Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A30426
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A sermon preached in the chappel of St. James's, before His Highness the Prince of Orange, the 23d of December, 1688 by Gilbert Burnet.
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Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing B5883; ESTC R27817
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13,997
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18
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A SERMON PREACHED In the Chappel of St. James's Before His HIGHNESS the Prince of Orange the 23d of December 1688. By GILBERT BURNET D. D. Chaplain to His HIGHNESS Printed by His Highness's Special Command Re-Printed at Edinburgh by John Reid Anno DOM. 1689. Licensed and Entred according to Order PSALM cxviii v. 23. It is the Lord 's doing and it was marvellous in our Eyes THings do sometimes speake and times call aloud and as all Men are before hand with me in the choice of this Text at least in applying it to the present time so that amasing Concurrence of Providences which have conspired to hatch and bring forth and perfect this extraordinary Revolution would lead one very naturally to use these words even tho we had no such Verse in Scripture for we have before us a Work that seems to our selves a Dream and that will appear to Posterity a Fiction a Work about which Providence has watched in so peculiar a manner that a Mind must be far gone into Atheism that can resist so full a conviction as this offers us in favour of that Truth And if a threed of happy steps on the one hand and of mistaken ones on the other can upon any occasion be made an Argument we have it here in its utmost force It is the Lord 's doing not as the Heavens and Earth as the Revolutions of Day and Night and the whole Chain of Second Causes are his Work The whole Springs of Nature are wound up by him so that all things are in some sort his doing He gives also a secret Direction to all second Causes to accomplish his Eternal Purposes He knows all the foldings of our Hearts and the composition of our Natures so well that without putting us under a force he can bring about whatsoever pleases him He also on some great occasions does Violence to Nature and puts her out of her Channel in those extraordinary Productions that are called Miracles But besides all these there are times in which the great Governour of Heaven and Earth will convince the World that he is not an unconcerned Spectator of Human Affairs But because Men are apt to be so partial to themselves and to their own Opinions as to look on every favourable Accident as a smile from Heaven and that Sanguine People are as ready on the one hand to think themselves God's Favourites and the special Objects of his Care as Melancholy Men on the other in the fourness of thought that oppresses them construe every thing that succeeds not according to their Wishes as the effect of some cross Aspect on them it is necessary to find the Temper between flattering our selves too much and the charging our selves too severely and to examine Providence by such equal and just measures that we may neither put too much on the common course of Second Causes nor ascribe too much to such Specialties as our Partialties may incline us to imagine appear in our favours for because we are always kind to our selves we are very apt to believe that Heaven is so too But to come closer 1. All signal and eminent things are by the common Phrase of Scripture ascribed to God and therefore every Event that is great in its self and may become yet much greater in its Consequences ought to be imputed to an immediate Hand of Heaven some that have judged that a special Direction of all things was too great a Distraction to his Divine Beeing a trouble unworthy of it have yet thought that its care extended to great matters If then this may be laid down for a Rule we must conclude that this Transaction now before us is God's doing since the vast importance of it is so visible that it may be perhaps lessened rather than aggravated if one would attempt to set it forth You all know what you both felt and feared the overturning this Church and the subverting of this Government must in consequence have brought on the Ruine both of the Protestant Religion and the publick Liberty all Europe over When all this is stopp'd and a happy Crisis appears that gives the fairest hopes not only of the securing our Religion together with our other Temporal Concerns but of putting a check to the Spirit of Persecution which has of late raged so furiously against our Brethren in so many different places of Europe and that the Persecutor of Religion and the Ravisher of Liberty and the Scourge of the Age after his having been so long a Plague to all his Neighbours may probably be brought to feel a little of those Miseries which he has laid on others so great a Transaction as this which is perhaps the fore-runner of a greater may upon very just grounds be called the Lord's doing if every thing that is great is so 2. Those Things in which God's Honour is most particularly concerned may be well reckoned his doing for if he has a Providence that extends it self to all Things wee have much more Reason to conclude that Mankind has a more special Title to it And among Men that Christians are under a particular distinction and of all Christians that those who have reduced Christianity to its Primitive Purity and Simplicity are its chief care so that the reestablishing of that Glorious Work which God in a series of many signal Providences had set up in the last Age and which for the Sins and the unreformed Practices of those who pretended to it was brought so low in this may be justly ascribed to that Sovereign Wisdom that governs the Church which was purchased by the Blood of the Son of GOD. Matters of Controversy are not proper upon this Occasion but without entring far into them the common sense of Mankind and the general Notices of Truth that are impressed upon our Minds may serve to determine the greatest part of the differences between us and our Persecutors Whether Men ought to satisfy themselves in the Points of Religion or ought to take them upon trust Whether Men ought to put the stress of their Religion upon a real Renovation of Heart and Life or if it may do full as well to hire and pay a Priest for forgiving our sins in this Life or redeeming us from the punishment of them in the next Whether we ought to believe our Senses and Reason in their proper Objects or not And not to run out too far whether those Eternal Rules of Justice and Mercy ought to be the Measures of our Actions or if Zeal for Holy Church can warrant us to break our Faith and destroy our Neighbours All these seem to be so plain that one would think the Decision should be soon made and indeed if instead of that false shew of Learning and the many hard words with which these Matters have been disguised and intangled Men would try them in a shorter and simpler Method Truth would be sooner found out In a word The Truth of our Religion appearing to us in