Selected quad for the lemma: city_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A60947
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A sermon preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Novemb. 9, 1662 by Robert Smith.
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South, Robert, 1634-1716.
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1663
(1663)
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Wing S4738; ESTC R24563
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14,746
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48
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A SERMON PREACHED At the Cathedral Church of St. Paul Novemb. 9. 1662. By ROBERT SOUTH M. A. Publick Oratour to the University of Oxford and Chaplain to the Lord high Chancellour LONDON Printed by J. G. for Tho. Robinson Bookseller in Oxon. 1663. To the Right Honourable THE Lord Mayor and Aldermen Of the City of LONDON Right Honourable WHen I consider how impossible it is for a person of my condition to produce and consequently how imprudent to attempt any thing in proportion either to the Amplenesse of the Body you represent or of the Places you bear I should be kept from venturing so poor a piece designed to live but an hour in so lasting a Publication did not what your Civility calls a Request your Greatness render a Command The truth is in things not unlawful great Persons cannot be properly said to request because all things considered they must not be denyed To me it was Honour enough to have your Audience enjoyment enough to behold your happy Change and to see the same City the Metropolis of Loyalty and of the Kingdom to behold the Glory of English Churches reformed that is delivered from the Reformers and to find at least the service of the Church repaired though not the buildings to see St. Pauls delivered from Beasts here as well as St. Paul at Ephesus and to view the Church thronged onely with Troops of Auditors not of Horse This I could fully have acquiesced in and received a large personal reward in my Particular share of the publick Joy but since you are further pleased I will not say by your Judgement to approve but by your Acceptance to encourage the raw endeavours of a young Divine I shall take it for an Opportunity not as others in-their sage Prudence use to do to quote three or four Texts of Scripture and to tell you how you are to rule the City out of a Concordance no I bring not Instructions but what much better befits both you and my self your Commendations For I look upon your City as the great and magnificent stage of Business and by consequence the best place of Improvement for from the School we go to the University but from the Universities to London And therefore as in your City-meetings you must be esteemed the most considerable Body of the Nation so met in the Church I look upon you as an Auditory fit to be waited on as you are by both Universities And when I remember how instrumental you have been to recover this universal settlement and to retrieve the old Spirit of Loyalty to Kings as an ancient testimony of which you bear not tbe Sword in vain I seem in a manner deputed from Oxford not so much as Preacher to supply a course as Oratour to present her thanks As for the ensuing Discourse which lest I chance to be traduced for a Plagiary by him who has played the thief I think fit to tell the world by the way was one of those that by a worthy hand were stoln from me in the Kings Chappel and are still detained and to which now accidentally published by your Honours Order your Patronage must give both value and protection You will find me in it not to have pitcht upon any subject that mens guilt and the consequent of guilt their concernment might render lyable to exception nor to have rubbed up the memory of what some heretofore in the City did which more and better now detest and therefore expiate but my subject is inoffensive harmless and innocent as the State of Innocence it felf and I hope sutable to the present design and Genius of this Nation which is or should be to return to that Innocence which it lost long since the Fall Briefly my business is by describing what Man was in his first estate to upbraid him with what he is in his present between whom Innocent and Faln that in a word I may sute the subject to the place of my discourse there is as great an unlikeness as between St. Pauls a Cathedral and St. Pauls a Stable But I must not forestall my self nor transcribe the Work into the Dedication I shall now onely desire you to accept the issue of your own requests the gratification of which I have here consulted so much before my own reputation while like the poor widow I endeavour to shew my officiousness by an Offering though I betray my poverty by the measure not so much caring though I appear neither Preacher nor Scholer which terms we have been taught upon good reason to distinguish so I may in this but shew my self Your Honours very humble Servant Robert South Worcester-house Nov. 24. 1662. Gen. 1. 27. So God created man in his own Image in the image of God created he him HOw hard it is for Natural Reason to discover a Creation before revealed or being revealed to believe it The strange Opinions of the old Philosophers and the Infidelity of modern Atheists is too sad a Demonstration To run the world back to its first originall and Infancie and as it were to view Nature in its cradle to trace the out-goings of the Ancient of dayes in the first Instance and Specimen of his Creative Power is a re-search too great for any mortall Enquiry and we might continue our Scrutiny to the end of the World before Naturall Reason would be able to find out when it begun Epicurus his Discourse concerning the Originall of the World is so fabulous and ridiculously merry that we may well judge the Design of his Philosophy to have been Pleasure and not Instruction Aristotle held That it streamed by connaturall Result and Emanation from God the Infinite and Eternall Mind as the Light issues from the Sun so that there was no Instance of Duration assignable of Gods eternal existence in which the World did not also co-exist Others held a Fortuitous Concourse of Atomes But all seem joyntly to explode a Creation still beating upon this ground that to produce Something out of Nothing is Impossible and Incomprehensible Incomprehensible indeed I grant but not therefore Impossible There is not the least transaction of sense and motion in the whole man but Philosophers are at a losse to comprehend I am sure they are to explain it Wherefore it is not alwayes rational to measure the truth of an assertion by the Standard of our Apprehension But to bring things even to the bare perceptions of Reason I appeal to any one who shall impartially reflect upon the Ideas and Conceptions of his own mind whether he doth not find it as easie and sutable to his Naturall Notions to conceive that an Infinite Almighty Power might produce a thing out of nothing and make that to exist De Novo which did not exist before as to conceive the World to have had no beginning but to have existed from Eternity Which were it so proper for this place and exercise I could easily demonstrate to be attended with no small train