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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	great_a	judgement_n	sin_n	3,123	5	4.8089	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43623	The horrid sin of man-catching, explained in a sermon upon Jer. 5, 25, 26 preach'd at Colchester, July 10, 1681 / by Edmond Hickeringill ...	Hickeringill, Edmund, 1631-1708.	1681 (1681)	Wing H1811; ESTC R32965	25,824	42

The Horrid Sin OF Man-Catching Explain'd In a SERMON upon JER 5.25 26. Preach'd at COLCHESTER July 10. 1681. By EDMOND HICKERINGILL Rector of the Rectory of All-Saints there Deliver me not over to the will of mine Enemies for False Witnesses are risen up against me and such as breath out Cruelty Psal 27.12 They laid to my Charge things that I knew not Psal 35.11 The Chief Priests and Scribes sought how they might kill him for they feared the People then entred Satan into Judas Luke 22.2 3. Now the Chief Priests and Elders and all the Counsel sought False Witness against Jesus to put him to Death but found none yea though many False Witnesses came yet found they none At the last came two False Witnesses Matth. 26.59 60. London Printed for Francis Smith at the Elephant and Castle near the Royal Exchange in Cornhil 1681. THE EPISTLE TO THE READER I Know very well that every Book-sellers Stall groans under the burthen of Sermons Sermons Sermons as common and as commonly cryed about the Streets as Ballads Sermons before his Majesty before the Judges before the Right Honourable the Right Worshipful c. In Court in City in the Vniversity in the Country c. Sermons of good use Sermons of little or no use Sermons of great use especially to those reading Don's of the Pulpit that transcribing other Men's Works make a shift to read them tho many times as much out of the Story as hard to get in again when they are out as having never been either in their Heads or Hearts Sermons of Learned Composure both for Matter and Style and Sermons given and Sermon 's sold over and over again and some Sermon 's perhaps published out of meer Vanity and Itch to be seen in print Which of these or whether any of these caused the Publication of this Country-Sermon neither contriv'd devis'd nor intended for the Press but preach'd in my ordinary Course in my own Parish I do not think my self concerned to give thee any account for they that like it not may let it alone yet the publishing thereof is chiefly intended for the use of them that have most need of it and who will therefore like it so much the worse Some Men are so crafty as in neglect of their Duty to God to their King the Kingdom and their own Souls they dare not preach against this Sin of Man-catching or Trepanning Men by Sham-Evidence False Witnesses Sham-Plots the Sin of the Text I had almost said of the Times in swearing and unswearing lying slandering and for swearing and so setting Snares to catch Men Body and Goods Life and Estate whilst the World is the worse but never the better for those Preachers those Chips in Broth whose God is their Bellies and are only swayed by that Kitchin-Maxime It is good sleeping in a whole Skin whilst I chuse to follow that Plain-Dealer and Martyr Bishop Latimer who presented the King for a New-Years Gift with a Bible with this Inscription in Letters of Gold on the outside thereof perhaps for fear the King should not much trouble himself with looking on the Inside Heb. 13.4 Marriage is honourable in all and the Bed undefiled but Whoremongers and Adulterers God will judge I know not what thanks he got for his New-Years Gift but he prov'd a true Prophet in one of his Sermons where he says We Ministers cannot say Vae Vobis but presently we are called coram Nobis We cannot reprove Sin in the Pulpit but forthwith we may be reprov'd for it by the Bench. But Blessed be God we do not live as Latimer once did in Popish-Times nor in Times where Popery has the greatest Sway Or if we should It is the greatest Honour as well as greatest Piety to follow his Fate as well as his Honesty and Plain-dealing THE Horrid Sin of Man-Catching Explain'd in a SERMON Upon JER 5.25 26. Your Iniquities have turned away these things and your Sins have withholden good things from you For among my People are found wicked Men they lay wait as he that setteth Snares they set a Trap they catch Men. IN which Words I shall only take notice in General 1. Of God's heavy Judgment upon Israel ver 25. 2. Of the Cause of that heavy Judgment the crying Sin of Man-Catching ver 26. But First to keep to the Method in the Text Let us enquire 1. Of what Nature was this heavy Judgment In Answer whereunto we may consider God's heavy Judgments or heavy Hand 1. Positively 2. Privatively 1. By stretching forth his Hand of Wrath in striking a People with either 1. The Sword of the Lord for so is called the Plague of Pestilence Or 2dly with War Forreign or Civil War though managed with the Sword of Man yet God is said to unsheath it and call for it and therefore also Wars bloody Wars are God's heavy Judgment upon a People and therefore called also The Sword of the Lord. 2. God's heavy Hand or heavy Judgment upon a People may be considered Privatively by depriving them of Mercies Temporal Mercies called good things in the Text which God for their Sins had turned away and withholden from them What these good things were which were withholden may evidently be seen in the verse before the Text namely God's heavy Judgment in depriving them of the former and latter Rain in his season and depriving them of the appointed Weeks of the Harvest Jer. 5.24 This great Drought did fore-run and threaten a Famine the worst and heaviest of God's Judgments the Sword of the Lord and the Sword of Man both of them make quick dispatch but Famine is a lingring Death and worse than Death and the worst of Death's And it was sad News for the King when he heard that his Subjects were glad to preserve their Lives by killing one another nay the Mother killing and eating her own Child and yet calling in vain to the King for help that could not have an Asses Head for himself under fourscore pieces of Silver nor a little Pigeon's Dung for the Dessert or second Course under five pieces more 2 Kings 6.25 26 27 28 29 30. No wonder that the King rent his Cloaths and wore Sack-clot● upon his Flesh to mortify it A great Drought or God's withdrawing the Rain bespeaks a Dearth as well as the Wrath of God upon a Land when the Dust as God says to Job groweth into hardness and the Clods cleave fast together when the Clouds are stayed and the Bottles of Heaven as God there calls them are stopped and the People cannot get a Dram of these Bottles tho it were to save their Lives In the three and thirtieth year of that wanton King Hen. 8th there was so great a Drought that small Rivers were clean dryed up and much Cattel died for want of Water and Food and afterwards In the five and thirtieth year of Queen Eliz. was so great a Drought that not only the Fields

lest they exalt themselves Selah As for the Head of those that compass me about in the mischief of their own Lips cover them Let the Wicked fall into their own Nets whilst that I withal escape Deliver me from my Persecutors for they are stronger than I. Bring my Soul out of Prison that I may praise thy Name It seems they had got the Holy Man into Goal these Men-catchers had catch'd him and holed him but could not hold him he out-lived the Malice of these Men-catchers But yet it is as true that God in his secret Wisdom does suffer these Trepanners to prosper a while in their Roguery and seems to hide his Eyes whilst his Beloved may be sore smitten in the place of Dragons and be covered with the shadow of Death though for his sake they be killed all the day long and are counted as Sheep for the Slaughter whilst Almighty God seems to sleep and cast them off for ever hiding his Face and forgetting their Affliction and their Oppression Whilst the Wicked say Tush God hath forgotten he hideth his Face he will never see it And I fear that Atheism and Irreligion is the great cause of these Evils of Swearing Forswearing Perjury and Blasphemy amongst us together with that false Religion that deems it lawful to do evil that good may come thereof or however can give a Pardon for the worst of Enormities and Villanies nay can Saint a Villain a Clement a Murderer a Ravilliack for Murder and King-killing Betwixt this Religion and no Religion there goes but a pair of Sheers they are all of a Piece and the ground-work of this Religion and no Religion is one and the same A theism it is to be feared The subtile Grandees and Engineers that set the bigotted Wheels at work saying in their Heart There is no God as that Pope Leo 10. that was such a Fool as to discover his Atheism in a jolly Fit or to shew his Wit and that he was above the foppish Ceremonies of that Superstition could not forbear his villanous Poetry in another place recited Hem quantum reddit nobis haec fabula Christi I am sure this Temper or Distemper of Atheism drew a great deal of Blood good and bad from Israel and Judah and made their Iniquity to be exceeding great and filled the Land full of Blood and the City full of Injustice and Oppression for so the word Perverseness is rendred wresting of Judgment in the Margent And the reason of these Mischiefs is there given by the Prophet Ezekiel at the latter end of the Verse to be Atheism For they say The Lord hath forsaken the Earth and the Lord seeth not Like those in Malachi that say Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delighteth in them or Where is the God of Judgment Where No where sure saith the Atheist or else he is like Baal and busy either he is talking or he is pursuing or is in a Journey or takes a Nap at present and sleepeth and must be awakened Poor Worms Yet these are the Blades of our Times and the Men of Valour they dare strut like those Gyants of old that bid Heaven Battel and bid defiance to the God of Heaven and blaspheme him to his Face and if they ever pray to him 't is only in Jeer as when they pray to God to damne them damn them All in good time And yet these plumed Whiflers shall like Caligula seek a Cellar or Cave to hide their Heads in when it does but Thunder and their Hearts tremble and quake at every crack of Thunder Or if Death do but stare them in the Face through the Casement of Sickness old Age Pestilence or in a Battel then any Privy-hole or Hollow-Tree is worth all the World to them to hide their Heads in Ay but like that Egyptian King Pharaoh let but their Fears be over and their Lusts that rule them make them Atheists again or willing to be Atheists again and they strut again and cry damn them again and the little Peacocks shreame out and yawleamain pluming themselves Thus when Pharaoh saw that the Rain and the Hail and the Thunders were ceased he sinned yet more and hardened his Heart he and his Servants And I'lle assure you these People think themselves of the subtlest Mould of Mankind Wits refin'd from the common Dreggs of Opinions imbib'd in Infancy and a Religious Education and are in all Men's Opinions as well as their own no small Fools 'T is a course Complement I confess to Men of their Pregnancy but I learn'd it a long time ago in my Psalter The Fool hath said in his Heart there is no God He cannot say so in his Head if there be any Business in it or any Eyes to see the Earth the Heavens the Sun the Moon the Stars that keep their Courses whose Mover and Maker is God but he says so in his Heart that is he wishes and prays so in his Heart that there were no God God there in the Original is Elohim not Jehovah Jehovah signifies God as he is Eternal and Self-Existent but Elohim signifies God as he is a Judg and so this Psalmist uses the Word in Psal 82.6 I have said ye are Gods Elohim Judges or Magistrates Thus the Fool could be content there was a Jehovah a good and merciful God but he cannot in his Heart which accuses and condemns him desire an Elohim which is greater than our Heart and knoweth all things even the secrets of the Heart the secret Plottings Conspiracies Perjuries and black Villanies hatch'd in Hell and in the dark and the most secret Adulteries Sodomies and Abominations not to be named whilst the Atheistical Committers of these Impieties like those Antients of the House of Israel that did their Idolatry in the dark every Man in the Chambers of his Imagery for they say The Lord seeth us not the Lord hath forsaken the Earth Then said he unto me Hast thou seen this O Son of Man Is it a light thing to the House of Judah that they commit the Abominations which they commit here For they have filled the Land with Violence and have returned to provoke me to Anger and lo they put the Branch to their Nose Therefore will I also saith God deal in Fury mine Eye shall not spare neither will I have Pity and though they cry in mine Ears with a loud Voice yet will I not hear them Therefore go dance you Atheists and ye that curse and damn swear and forswear and kick up your heels at Heaven go dance like Murderers in a Goal with your Shackles on and think every day a play day till the Assizes come Go Rant and damn your selves and say with your Brethren in Isaiah We have made a Covenant with Death and with Hell are we at agreement When the overflowing Scourge shall pass through it shall not come unto

Protestant Neighbour let the World judg except they defy the Pope and the Devil and all their Works of Popish and Hellish Darkness Plots and Designs And I think I am not at all herein strait-lac'd in my Charity though I must expect never the fairer quarter from them for this Declaration But where is our true Christian true Protestant and true English Courage now become Who but he that 's unfit to live would fear to die in and for so just a Cause Better a thousand times if possible to die a true Protestant and a true English Man by the Sham-Plots False Witnesses and Popish Machinations than willingly to enslave a Man's self and Posterity Soul Body Honour Honesty Religion and Estate to Arbitrary and Popish Sway I put them together for like Hippocrates-Twins they are born and live and die together Does not Pope Boniface himself with as little Modesty as Truth assert his Vniversal Power over all Nations as well in Temporals as Spirituals from that Scripture Luk. 22.38 Behold here are two Swords no jot to his Purpose nor the least colour more than the bare sound of the Words two Swords which were no Allegorical nor Metaphorical but plain travailing Swords of Ammunition Hilt and Blade And yet this Vsurper though he can show no Warrant no Commission nor Authority for his Claim from Christ or Holy Scripture yet like another late Vsurper he can lay his Hand upon the Hilt of his two Swords Spiritual and Temporal and cry This is my Commission For if his Temporal Sword which is no small one be too short then he unsheaths his Spiritual Sword and with Fulminations Excommunications Curses and Anathema's with Bell Book and Candle he huffs and swaggers roars nants hectors and blusters all Mankind that either fear his vain Thunderings or come within the dint of his Thunderbolts To keep up therefore this usurped Power or to regain it where lost there is and ever will be Popish Plots when and where there are any blooming hopes to accomplish them in any Protestant Kingdom whatsoever They are not now though they have been much troubled with these Popish Plots in Sweden and Denmark wherefore I 'le tell you For two Reasons One is that the Laws against Papists are so fully put in Execution without connivance that I have rid a hundred Miles together in those Countries and could not upon Inquiry hear of one known and profess'd Papist 2. Another Reason is and they have found it by Experience a most incomparable Remedy They gueld all the Popish Priests they catch in their Kingdoms and Dominions They used to hang them formerly but that would not do for the hopes of being Canoniz'd and Sainted as Martyrs drill'd some silly Priests thither 'till a converted Nun I know not from what Experience persuaded Authority to gueld all the Popish Priests they took They took her Advice and it proves a wonderful Cure and Remedy against propagation of Popery in these Kingdoms I say therefore 't is senceless to doubt the being of a Popish Plot that never ceas'd since the Reign of Hen. 8. in England but now by Coleman's Letters it infallibly appears that they never had such blessed hopes of converting these three Kingdoms since the Bone-fires in Smithfield in Queen Mary's Days as now now at this time now that And the more impudently they deny so clear a Truth the more cause we have to abominate the Villany of that Religion that hardens Men in Lies or Equivocations even to Death And the more they deny it after such apparent and manifold Conviction the more suspicious and dangerous it is by the combined endeavour to conceal it and to turn the Edge thereof upon the Protestants Thus the Prophet did first blindfold the Syrians and then how easily did he lead them into the Enemies Camp And indeed no Man can deny but 't is politickly and craftily done to endeavour to put out the Eyes of those Men that are most quick-sighted to discern their dark mysterious and hellish Intrigues Or if they could but be Godfreydiz'd strangl'd hang'd or stab'd the Business would be done as effectually and to all Intents and Purposes Especially if the Sham-Evidences would but be improv'd and manag'd with some Lawyer 's Hackney-Tongue whose Conscience is so often sold pro and con right or wrong for Plaintiff or Defendant who bids most and who comes first prostituted and set to sale when Merchandize is indifferently and equally made of Truth and Falshood the Snare of catching Men would be the stronger and the Feat more currant But that honest English Juries do know that a Hackney-Tongue is no Slander and they 'll believe them no further than they list They have heard them so often bawle babble and bluster so loud and clamorous for Plantiff one day for Defendant another that no wise Man heeds them but knows that Words are but Wind Windy Words from Hackney-Tongues as empty and variable as the Wind but that it costs more to buy such Winds than it does the becalmed Mariners in the Baltick-Sea when they as I have sometimes known them buy a Wind of a Lapland-Witch But 't is observable that this Hackney Wind as well as the other is usually fatal to all that buy them ending in a Wreck at least a repented Bluster and Storm Whilst these Merchants of Truth and Falshood Merchants of Law and sometimes of very little or no Law but with the same Hackney Tongues vilify and disgrace all that stand in their way without respect to their own Modesty I thank you some of them have none without respect to Ingenuity common Civility or good Manners without respect to any Man's Worth or Quality except they expect a Fee from them for that alone opens and shuts the Breath-seller's Mouth they cannot open but Dirt flys out to bespatter as if they had got a Priviledg or Patent to be the Common-Shoars and common Filth common Slanderers under the colour of a Fee and under the Protection of a Motley or Button-Gown Nay I know it and will maintain it for a great Truth that a Gentleman's Credit and Estate Life and Honour are in less Danger and Hazard in the Field amongst ten thousand Enemies than amongst those sneaking split-Split-Causes these Snappers Ensnarers and Catchers of Men. For they can make the righteous Law execute their Malice and Spleen by wresting wrong setting and turning its Edge so that no Innocence Honesty Honour or Ingenuity can prove a sufficient Safeguard The wary Hollanders therefore though the greatest and wisest encouragers of Trade of all Trades and Mysteries of Iniquity suffer not the Merchandize of these Hucksters of Law in any of their Territories They suffer neither Bar-Gowns nor Button-Gowns amongst them They suffer no Tinkerly Pleadings of mending one hole and making too They suffer no Man's Cause to perish by the Error or Folly Knavery or Inadvertency of any Scribe or Attorney by a word mis-placed mis-recited or mis-pleaded but every Man knows an