Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	david_n	israel_n	king_n	20,093	5	4.5589	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28182	A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons at St. Margarets Westminster, January 30, 1694 by Peter Birch ...	Birch, Peter, 1652?-1710.	1604 (1604)	Wing B2939; ESTC R12701	9,637	28

Mercurii 31 mo die Jan. 1693. Ordered THat the Thanks of the House be given to Dr. Birch for the Sermon by him preached before this House yesterday at St. Margarets Westminster And that he be desired to Print the same And that Sir Thomas Dyke and Mr. Hungerford do acquaint him therewith Paul Jodrell Cl. Dom. Com. A SERMON Preached before the Honourable House of Commons AT St Margarets Westminster JANVARY 30. 1694. By Peter Birch D. D. Chaplain in Ordinary to Their Majesties LONDON Printed for Tho. Nott in the Pall mall and are to be Sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers-hall 1694. 2 SAM I. 21. Ye Mountains of Gilboa let there be no dew neither let there be rain upon you nor fields of offerings for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away the shield of Saul as though he had not been anointed with oyl THis is part of the lamentation of David over Saul and an expression of his grief so raised and extraordinary as nothing but the greatness of the occasion could excite nor any raptures but those of a King and Prophet present us with It is over the fall of a Prince that was literally the Lords anointed and his Successor or if any prefer the being Vicegerents to their inferiours that was the desire and choice of the people Saul being advanced to the throne when Israel first grew weary of the Theocracy and desired a King after the form of other nations Besides that after his unction he had a new heart given him and was numbred among the Prophets so that his obsequies were fit only to be solemniz'd by one like himself the known inheritor of his Kingdom and Spirit To whose tears also it must needs have been a considerable addition that he had then raised an army which though not immediately employed against his master yet we find offered unto Achish and that it made the rear of his battel when he went out to fight against Israel and therefore it is no wonder that he whose heart smote him for offering violence but to the skirt of his Prince's robe should be overwhelmed at his death But besides these appropriate circumstances there are sufficient in this pathetick story to warrant our Churches accommodating it to the present solemnity For although few Texts of Scripture are exactly suited to those of providences and much less to that crime without a precedent in which all the villanies of our late confusions were compleated yet does this noble instance of David's piety to Saul teach us that our duty is practicable even against an apparent interest and the highest provocations We need not then spend time in making out the parallel or enquire whether God really suffered his anointed to fall by the hands of one he had disobediently saved 't is enough for us that David believed the Amalekites relation and that his carriage herein is recorded for our example to guide posterity in the same course He was at that time under more true discouragements from his duty than ever any rebel since invented false ones he had a just declared title to succeed had saved the honour of his Country and was the darling of his people and yet had grievances alone to plead where he had merited rewards For he was openly persecuted by Saul with a malice that seemed equally incapable of end or increase one that all his services and submissions together could never allay that had endangered the life of Jonathan for interceding and could ungratefully welcome him from the slaughter of the Philistins with seeking to strike him to the wall with a Javelin that as himself complains pursued him like a Partridge on the mountains and made his days as a shadow that declineth And yet when this heir of the kingdom saw the Crown and his Enemy fall into his hands together he does not basely trample upon his misfortunes or draw arguments from providences to conclude him rejected of God but forgetting his revenge he first vindicates the majesty of Saul by the death of his destroyer and then he piously laments over him not with a transient and retired grief as if he alone had been concerned but after the same manner as the Gospel now provides that supplications prayers and intercessions be made for Kings i. e. composed and solemnly performed in our daily offices so he likewise frames this divine lamentation enters it in his book of Jasher where his other hymns and spiritual songs were written and having according to the use of ancient times given it a title from the most eminent passage as was the bow of Jonathan he to make the sorrow universal commands it to be taught the children of Judah that all might learn with one heart and mouth to weep over the light and beauty of Israel Ye mountains of Gilboa c. If the whole earth was once accursed by heaven for the sin of man 't is but just that you O unhappy Mountains should for ever bid adieu to its blessings upon which the light of Israel was extinguished you deserve to lose your fertility and be given up to perpetual barrenness and may this expiate may you rather never more yield an increase sufficient for an offering unto the Lord than that his heritage should be brought to confusion and the blood of his anointed be required at our hands These two parts therefore the malediction and the reason of it I shall distinctly consider with relation to the present solemnity And 1. Of the malediction Let there be no dew nor rain upon you nor fields of offerings This we need not force into a Prophecy as if no rain or dew had ever since fallen upon Mount Gilboa and much less are we to esteem it only the rage of the Poet all rapture and hyperbole for if we pass on to its ground and design or compare it with other the like passages in several of the Prophets it will appear so far above a curse of fancy and presumption as to be founded upon one that is real and perpetually threatning 'T is comment enough but to repeat that one parallel instance of Job's cursing the time of his birth c. 3. Let. saith he the day perish wherein I was born and the night in which it was said there is a man-child conceived Let that day be darkness let not God regard it from above neither let the light shine upon it Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it let a cloud dwell upon it c. All which is not a piece of blasphemy or distrust in God but a designed demonstration of the bitterness of his troubles and the contempt he had of that life which sustained them for Job is before said c. 1. 21. not to have charged God foolishly he was long since resigned and had commenced the standard of patience And therefore those who first ignorantly call this murmuring and then excuse it by infirmity they might as well apologize for the Saviour of the world himself who

into his hand that he raised up a foreign enemy to make War upon our Coasts that he sent the Pestilence into our Streets and a devouring Fire to lay waste our Metropolis And is any so blind as not to see this among the causes why distress and perplexity still remains upon the Nation Mens hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth Is it not Judgment-like that our excellent Religion which hath no foreign dependencies and whose prosperity alone is founded on that of our Country should yet be forced to truckle either to the practices of Rome or to a riot of Enthusiasts and that we are still threatned in their turns either with no Church at all or the worst among Christians are we not still left open to a bitter and hasty Nation to land upon our Coasts and possess the dwelling places which are not theirs Are not our very blessings all turned into a curse our boasted freedom is now only a liberty to bite and devour one another our long cried up liberty of Conscience proves one of Impiety Licentiousness and Error and at best serves for a step to Dominion more than Devotion our Laws are indeed open but to the continual conspiracies of false witnesses against the Lives and Fortunes of the Innocent but if the Fountain also is troubled as the many attempts to clear it insinuate if there be wickedness in high places or it were possible to believe the reports of Patriots that prefer others safety to our own of Fathers that were never Sons of Guardians that sell their Trust or the like Contradictions in Morality then we may conclude that God's anger is not yet turned away but his hand stretched out still and the vengeance impending And thus I have attempted some poor account of the malediction in order to avoid the like it remains to consider the reason of it For there the Shield of the Mighty was vilely cast away the Shield of Saul as though he had not been anointed with Oyl This expression of David's grief we have no reason to ascribe to any personal obligations and therefore it must be interpreted as a confirmation of the practice of all wise and civilized nations who have been always so sensible of the advantages of Government as both to solemnize the birth of their Kings with all the expressions of publick joy and to attend their deaths with as great demonstrations of mourning Nor was it anciently esteemed an empty ceremony to have the memory of a judgment preserv'd by a solemnity but as necessary to imprint a sense of its misery and to endear the contrary blessing the multitude being wholly led by their senses and the wisest hardly escaping the being affected by them We are not then to look upon David's action as private only and temporary which cannot be drawn into example but it expresses the setled and publick opinion of the whole Jewish Church For he might formerly have as easily cut off Saul's head as he did his garment but that faith Optatus Timuit Oleum the holy Oil was upon his head and his character sacred And I hope we who pretend to a better information than the Jews ever had shall not be less sound in the doctrine of civil obedience or think it altered by the late exercise of that provisional power which is necessarily reserved to a free people upon all extraordinary emergencies All these are questions of law and constitution and were of old so little thought to belong unto Divinity that ours is the first State Schism known in the world and therefore our Superiors owe very little to the controvertists on either side But the time allows not a just prosecution of the subject and much less a digression from it if then we recollect the whole we have heard the guilt and still feel the consequences of this wicked action it hath brought us nigh unto cursing for it was this villany which first forced the posterity of that pious King out of their Country and their Religion together and which as a consequence of that hath entailed upon us disputed titles and for ought yet appears endless wars The way then to appease the wrath of God and to wash out the guilty stain of our Soveraigns blood is not to unite in forgetting it or to add impudence to the crime by seeking to depress his credit but to make the remembrance of his undeserved sufferings still more solemn and effectual that the shame justly due and so often charged to the account of our Nation for them may be an instrument to turn us from our transgressions and make us bring forth fruits meet for repentance It is yet in the power of an humble repentance to make God shine upon our Councels and go forth with our Armies and though our short-sighted reason can see nothing before us but blackness and darkness and confusion yet he can by unforeseen ways easily disperse the storm and establish our happiness as the strong mountains And in order to attain that happy end of our follies give me leave to conclude with King Solomon's axiom Prov. 29. 25. The fear of man bringeth a snare but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe We are fallen into those dregs of time wherein hypocrisie and profaneness seem to divide the world between them and all true and unaffected piety is out of countenance wherein all the sacred ties to our King and Country appear as loose as our manners and in which that generous honesty and integrity which was once the glory and the character of our Nation is all vanished into mean false and undermining compliances If then we dare own discouraged Virtues and would stand in the gap to save the whole from destruction the true way is not to follow a multitude to do evil or to joyn in those fashionable flatteries that are ruin to the embracers much less are we to put any confidence in our selves whose strength is but weakness but we are according to the wise mans direction to trust in the Lord that is in the constant sense of Holy Writ to make our ways so direct as may encourage our affiance in him And if God be for us who can be against us May he therefore endue us all with this wisdom from above and only true greatness of mind that we may keep innocency and do the thing that is right and this shall bring us peace at the last Now to God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost be all glory and honour world without end Amen FINIS