so many visible interpositions of Providence in behalf of our King our Church and our Nation those strange and sudden changes of things and those mighty deliverances effected which nothing but the right hand of God could bring to pass It were well worth considering therefore certainly how we may secure the influences and blessings of the same Providence still and whether there be any so certain a way to this as acting honestly upon Principles of Religion and Conscience to God in all the instances of our subjection and duty to our King the doing duty in singleness of heart as unto Christ as unto the Lord and not to men onely as the Apostle excellently adviseth Servants For in such a case we approve our selves to God as his Servants of whom he will never fail to take care we render our Duty and Allegiance God's cause and go the best way to engage his maintaining of it For God is always ready to bless his own Institutions and will never fail to bless those that keep religiously close to them and when we honestly revere these we shall find he will bless us in our subjection and bless him too to whom we are subject for good Subjects may make good and happy Kings I wish good Kings could as easily make good and happy Subjects And certainly to preserve that due respect and honour to God by whom Kings Reign and out of that respect to pay a religious fealty and subjection to them is a sure way to draw down his blessing upon both and entitle both most certainly to his protection and care 3. And now I beg leave to put a period to this discourse in the last thing I proposed and all the improvement I intend of it shall be in these three short Inferences 1. From hence we may inform our selves of one great reason of the unsteddiness of men in their Allegiance and Loyalty in this age The sickleness and unconstancy of English men is grown into a Proverb and hath too justly render'd us vile and cheap in the esteem of other Nations but there are few instances in which it more justly doth so than our instability in our Allegiance to such a King and subjection to such a Government which all but our selves admire and envy us for For my part I can resolve the cause of this into nothing so rationally as want of true Religion and due respect unto God unless it be a divine infatuation and this evil also be of the Lord. No People talk more of Religion and yet I fear few practise it less we have wrangled and disputed so long about it till we have quite lost it and had God and Conscience so long in our Mouths that our hearts have almost forgotten that there are any such things and 't is not to be much wonder'd at if such men do not greatly revere God's Institutions or if they do that they are not very zealous and steddy in doing so I know not how a House should stand without a Foundation nor what great difference there is between standing upon a floating Sand and no Foundation at all there is no great thing to be expected from him that is Loyal upon uncertain and shifting reasons he that chanceth to be Loyal may chance to be a Traytour and he that is subject upon changeable reasons will upon the change of those reasons change his subjection into Resistence It is very well and we ought to adore the good Providence of God for it that men may be Loyal now upon all these lower reasons that our circumstances are so happily changed that even our Interest combines with our Duty and is complicated with it but such duty will scarce hold out in the day of temptation or stand if what supports it chance to fail Then are men to be relied on as I said before when their Allegiance is upon Principle and their Loyalty the effect of true Conscience when men honour their King because they love their God and dare no more become Rebels than they dare be Atheists when they revere their King as an imbodied kind of Divinity the Image and Character of the great God who resents any disrespect or injury we doe our Prince as done against himself who will strictly require it and severely punish it and who counts himself blasphemed when his great Minister is so These are arguments that will hold men fast and keep them close to their duty preserve them against all the batteries and charms of Rebellion and all the inchantments of factious and seducing men 2. From hence we may learn what to think of those men that plead Religion for Rebellion and Conscience to God for resistence against the King There are two great degeneracies of Christian Religion at this day justly chargeable with this egregious Prevarication and it is not easie to say which are more so their Faces like Sampson's Foxes look two ways and they would be taken to be at the greatest enmity and distance but it is notorious they have united in setting the Christian world in a Flame and I am perswaded no Places can hope long to enjoy Peace where they are freely permitted to earth and propagate If any chance long to do so it is in spight of them and their Principles too which are so very dangerous in their nature so directly in their consequences introductive of disturbance and confusion that if any Persons leven'd with them continue good Subjects it is because their hearts are better than their heads or the Vipers are under some powerfull charm We have been loudly alarm'd in this Nation with the effects of both and unless we be infatuated may with our own experiences fortifie our selves against their Importunities if our reason were not able to secure us yet our experience may and warn us against attending to those men who may court us as fair as the Hiena doth the Shepherd but whose embraces we have found to be as terrible and deadly There hath been great disputing about Religion and contesting the marks of a true Church I think it would be one good way to reduce the contest to this question and put the debate upon this issue and I am very sure a Church that teacheth Doctrines that any way vacate a standing Law of Religion and dispense from obedience to it in any case may safely be condemned as Antichristian how much soever it may pretend to infallibility on the one hand or purity on the other It is a sad Story that any that call themselves Christians should become Rebels and Traitours but to plead Christianity for being so is a great deal worse it is bad enough to violate the Laws of our holy Profession but to traduce them and make them a Cloak for our Villanies and such horrid Villanies too is a Sin next to that which is impardonable Were this a place fit for a Satyr or did my Religion permit me to bring a rayling Accusation against any man I might be pardon'd if I
Evil art and subtilty collected from hence is that Kings and Governours are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 things of humane yea of the peoples Creation this is the Palladium of the Republican cause and that in which the rude strength of the Leviathan consists and no place of Scripture that I know of hath been press'd to serve it like this I confess I should not much wonder to hear downright Atheism maintain this I know it doth others as absurd and irrational nor to hear those give this account of the Original of Government that have given a more senseless one of the Original of man if multitudes of Men spring up so like many Mushrooms out of the Earth at once then perhaps this account might be consistent and I will never wonder if they that believe the one swallow the other also But to have God drawn into the Conspiracy and his word suborned to serve an Hypothesis that it is every where so express against is intolerably fulsome And yet I wish this were the onely instance in which any forced expression and any obscure way of speaking shall be made to confront the most plain and obvious Doctrines of holy Scripture when it is the interest of some Men to have such things believed But these things are onely previous to my design and argument to which I now directly proceed i. e. to lay down the true ground of Christian Loyalty to fix it upon a principle that will keep it steddy in this giddy and wavering Generation now this is the being subject upon reasons of Religion upon principles of Conscience and duty to God which our Apostle means here by submitting for the Lord's sake 1. The First thing I proposed on this was to make good the ground of my argument shew that Conscience doth immediately oblige to this and that if men have a true respect to God Almighty and a regard to the duty that he hath made necessary they must thus submit And a very little I hope will suffice upon this in such an Audience for if the 5th Precept in the Decalogue be moral and eternally obliging and if either the Jewish or Christian Church may be allowed to have understood the sense of it or if the plain Precepts of the New Testament may be allowed to be any rule of Conscience and God's immediate Commands to lay any obligation upon it then it is most plain that men are as immediately tyed to this in point of Conscience as any other duty whatsoever So that let Conscience be as free as men assert it to be and accountable unto God onely as they love popularly to speak in this we desire no more to be granted and are ready to joyn issue upon it For if Government be God's own immediate institution and Kings specially commission'd and constituted by him if he have guarded them with Laws and charged all to be obedient to them on pain of Damnation and his highest displeasure then I am sure if Conscience be an honest respect to God and his Laws and any thing more than the opinion and fancy of every private Person it must necessarily oblige all men that follow the conduct of it in this instance Now whether these things be so or not I am content the most biass'd and even perjudiced Persons judge when they have read seven verses of the 13th to the Romans and five verses in this Chapter where it is plain if either the great Apostle of the Circumcision or of the Gentiles understood the obligation of Conscience or may be thought able to direct the obedience of it we need not contend farther in this matter though if need were we might summon the Old Testament the Doctrine and Example of the Blessed Jesus in the New the consonant Doctrine and practice too of the ancient and best Christians to vouch the truth of all this 2. But the thing is plain and I proceed to represent the advantages of fixing Allegiance and Loyalty upon this principle I know too well how forward some men have been to represent Religion an Enemy to Government and to reproach the Doctrine of Conscience as a nearer Plea for Rebellion and resistence and I would to God that some mens practices who have pretended so much to both had not given unthinking men too much cause for such surmises But I do not understand why this ought to prejudice my present argument unless we cannot distinguish between the truth and hypocrisy of a thing nor will allow any men to be truly honest because there are abundance of Knaves in the world Allow me that Religion is a real thing and Conscience more than a bare Name and methinks these are no very hard Postulates to beg in a Christian audience and then I will be content to argue the advantage of it to Government with any thing that the men of sense and reason as they please to call themselves shall set up in competition with it All I purpose to say I shall reduce to these three heads of advantage onely 1. The first is the keeping men steddy and fixed in their Loyalty and subjection 2. The second is the satisfaction and security of Princes 3. The third is the securing the divine Protection and Blessing which after all five Stories is the surest Firmament of Kings and Government too 1. To the purpose of keeping men steady and constant in their Subjection and Loyalty It is a sad contemplation to consider how desultory and fickle the humours and tempers of men especially the great crowd of them generally are But it is something sadder to consider that there should never be wanting evil and designing men to put an evil ferment into their tempers and to poison their Allegiance and Duty to their Prince And yet the worst of all is to consider how ready the multitude usually are for such insinuations easily prejudiced against their Governours pleased to hear any ill Stories of them and apt to Idolize those that set up for Assertours of their Liberties and Rights though in the end they find them always the greatest betrayers and inslavers of them Now in this state of things what can fix this volatile temper of men and keep them steady to their duty in spight of their own inclinations and the sorceries of factious rebellious Men like Religion There are but four things I can think of to come into the competition in this case Tower in the Prince Interest Honour or Gratitude in the People Now alas what can any of these do in comparison of Conscience Power were a sure way were it inherent onely in the Person of the Prince and every King like another Sampson able to destroy whole Armies of Rebels by his single strength But while it is lodged in others there will be need of something to secure it there otherwise as the Great Augustus said once Kings may be as unsafe amidst their Armies as without them and 't were well if no instances could be given in which that great
A SERMON PREACHED In His MAJESTY's Chapel-Royal AT WHITE-HALL Upon the 26th Day of July 1685. BEING The Day of PUBLICK THANKSGIVING to Almighty God for His Majesty's late Victory over the Rebels By HENRY HESKETH Chaplain in Ordinary to His MAJESTY Printed by Command LONDON Printed for Jo. Hindmarsh at the Golden Ball against the Royal Exchange in Cornhill 1685. IMPRIMATUR C. Alston R. P. D. Hen. Episc Lond. à saeris domesticis A SERMON PREACHED In His MAJESTY's Chapel-Royal AT WHITE-HALL Upon the 26th Day of July 1685. 1 PET. II. 13. Submit your selves to every Ordinance of Man for the Lord's sake WE are invited by a Gracious and Mercifull Providence to double the service of this Day to add incense to our common sacrifice and to wing our devotion and praise to Almighty God with a pious and gratefull reflexion upon a fresh Deliverance which it may be nothing but that mighty Redemption could exceed or equal A Deliverance of our Gracious King and the whole Royal Family of our Princes and Nobles of our Church and Religion of our Government and Laws of our Lives and Fortunes and whatever can be thought valuable or dear to Christian men Were an Oratour to manage this argument he could not possibly want matter to enlarge upon his hardest task would be to know where most aptly to pitch and to methodize those thoughts which would crowd in so fast upon it All the common Topicks from which men use to shew the becomingness and duty of Praise and from which they endeavour to raise it to the highest pitch were natural here and would come in without the least art or force Both the baseness and ingratitude of the Rebellion the dismal and deplorable effects that would have followed had it succeeded and the immediate and even visible interposition of Providence in the defeating of it I am very sensible the enlarging upon these were a popular entertainment and would be gratefull enough in some common Audiences But I think you something above these things and know that your own thoughts have anticipated the most of what I could say upon them and have therefore designed to treat you with something that I take to be more generous and manly To recommend that to you which I am sure will be the most substantial and acceptable expression of your praise for what is past and the most effectual securer of us all from such things for the future and that is to comply with the Advice given us in this text to submit our selves to every Ordinance for the Lord's sake I do not come to preach up Loyalty in this place nor am so impertinent as to think there is need of doing so but I hope I may be allowed to preach up Religion and recommend the practice of that which is the truest support of Loyalty and every thing else that is acceptable to God or of benefit to Man It is for want of this that we ever hear of Rebellion or are disturbed with the unwelcome interruptions of it and it is by a due practice of it that we shall be effectually secured from these things for the future 'T is this which is intended to be the service of this day by this we shall best answer the purpose of its institution and most acceptably admire and adore that great Providence that hath called us to it and therefore I humbly beg that you will hear me with your wonted clemency and candour a few words The Argument that I purpose to discourse from these words is to state the true Ground of Christian Loyalty and Subjection which is said here to be Religion and Conscience Submit your selves to every Ordinance of Man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the Lord's sake that is out of immediate duty to him and conscience and respect to his Command Whatever else there is observable in the Text will fall in upon our considering this main purport and design of it In the prosecution of this Argument I shall endeavour to doe these three things 1. I shall briefly make good the Ground of the Argument and shew that Religion and Conscience doth really oblige to this Subjection 2. I shall remark some of the advantages of being subject upon this reason 3. Make some short deductions from this for our own benefit and improvement Onely if it might not intrench too much upon my time and your patience I would crave leave in order to my argument to state the Notion of Christian Subjection as it is described here by St. Peter and this the rather because it would give me a fair occasion of reflecting upon two things under which the Men of Republican and turbulent Spirits seek to shelter themselves 1. Then I observe that when our Apostle speaks of Subjection here he intends it equally to the Persons and Laws of Kings and Governours and makes no distinction at all between them in these words he seems to mean their Laws and in the words immediately following he expresseth their Persons To the King and to those that are sent by him I know no reason to oppose one of these against the other or to distinguish between submitting to them Subjection to the one implies Subjection to the other in the sober sense of all the World and every honest heart will take it to hold true both ways He that submits to the King will submit to his Laws and he that submits to his Laws cannot resist or offer violence to his Person And yet we have had and I wish onely have had such nimble Sophisters as can put a difference between these both ways Some that can talk high of Allegiance of deference and a mighty respect to the King of being as good Subjects as any but yet make bold to desecrate his Laws and despise his Authority when their Interest or humour is crossed as if honour to the one would be secured without respect to the other And we have others as quick sighted the other way that can distinguish between the Authority and Person of the King and make a pretended respect to him in his political Capacity an excuse for Violence against him in his Personal that can raise Arms by his Authority against his Person and use those Arms against the Man in defence of the King Sophistical miscreants as if Authority would fight against it self or Murthering of Kings could be in any sense allegiance to them The Ignatian Wits never were Authours of a more subtile distinction or a neater way of cheating Conscience than this and if they did not prescribe to our dull Tramontains in this it might be expected they would call some men so no longer I am sure the Scripture was never so nice as to distinguish between them and had David known of any such difference he needed not have been put to any dilemma the case had been plain and the resolution easie he might have slain Saul and yet have preserv'd the Lord 's Anointed 2. Another thing with as much