the slaying of their great Enemy King Saul and vanquishing his Forces did shew to whom they acknowledg'd themselves Obliged for this great Victory by putting his Armour in the House of their Gods and fastning his Head in the Temple of Dagon 1 Chron. X. 10. 2. Giving Glory and Praise to God for Deliverances and other Blessings implieth a grateful Sense too of our being Obliged to Him for them The meer Belief hereof I need not say is a most insignificant thing without this And 't is equally necessary to express this Sense by Praising Him with joyful Lips and by Living to His Praise and Glory Nor can we glorifie and praise Him with all our hearts but by joyning these two together And therefore Offering Praise and Ordering the Conversation aright are conjoyn'd by the Psalmist in the words following those forecited ones He that offereth Praise Glorifieth Me. As to the former of these Expressions of Gratitude what Noble Strains do we find of Praise and Thanksgiving in the H. Scriptures and especially in the Psalms As Bless the Lord O my Soul and all that is within me Bless His Holy Name Bless the Lord O my Soul and forget not all His Benefits Who forgiveth all thine iniquities and healeth all thy diseases Who redeemeth thy Life from destruction and Crowneth thee with loving kndness and tender mercies Psal. 103. beg I will extoll Thee my God O King and I will-Bless Thy Name for ever and ever Every day will I Bless Thee and I will Praise thy Name for ever and ever Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised and His Greatness is unsearchable One Generation shall declare Thy Works to another and shall Praise Thy mighty Acts. I will speak of the glorious Honour of Thy Majesty and of Thy wondrous Works And men shall speak of the might of thy Terrible Acts and I will declare Thy Greatness They shall abundantly utter the memory of Thy great Goodness and shall Sing of Thy Righteousness Psal. 145. 1st to 7th V. And so he goes on admirably to the end of the Psalm But could we sing God's Praises with the Tongues of Angels we shall be far from Glorifying Him from giving Him the Glory due unto His Name as we are called upon to do except we live them too except we are led by the Great things God doth for us to a more careful Observance of His Righteous Laws The Praises of the Disobedient do Him no Honour since the Lives of such do give the Lye to their Tongues Such will never be believ'd to Praise God in Earnest for it may well be concluded that the Principle which will make a man Sincere in his Praises must needs excite him to real Expressions of Thankfulness no less than Verbal ones It is not to be imagin'd that those who take but little Care to do what is acceptable in the Sight of God and stick not at wilfully and deliberately Offending Him can have any great Sense of their being much Obliged to Him And God doth lay so great weight upon being glorified by our Lives that this is His great design in obliging us as He doth And we read particularly of Deliverances from our Enemies that they are sent us for this end Luke 1. 74. That we being delivered out of the hands of our Enemies may serve Him without fear in Holiness and Righteousness before Him all the days of our Life King David upon his Deliverance as 't is very probable from the imminent danger he was in from his Son Absalon brake forth into such Expressions as these I love the Lord because He hath heard my Voice and my Supplication Because He hath inclined His Ear unto me therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live I will lead a more devout and religious life Thou hast delivered my Soul from death mine Eyes from tears and my Feet from falling I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living Or therefore I will do so I will be more caresul than ever to walk uprightly before Him What shall I render unto the Lord for all His Benefits towards me I will take the Cup of Salvation and call upon the Name of the Lord. I will pay my Vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his People O Lord truly I am Thy Servant I am Thy Servant Thou hast loosed my Bonds Or by thy having set me free from the fear of mine Enemies Thou hast laid a new Obligation upon me to be Thy Servant Thy faithful Servant The Israelites as the Psalmist observes remembred that God was their Rock and the High God their Redeemer and they remembred this in Songs of Praise to their Rock and Redeemer He had enough of these from them but their Hearts not being upright with him as it follows and they not being stedfast in His Covenant 't is said they flattered Him with their mouth and lyed unto Him with their Lips All their Thanksgiving Songs and Sacrifices too were of no better account with God than meer Mockeries and were in themselves no better We our selves can have no better Opinion of the Thanks we receive from those we have Obliged tho' they are never so solemn and seemingly hearty when at the same time we observe an Aversion in them to answer our reasonable Expectations from them Tho' we read of but one Fault charged upon that Excellent Prince Hezekiab namely that his Heart was lifted up that he had a too high Opinion of himself by means of his being magnified in the sight of all Nations upon the most Miraculous Deliverance which God had sent him from an irresistible Invasion yet upon this single Account he is said not to have render'd according to the Benefits done unto him and it follows that therefore there was Wrath upon him and upon his People 2 Chron. 32. 25. Therefore God punish'd him and took this occasion to be very severe upon his People for former Provocations And this leads me to shew 2dly That we are under a necessary the most absolutely necessary Obligation to Praise the Lord our God with all our hearts and to Glorifie His Name for evermore as these Phrases have been expounded for all God's Blessings in general and for our Deliverances from our Enemies in particular I will not here insist upon God's Command whose Will and Pleasure must as such be obey'd but upon those Reasons on which this Command is founded And those Reasons do speak this Duty not only a Branch of Natural Religion but as clearly discernable to be a Duty of the most indispensable necessity at first sight as is any corporeal Object apparent to our outward Senses So that no man in his Wits can doubt whether he be bound to glorifie God both with his Lips and by his Life for the great Expressions of His Goodness to him Now the Reasons on which our Obligation hereto is grounded over and above the Command of God and which are the Foundation of
THE BISHOP of GLOUCESTER's Thanksgiving Sermon BEFORE THE house of Lords At Westminster-Abby April 16 th 1696. Die Veneris 17 o Aprilis 1696. IT is Order'd by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled That the Thanks of this House shall be and are hereby given to the Lord Bishop of Gloucester for his Sermon Preached Yesterday before this House in the Abby-Church at Westminster And he is hereby Desir'd to Print and Publish the same Matt. Johnson Cler ' Parliament ' A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE The house of Lords In the Abby-Church at Westminster Upon Thursday the Sixteenth of April 1696. Being a Day of Publick Thanksgiving to Almighty GOD FOR The most Happy Discovery and Disappointment of a Horrid Design to Assassinate His Sacred MAJESTY AND For Our Deliverance from a French Invasion By EDWARD Lord Bishop of Gloucester LONDON Printed for B. Aylmer at the Three Pigeons near the Royal Exchange in Cornhill 1696. PSAL. lxxxvi 12 13. I will praise Thee O Lord my God with all my heart and I will glorifie Thy Name for evermore For Great is Thy Mercy towards me and Thou hast deliver'd my Soul from the Lowest Hell Or as it is in the Margin from the Grave IT is not worth our while to enquire what particular Deliverance from an Extraordinary Danger that was which King David here expresseth in very Vigorous and Emphatical Words his thankful Sense of 'T is enough to observe to you that it was from a Design of Uillains upon his Life This the next Verse sheweth O God the Proud are risen up against me and the Assemblies of Violent men have sought after my Soul and have not set Thee before them And the Deliverance we are now met to Commemorate being of the same nature it being from an Horrible Conspiracy of Blood-thirsty People both Foreigners and our own Countrymen against our King and his Kingdoms His Majesty from a Barbarous Assassmation and all his good Subjects not only from the Loss of him who is the very Breath of our Nostrils but also from a most Formidable Invasion ready to follow it I say this being the Deliverance which God Almighty in His undeserv'd and infinite Goodness hath now sent us I take the Words I have read to you to be a Subject very proper to Employ our Thoughts on upon this joyful Occasion I will Praise Thee O Lord my God with all my heart and I will Glorifie Thy Name for evermore For Great is thy Mercy towards me and Thou hast delivered my Soul or Life from the Grave Or Great is Thy Mercy towards me in delivering my Life from the Grave The Return which this Pious King here makes to his Great Deliverer was the Engaging himself to Praise Him for his Deliverance with all his heart and to Glorifie His Name for evermore And the Example of this as Good as Great Man are We bound to follow tho' we need no Example to excite us to make the same Return for Our Deliverance which is as great a one as his could be it being a most necessary and indispensable Duty thus to Express our Gratitude for far less Expressions of the Divine Grace and Favour In the handling of these words I will endeavour to shew I. What is implied in Praising God with all our hearts and Glorifying His Name II. That we are under the most necessary Obligation thus to do for our Deliverances and consequently for our other Blessings 1. What is implied in Praising God the Lord our God with all our hearts and Glorifying His Name I joyn these two together because they are one and the same thing as God Himself saith Psal. 50. 23. Whoso offereth Praise Glorifieth me And Glorifying God's Name is expressed by Singing forth the honour of his Name and making His Praise glorious Psal. 66. 2. I need not inform those who are not grosly ignorant of the Divine Nature that 't is impossible to make any Addition to the Divine Glory and Praise There is no greater Contradiction than that the Glory of an infinitely-Glorious Being is capable of the least augmentation or diminution But if a greater could be it would be this that it lieth in the power of any Creature to add thereto or lessen it To Glorifie God therefore is to make His Glory His Essential Glory to be more known observ'd and acknowledg'd And by His Essential Glory His Glorious Perfections are to be understood such as His Power Wisdom Righteousness Holiness and Goodness Thus doth God Almighty Glorifie Himself namely by displaying His Perfections and making Men and Angels behold them in their Admirable Effects And Rational Beings do Glorifie Him by declaring such Effects and their affecting Sense of them When it is said That God in all His Actings designeth His own Glory we are to take notice that the Glory He designeth to Himself is not a Consequent of but the self-same thing with the Illustration of His ' foresaid Perfections and making them known and manifest in various Exertions and Exercises of them The Glory He aims at is the making His Intelligent Creatures to feel in themselves and to observe in other Beings His Perfections in their Productions And 't is absolutely impossible for any Creature to give Glory to God otherwise than by rendering His Glorious Perfections more conspicuous which are much Eclipsed and Obscured by the Sins of Men. In which sence Sinners are said to dishonour God and to rob Him of His Glory and to turn His Glory into Shame Having thus explain'd the Notion of giving Glory and Praise to God I proceed to shew what is implied therein And First It implieth a strong Belief of our being Principally obliged to God Almighty for our Deliverances with all other Blessings and obliged to none but Him otherwise than as His Instruments Secondly A grateful Sense of our Unspeakable Obligations to Him 1st It implieth a strong Belief of our being principally Obliged to God for our Deliverances c. and to none but Him otherwise than as His Instruments As those who are acquainted with and do believe the H. Scriptures cannot doubt but that God is All in All to the whole Universe that the most excellent Creatures are perfectly dependent things things immediately dependent on their Creator both for their Well-being and their Continuance in being that all their Powers and Abilities are from Him and preserv'd by Him so all hearry Theists must acknowledg this nothing being more knowable by Natural Light And therefore Tully stuck not to pronounce Epicurus an arrant Atheist because tho' he profess'd to believe the Existence of a God he deny'd the Divine Providence and that the Affairs of Men are under His Care and Government And as to Deliverances from Open Violence and Secret Conspiracies and Successes of War nothing is better known than that the Pagans who retein'd any Sense of Religion have always ascrib'd them to the Protection and Assistance of their Gods Even those brutish Idolaters the Philistins upon
Division among Protestants at that time and we had then nothing so formidable an Enemy to our Neighbour as we have now As to the Tragedy now to be Acted there was late notice from Abroad of great French Preparations but no great Apprehension from them of a Design to invade us till the Assassinating Part was brought to light And the Circumstances of the discovery hereof are such as speak it the Lord 's doing And indeed without the knowledge of those Circumstances which may hereafter be more fully publish'd whosoever believes a Providence superintending the Affairs of the World will think it highly reasonable to impute this Discovery to a Secret Impulse from Him who hath the hearts of all Men in His Hand as the Wise Man saith of the hearts of Kings and turneth them as the Rivers of Water And to what can we ascribe so certainly the bringing to light such a hidden Work of darkness as this was and which was so very shrewdly laid as to His Special Providence from whom there is no darkness nor shadow of death to use Elibu's words where the Workers of Iniquity may hide themselves Since nothing is more worthy of Infinite Goodness than to take the most special Care of those to whom is committed the Care of Whole Nations and who are the Greatest Instruments of Good to Manking as all good Kings are And never did the Welfare of any People in the World more necessarily under God depend upon the Life of their King than does Ours at this time as our Enemies well know upon the Preservation of his Life who not as our Conquerour but for having been the Glorious Instrument of our Deliverance now Reigns over us And who that is a hearty Assertor of the Divine Providence can find in his heart to impute an Event of so Mighty a consequence as this is to God's bare Permission since he knows that the most insignificant and trivial matters can't come to pass without it And as to the Invasion what a PROVIDENCE was it that the Wind should so constantly blow for I think near a Quarter of a Year together and in the Winter too from such Points of the Compass as that the Squadron design'd for the Mediterranean could not stir Which if it had gone within that time our Island had been left naked of all Defence I am sure we concluded this stay of those Ships a very Unhappy Providence and that it boded extremely ill to us whereas it prov'd to be the Happiest we could have wish'd for Little did we imagine that now God had sent us another Protestant Wind. To nothing better than most Stupid Infidelity can the not seeing God's immediate Hand in this be attributed by us But God be thanked no Body would he never so fain can now be so stupid or perverse as to have the least doubt ' of even the basest and most barbarous part of this Conspiracy as many as at first would have had it a Sham it being confessed under their hands by two of those three Papists who have Suffer'd for it and not denied by the third tho' they could not have Wanted Absolution had they Protested most solemnly in their Old Form That they knew no more of it than the Child unborn But all they Attempted was the Clearing their King from having any hand in it And how did they this They only affirm'd that they saw not nor knew of any Commission from him for it And this they might truly affirm in the strict sence of the word Know if they had never seen it tho' it had been never so well Attested to them But those little understand what a Papist is who can think the Conscience of any of them so strait laced as to scruple so small an Equivocation as this to serve so highly meritorious a purpose as the wiping off such a horrible Scandal from a King so Bigotted to the Church of Rome as to part with three Kingdoms for her sake But 't is a Jest which no Sensible Man can forbear smiling at that there should be a Commission for an Invasion but none for that on which their Hopes of Success did so much depend 2. In the second place since the Hand of God is so Apparent in this Deliverance let us not only Acknowledg it which as hath been said is the least Honour we can do Him for it but let us most Gratefully Acknowledg it And let us express our Gratitude by Praising our Great and most Merciful Deliverer with all our hearts and Glorisying His Name for evermore in the full sence which hath been given of these Phrases Let us express it by crying out with the same holy Man O Magnifie the Lord with me and let us Exalt His Name together By adapting the Doxology of the Mother of our Lord hereto My Soul doth Magnifie the Lord and my Spirit doth Rejoyce in God my Saviour And above all by more fearing to offend Him and more delighting to please Him for the time to come this being the great End and Design of Deliverances particularly as hath been shew'd And God Almighty having told us the same thing Psal. 50. 15. I will deliver thee and thou shalt Glorifie Me. And I need not repeat it that the Reforming of our Lives is absolutely necessary to our Glorifying of God Certainly a very little Ingenuity will constrein us to these Expressions of Thankfulness if we well consider First What our Deliverance is Secondly What little Reason we had now of any time to expect such a Deliverance 1. If we well consider what our Deliverance is and therefore seriously Reflect upon what we are deliver'd from we shall be presently satisfied that no People under Heaven ever had a Greater Had our Enemies Accomplish'd their Horrid Design upon the Royal Person of our Sovereign How would our Faces have gathered Blackness With what Fearfulness and Trembling should we have been seiz'd upon the dreadful Out-cry The King is Murther'd The King is Murther'd And how would our Hearts have failed us for fear and for looking after the things that were coming upon us And what Horrour and Astonishment would have filled all Places upon the Rushing in of so many Thousands of Bloody French joyn'd with an Army of Unnatural English Then would our Streets have Rung with as doleful Moan as that of the Prophet Jeremy upon the Babylonians invading his Country My Bowels My Bowels I am pained at the very heart my heart maketh a noise in me I cannot hold my peace because thou hast heard O my Soul the Sound of the Trumpet the Alarm of War Destruction upon Destruction is Cryed And like that of Isaiah in the name of Jerusalem upon the Assyrian Invasion Look away from me I will weep bitterly because of the Spoiling of the Daughter of my People For it is a day of trouble and of treading down and of perplexity by the Lord of Hosts And what frightful Spectacles should we have been forced to behold while