelacy I shall pray you may be happy at least without it and also wish I may be able to pray with Faith too Only as often as I reflect on King IAMES his Motto No Bishop no King and withal do consider its having been verified once and before our eyes I think it my duty to desire it may not be verified any more But that it may rather be here applyed what was spoken heretofore of the Spartan Laws ut semper esse possent aliquando non fuerunt They only ceased for a Time to the end they might continue to all eternity These are sincerely the very Reasons for which I insist upon such a Subject Secondly I do it in such a place because I look on This Assembly as on the Head and the Heart of the Royal City I look on the City as on a Sea into which the main stream of the Nation runs Even the Parliament it self hath such a respect unto the City that if ye plead for Gods Spouse as ye have done for his Anointed for which your names will be pretious with late posterity if ye shall supplicate for a Discipline which is as old in this land as Christianity it self and stands established in Law by thirty two Acts of Parliament and without which ye cannot live unless by living under the Breach of your greatest Charter they will not onely be apt to grant but to thank you also for your Petition Having gone thus far in prosecution of the Advertisment That the Night of our Suffering is fairly spent and that the Day of our Injoyment begins to dawn And having directed unto the means with submission be it spoken to all Superiours by which our Day is to be lengthned not only into a year but an Age of Iubilee into a kind of perpetual Sabbath a Day of Rest from those works which either wanted Light or were asham'd of it which either borrow'd Darkness for their Cover or else which own'd it for their Cause I humbly leave what I have said to His acceptance and disposal in the Hand of whose Counsel are all your Hearts T is more than time that I proceed to the general Use of this Advertisment to which I am prompted by the word Therefore as 't is a word of connexion betwixt the Duty and the Deliverance Our Apostle does not thus argue Because the Night of Oppression is now far spent and the Day of Deliverance is hard at hand Let us therefore inioy the good things that are present let us stretch our selves upon 〈◊〉 bed of Ivory let us Crown our selves with Rose-buds let us drink Wine in bowles and let us dance to the sound of the Viol let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every street
have but the Grace to use them rightly else they will make us the unhappier in that world which is to come For without the right use even the Grace of God it self does accidentally highten our Condemnation And though I never had yet such a Roman Faith as to believe that there IS such a thing as Purgatory yet with submission to God's Oeconomy I think the most of mankind might be glad there were Because it seems a very easy Composition with his Justice to suffer Hell for a time in order to happiness for Eternity It concerns us therefore to pray in this conjuncture of our affairs that God will give us to drink of his bitter Cup not as our Appetites shall crave but as He in his wisdom shall judge expedient Let him enable us to choose but this one Requisite for our selves even His sanctifying Grace And then in company with That let him allot us what he pleaseth Be it War Pestilence or Famine be it Ignomy Overthrow or suddain Death For as by looking upon our Sins we cannot but see matter of Terror whereby to hold us in constant fear so by reflecting upon our sufferings we may discern matter of Comfort whereby to couple our Fear with Hope I say 't is matter of some Comfort that God doth seem by his Correction to own us still for his People that he does not severely suffer us to be over prosperous in our impieties that he has not so wholly left us as not to visit us with his Rod but that at least he does vouchsafe us the Mercy of his Iudgments to work upon us And though he threatens to give us up to some of the cruelest of our Enemies such as are the two plagues of perfect beggery and the Pestilence 't is that he may not give us up unto our more cruel selves that we may never indure the Tyranny of our own hearts lust or live under the Yoke of our vile Affections And therefore to the end we may rather kiss than undutifully repine at his gracious Rod which does so charitably smite and would fain wound us into a Cure let us continue to fix our eyes as on the Errand on which it comes so withal on the Author from whom 't is sent Which leads me to the Potentate by whom the Embassadour is dispatcht The last particular in the Division Hear ye the Rod and who hath Appointed it § 1. That the same Dispensation of the Cup of Trembling and Astonishment should not only have such diverse but such contrary effects upon the several Complexions it meets withal as to be one mans Restaurative and anothers Poyson softning one into Repentance and hardning another into Despaire might seem a difficult kind of Riddle at the very first hearing were it not that this Accompt may be given of it That the one looks only downwards and views the Rod of his Afflictions as meerly springing out of the Dust whereas the other looks upwards and acknowledges the Finger of Him that sent it They whose Spirits and Contemplations are ever groveling on the earth and look no higher than second Causes are commonly sorry in their Distresses as men without Hope whereas the men whose Affections are set on things that are Above and with the Lyncean Eye of Faith can look on the other side the Veil do so submit to and comply with the will of God in their afflictions as to desire it may be don as well on Earth as it is in Heaven I know not whether it is more to be fear'd or hop'd that God will never withdraw his Rod which lyes so heavy upon our shoulders until he has first of all whipt us into the wisdom to discern and into so much Humility as to acknowledge That the Original and Increase and present Continuance of our Plague hath not only arisen to us out of natural Causes much less out of fortuitous to wit from Atomes or Insects or from I know not what malignant and secret qualities in the Aire but from the wrath of a provoked and jealous God for the most brutish unconcerdness and Impenitences of Men. The Plague of Pestilence being a Rod of so astonishing a Nature that though the Heathens look'd upon it as a thing rooted in the Earth yet they thought it laid on by an hand from Heaven The Carthaginians at Syracuse and the People of Tolouse in the time of Brennus ascrib'd the Cause of their several Pests unto the Anger of their Gods for the Sin of Sacriledge and fled for Refuge to Restitution as the great means of their Recovery And however Diodorus did take upon him to assign the natural Causes of the Pestilence that reign'd at Athens yet he assures us that the Athenians did look upon it as a Rod of supernatural contrivance Much more should we Christians impute the Cause of our Plague unto God's Displeasure as being that that serves to humble and raise us up too For as 't is matter to us of Terror to fall into the hands of the living God Heb. 10. 31. so 't is matter also of Comfort that we do not fall out of the hands of God no nor yet into the hands of relentless men For with God there is Mercy and that in the midst of his Iudgments too whereas the very tender mercies of men are cruel Prov. 12 10. God does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men and when at last he is fain to wound 't is to the end that he may heal us But men to men are so inhuman that they will commonly break our heads with their pretious Balmes too And therefore David having his Option betwixt the Sword of the Lord for so the Pestilence was call'd and the Sword of man did soon determin to choose the former Let me fall now says he into the hand of the Lord for very great are his Mercies but let me not fall into the hand of men 1 Chron. 21. 13. § 2. If we look back upon the Church whilst she was yet but in her Childhood and consider her Tribulations as far as from Nero to Dioclesian we may observe how mens reflections upon the Wisdom and Goodness of God's Oeconomies did smooth the face of Death it self as 't was inflicted by the Rod of Divine Appointment and made her Children even to Court it how grim soever it became by its greatest Torments Amongst a thousand Examples which might be given of this Truth I shall not trouble or detein you with more than one In that dreadful and most bloody Sedition at Alexandria just as if Cadmus had sow'd his Teeth in that fruitful Soil when the Gulf of Arabia became a red Sea indeed which before was only call'd so by either a figure or a mistake when that Sea was so polluted with Blood and Stentch that had its water been to be wash'd all the Ocean saith Dionysius had been too little to wash it clean and when in consequence of This there
impotent slanders his most unsavoury scurrilities his pique at my cassock and my cap his evil eye upon my Rectory and female Readers to the honour of your sex and shame of ours last of all for his impenitency and resolutions to persevere in his crying sins against That person of all the world whom next to God and his Parents he ought to have had in the greatest reverence I shall leave him to the mercy of one or other of my Disciples who being as much his Iuniors as he is mine may have youth enough to excuse if not commend them for cooling the courage of so prurient and bold a Writer But for my self I have determined so to profit by what I Preach in the following Sermon as not to leave it in the power of every petulant undertaker to dispose of my hours in altercation They that look to live long before they look upon the grave may trifle out their time with better pretensions to an excuse but I who have lost so much already and have had as I may say so many Trials for my Life at that Bar of Mortality the Bed of Sickness which makes me consider it as a perishing and dying life cannot think it so much as lawful to dispute it away with an itching adversary who however insufficient to hold up his quarrel is yet too restless to lay it down But I proceed to that Subject from which my thoughts have been kept by a long parenthesis of which I love to be speaking on all occasions that can be offer'd because I find so much in it of which I cannot but speak well and no less to the honour of his memory than to the profit and pleasure of his survivers He was certainly a person who liv'd a great deal of life in a little time especially dating it as he did from the memorable point of his renovation When I consider him in his Childhood at the University of Oxford I am sure some years before you knew him exciting others by his Example to mind the end of their being there how strict and studious he appeared throughout his course how much farther he went before in point of standing and proficiency then he came behind others in point of years how much applauded he was by all for his publick Exercises in Lent both as an Oratour at the Desk and as a Philosopher in the Schools how like the brave Epaminondas he added honour to his degree which yet to us of his form was all we were able to attain when I reflect upon his progress through much variety of Learning through every part of the Mathematicks especially through Algebra the most untrodden part of them and when I compare with all this the great sobriety of his temper his unaffected humility and after a publick aberration his perfect return into the way out of which for some years he had unhappily been seduced last of all when I rememember how whilst nothing but prosperity made some in the world to hug their errour he hated his so much the more the more he had prosper'd by its delusion which was an argument of the most generous and Christian temper I think I may fitly affirm of him what was said by Siracides concerning Enoch that being made perfect in a short time he fulfill'd a long time I do the rather think it a duty to praise him after his decease the less he was able to endure it whilst yet alive And I conceive my self the fitter to speak a little in his absence of his perfections because so long as he was present I only told him of his faults Never leaving him as a Monitor until I thought he left them For having found him my noble Friend and which in honour to his memory I think it my duty to acknowledge my very munificent Benefactor I could not be so unkind a thing as not to afford him my reprehensions yet still attended with respect in whatsoever regard I could think them useful And 't was the mark of an excellent judicious spirit that he valued me most for my greatest freedom in that particular Even then when our heads were most at enmity by the over great influence of his Father's persuasion upon his own there still remained in both our hearts a most inviolable friendship And yet the chiefest instance of mine was only my often having been angry with what I conceived to be a sin against which by Gods goodness being sufficiently convinc'd he grew at last to be as angry as Friends or Enemies could have been He had impartially consider'd that sacred Aphorism that to refuse instruction is to despise ones own soul. And he who could not be thankful for being chid was judg'd by him to be unworthy of any honest mans anger Nor can I imagine a solid reason why he was careful in time of health to bespeak my presence in time of Sickness of which you are able to be his witness unless because he did esteem me the most affectionate person of his acquaintance by his having still found me the most severe To conceal his great failing which was so far scandalous as it was publick and apt to be hurtful by the reverence which many men had to his example and only to speak of the best things in him were rather to flatter then to commend him But yet as the Scripture hath said of David that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite so I think I may say of your self-departed that unless it were in that one unhappiness of ingaging himself in an ugly Cause which yet he seriously repented and so was fitted for that early but most exemplary death which happily opened a door to his Immortality his greatest Vice was but this that he modestly concealed too many Virtues The remarkable manner of his departure did most remarkably resemble Sir Spencer Compton's a person so singularly qualified by Grace and Nature and Education that however his extraction was highly Noble I may confidently say it was the lowest thing in him who dyed at Bruges about the time wherein the man of our desires expir'd at Compton Never did I hear of a more heavenly Valediction to all the contentments of the earth than was given by these two at their dissolutions Never yet did I hear of any two farewells so much alike Never were any more admired by those that saw them whilst they were going or more desired when they were gon How your excellent Husband behav'd himself I have but partly related in the conclusion of my Sermon For though I may not dissemble so great a Truth as my strong inclinations both to think and speak of him to his advantage yet in my last office of friendship I did religiously set so strict a watch over my tongue as that I rather came short in many points of his commendation than went beyond him in any one And could I have had the