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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43071	A sermon preached at St. Olave Southwark, September the 8th, 1700 occasioned by the recantation of Dr. Joh. Spire, lately a Quaker : which said recantation is added at the end / by John Haslewood ...	Haslewood, John, b. 1647.; Spire, John. Oration at the parish-church of St. Olave-Southwark.	1700 (1700)	Wing H1132; ESTC R14553	11,771	28

Rules What now remains but that we present our humble Supplications at the Throne of Grace in behalf of this good-natured this Orthodox and Uncorrupt Church that God would continue to be her Guide and Defence that he would keep and strengthen in the true Faith and Holiness of Life all the Members of her Communion and daily add to her such as shall by his Blessing save both themselves and others Which God of his infinite mercy grant for Jesus Christ's sake to whom be rendred as is most due all Honour Glory Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen FINIS Dr. John Spire's ORATION AT THE Parish-Church of St. OLAVE-SOUTHWARK September the 8th 1700. It is probable it may seem somewhat strange to many for me to appear after this manner in this Place but let it not be accounted either presumption or rudeness in me so to do for my undertaking is justifiable in the sight of God and all good Men. FOrasmuch as upon the Occasion of my being here the first time which was on Trinity-Sunday the 26th Day of May 1700. and that caused a disturbance in this Place and for the prevention of the like again as well as many and various false Reports that have been spread up and down and that I have frequently met with all for so doing I think it very proper to signifie something of the Reason of my coming hither and also to give you a short account of my Life down to this Day I doubt not but many will be asking why such a Man and his Family or Friends come to Church who have so many Years been Dissenters from her to which Question I shall return one general answer by acquainting you as followeth I was born of Honest Christian Parents in the County of Berks and about 40 Years since Baptized according to the usage of the Established Church of England and Educated therein till I was about 13 Years of Age at which time my Parents Joyned with the People called Quakers and afterwards I was instructed in their way in which I continued about 26 Years and in the Year 1694 when thro' the good Providence of Almighty God I began to have some small glances of the Christian Religion from which with many others I had so many Years swerved upon this Discovery I published a small thing in print to vindicate my self and my Friends many of which are here present from some erroneous Tenets held by the Quakers for which I received many and great Abuses from them and was excommunicated or disowned under the Hands of 24 from being of their Communion And in the Year 1696 finding by many of their Books and Preachments that they slighted the Humanity of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ I did in that Year print a small Piece asserting the Humanity of Christ from Scripture Testimony for which Ialso suffered many Reproaches and have it now under a Quaker Preacher's Hand baring date the 27 of June 1696 what affronts I then received who after his long Scribble thus violently utters himself against me He tells me the Lord will confound me that God will destroy me he calls me a Ravening Wolf and bids me call in my Book that asserts the Humanity of Christ and says withal that the Lord requires it of me In the Year 1698 it pleased God Almighty to let me see that those two great Ordinances of Christ Baptism and the Lord's Supper are thankfully to be received by all sincere Christians till his coming again at the last and great Day And I do hereby freely acknowledge my former Error in denying the Benefit and Necessity of Baptism and the Lord's Supper as well as in slighting the use of the Holy Scriptures as also in Denying that great and fundamental Article of the Resurrection of the Dead all which with many others of my Friends and Relations I have been taught by the Principle Leaders and Teachers of the aforesaid People and do own I was so far seduced as to help to teach and encourage others in these abominable Errors which sin I trust the Lord of his Mercy hath pardoned because I did it Ignorantly I do also hereby freely declare that I own for Substance the Doctrine of the 39 Articles of the Church of England and desire that I may live and dye in that Faith into which I was baptized What I have further to add is that you and I may persevere in the Way and Worship of the true God and that we may be exemplary one to the other and Patterns of Humility as becomes the Christian Religion that when Days and time shall be no more to us in this World we may have our Dwelling and Habitation Eternally in the Heavens with the Lord Jesus Christ To whom with the Father and Holy Ghost be all Honour and Glory now and for ever Amen John Spire Junior

that will not part with his Iniquity and his Ruin is to lay to his charge an unjust Sentence and as a necessary consequent thereto an undue Execution of it Let us not therefore please our selves with the vain delusions of being God's special Favourites when our hearts are not right towards him for doubtless only those that live to him here shall live with him hereafter Give me leave to make some Application of what hath been delivered to the present occasion and I shall conclude I do not pretend to have given you here a Catalogue of all the false Doctrines of Quakers which are as much too numerous to be recited as they are too foul to be owned What I have concerned my self with have been only such as have come in my way and could not fairly be avoided And those I look upon as sufficient to vindicate their prudence and honesty who have forsaken them and their Errors and have come out from among them that they might not be partakers of their Sins And I hope that those who have thus deliberately chosen to walk together with us in the House of God as Friends will never bring any scandal upon our Profession whilst they own it nor upon themselves by forsaking it will never hearken to any Sophistry that either the Tempter himself or any of his Agents shall make use of for the seducing them back again to those Principles and Practises which they have so wisely and so solemnly renounced For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness then after they have known it to turn from the holy Commandment dilivered unto them For a relapse as it is more dangerous so when it may be prevented it is more culpable too then the first beginning of a disease But I am perswaded better things of them that hear me now and things that accompany Salvation though I thus speak And to the end that you and they may be rooted and grounded in the true faith of our Church I shall briefly shew you her temper i. e. draw some of the great lines by which she may be known for I have neither time nor ability to represent her at large and give you a full view of all her excellencies In the first place then She Accounts no Doctrine necessary to Salvation but what is either expresly founded upon or by direct consequence deduced from Scripture which is the Pillar and ground of Truth to which with all the Saints that are and have been upon earth and such as excell in Virtue she pays a most profound Veneration and takes it as David did for a Lanthern to her feet and a light unto her Path. So very different is her treatment of it from that of Quakers who vilify it as a thing of nought and therefore in a style as peculiar to them as their behaviour dishonour it with the contemptuous Names of Dust Death and Serpents Meat (C) G. Fox's News out of the North Pa. 14. And it is plain they are not conversant in it For then would they cease to talk and act so foolishly and so wickedly as they do It being one of the great excellencies of sacred Writ to give wisdom und understanding unto the simple She doth indeed insist upon the two Sacraments of Baptisme and the Lords Supper And very good reason she hath for so doing because they are of Divine Institution The former was established by our Saviour when he gave his Disciples a Commission to go and baptize all Nations in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost And when he hath enacted it as a law That all his followers shall be received into his Church by that laver of Regeneration can any one forbid them Water that they should not be baptized And as for that other Sacrament of the Lords Supper certainly it must be a strange Spirit of opposition that possesseth them who gainsay it for can there be any thing more endearing than our Lords appointing that perpetual feast except it be the love that made him do so Is his precious Blood-shedding become so vile in our Eyes that we cannot bear the remembrance of it And yet neither the benefit nor the sacredness of the Institution could restrain a Blasphemous Quaker from this unsufferably vile Reflection upon it Their Communion Bread and Wine is the Table of Devils and Cup of Devils (D) G. Foxe's News out of the North Pa. 14. And yet some of the inferiours of this wicked Crew have payed Divine Honours to this vile Wretch and W. Pen hath since vindicated them (D) W Pen. Judas and the Jews Pa. 44. Surely St. Paul took it for granted that his Corinthians neither would nor should abstain from it when he only directed them how to prepare themselves for it Let a man examine himself and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that Cup 1. Cor. 11.28 And if this be not a standing Duty never to be let fall certainly the Apostle would not have recommended it to us by such an engaging account as he hath given us at V. 26. of the fore-mentioned Chapter as often as ye eat this Bread and drink this Cup ye do shew or shew ye the Lords Death till he come till the end of all things when the whole World shall be dissolved and this beautiful Frame of the Universe be first reduced to Ashes and then to nothing Nor is She more intent upon purity of Doctrine than that of Life and therefore requires Holiness in all her Professors so that if any of them are wicked Livers they are not so by her Indulgence but their own depraved inclinations Their ungodliness therefore can be no just imputation to her the strictness of whose rules is a sufficient proof of her love of Virtue and hatred of Vice I own indeed that she requireth a conformity to a few innocent Ceremonies not that she looketh upon them as absolutely necessary but only as fit to be observed for the sake of good Order Decency and Edification which is the sole cause of her injoyning them And to lay them aside would be of more mischievous consequence than some of their oppugners apprehend or perhaps would consent to if they did for they seem to me to have the same kind of usefulness that leaves have which if they be not too numerous are both an Ornament to the Tree and a Fence to the Fruit. And now that I may not be suspected to have any By-end in what I have delivered as if I had not spoken the very Thoughts of my Heart I do with all imaginable Sincerity make this Wish may my Portion in the next World be with those that are true Members of the Church of England who walk worthy of that their Profession may I have the Reward which God in his Mercy for his dear Son's Sake shall bestow upon them whose Faith and Practise are agreeable to her Doctrines and