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A53926
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A sermon preached at the funeral of Sir Henry Johnson, Kt. who was interr'd in the chappel at Popler, November the 19th. 1683 / by Samuel Peck ...
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Peck, Samuel.
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1684
(1684)
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Wing P1037; ESTC R33040
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13,357
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29
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That 't is Eternal 5. And lastly That which is the chief of all you have here the Believers Right and Title to it we know 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very top of Faith we are sure As certainly assured by Faith that we shall have it as if we did now possess it So sure is it so certain are we of it that the Apostle speaks in the present Tense 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not we shall have but we have an House not made with hands Eternal in the Heavens Thus you have in the Terms and Epethites which the Apostle gives this Building in the Text a shadow or glimpse of Heaven of that Blessed and Glorious Estate which the Faithful enjoy after this Life The fulness whereof no Tongue can utter or Words express for saith the Apostle Eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor can it enter into the heart of man to conceive what things God hath prepared for them that love him O! Who then would be an Atheist who would be irreligious or prophane and so at once cut himself off from all hopes of all this Glory Surely Religion is not an idle empty Thing that brings such rewards to all the serious Professors and Practisers of it 'T is not in vain to be holy and to serve God in good earnest There is a reward for the righteous and our labour in the Lord shall not be in vain to us The wicked indeed may be said to have an house and an eternal house too prepared for them in another world but 't is a sad one Tophet is prepared for them of old saith the Prophet the pile whereof is fire and much wood and the breath of the Lord as a river of brimstone continually kindling it A state of Sorrow weeping and mourning for ever and ever But the House or Dwelling-place of the Righteous hereafter is in the Heavens an House of Light of Joy and Rejoicing wherein they shall sing Praises and Hallelujahs to the Lamb that sits upon the Throne for evermore O how should the belief and hope of this push us on to the greatest perfections of Holiness and severities in Religion if thereby we may attain to an assurance of our right to this heavenly Habitation How should this make us contemn the world with all its inconsiderable nothings How should this bear us up under and chearfully carry us through all Afflictions and Troubles all reproaches and scorns in this World In a Word How should the hope and prospect of this Glory of this Coelestial Palace and Eternal life to come steal us against death vanquish from our souls all slavish fears of the dissolution of these bodies and moderate our Sorrow forour departed Frien ds and Relations who have given us any hopes that they have but changed this earthly house for that glorious Building of God Eternal in the Heavens where we hope one day to meet and enjoy them and they us without Sin Sorrow or Fear of parting more for ever and ever I have said what I intended on the Text But I have now another Subject to enter upon of which it is but fit and necessary somewhat be spoken that is Sir HENRY JOHNSON whose Remains lye yet before us And here I could be large but both the Time and the particular Acquaintance which most of you had with him commands Brevity Nor is it so much my design in what I have to say to praise the Dead whom our Praises can neither reach nor profit as to provoke you that are living to imitate him in what is good and praise-worthy And to let you see 't is possible for a man to be great and good too I shall omit to speak of him as he once stood in those Relations of an Husband Father or Friend in every of which there are many will testifie he deserved an Euge but shall consider him only as a Christian and here let his own works speak for him both living and dying Some of which I shall set before you from my own Observation and others from credible and undoubted Information All the Time I have known him now near fourteen Years I have observed him religiously inclined not only free from the gross debaucheries and sinful excesses of this Atheistical and corrupt Age wherein he lived from those open Vices and Immoralities which many of his rank are tainted with and are not at all ashamed of but very serious in his Discourses grave and exemplary in his whole deport No encourager of Faction or Rebellion no friend to or favourer of Prophaneness or Irreligion but the contrary a Countenancer of Religion and Loyalty this I know I doubt not to say without fear of Controul that Sir Henry Johnson was one who both feared God and honoured the King a pair of Vertues as inseparable as Commendable which I wish more were endued with that make as great a figure in the Word now as he once did As to the former of these his Religion towards God I need mention but this one Demonstration of it That commendable and Religious Order that he constantly kept up in his Family by Prayer reading the Scriptures and good Instructions to the members of it especially upon the Lords Day or Sundays which he was a strict observer of This I my self have sometimes seen and those of his Houshold can bear Testimony to the truth of it and I have often heard him say that those Servants that would not submit to and comport with this Discipline were no servants for him I wish more Gentlemen were of his mind so that he seemed to have taken up Joshua's Resolution As for me and my house we will serve the Lord. As to his good works his pious and charitable deeds both in his Life and at his Death I presume not to give an exact Account of them from my own knowledg but as I am informed and in recounting these I know no reason why that charritable Act of his to the Poor of Wapping in the late dreadful Fire there may not be remembred Since many of you know he was the first and chief Mover to obtain a Contribution to their present necessities and I know a liberal donor thereto himself which was a great a publick good work In the time of his life for divers Years last past besides his most private acts of this nature he every Sunday or Lords Day relieved Forty or Fifty poor Persons at his own house and that not with the Fragments of his own Table but with good and wholsome Diet provided on purpose for them and as he fed the poor in his life so he did not forget them at his Death having in his last Will bequeathed several Legacies to chairtable uses some of which I had an account of As To Two Hospitals Christ-Church and Bridewell To the Poor of Trinity House To the Poor of the East India Alms-house in this Hamlet To the Poor of Shipwrights Hall in Ratcliff To the Erecting and maintaining of an Alms-House for six poor Persons in Blackwall He hath also given Monies for the placing out of several Poor Children at Albrough in Suffolk and for the maintaining of a Weekly Lecture at Saxmundum in the same County By these Charitable deeds he hath built his own Monument more lasting than those of Brass or Marble And I wish every man to whom the Divine Bounty hath liberally given the good things of this World would but go and do likewise And now I shall commit him to his bed of rest when I have said this one thing more That during his last long and tedious sickness in which I was sevral times with him he had many excellent expressions of God and the state of his own Soul I could mention divers and the occasions of them but then I should be tedious I will only recall some spoken to my self I bless God saith he for this affliction I would not have been without it for all the world And again when I told him I should visit him oftner if his ilness would admit me He replied I thank God I am never alone God is always with me and Christ is my Visitant who is above all to me and who I trust will work all in me and for me He often spoke of the Vanity of the World and not withstanding the large share God had given him of it declared himself willing to leave it Adding this with great earnestness and vehemency of spirit being sensible he was not wholly without enemies and what good man is I sreely sorgive all the world In a word When he received the Holy Sacrament which I administred to him in the time of his sickness as he received it with good devotion so he afterwards expressed himself very thankful to God for that opportunity blessing him for the refreshment he found in his soul by it I could mention more expressions of this nature that fell from him but I forbear These with the manner of his delivering them begot in me I confess a belief that he had upon his mind a real sense of God and a savoury relish of the great things of Eternity yea and an hope too of a better inheritance in the other World than he hath left behind him in this even of a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens To which blessed and glorious Estate God of his Infinite Mercy in his due Time bring every Soul of us for the sake of his Beloved Son who died for us Christ Jesus the Righteous To whom with the Father and Holy Spirit be Glory for ever and every Amen ERRATA In the Epist. 1. 17. for gloss r. glose page 11. l. 7. for if r. of page 13. l. 4. for lato r. luto FINIS Hab. 2. 13. 2 Pet. 3. 11. Phil. 3.20 Joh. 3. 13. 14. 1 Cor. 15. lat end
A SERMON PREACHED AT THE FUNERAL OF Sir HENRY JOHNSON K t. Who was Interr'd in the Chappel at Popler November the 19th 1683. By Samuel Peck Minister there LONDON Printed for Tho. Parkhurst at the Bible and Three-Crowns at the lower end of Cheapside near Mercers-Chappel 1684. Academiae Cantabrigiensis Liber To the Worshipful HENRY JOHNSON Esq Worthy Sir THAT neither a private interest nor itch of vain-glory have the least share in this Undertaking in whole or in part God and my own Conscience bear me witness And that a compliance with the repeated and reasonable commands of some Friends of the Deceased to whom I bear a deserved respect and honour have made it publick you and they are able to testify 'T is somewhat larger in the Press than 't was in the Pulpit yet no more than what should have been spoken had the time permitted What is said of the Dead I am satisfied Envy it self cannot disprove or contradict The Discourse is not polite but plain For 't is never my custom upon such Solemn occasions to interline my Sermons with much Reading nor to gloss them with much Rhetorick knowing that the leaves of Antiquity would make but a weak Shield against the stroak of Death And that the fine Flowers of Rhetorick are not Armour of proof against the Conquering fears of the King of terrors Such as it is I hope you will accept And if it may prove persuasive to any into whose hands it shall fall timely to prepare themselves for Death and Judgment I have my desired end and fervent prayer who am Decemb. 1. 1683. Sir Your respective Friend and Servant SAMUEL PECK A SERMON Preached at the Funeral of Sir HENRY JOHNSON Kt. 2 Cor. V. 1. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens HE that in his private recesses and solitude takes a serious and impartial survey of most mens works and actions how they spend their strength for nought and as the Prophet speaks labour in the fire for very vanity How greedily they pursue the World and what sinful and indirect courses they take to further and promote themselves therein How they blind their Judgment bribe their Reason and baffle their own Consciences dally with God and their Souls and play the wantons with Death and Judgment and every thing that is good and serious will sadly break forth in the words of the Royal Psalmist Psal. 36. 1. The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart there is no fear of God before his eyes So the lives of such men make me think that Death and Judgment seldom enter into their hearts that the reward of the Righteous and the recompence of the evil doer are seldom the subject of their Meditations and that they have but a very weak Faith of the invisible realities of the World to come For did men firmly believe and frequently consider That for all these things God will bring them to judgment and that an unalterable Weal or Wo will follow upon it according as their works shall be it must needs excite them unless they are hardned to destruction to a Religious life a Godly conversation yea it would make them serve the Lord and work out their salvation with fear and trembling 'T is Chronicled of Philip King of Spain That tho he never committed any great sin all his life yet he cried out dreadfully at his death saying O that I had never been King Oh that I had never reigned for then I should not have now to answer for the neglect of doing the good I might and for not preventing the evil I ought in my Government And tho God hath not set any of you in Places of so great weight and trust yet there is none of you to whom he hath not committed many Talents and opportunities of doing and receiving good in order to Death and Judgment And will it not be a fearful time with you when you are grapling with the King of Terrors when you are upon the brink of Eternity and within view of that Eternal Judgment which the Apostle calls the terror of the Lord 2 Cor. 5. 11. to have Conscience fly in your faces and accuse you for your falsness and unfaithfulness in your places and relations For neglecting your time and abusing your Talents wishing a thousand times you had never been or that you had never known what the Gospel meant for then your account before the great Tribunal of the Righteous God would have been less strict and more easie by far than it is now like to be for those evils which you might have avoided but would not and for all that good which by your pious Patterns and holy Examples you might have done but did not Alas Who can conceive the sad Apprehensions and killing Terrors that wrack the soul of such men in such a day Let the belief hereof provoke you to make a better improvement of your Time and Talents Opportunities and Enjoyments than hitherto you have done Lay them not out upon Toys and Trifles Worldly Lying Vanities which like your own Flesh or Bodies are frail uncertain and will quickly fail you for St. Peter tells you All these things as well as these earthly tabernacles shall be dissolved But let us spend them upon better Objects upon a better Inheritance a more durable and lasting Estate than this World can afford us seeking to make him our Portion who will be a living Comfort in a dying Hour the ever Blessed and Glorious God spend more Strength and Time in his Service Let us have our conversation in heaven here as the Apostle exhorts that we may obtain an Assurance our Habitation shall be there when we go hence as the Apostle tells us he had saying We know that if this earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens Which Words are both an Illustration and Confirmation of the reason which our Apostle gives his Corinthians why he did so couragiously and valiantly labour in the Work of the Ministry notwithstanding the many Difficulties and dangers the continual Trouble and Opposition he met withal on every side for commending himself to every mans conscience in the sight of God For he had spoken in the preceding Chapter of the perishing of the outward Man and of renewing the Inward Man day by day of the great Weight of Glory which should succeed his light Affliction for a Moment in this life and that those things that are not seen which are eternal are to be looked to and minded rather than these things which are seen and are only temporal chap. 4. 16. to the end Now in the beginning of this chapter he doth farther expound himself concerning the dissolution or change of the Outward Man and the building up or perfecting the New Man as also