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A51230
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A sermon preach'd before the House of Lords in the abby-church at Westminster, upon Monday January 31, 1697 / by John Lord Bishop of Norwich.
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Moore, John, 1646-1714.
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1697
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Wing M2555; ESTC R26202
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18,373
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42
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Titus by him constituted Bishop of Crete he presses him to put the Churches in mind to be subject to Principalities and Powers to obey Magistrates to be ready to every good Insomuch as Timothy is required That in his Office of Publick Prayer Kings should have a principal part and Titus hath order in his Sermons to put the Hearers in mind of their Duty to the Supreme and Subordinate Powers Whatever therefore is declared a Duty of our Holy Religion and is contained among the Apostolical Precepts must not only be a Subject proper but very necessary for Christian Ministers to explain and seriously recommend unto the People There was more cause for making this Observation which arises directly from our Text because it hath been often objected to the Clergy when they preach Loyalty and Submission to the Government that they exceed the Bounds of their Office and meddle with Matters which do not belong to them As if a Christian Minister could go beyond his Commission while he contained himself within the compass of his Bible and only published those Doctrines unto the Congregation which our Lord Christ and his Holy Apostles had taught before him If any therefore have been worthy of blame for their Discourses on these Arguments it must proceed from want either of Judgment or Sincerity in their Performance We do not therefore pretend to excuse either those who have taught the People to speak Evil of Dignities and would have disposed them to Mutiny and take Arms against their Sovereign Lords or those who would persuade Governors to Rule by Arbitrary Power and not to have respect to the Laws and the general Good in their Administration Such Men indeed transgress their Commission and Act without Integrity or Skill in both the Extremes and ought not to be esteemed Friends either to the Prerogative of Princes or to the Liberty of the People For neither the one nor the other can be stretched beyond the Measures of Law and Justice without hazard of being broken But then this is not the only Case in which Men may betray the defects of their Understanding or of their Honesty seeing other Religious Matters have likewise their Extremes and we need not seek much or go far for a pertinent Instance For in the same Verse that St. Paul does bid Titus to put them in mind to be subject to Principalities he also requires him to exhort them to be ready to every Good Work Now Good Works are a most noble and necessary Subject for Preachers to treat of in the Pulpit and they hardly can compose a Sermon without having occasion to make mention of them And yet some have set too high a rate even upon Good Works and others have as much undervalued them The Romanists over-rate them while they contend they are meritorious and that God is bound to reward those who do them making that a Debt of his Justice which is the effect alone of his free Grace and Mercy On the other hand the Antinomians and Solifidians as they are called do put too low a Value on Good Works by not allowing them according to the ordinary Laws of the Gospel to be necessary Ingredients of the Condition upon which the Christian man shall be justified When yet our Saviour hath declared that the truest Test we can give of our love of him and the way to enter into Life is to keep his Commandments and St. James does pronounce That faith without works cannot save us Wherefore to conclude this matter Accusations and Clamour should never divert us from our Duty but they ought to make us more diligent and exact in the manner of doing it We proceed therefore to shew 2. That the People are bound by the Laws of God and Nature to pray for those in Authority and to live in due Obedience to them The Obligation upon Men to be Subject to Kings and Princes hath been made appear from the Holy Scripture in part already But before I fetch further Proof from thence it may be of advantage to this Point to enquire what Evidence there may be for it from Reason and natural Light The Evidence from the Light of Nature and Reason will be strong if it can be proved that the Original of Society is from God and that he hath made Government necessary to Mankind and consequently hath obliged every Man to comply with and submit to all things necessary to uphold Rule and Discipline in Bodies Politick In order to make which out I shall shew 1. That God hath qualified and fitted the Nature of Man for Society 2. That Man has a great Love Appetite and Desire to Society 3. That the Wants and Deficiencies unavoidable in the present State cannot be supplied without Society and other Mens Assistance 4. That unless Men submit to the Authority establish'd in every Society for the Government of it no Society or Community can subsist or continue 1. That God hath fitted and qualified the Nature of Man for Society is manifest both from the Faculties of the Mind and the Powers of the Body wherewith he hath endowed him Man is furnisht with Reason and Memory and Speech and Bodily Strength which are so many Qualifications for the making him a sociable Creature since they are all contrived and may be used as well for the benefit of others as of our selves and Speech seems for no other end designed than Conversation and the furtherance of Mutual Good Man by the Exercise of his Reason does discover a difference between things that some are Good and others Evil those things he judges Good which will preserve and improve the Faculties and Powers of his Being and those Evil which have a tendency to corrupt and destroy them Next by comparing his own Nature with other Mens and observing the respects they have one to another he concludes that what is Good or Evil for him will be so for other Men that what contributes to his own Safety or Destruction in the same Circumstances will do so to theirs who have the like Intellectual Faculties and Corporeal Powers with himself Hence he advances to find out the different degrees of goodness in things and to compute how much one Good exceeds another and he cannot but determine that the Good which is durable is to be preferr'd to that of short continuance that what causes Peace and Tranquility of Mind is more to be esteemed than what procures freedom from Pain and Ease of the Body and that Goods of every kind are so much more valuable as they are more diffusive And therefore what is good for him and for others also is a greater good than what is so for himself alone and that in proportion every Good is still the greater by how much the more have benefit by it and consequently his Reason will engage him constantly to pursue and promote the most Universal and Publick Good in which his own will ever be involved before and above all others Moreover Men
THE Bishop of NORWICH's SERMON Preach'd before the House of LORDS On JANUARY 31. 1697. Die Lunae 7 o Februarii 1697. IT is Ordered by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled That the Thanks of this House be and are hereby given to the Lord Bishop of Norwich for his Sermon Preach'd before this House the One and Thirtieth Day of January last in the abby-Abby-Church and he is hereby desir'd to Print and Publish the same MATTH JOHNSON Cler ' Parlamentor ' A SERMON Preach'd before the House of Lords IN THE Abby-Church at Westminster UPON Monday January 31. 1697. By the Right Reverend Father in God JOHN Lord Bishop of NORWICH LONDON Printed by R. R. for W. Rogers at the Sun against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet MDCXCVII 1 TIM II. 1 2. I exhort therefore that first of all supplications prayers intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men for kings and for all that are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty NOtwithstanding the Care at first which was taken in planting the Gospel of Christ and that the Doctrines and Precepts thereof were publish'd by Men divinely inspired yet Errors of a dangerous nature did early creep into the Church Two of which are opposed by St. Paul in the Text the one concerned the Extent of the Christian Religion and the other related to the Subjection due to the Civil Magistrate It was a prevailing Opinion among the Jews who were the first Converts to Jesus Christ That his Gospel was only to be preached to themselves and that the Infinite Happiness promised in it should be limited to the People of their own Nation They were puff'd up with the long Course of Favours God had been pleas'd to vouchsafe unto them and could not endure with patience to hear and think that under the Dispensation of the Gospel the Gentiles should stand on a Level with them and become equally capable of the hopes and means of Salvation And as the Epicureans would have shut the Providence of God out of the World so They would have confined the illustrious Manifestations of it by Jesus Christ to the Seed of Abraham While indeed the Jews were under the peculiar Care of God the Laws he made to govern them were chiefly Political and had regard to their Publick Good and Safety as a Nation and Community like the Civil Laws of other Countries and Submission to them was enforced by Temporal Rewards and Punishments But when it pleased him to enact Laws which were for the Reformation of the Minds and Affections as well as the Manners of Men and which would not only advance their general Good in this Life but procure their Eternal Welfare in the next it seemed agreeable to his boundless Goodness and Wisdom that what he intended for the Advancement of Human Nature and the Reparation of his own Image in the Souls of Men which was defaced by Adam's Fall and Man 's own wilful Transgressions should reach to all who did partake of that Nature And this being the highest Favour his poor revolted Creatures were capable of receiving it was his merciful Resolution not to deny any of them the Means to obtain it Insomuch that the Merit of Christ's Death was to extend not only to the Seed of Abraham but to the whole Posterity of Adam That as in Adam all dye even so in Christ shall all be made alive And that God's designed Bounty by the coming of the Messiah should comprehend all Nations the Jews had sufficient notice from the Inspired Writers of their own Country And I will shake all nations and the desire of all nations shall come I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth And in support of this great Truth St. Paul doth exhort Timothy That Supplications be made for all Men Whether Jews or Gentiles Believers or Infidels of what Country of what Rank or Quality soever they be But the Occasion of our being at this time assembled will not permit me longer to insist upon the Refutation of this first Mistake of the Jewish Christians against which St. Paul's Exhortation is here directed I proceed therefore to the Consideration of the other immediately following which was Their Averseness to live in Subjection to the Civil Magistrate Their Untractableness and Disrespect to Rulers had appeared on several occasions especially since they were brought under the Roman Yoke and may probably be in some measure imputed to a wrong Interpretation which they had put upon a Precept that God gave them by Moses God had required them to make no King but of their own People One from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee thou mayest not set a stranger over thee which is not thy brother This made them unwilling to submit to any Foreign Power It is true while a liberty of Election continued they were to chuse a King of their own Nation but after God for the hardness of their hearts did suffer them to be subdued by their Neighbours and to be carried Captive into a strange Land it became their Duty to be subject to them who had brought them under their Power and to conform themselves to the Laws of the Emperors and Kings who protected them Now St. Paul having some cause to suspect since their Conversion to the Christian Religion that they had not quitted all their Prejudices and false Notions about Obedience and Submission to the higher Powers which they held under the Mosaick Dispensation does in the Text exhort and desire Timothy that as Prayers should be made for all kinds of Men so chiefly and in the first place for Kings and all that are in Authority In treating of which Argument I shall endeavour to shew 1. That it is not foreign to the Office of the Ministers of the Christian Church to remind the People of their Duty to the Civil Power 2. That the People are bound by the Laws of God and Nature to pray for those in Authority and to live in due Subjection to them 1. That it is not foreign to the Office of the Ministers of the Christian Church to remind the People of their Duty to the Civil Power Which Proposition may be grounded on the Exhortation of St. Paul to Timothy The Apostle did not think it sufficient when he writ to whole Churches to injoyn them to render Tribute 〈◊〉 and Service to Chief Governors and all in Authority under them but in his Epistle to Timothy who being made Bishop of Ephesus was about to order and establish the Worship of God in the Assemblies of the New Christians he does exhort and beseech him that their Publick Service should begin with Prayers for all Men and particularly for Kings And with equal Care and Zeal to preserve Christians from Seditious Designs and Plots against the Magistrate in his Letter to