Mr. BVTLER's Fast-SERMON Preached before the Lord Mayor AND COVRT of ALDERMEN Sept. 16. 1691. Pilkington Mayor Jovis xviimo die Septembris 1691. Annoque Regni Regis Reginae Willielmi Mariae Angliae c. Tertio THese are to desire Mr. Lilly Butler to Print his Sermon preached yesterday in the Parish-Church of St. Mary Le Bow before the Lord Mayor Aldermen and Liveries of the several Companies of this City Goodfellow A SERMON Preached at St. Mary-le-Bow Before the Lord Mayor COURT of ALDERMEN AND CITIZENS of LONDON On Wednesday the 16th of September a day appointed by their Majesties for a solemn Monthly Fast By Lilly Butler Rector of Bubbingworth in Essex LONDON Printed for R. Baldwin near the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-lane M DC XCI To the Right Honourable S R Tho. Pilkington Lord Mayor of the City of London AND THE COURT of ALDERMEN My Lord I Know not any thing could move you to require the Printing this plain Sermon but a great affection to the design of it Which I pray God increase in you all and make you signally instrumental in promoting that Reformation wherein the safety and happiness of our Country is so highly concerned And if the publishing of this discourse may confer but any little matter towards it whatever other defects may be found in it especially after so kind and favourable an acceptance from you will not much concern My Lord Your most Humble and Obedient Servant L. Butler Isaiah LVII 21. There is no peace saith my God to the wicked THe Prophet towards the beginning of this Chapter upbraideth the Jews with their abominable wickedness and Idolatry for which they were shortly to be made Captives in a strange land From whence he telleth them they should in vain expect to be delivered by the Nations whose Gods they worshipped and with whose wickedness they had complied V. 13. When thou criest let thy companions deliver thee but the wind shall carry them all away vanity shall take them Nevertheless if they should at length bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captive heartily bewail their sins and turn unto the Lord they should again see Jerusalem in prosperity and peace upon Israel But he that putteth his trust in me saith God shall possess the land and shall inherit my holy mountain All things shall be made ready for a happy return V. 14. Cast ye up cast ye up take up the stumbling block out of the way of my people The high and lofty one will revive the humble and contrite Spirits v. 15. For I will not contend for ever saith the Lord v. 16. neither will I be always wroth For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth and smote him I hid me and was wroth I have seen his ways v. 18. I have seen them at length corrected and reformed therefore I will heal him I will lead him also and restore comforts to him and to his mourners Their mouths shall be filled with Praise and Thanksgiving for the restoration of their peace I create the Fruit of the Lips Peace Peace to him that is far off and to him that is near saith the Lord and I will heal him But if upon their return out of Captivity they should forget their Redeemer and return to their former wickedness their Peace and Prosperity would soon be disturbed again For saith the Prophet the wicked are like the troubled Sea when it cannot rest which he explaineth in the words of the Text and confirmeth with the Testimony of his God that sent him there is no peace saith my God to the wicked By the wicked in this place we are chiefly to understand a wicked Nation or People as appeareth plainly by the account I have given of the context And by peace Prosperity and Happiness in general according to the common use of use of the word peace in the old Testament The meaning of the words then may be expressed in in this plain Proposition That prevailing wickedness is most certainly destructive of the prosperity and happiness of a People In discoursing upon which I shall endeavour to do these Four things First To clear and manifest the truth of this proposition Secondly To shew that we of this Nation are very much concerned in the Truth of it and that it prophesieth evil concerning us Thirdly To shew what is to be done by us in order to the preventing this evil And Fourthly By some proper motives and argu to perswade every one to do his own part in it First I shall endeavour to clear and manifest the Truth of this proposition That prevailing wickedness is most certainly destructive of the prosperity and happiness of a people This will be sufficiently manifest by the consideration of these following things First The abounding of iniquity is it self the the great unhappiness of a People So long as a Nation is distempered with vice the head sick and the heart faint full of wounds and bruises and putrifying sores as the Prophet describeth a People laden with iniquity no outward Priviledges or Advantages can make it happy If God should give us bread and flesh from Heaven and be always working miracles for us a murmuring and discontented Spirit would still make us miserable The bondage of Aegypt and a deliverance from it would be equally grievous and uneasy to it Tyranny and Oppression Sedition and Rebellion Schism and Faction are the names of great Judgments as well as of great Sins Sensuality transformeth Men into the likeness of Beasts and hatred and malice of Devils and what a wretched Society must such people make Can a People be happy where they are continually envying and vexing cheating and defrauding censuring and reviling striving and quarrelling with one another where judgment is turned away backward and justice standeth afar off where truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter Is not this the character of a very unhappy as well as of a very wicked People We can hardly mention any sin but the common and constant practice of it is not only likely to procure but is it self a great Judgment upon a Nation It is therefore mentioned as a heavy curse upon Israel Ps 81. 12. that God gave them up to their own hearts lusts and they walked in their own counsels Oh that I had in the wilderness saith the Prophet Jeremiah a lodging place of wayfaring men that I might leave my people and go from them for they be all adulterers an assembly of treacherous men Jer. 9. 2. David also maketh the same wish Ps 55. when he saw violence and strife in the City deceit and guile in her streets The desolation and barrenness of a wilderness were a desirable refuge from the greater calamities of these sins Secondly Sin doth farther tend to make a Nation unhappy by the natural fruits and consequences of it Is it not vice and passion that break the bands of love and concord the most necessary preservatives of publick
their Blasphemies against God and most barbarous violence and cruelty to his people erecting pillars to their Emperors as Trophies of their abolishing Christianity Then did the Providence of God manifest it self in many severe and signal judgments upon them In the reign of one Emperor there was in Rome a most raging Famine a Plague of which we are told there dyed in that City 2000 a day Great multitudes were slain in a Sedition and a great part of the wealth of the City was consumed by Fire from Heaven And besides these under Commodus there were many of the like Judgments under their following Emperors until Constanstine And when the Christian Emperor at length fell into all manner of Vice and Wickedness the Goths and Vandals and other rude and barbarous Nations were let loose upon it and suddenly made most terrible havock and destruction of it But we need not search into Ancient or Foreign Chronicles for instances of the wrath of God punishing the sins of a provoking people For if a long and bloody War amongst our selves and all the woful effects of it a wasting and devouring Plague and most dreadful and consuming Fires may be reckoned as publick Judgments the sins of this Age and Nation have not altogether gone unpunished This then hath manifestly been the constant course of Gods providence to showre down his Judgments on a sinful people And that we may rationally conclude from hence that it will be so still will appear if we consider these two things First That God is the same Wise and Just and Holy God and Governour of the world that ever he was He is the Lord that changes not and his Dominion endureth throughout all Generations Are not his ways still equal Will not the Judge of all the world still do right Is not his hatred of sin as great as ever and his inclination to punish it Doth he repent of his past severity or find cause to correct the wonted method of his providence Doth not the Lord still see or hath he forsaken the earth If God be still the Governour among the Nations If his providence be still directed by the same wisdom and holiness and justice we may safely conclude that his dealing with sinful nations as to the substance of it will be the same too that because he hath not therefore he will not finally acquit a wicked and impenitent people but sooner or later as he hath always done will visit their iniquities with Rods and their sins with Scourges Secondly The Spirit of God in Scripture doth use this very way of arguing from former examples of Gods judgments Jer. 25. 29. God doth thus reason with the Nations He telleth them they shall drink the cup of his Fury For saith he Lo I begin to bring evil on the City which is called by my name and should ye be utterly unpunished Do I punish them for their iniquities and shall I not punish you for yours ye shall not be unpunished for I will call for a Sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth saith the Lord of hosts After the same manner doth St. Peter argue 2 Pet. 2. 5. and the following verses If God spared not the old world bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly And turned the Cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes he inferreth That the Lord still knoweth how that is is still able and ready to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is To reserve the unjust being punished here in some such remarkable manner as the Old World Sodom and Gomorrha were unto the day of Judgment when they shall receive their eternal doom and recompence St. Paul in the 11th to the Romans sheweth the danger the Gentile Christians were in from Gods severity on the unbelieving Jews Because of unbelief they were broken off be not high-minded but fear For if God spared not the natural branches take heed lest he also spare not thee Rom. 11. 20 21. He telleth us also plainly 1 Cor. 10. 11. That the judgments which God sent upon the Jews in the Wilderness happened unto them for examples and are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come To teach all Nations to the end of the world to expect the like Judgments if they are sinners like them If the case then of a sinful people be thus desperate if prevailing wickedness will thus certainly make them unhappy not only by it self and the fruits that naturally spring from it but also by provoking the wrath and pulling down the judgments of God upon them Doth it not greatly behove us in time to look about us and to see whether the clouds be not gathering and the wrath of God ready to fall in most horrible tempests upon us I come therefore Secondly To shew That we of this Nation are very much concerned in the truth of the Proposition I have been now proving and that it prophesieth evil concerning us This will be sufficiently manifest if we do but search and try our ways and impartially consider what great sinners we are A meditation very proper and seasonable at this time now that we are met together to call our sins to remembrance and to humble our selves for them Give me leave therefore to set some of them in order before you and briefly to represent the sinful state and condition of this our Nation And here I am entring upon a subject will afford us equal matter both of wonder and of grief of wonder that there should be such and so much wickedness practised where so pure and holy a Religion is professed and of grief too that we should be these Offenders and Englands sins the matter of our astonishment If a man should barely contemplate the purity of our Religion and the great stir we make about it with what heat and zeal we contend about some little matters relating to it he might with reason enough conclude that we were the most religious and holy people upon earth But if he come once abroad and look but with half an eye upon the lives and common practices of men amongst us he would soon find he was mistaken in his conclusion and that the most zealous pretenders to the most pure and holy Religion may be as corrupt and wicked as those that have no true knowledge of God in their Land Are not Atheism and Infidelity openly avowed by our Heroick Sinners and some pretended Refiners of Wit and Reason amongst us Who if they will allow him to be a Fool that saith in his heart there is no God it is because he saith it only in his heart and declareth it not with them in more publick and daring expressions And amongst those that profess to know God how many in works deny him being abominable and disobedient and to every good work reprobate Blasphemies Oaths and Curses seem to be affected as the greatest Ornaments of Speech in
all that affection and importunity which becometh the importance of the suit not to remember our offences not to take vengeance of our sins but to spare his people whom he hath redeemed Hearty and fervent Prayer hath a mighty prevailing power with God The greatest blessings are promised to it and the hardest things have been effected by it It hath opened and shut the windows of heaven and restored departed souls to their forsaken bodies It defeated the malice of Haman the wisdom and counsel of Achitophel and put to flight an army of a thousand thousand Ethiopians It hath prevailed with God to revoke the judgments he hath denounced and to deliver his people after he had declared he would deliver them no more How then should this encourage us to lift up our hearts with our hands to God in the heavens to embrace all opportunities of pouring out our supplications before him both in our closets and our houses of prayer To pray without ceasing with the utmost vigour of our affections To cry mightily unto God to wrestle and not give over till with Jacob we have prevailed prevailed with God and obtained his blessing Thirdly We must add the reformation and amendment of our lives Otherwise our Humiliation will be mockery and our Prayer sin Our sins are the Achans the troublers of Israel and were but these accursed things put away from amongst us we might then be confident that God would be appeased and the Nation flourish It is to the wicked only that God saith there is no peace But the work of righteousness is peace and the effect of Righteousness quietness and assurance for ever O then that we would all know that in this our day we would know the things that belong unto our peace That every one of us would bid an eternal farewel to his sins in that passionate stile of returning Ephraim What have we to do any more with you Hence ye disturbers of our peace ye provokers of our God and most treacherous underminers of the safety and happiness both of Church and State Let us then resolve and if we do it not we have but dissembled with God in our approaches this day Let us resolve henceforward to ingage with all our might in bridling our passions in curbing our appetites in mortifying our lusts in pulling down the strong holds of Satan in us and in bringing nto captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ And thus fighting the good fight of Faith we may as effectually promote the safety and honour of our Country as if we had served in its Fleets or Armies This is the way to strengthen the hands of them that fight for us to send them most effectual relief and succour to bring down the Lord of hosts to go before them the God of Israel to be their Rereward to be a wall of fire round about them and the glory in the midst both of them and us O that my people had hearkened unto me saith God and Israel had walked in my ways I should soon have subdued their enemies and turned my hand against their adversaries Ps 81. 13 14. But is it not may some object an universal Reformation that must produce these happy effects To what purpose then will our personal and particular Reformation serve For the answering of this I shall proceed to the last thing I am to do which is Fourthly To endeavour by some proper motives to perswade every one to do his own part in that the general practice whereof is the only certain means to procure the favour and divert the judgments of God To this end therefore let us consider these following things First That a General Reformation is nothing else but the Reformation of all Particulars and if ever it be wrought amongst us it must be the work of particular persons and the result of every one's doing his own part Let us not then stay for examples but rather contend for the honour of being examples to others Let us strive who shall be first and most active in so noble a design in setting forward that work wherein the Honour and Happiness of our Country is so highly concerned How great an influence might your examples have upon this whole City And how soon do the manners and fashions of that overspread the Nation You are therefore more concerned than others to begin this great and blessed work to cause your light so to shine before and above other men that seeing your good works they may be won by the charms of a bright and illustrious vertue to follow your steps and to glorify your Father which is in heaven And this would advance your reputation and perpetuate your memories more than all the dignities of this world Secondly Though by doing our own parts we should not be able to do much towards a General Reformation yet we might make up such a number for whose sake God might spare and bless the whole Land How ready was God to have spared even Sodom it self had there been but ten righteous persons found in it He did spare the City Zoar for the sake of Lot and the small company with him A single act of one single man staid the fury of a devouring Plague and restored health to the Congregation of Israel Ps 106. 30. Then stood up Phinehas and executed judgment and so the plague was stayed To which I may add that gracious Proclamation we find published Jer. 5. 1. Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see now and know and seek in the broad places thereof if ye can find a man if there be any that executeth judgment and seeketh the truth and I will pardon it One faithful Magistrate executing Judgment had saved that great City How then should this encourage you to a zealous and upright execution of the Resolution ye have made Not to bear the Sword in vain but to make it a terrour to evil-doers Thus avowedly to set your selves to destroy the works of the Devil To be hearty and couragious in the cause of God and righteousness in the midst of so crooked and perverse a Nation To contemn all the censures and reproaches the execution of justice and judgment may expose you to Who knoweth how far this might prevail with God If a few righteous men can yet save us none so likely to do it as such Magistrates by such heroick piety and vertue There may be a time indeed when the sins of a Nation are so ripe that though Noah Daniel and Job were in it they could not avert the judgments of God yet consider Thirdly That however They may deliver themselves by their righteousness Our personal reformation may procure a refuge for us in the day of Gods wrath Thus Noah escaped the Deluge of waters and Lot the flames of Sodom and those that sighed and cried for the abominations of Jerusalem the fury of that destroying Angel who went through the midst of it In what manner God doth often deal with good men when his judgments are abroad in the earth we have at large described in Ps 91. Thou shalt not be afraid of the terrour by night nor for the arrow that flyeth by day nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness nor for the destruction that wasteth at noon day A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand but it shall not come nigh thee If notwithstanding it should seem good to the Divine Wisdom to involve us in the common calamity yet let us consider Fourthly That the conscience of our own personal reformation would be then a most comfortable support to us What a reviving consideration would it be when the judgments of God are upon us that we are not the guilty causes of them that we have done our parts to prevent them and and are clear from the blood of all men That even these things will work together for our good because we love God and keep his Commandments That all these clouds cannot intercept the light of Gods countenance or hide his face or favour from us that no tribulation or distress neiter 〈…〉 nor famine nor nakedness nor peril nor 〈◊〉 able to separate us from the Love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord Lastly Consider how unsuccessful soever our personal reformation may be in promoting the publick or our own particular good here it will not fail of a great and glorious reward hereafter For so an entrance shall be administred unto us into that City which hath Foundations whose builder and maker is God into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Where we shall be free from sin and all the dreadful consequences of it and when not only the Cities and Nations of this world but this world and time it self shall be no more we shall be still secure in the enjoyment of the most perfect peace and happiness To conclude then I exhort and beseech you all as you regard the Honour and Preservation of your Country your own present Good and Safety and the everlasting happiness of the Life to come by all that is valuable and dear to you both in this and the other world that you would no longer delay that Reformation in which all these things are so highly concerned O that there were such an heart in every one of us to repent and turn from all our transgressions to fear God and to keep his commandments always that it might be well with us and with our children for ever Amen FINIS