Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	act_n	church_n	communion_n	1,604	5	9.1682	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30437	A sermon preached at the funeral of the Right Honourable Anne, Lady-Dowager Brook, who was buried at Breamor, the 19th day of February, 1690/1 by the Right Reverend Father in God Gilbert, Lord Bishop of Sarum.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1691 (1691)	Wing B5895; ESTC R21611	15,045	40

Nations than the setting forth the Praises of the Dead at their Funerals But indeed these have been generally given out so lavishly and often so unjustly that all Discourses of this kind appear with great Prejudices against them and therefore they ought to be severely weighed The following Words in my Text give such measures that if these be observed all Errors and Excesses will be prevented Give her the Fruit of her own Hands That is let her not be praised by a pompous setting forth of those things that were not her own such as her Birth and Fortune which are only the Distinctions of Divine Providence by which Persons of Noble Minds are set in a higher Sphere and are made capable of giving a more conspicuous Example and of being a more general and publick Good to Mankind Therefore the shewing what were the real Instances and the good Effects of her Religion is the most proper way of praising her and the less Pomp of Eloquence or Art of Disposition and Expression that accompanies such a Description it comes the nearer the Rules that are here given Let her own Works praise her in the Gates Among the Jews their Courts of Judicature and other Solemn Assemblies were at their Gates It being judged much safer for a City that the chief place of Concourse should rather be at and about its Gates than in its Heart and Center So that by Gates we are to understand the gathering of the People and there it was that her Works were to praise her every one having somewhat to say that had either fallen under his own Observation or that had come to his Knowledg There was no need of an Orator to recite them of a Poet to adorn them or of Hired Mourners to sing them out in doleful Tunes which were the Methods of those Times All these might well be spared when the Universal Sense of the Town and the Groans of the Neighbourhood agreed in the same Character and that a General Lamentation followed a Common Loss This is a Panegyrick that can never be suspected for no Man misdoubts those Tears that fall upon a real Loss When the Widows came to mourn over Dorcas who had been full of good Works and Alms-Deeds and shewed the Coats and Garments which she had not only given them ' but had made for them while she was with them Here was a more powerful Strain of Rhetorick than the most studied Composures The reciting the Names the Vertues and the Sufferings of the Primitive Christians and Martyrs was in the First Ages of Christianity a great part even of the Office of the Communion it self and the striking the Names of any out of those Registers and Memorials was reckoned to be one of the severest Acts of the Discipline of the Church It is true the Abuses that were ushered in by this do well excuse us though in this particular we do not conform our selves to so ancient a Custom yet when singular Instances come in our way as we ought to rejoice to see that Religion has not yet lost its force but can even in this degenerate Age give Noble Instances of the Power it has and of the Effects that follow it so we ought to set it out in its True and Natural Colours We are not indeed to follow the Steps of a Church that as she is made up of Lies so lies more impudently in nothing than in dressing up the Legends and setting forth the Excellencies of those who have contributed to her enriching or to her Exaltation and that does plainly shew no regard either to what is true or to what is so much as likely in the Lives or rather the Fables that are given out of her Saints In which it is visible that no Care is had to tell things truly as they were but as they think they ought to have been done and that is managed in such a manner as may most powerfully work on the Credulity or Superstition of the Age in which they write They varying the Performances of their Saints according to the Taste of the several Ages in which they happen to write and by these means they serve their Ends of deceiving the World by this Exchange of Sophisticated Ware for the wealth and advantages that it brings to them But we have not so learned Christ we know no other Arts but the plain Simplicity of the Gospel we dare not lye for God and much less for the best Person upon Earth And now I am brought back to the Subject with which I began If we have here before us the earthly Tabernacle of a Woman that feared the Lord then it is just and reasonable for us to praise Her but in the praising Her I shall strictly observe the Direction of my Text I will only give her those Commendations that are due to Her that are the Fruit of her Hands and will set before you some of Her Works and leave them to praise Her by an Eloquence that will have more Force and Beauty in it than can be possibly put in Words I will say nothing but that which I have good reason to believe to be true for though I had not the honour of so particular a Knowledge of Her as to be able to form out of it an entire Character yet what I saw in Her shewed so sincere and so profound a Piety so severe and scrupulous a Vertue so pure a Conscience and such an exact Conduct that from thence I have good reason to believe other Particulars which I have received from those who have been long the nearest Witnesses to the whole Course of Her Life This I must say and you all know it to be true that both in the Neighbouring City which is the chief Part of my Care and in this whole Countrey She hath had this Character to have been the greatest Example and the Instrument of the most Good of any Person that has been in these Parts within the Memory of Man I will not lessen what I am to say concerning Her by any account of Her Birth of the Nobleness of her own Family or of that into which She married nor of the Greatness of the Fortune that descended to Her if I should speak of these I should not give her the Fruit of her own Hands only it is no small part of a Character that such things can neither swell a Mind to Pride nor dissolve it into Vanity or Sensuality Her descending to the concerns of the meanest Persons Her going so oft about to the poorest Houses where Her Charity or Assistance was necessary Her constant care of the Sick Her supplying them so plentifully with Medicines from that vast Store that She provided for them Her sending oft for Physicians and Surgeons to them Her frequent handling and dressing their Sores Herself when Surgeons could not be had which as She never affected to do so She never declined it where it was necessary Her kneeling so oft down and

against Sin but when the occasions of observing the Evil that was in the World came in her way she made the right use of them in proper Reflections on them to those who were under her Care She loved the Privacies of the Countrey much more than the Diversions and Disorders of the Town She loved to be at quiet and to be either improving her own Mind or to be doing good to others She had attained to a great understanding in the matters of Religion and the Scriptures and was not only conversant in the practical but even in the speculative parts of it So much study as she used with so true a Judgment as she had carried her a great way next to that she studied Physick most as that by which she found she had the greatest opportunities of doing the most good and in this she set no bounds to her Care and Labour and to the expence it drew with it and in her later Years the extent of her Charity and the Zeal and Tenderness of it grew upon her very sensibly She had observed one constant Practice upon any special Blessing that she received from God to make a particular Largess of Charity besides her ordinary Givings but this of late encreased to great Sums that walked round the Jayls of London as well as amongst the miserable in these Parts besides that Riches of her Liberality with which she relieved the French and Irish Protestants So that she seemed to be making haste to do all the good that was possible for her as if she had had a secret Intimation that there was but a small Portion of time now before her A slow Decay came to seize on her while she was yet a great way from Old Age being but Fifty when she died She quickly apprehended that it would make an end of her and so she set her self diligently to prepare for it I must add one part of her Character which I think so bright a one that I am not afraid to rank it among those I have already mentioned She had so great a sense of the Goodness of God to the Nation in the late happy Revolution that she said her Nunc dimittis with the more Joy because she had seen that Salvation which God hath wrought for us She paid one Tax to the Government with so hearty a Zeal in offering up many earnest Prayers to God for its Establishment that if many made so many Free-Will Offerings of that kind as she did we might hope for a better account of all the other Taxes and a speedy end put to them all and as she had so true an Affection to this Government her self so she declared an unalterable Resolution of not bestowing that dear part of her Care which she did not live to finish to any but such as she believed were Faithful and Zealous to it But now the Melancholy part is yet before me I unwillingly go to it but as the Discourse leads me so I may well speak of it since it was such as agreed with all that had gone before she felt the Decays of Nature come so fast on her that she prepared her self to meet her God She had quite overcome all that unwillingness which so just a desire as was formerly intimated had raised in her She rejoiced in the Will of God and expressed so much satisfaction and chearfulness even in her Looks that it plainly appeared all was calm within She was no more depressed with uneasy Reflections on her self but had the Joy of a good Conscience and the Assurance of the Love and Goodness of God through Jesus Christ to so high a degree that she felt not now those unjust Censures with which she alone had sometimes punished her self For she was the only Person that as far as I have been informed ever thought hardly of herself Since I could never hear that she had an Enemy or that ever a considerable Injury was done her by any Person her prudent grave and unmedling Temper kept her out of the way of making Enemies and to this was joyned a special Blessing of God that preserved her from unjust Malice Thus for meer want of occasion I could not learn how her Charity would have wrought towards an Enemy that had injured her in any sort She continued during the Course of her Sickness not only to have the Prayers of the Church said by her but was very often indeed almost constantly observed to be raising up her Soul to God She had resolved to fit her self for her last Passage with the great Viaticum of Christians but Nature sunk all at once and so fast that she could only communicate inwardly yet though she could not end her Life with that most solemn Act of church-Church-Communion She desired that Character of dying in the Churches Peace that is given in Absolution which she received with much devout Joy At last she broke Prison and left a feeble and exhausted Body and is now entered into the Joy of her Lord into that Rest to which she was so long aspiring and of which she had felt so many ravishing Fore-tastes in her way to it There she is now in the Fellowship of Angels and in the Presence of God where she will remain till the restitution of all things that this her now forsaken Body shall be changed and be made meet for her to return to it and to dwell in it for ever And for her Memory let her own Works praise her and make her Name to be as Ointment poured forth May all in these Parts that have either observed her Deportment or felt the effects of her Charity honour her or rather Religion that made her to be what she truly was even a publick Blessing to the whole Countrey Look through all the Companies of the gay Libertines and see what you can find among them all compared to that which Religion wrought in her and then acknowledge that This is the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World May all that hear of her rise up and call her Blessed and by a noble Emulation study to imitate the Vertues that shined so fair in her May the great Family that is to succeed to her Seat so far follow her steps that they may dry up the Tears which do now flow so plentifully for her loss May her noble Children answer the honour of being hers and the Obligations that lie on them by the Example that they saw in her and the Education that they received from her And may he whom she loved and esteemed so highly carry still with him so tender a sense of all the excellent Things that he observed and admired in her that according to her last Words to him Though they are now parted since it was the Will of God that it must be so yet they may meet again never to be separated but to live eternally happy in that Fulness of Ioy and in those Pleasures which are for evermore And in conclusion May the Example she has set and the Good she has done be ever celebrated may it recommend true Religion to the World Mark the Upright and behold the Perfect for their latter End is Peace To which God in his Mercy bring us all in his good and appointed Time Amen FINIS * Treat of ●●sts c. 4. n. ● Acts 9. 39. The Lord ●●●●●p of Worcester