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A45354
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A defence of revealed religion in six sermons upon Rom. I, 16 : wherein it is clearly and plainly shown that no man can possibly have any real ground or reason to be ashamed of Christianity / by Henry Hallywell.
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Hallywell, Henry, d. 1703?
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1694
(1694)
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Wing H459; ESTC R26653
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55,183
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216
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was the Reason the Gauls gave for their Sacrificing of Men Pro vitâ hominum nisi vita hominis reddatur non posse Deorum Immortalium Numen placari arbitrabantur i. e. They thought the Anger of God could not otherwise be averted unless the Life of some Man were offered as a Piacular Sacrifice for the safety of the rest Now our Lord by his Death extricated Men from this insulting Pride and Cruelty of the Devil in his barbarous Usage and infinite Contempt of humane Race and the sheding of his Blood became a real Propitiatory Sacrifice to appease the Anger of GOD and to obtain Terms of Reconciliation and Peace with him for all his lapsed Brethren 4. It is highly reasonable that this Preacher of Righteousness the Person who should undertake to bring back the strayed Souls of Men to their Obedience to God should have all Power committed into his hands both in Heaven and Earth For since he humbled himself so far as to take upon him the form of a Servant and vilifi'd his own Life in comparison of that great benefit that would accrue to the World by his laying it down and submitted to the ignominious and accursed Death of the Cross Divine Justice was concerned to Reward these Exinanitions with a proportionable Glory And that he might be instated in a capacity to Reward his faithful Friends and Adherents and Punish his refractary and stubborn Enemies it became necessary that he should have the Government of Heaven and Earth put into his hands For this is a great Security to us That our Lord is able to make good whatever he has promised to his Servants and a powerful Encouragement to us to persevere and go on to the end in Vertue though we pass through many Troubles and Afflictions And being thus made God's Vicegerent we cannot doubt but he will order all Affairs of the World for the good of his Church and at last remarkably Triumph over all the Powers of Darkness You see now the reasonableness and becommingness of the Frame of Religion and how suitable and agreeable it is to our Capacities and Necessities All which when St. Paul had considered he breaks out into a kind of Admiration Rom. 11.33 O the depth of the Riches both of the Wisdom and Knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his Judgments and his ways past finding out GOD being an infinite Wisdom has various ways and methods of Governing and Ordering his Creatures far above our shallow Comprehensions But the way of recovering Men is that which he has made choice of and discovered to us by Jesus Christ in which there are such easie compliances with those inveterate Prejudices the World laboured under and such apt Condescentions to Humane Nature as when the whole Frame and Contexture is laid open to an entire view we cannot wonder that the Angels desire to look into it Which plainly shews that Religion is no confused Jumble or Nonsence but a Contrivance wherein appears the greatest Art and highest Wisdom in the World And if all sober Persons admire the infinite Wisdom of God in the Works of Nature as the creation of the Sun Moon and Stars they have much more reason to stand amazed at this great Work of the New Creation or recovery of Mens Souls to their first and Original Happiness And if we can give a satisfactory Account of the Order and Management of the several Phaenomena of Providence in the natural World so in like manner there is a very reasonable Defence to be made for the Contrivance and Conduct of Affairs in the Moral A DEFENCE OF Revealed Religion SERMON III. ROM I. 16. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ THat there is no unreasonableness in the Frame and Composition of Christianity but that it is infinitely agreeable and suitable to our Case and Necessities we have clearly demonstrated It remains now that we show with the same Plainness that there is nothing disagreeing with sound Reason in the Doctrines contained in it that so we may see that upon neither of these two Accounts we have any cause to be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ The Doctrines of Christianity consist either 1. Of such things as are to be believed as Articles of Faith Or 2. Of such things as are commanded as Duties and Matters of our Practice Or 3. Of Promises of great Rewards to them that shall be Obedient and severe Punishments and Threatnings to the Stubborn and Rebellious who refuse to walk according to those Rules laid down in the Gospel As to the Articles of Faith we shall briefly run over some of the chief of them that it may appear how consonant they are to the light of our own Reasons and Understandings That our blessed Saviour should be born in an unusual and extraordinary manner of a pure and immaculate Virgin that there should be an Apparition of Angels at his Birth that the Wise Men of the East should have notice and come to see him are all things so highly becoming that we should wonder if the same or something like them had not been done For our Lord being to be the greatest Person that ever appeared in the World and being designed to be the fairest Copy of a Holy and Pure Life and to correct all the carnal Exorbitances and Corporeal Impurities in which Mankind wallowed as if their only Felicity had consisted in the highest and rankest Exercise of their Animal Powers it was very agreeable that his Birth should be different from the common manner And that he should have no other Father but God was a way very suitable to gain a greater Authority to those Holy Precepts that he should deliver to the World this being the universal Sence of Mankind that there is the greatest Reverence due to what any Person nearly related to God communicates And that the Angels should usher in his wonderful Nativity with a solemn Anthem is no more than what served to enhance and set forth the Eminency Value and Dignity of his Person who was to be the great Prince of Angels as well as Men and in that Christ was designed to be the Hope of all the ends of the Earth and the Person in whom the Gentiles should trust though the Magi or Wise-Men intended no such thing yet it may well seem a Prefiguration of that chearful Submission the Gentile World should yield to him as their Prince and Redeemer so soon as he should come to be manifested to them And that Christ should appear in the World like one of us Cloathed with Flesh and Blood is more suitable to our State and Condition than if God should speak by an Angel or a Voice from Heaven For since many Troubles Afflictions and Tribulations attend us in our way to Immortality it cannot but be a greater encouragement to us to bear them with Patience when we see our most Holy and Innocent Lord suffer a World of Reproaches and Indignities and much hard usage
should not shelter our selves in a formal outside Sanctity but attain to that New-birth wherein all the Power of Sin is perfectly vanquished and subdued and no Life stiring but that which flows from and partakes of GOD's Spirit And we having such a Potent Assistance it must needs enliven and encourage us to put forth all our Strength in mortifying our Sins and Corruptions being assured that through the mighty energy of this Divine Spirit we shall become Victorious over all our Enemies And that though we have old Rebellious Giants within us powerful Lusts like the Sons of Anak yet this Almighty Spirit if we be not treacherous and false to his Inspirations is able and certainly will bring us into the promised Land And that we have no greater success in the Mortification of our Sins proceeds not from the want of the supply of GOD's Spirit but from our own Carelesness and Falseness When he calls to us to awake and arise from the Dead from that dull and stupid condition we lie in under our Sins we resist his Influence and shut our Eyes against that Light that shines in upon us and fall again to our old slumbering and drowziness But if we would collect the Powers and Faculties of our Souls together and go against our strongest Vices and our habitual and customary Sins with hearty and sincere Resolutions of destroying them this Spirit would never be wanting to us but we should find wonders wrought in our own Souls We should find the dry and parched Soil that barren Wilderness wherein no Plant of sincere Piety and Righteousness has of a long time prospered to become a Plantation of GOD and filled with all Divine Graces and Vertues For certainly GOD has not afforded us this Help to gratifie our Idleness or Vanity but to actuate our Diligence and to enliven our faint and drooping Spirits That we may not conceit our selves to be under an invincible Infirmity and Imbecility and that we shall never be able to free our selves from the Tyranny of the Body of Sin but to go on with Courage and rest assured that when the Enemy comes in like a Flood the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a Standard against him This must of necessity bring a wonderful comfort to a Man under his strongest Temptations and in his sorest Conflicts with Sin and Vice to be assured not only that he shall not be left alone and forsaken but that this eternal Spirit shall co-operate with him and strengthen and perfect him in the inner Man till he have brought him unto Glory And because the Promise of the Holy Spirit is one of the great Props and Encouragements of a Christian Travelling through the Wilderness of this World therefore it is in plain Words and without a Parable declared by our blessed Saviour John 14.15 16 17. If ye love me keep my Commandments And I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you for ever Even the Spirit of Truth whom the World cannot receive because it seeth him not neither knows him but ye know him for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you 2. A second powerful Motive for the begetting a Divine Life and Nature in Men which is the ultimate end of Christian Religion is the consideration of the stupendious love of GOD in sending Jesus Christ for the Redemption of the World This our Lord himself signified to us John 3.16 So God loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting Life GOD is a Being of infinite Love and Goodness that as he made all things to be happy according to their several Natures so his compassionate Eyes could not behold them for ever lost and involved in an inextricable Ruine though through their own Fault and not provide them some means of recovery The Psalmist says Psal 145.9 that the tender Mercies of God are over all his Works And if Compassion and Mercy be essential Attributes of GOD as doubtless they are then there is a mighty suitableness and agreeableness between a poor and undone Creature and Pity and Compassion Whereby we are assured that it is alone the infinite Love Mercy and Compassion of GOD that moved him to rescue the World from perishing for ever And that this might more deeply affect our Hearts and more powerfully draw us off from our Sins his All-comprehensive Wisdom so contrived it that his only begotten Son should take our Nature upon him and be the Saviour and Redeemer of all his lost Brethren What a strong Argument now is this to reclaim the most stubborn Offender Had we but common Gratitude it would certainly move us to make our returns of Love and Affection in some degree answerable to so infinite a Kindness And when we shall consider further that all this Provision was only upon our Account and that GOD was not in the least bettered or made more happy by our Salvation this will turn it into Admiration that GOD should take such pains and compass such strange Designs and all for his Enemies that wilfully departed and revolted from him There is another cogent Argument to promote the grand design of the Gospel and that is a serious Meditation upon the Crucifixion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ It is a wonderful Privilege granted to Men that they should be received into favour after their heinous Rebellion against GOD. But when we consider that this Privilege was not bought or procured for them by such mean and contemptible things as Silver and Gold for which yet we know that things of greatest Worth pertaining to this Life may be had but by the precious Blood of Jesus Christ that immaculate Lamb as the Apostle speaks 1 Pet. 1.18 19. this makes it still more wonderful For the greatness of the Price by which any Privilege or Liberty is purchased for any Man 't is a higher engagement upon him to improve this Benefit to the utmost as well for his behoof who has made the Purchase for him as for his own And what Treasure is there in Heaven and Earth more valuable than the precious Blood of the Son of GOD And yet he willingly offered this for the World that he might disengage Men from their Sins and perswade them to follow Holiness which should be for their eternal Benefit and Advantage To illustrate this by a familiar Similitude suppose some dear Friend should part with his Life to redeem another from some certain danger which otherwise would ruine him and should only Condition with him to perform some easie Commands which yet should tend to his unspeakable Good and Advantage Could such a Man slight so great a Love or ever think himself too punctual in observing those light Injunctions which his dying Friend had laid upon him Surely if it were but for his own Gain and Profit he would never disregard them The case is the same with us