A SERMON PREACHED In St. Pauls Church London before the Right Honourable the Lord Major Lord General Aldermen Common Council and Companies of the Honourable City of London February 28. 1659. BEING A day of solemn Thanksgiving unto God for Restoring of the Secluded Members of Parliament to the House of Commons The Common Council And preserving the City and a Door of Hope thereby opened The fulness and freedom of future Parliaments The most probable means under God for healing the hurts and recovering the health of these three Brittish Kingdomes By JOHN GAVDEN D.D. Ezek. 21.26 27. Thus saith the Lord Remove the Diadem and take off the Crown this shall not be the same exalt him that is low and abase him that is high I will overturn overturn overturn it and it shall be no more untill he come whose it is and I will give it him Restat ut pauciores pluribus cedant hoc uno stant popularia imperia aliter casura H. Gro. Hist. Bet. l. 17. pag. 150. LONDON Printed for Andrew Crook at the Green Dragon in Pauls Church-yard 1660. Aleyn Major A Common Council holden the 29. of February 1659. Ordered that the thanks of this Court be given to Dr. Gauden who preached Yesterday before them at St. Pauls Church And that he from this Court be desired to print this Sermon SADLER To the right Honourable THOMAS ALEYN Lord Mayor of the City OF London THE Court of Aldermen and Common-Counsel AS by your Desire I was induced to preach the following Sermon so by your Order in Common Council I was requested to print what I preached I have obeyed you in both and supererogated in the later adding something prepared but omitted for want of time and a respect due to your expectation of a second and better course on that Festival This I have done not only as compliant with your Christian Commands but as solicitous to conform all my endeavours to the publick Good of your City and our common Countrey which a great part of the Church of Christ and many precious souls as well as mens bodies Lives Liberties Honours and Estates are embarqued All which have for our sins been long engaged in a tempest of War and sea of Blood nor have they been able to make any fair Port or happy Haven these many years since they lost their Pilots and Compass their King and Parliaments by the various Euroclydons of mens passions Lusts and Interests which have tossed them to and fro with every wind made great waste of all that is precious for Religion Justice and Honour besides Estates and Lives of men in the three Kingdomes threatning all either with speedy and utter Shipwrack by forreign Invasion or an everlasting storm by domestick confusions untill the unexpected and undecerned providence of God began to open to your and the Countryes prayers some door of hope by the prudent valiant and succesfull Conduct of the present Lord General Monck from whom all good men expect all good things nor can he deceive them without deceiving and destroying himself and his Countrie Your gratitude to God for this seasonable dawning of Mercy which seems to bespeak a great calm occasion'd your solemn Convention that day and my preaching to you In which work you cannot wonder if I endeavoured to shew my self a Work-man that needed not to be afraid or ashamed being very sensible with you of the great many and long hurts of the daughter of my people both in Church and State I then freely declared them to you I deplored them with you I proposed the methods of cure to you as fully as the time will permit and as freely as became my duty to my God and my conscience As I would not injure any man or fester the times so I abhor to flatter them which is the greatest injury a Preacher can do to Church and State Some I hear were offended then late of Christs of John Baptists and Saint Pauls preaching at the plain dealing I used which possibly was from thier overrawness and soreness more then from my roughness As I aim to do things faithfully personally so decently and discreetly Nor do I think I am to learn of those Censorious Catos how to preach any more then they will learn of me how to buy and sell or how to fight and war No man may wonder if I dare to reprove those sins which some dare to do or approve but dare not hear of or repent The parrhesie or freedom of my speech as a man a Christian and a Preacher was such as became my feeling of the publick miseries my desire of the publick tranquility and my sense of that fidelity I ow to God to my Countrey to you and to my own soul These are not times to palliate and speak smooth or soft things Never age had fouler humours or prouder tumours more felt and more painfull more hard and less mollified These I would help to cure that so we might recover publick health together with our wits and reason our Laws and Religion our good Confidence and Government our Peace and Unanimity all which we have lost since we lost our heads in Church and State Our full and free Parliaments consisting of King Lords and Commons in which the soule and life the honour and happiness of these Nations are bound up And no part of it is more concerned then your famous sometime flourishing and still populous City in whose happiness the whole Nation will be happy and in its misery all must be miserable Since London is not only as a ponderous Byas to the great bowl which draws all parts towards it but it is as the Mistress Lady or Queen to which every Village City and Countrey of the Nation as officious Hand-maids study to present all manner of costly comlyness not only feminine as the superfluity of peace and plenty but also masculine for London like Pallas is furnished as with men of Counsel and Conduct with Treasure and Strength with all sorts of Armes and Aminition being a Camera Imperii Britanii a vast Magazine of men and money a nursery of all Arts Mechanick Ingenuous and Military a great entertainer of Learning and a noble encourager of Religion wanting nothing to make it self and the Nation happy if it have such heroick minds and honest hearts and become so rich so great and so Christian a City 'T is true like plethorick bodies great care must be had how ill humours yea and good ones too are put into motion since the first cannot well be long kept in nor may the second be purged out The first threatning dangerous inflamations the second no less dangereus Evacuations Here Prudence Order Moderation Confidence and Unanimity are required besides Zeal and Courage in order to recover your and our former health in Church and State which was made up of an admirable temper and constitution till sin tumults violence and war cast us into these Feavers Convulsions and Confusions with which
These hurts on the mental spirits or intellectual powers of a Nation are more dangerous than those that are incident by grosser wounds of outward immoralities which the Physick or dieticks of good Laws well executed will easily keep from predominating but the hurts which fall on Religion and Learning on the Reason and Conscience of a Nation are like frenetick distempers long a growing and long a going like the wounds on the head or cracks as we say of the brain hardly ever throughly cured when Heresie or Schism like a spiritual frenzy hath seised on any people as was evident in the Maniches Novatians Arians Donatists Nestorians Eutychians and others of ancient and modern ages There are further plagae per peccatum and proper peccatum hurts from sin and for sin the first hurts are by our own evil meritings as the self wounds of a drunkard the second by Gods just inflictings upon malefactors for he will not always leave the publique sins of a Nation without visiting with sore and publique punishments The first hurts are those from sins when they grow great and masterly boysterous and imperious either countenanced in Court or indulged in City or prevalent and neglected in Countries when prophaness and lying and swearing and drunkenness and uncleaness and murthers or the like faedities come to pollute a great or a considerable part of a Nation so as men make a mock of sin and glory in their shame when Rebellion Perjury Innocent-blood-shed and Sacriledge are drawn on like strait and pinching shoes at first with the shooing-horns of Religion and Reformation of publique necessity thrift and good Husbandry with antipathies against Idolatry and abhorrencies of superstition when Prince is bad and people worse and Priest or Prophet worst of all When from the Rulers or Teachers of a Nation wickedness as a plague of leprosie is spread over all the Land When there is a loathing of the heavenly manna a contempt of Word and Sacraments an indifferency to all Religion as little reverence in a Church at holy duties as in a Play-house and far less than in a Shire-house these fiery darts of mens own wanton lusts and the devils temptations do wound very deep they at once pierce and sear they hurt and stupifie they make men past feeling at length and only fit them for vengeance The second hurts are propter peecatum those which the just and angry God in his sore judgements inflicts on a people now incorrigible in ordinary ways and most severely on those that are called by his name and owned as the daughter of his people so the Jews by various hurts and healings were objects of Gods wrath and mercy till they had filled up the measure of sin See the Eastern Asiatick Greek Egyptick and African Churches how famous how fruitful how flourishing till wounded with sins overgrown with gross heresies and schisms noisom lusts base opinions and bad actions the sword of Gods vengeance by the barbarous inundations of Scythians Saracens Turks and other colluvies or scum of people at last so divided them that they are at this day almost utterly destroyed The arrows of presumptuous sins shot up against heaven fall on the heads of the shooters to their own hurt as Lamech speaks And as Solomon tells us wicked men sin against their own souls and so against the peace plenty honor health and welfare of their Nation and posterity Sin as Pliny says of Qucksilver is venenum omnium the pest and poyson of all things it urgeth God to be as a cruel one it provokes till there be no mediation intercession or remedy when men proudly and impenitently treasure up sin they treasure up withal wrath against the day of wrath till judgement break in like the flood on the old world or fall like fire from heaven without any to help or the earth open and swallow men up quick as Korah and his complices Here God is in Justice and Honor concerned to arise to bend his bow to whet his sword to be avenged on such a nation which is grown wantonly wicked which dares fight against God yea and challenge him whether he regard iniquity or no whether he be not such an one as themselves the wounds which men inflict on the Spirit Grace and Glory of God force him to wound them when there is no fear of God no shame or remorse or repentance for sin ideo conterimur quia non conterimur ideo vulneramur quia non vulnerantur as St. Bernard because our hearts are not broken nor our Spirits contrite within us for sin therefore the Lord of hosts breaks in upon us with one breach in the neck of another with famine plague sickness and death with intestine war divisions and endless distractions till Ephraim rise against Manasseh and Manasseh against Ephraim and Judah against both to eat as Canibals one anothers flesh and drink each others blood and thereby break the arm or strength of the whole Nation yea the very bones will be broken as when one choppeth wood when the sinews are cut in sunder all bonds of Law and Conscience of Reason and Religion of Justice and Charity of Unanimity and Unity are like Sampsons withes snapped in peices All these hurts mens own ways procure to them so that God appears either as a stranger and waifering man or an enemy yea as a cruel one in his sore judgements which like waves of the sea pursue one another Yet there was some mercy in this severity as to Israel and Judah a long time while God cut them short only but did not utterly forsake them or cast them out of his sight it may argue some hope that a Physician yet vouchsafes to mind and visit his Patient to apply any causticks or scarifyings which by pain may bring to sense and so to healing But there are coeca surda vulnera silent and unseen and at present unfelt yet very sore hurts and deep wounds bleeding inwardly which God may inflict as upon a particular soul so upon the spirit and genius of a whole Nation as to the generality of the people by giving them over by letting them alone Why should they be smitten any more being a rebellious stif-necked and back-sliding people profound to revolt bold Apostates falling from their duty to God and man yet glorying as if they were delivered to do all this wickedness by the test and approbation of providence discovered as they fancy in the prosperity of their impietie for a season Whereas indeed as St. Austin observes Severisimé punit Deus cum paenalis nutritur impunitas There need no greater punishment of a gangrene than to let it alone to leave it to it self This crudelis misericordia severe mercy St. Bernard passionately and wisely deprecates potius ure seca percute domine ne parcas ut parcas Rather lance O Lord and cut and burn by a merciful
do what is just by which they enjoyed health so many years without any considerable aches or pains which was easily and speedily remedied by the justice and discretion of honest Physitians compleat and conscientious Parliaments with a learned and godly Synod You know the unanimous cry and vote of far the most and best people of the Nation is for healing which shews that they do not yet finde themselves healed the cries and complaints of poor and rich of great and small witness We are not yet healed All testifie this so loudly in Cities and Country that none contradict it but those who as Sylla's lice or Herods worms feed on our soars and hope to make a prey of Church and State of our Bodies Estates and Souls by continuing the hurts putrefactions and miseries of both Whose cruel policies and impressions I hope the mercy of God by the valour and wisdom of godly men will speedily if our sins hinder not frustrate and defeat when they see that next our sins the instruments of all our miseries have been Fanaticorum spicula Jesuitarum veneno tincta Fanatick darts and arrows dipt in the Jesuites poison My only ambition and design in this freedom of my speaking to you is to help to heal and close hurts and to arm you against them for the time to come T is high time for every honest heart to make use of a discreet tongue pathetically to set forth with the Prophet the hurts of the daughter of his people to cry mightily to heaven and earth to God and man to honest Counsellors and just Commanders to give us leave to use or in pity to put us into such hands and such ways as may effectually and speedily heal us and not by a supine silence and sottish slavery suffer our selves and our posterity to wallow in our sanies or putid effluxions or to sit for ever on a dunghil like Job scraping our sores with potsheards and there is none to help us We do not desire to be happier than our religion and laws would make us and did so before might affronted right and force cut the sinews of Justice to put us off with fine words godly phrases and Saraphick fancys of cures beyond the proportions of this mortal condition as if we must all be healed to Angelick perfections and setled by Mathematical ballancing of a Common-wealth or a Church beyond all humane infirmities or worldly vicissitudes these are but the philters and delusions of those who meditate nothing less than a speedy and honest healing to which if my freedome used this day may any way contribute who am I thank God exempted from base fears or flatteries of any man I may hope that it will not onely be pardonable but acceptable to you as from one that hath no designe so upon his heart next the saving of his soul as to see before I dye the salvation of God in the right healing of the hurts of the daughter of my people both in Church and State whose welfares are unseparable For this end I have now preached to you upon your desire and shall ever pray to God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ and Saviour of his Church that after the many publique troubles we have for our sins seen and suffered to our sorrows at length the waters may be so moved by some good Angel that the daughter of my people may be effectually healed by a soveraine and celestial influence of what ever disease or hurt she hath either in Church or State and this for Jesus Christs sake to whom with the Father and blessed Spirit be everlasting glory FINIS These Book following are written by the Author Dr. GAUDEN and are to be sold by Andrew Crook at the Green-dragon in S. Pauls Church-yard HIeraspistes A defence for the Ministry and Ministers of the Church of England in Quarto II. Sermons preached on publick occasions III. Funerals made Cordials in a Sermon preached at the Interment of the Corps of Robert Rich Heir apparent to the Earldom of Warwick in Quarto IV. A Sermon preached at the Funeral of Dr. Ralph Brounrig Bishop of Excester Decemb. 17. 1659. with an account of his Life and Death new in Octavo V. A petitionary Remonstrance in the behalf of many thousand Ministers and other Scholers new in Quarto The Preface or Address The difficulty and danger of the work Touchiness of times Of free speaking in preaching Offence easily taken from free preaching 2 Tim. 4â— Prov. 26.28 Honest freedom is best 2 Chron. 15.5 Isa. 1.5 6. Pretenders to peace and health Mark 5.26 The scope or design of the Text Hurt of a Nation not fatal and incurable Ier 6.14 Ier 9.22 The hope and expectation of this day for our healing Mark 3 23. Division in six parts The Patient or diseased and hurt daughter of my people 1. As related to God 2. As related and indeared to the Prophet The importance of the Title The Daughter of my people 1. Fertility Rom. 8.23 2. Tenderness and indulgence 3. Sympathy in God and the Prophet Ier. 31.20 2 Sam. 22.7 Oft he loâ—â— due to our Country Ier. 1.19 Iam. 3.17 Ier. 8.22 The heathens compassion courage for their Country Our Country is both our Mother and Daughter Isa. 49.15 Ezek. 30.24 The dangerous and desolate estate of a Nation deprived other true Fathers Isa. 49.23 Conclusion of the first part in the text Psa. 122.6 2 Part what the hurt or disease is 1. Of imbred hurts or distempers Hurts by redundancy of humours 2. Of consumptive distempers by too great evacuations 3. Civil hurts or bodily distempers by Injustice 4. Of violent rapes committed on the Daughter of my pâ—ople 5. Spiritual hurts 1. As to Religion 2. Hurts as to good Learning Acts 19.28 â— Publick hurts from sins predominant and unpunished Ier. 27.10 Isa. 59.3 Hos. 4.2 Ier. 5.31 and 6.13 Hurts for sin by Gods inflâ—cting Ier. 25.29 Prov. 6.32 2 Châ—on 36.16 Ier. 5.9 and 9 9. Psal. â—0 11 Isa. 27.1 and 9.21 Ier. 4 18. and 30.14 There is good in the evil of punishment outwards The worst hurts are unseen and unfelt Hos. 14.15 Ier. 2.30 Hos. 5.2 Ier. 7.9 10. Deu 28.34 and 65. Acts 18.3 Isai. 50.11 Ier. 16.5 Isai. 55.23 3. Part. The pretended Healing 1 Kings 2â— 11 Ier. 28.15 1 The craft of these Empiricks Acts 19.35 Iudg. 17.13 The confidence and cruelty of false healers Isa. 29.21 Ioh. 18.36 1 Ioh. 4.1 Mat. 24.23 Isa. 5.20 Rev. 3 9. The honour of Parliaments when full and free Isa. 1.5 4. The lye or fallacy of healing slightly The fraud of such Their Character 2. Tim 3 2â— Dispair of cure by them Their monopoly of healing Ier. 8.12 Impostâ—rs provoke to just impatience Isa. 1·2 Character of true healers Psal. 119.155 Isa. 57.22 Isa. 32.17 Exod. 18.21 Iames 4.1 Luke 4.23 Isa. 1.16 17. Iames 4.8 Isa. 58.6 7 8. Micah 6.8 Zach. 13.6 Isa. 1.23 Isa. 58.8 Ezek. 21.27 Particular instances of
we have wrestled for many years Indeed your City ows some Reparation now payd it to the whole Nation not only for the advantages it hath from all parts but for the disadvantages which all have suffered not from the ill intentions but from some tumultuating dispositions which as Porpusses were pregnant in your sea of people when our troubles first began I hope God hath prepared blessings for you and by yours for the whole Nation by opening your eyes humbling your hearts disposing your minds and exciting your spirits to thoughts of Justice and Piety of Repentance Restitution and Peace We have had wounds and hurts enough healings and strong Delusions too many It is high time if it be Gods time to speak comfortably to Zion and tell her Warfare is accomplished to pour in the Balm of Gilead by sober and aquanimious Counsels to bind up by orderly just power what hath been long broken to make up the grand defects in our Government and to lay foundations of future peace and happiness in Righteousness and Truth That the enemies of our now Religion and this reformed Nation may not rejoyce in our continued miseries and say So would we have it I have sought to do my duty if some think I have overdone it I must crave your patrociny to assert that which by your acceptance seemed to be your sense as well as mine and is as I hope the sense of all honest and judicious men For men that are fanciful fanatick we need them not to make us happy I am sure they have made a shift to make us very miserable And if God had not in mercy set bounds to the rage of that sea and the madness of that people they would have made your City an heap of ashes and our Countrey a field of Blood It will be your Wisdom Honour and Happiness to keep in the bounds of just moderate religious and sober Counsels to aim at legal honest and tried wayes of settlement to apply to such Physicians as you find most able and faithfull so will health and salvation break forth upon you and the three Nations which is the earnest prayer Of your humble servant in Christ J. GAVDEN A SERMON PREACHED Before the Lord Mayor Aldermen c. of London IER. 8.11 For they have healed the hurt of the Daughter of my people slightly saying Peace peace when there is no peace BEing called to this publick service by the piety and civility of this great City Right honorable and worthy Auditors I could not well tell how to avoid it because it seemed so good a work nor yet upon so short warning how to accept of it being so great a work if either I regard the importance of the occasion which looks like a door of hope opened to the healing of these Nations and composing of their sad distractions by the counsels of a full and free Parliament and by the assistance of regular and orderly power Or if I consider as I ought in prudence the difficulty and danger of touching though in order to heal the old sores and fistulating ulcers of this Church and State which are now vetuscentia mala annosi morbi inveterate dolors obstinate evils and pertinacious maladies not only impatient to be touched freely and searched throughly but are prone to plead as the Devils in the Gospel who had possessed the poor man now a long time against all health and recovery Many men like Canters and Lazars are in love with their wounds and ulcers getting their living more easily by keeping their sores open raw and running than if they should quite heal them up I am further conscious not only to the touchiness of the times and the tenderness of many mens minds who are only for lenitives and oyles for soft smooth and supple applications even to their most desperate hurts but to that my own native parrhesia or freedom of speaking which is both customary and consciencious not that I affect unseasonable severities of speech and such rudeness under the pretence of freedom as rather exasperates the wound and inflames the humor than purgeth allays or easeth them But I profess to chuse not to preach at all than to preach timorously or precariously Vt Lugdunensem Rhetor dicturus ad aram as if I should ask men leave to be honest or were afraid to speak the Word of God to them When I am called to speak in Gods name I must be Parrhesiastes as well as Ecclesiastes I am to do it as a workman that needs not to be ashamed either for his ignorance or cowardise or indiscretion whether men will hear or forbear the whole counsel of God must be delivered in its season so as becomes the words of soberness and truth for the Church or Pulpit must not be a sanctuary for insolency or a burrow or a retreat for rudeness No however men may become our enemies for speaking the truth yet it is better so than to have God our enemy for smothering it when it is just and seasonable and such it is when necessary and soveraign to heal the hurt of a Church or State It hath been my fate frequently to offend some men when I have been most intent to serve them by Texts and Sermons which I thought most apt useful and innocent When I preached at the Court Anno 1640. upon that Heb. 12.14 Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see God When before the long Parliament at its first convening upon Zach. 8.19 Therefore love the truth and peace When at another great and epidemick Assembly upon 1 Cor. 3.19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God Of all three though wholsom and innocent Texts and I hope accordingly handled yet I heard some unpleasing Ecchoes and reflexions the sore and itching ears of some men in all ages are such that they will not endure {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} healing or sound and wholesom doctrine though the pain riseth from the soreness and inflammation in themselves and not from the plaister or hand which honestly applies it yet they are prone as in fell boils and acute tumors when touched though but gently to fly upon those that are next them and cry aloud O you hurt me when the hurt is within and from themselves Sound parts will endure free and rough handling such as are unsound do most want it and therefore if we will be faithful to God to our own souls and to our hearers we must not flatter their sores to their ruine but rather chuse to heal them though at present we be thought to hurt them nor shall our labor of love be in vain either in the Lord or before good men who at length will finde by experience that the wounds of a friend which let out the putrified matter of painful tumors are better than the kisses of an enemy which do infidis cicatricibus cuticulam