a scandal and contradiction is it that they should pass for true Protestants among us that were never Christians and boast themselves the chiefest Ministers of Christ the Head that cut themselves off from all Communion with the Body of Christ his Church and make their Children pass through the fire to Moloch rather than through the Baptismal water to Christ That would rather confederate in a Covenant for Bloud with some Sons of Belial than partake of the Bloud of that Covenant of Peace which the Son of God invites us to Certainly the Bloud both of their King and of their Saviour must seem very vile to those that can thus trample them under their feet And notwithstanding the Cry of Persecution I think it our bounden duty and an act of Christian Charity to practise our Saviours Prescript upon these distracted people and compel them to come in to his House and to his great Supper that as St. John Baptist says they may be preserved from the wrath to come Mat. 3.7 for otherwise God can as well raise up Children to Abraham out of those stones as St. John says pointing as some learned men think at those very stones which Joshua set up in the midst of Jordan as make them Children of his Kingdom which nothing can do but a Miracle of Mercy whereof they can have little hope that despise the easie and ordinary means of their Salvation And now to convince these men behold another Wonder That notwithstanding all these impotent Commotions those two great Luminaries and Ordinances of Heaven the light of the Gospel and the comfortable influences of Government do stand still over our Land as the Sun did over Gibeon and the Moon in the Valley of Ajalon neither the blustring of the Northern Winds nor the interposition of infernal Mists consisting of gross darkness and new lights together have been able to hinder the dispensation of those heavenly blessings to the comfort of all humble and faithful Souls and as well to the admiration as to the regret and confusion of our enemies And may they ever so stand till all the enemies of the established Religion and Government be so destroyed that there be not one of them left And now I dare for once to appeal to the people as Joshua did ch 23. 14. Ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord our God promised to his Church in these later days The Sun of Righteousness was promised Malachy 4.2 to arise with healing in his wings and it was foretold Isai 49.23 that God would send Kings to be nursing fathers to his Church and nothing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord our God promised us he hath in a good measure healed our Divisions removed our Prejudices and Enmities and established the Vniformity of his Worship among us and rolled away the Reproach that lay upon us But if with Jessurun we shall grow wanton and kick against God and bite and devour one another he hath threatned to bring upon us all the evil that is written in his Law till he have destroyed us from off the good land which he hath given us Josh 23.15 He can as he hath done once already turn the Sun i. e. the Gospel into darkness and the Moon i. e. our Government into bloud he can remove the Ark of his presence and Worship and roll back the reproach of Egypt upon us and write Ichabod upon the whole Land Wherefore as we have heard and seen the great works of God for the magnifying of our King so let us consider the duties which we owe to God and the King that we may rightly celebrate the joyful Solemnity of this day And first let us sing our Te Deum let us ascribe unto the Lord the praises due unto his Name for all those Acts of Grace whereby he hath magnified the King for with his own right hand and with his holy arm hath he gotten himself the victory and therefore not unto us O Lord not unto us but to thy Name be the honour and glory of all those great things which thou hast done for our King and for us whom thou hast committed to his charge It is he that giveth victory unto Kings and hath delivered David his servant from the peril of the sword Let us therefore that are all partakers of his mercies joyn together in singing our Magnificat with one heart and one mouth My soul doth magnifie the Lord and my spirit hath rejoyced in God my Saviour for he hath regarded the low estate of his servants he that is mighty hath magnified us and holy is his Name He hath shewed strength with his arm and hath scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts he hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek he hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away He remembring his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel as he promised to our forefathers Abraham and his seed for ever Secondly Let us beware how we do so much as in our thoughts despise or undervalue much less seek to cast him down whom God hath so wonderfully exalted It is hard fighting against God and our murmurings against so good a Governour are not against him onely but against the Lord. Haman being asked what should be done to the man whom the King delighted to honour Hest 6.6 answered Let the royal apparel be brought which the King useth to wear and the horse which the King rideth upon and the Crown royal be set upon his head But what shall be done to the King whom God delighteth to honour that King whom God prevented with blessings of goodness and gave him his hearts desire that King on whose head he hath set a Crown of pure Gold and crowned that Crown with inestimable mercies and loving kindnesses that King that trusteth in the Lord that hath been born upon Eagles wings and fixed on the Rock that is higher than himself against whom though the people did rage and their Rulers took counsel together yet with a Non Obstante he hath set his King upon his holy hill of Sion He hath laught his enemies to scorn and vexed them in his sore displeasure What shall be done to such a King What why there are some who are of a far worse mind than Haman was that would deal with him as the Jews did with Christ their King they have platted a Crown of Thorns and would set it on his head and put a Reed in his hands instead of the Royal Scepter and instead of the Royal Robe clothe him with Curses railings and mockings as with a Garment and nail him to the Cross and pierce his royal sides with their Tongues sharper than swords or spears that thirst for his heart-bloud and cry as they did His bloud be upon us and our children not considering
in over-ruling the perverse wills and contrary dispositions of men bringing Good out of Evil and Peace and Order out of all the Confusions which are intended and acted by them as in any miraculous work And if any thing in this late Age comes near to the nature of a Miracle that Series and Succession of unparallel'd Wonders for twenty years together granted to our King may be so called If therefore it were a Wonder in Nature to see Jor and Dan forsake their course and stand on an heap while Joshua passed over it was no less to see multitudes and streams of people in an about Thames and Isis forsake their wonted Channel and * Amnisque cucurrit qua non pronus erat flow back to their Head and Fountain from whom they had ran so long over so many Precipices To see those great men that thought themselves as immovable as the Mountains skipping like Rams and the little hills like young sheep at the presence of Joshua and the Ark of God Psal 114.4 To see that Prince who had been so long and often near to be shipwrack'd on dry land to be owned and guarded as Soveraign Lord and Commander of the Seas and those Ships which as so many Tygers and Vultures roved up and down to make him a Prey as so many Doves flying to him as to their Ark with Olive-branches in their mouths to assure him that the Deluge was over was very strange but much more wonderful it was that those slouds of people that had lift up their voice threatning present death at his first approach and that if he pass'd the Seas he should wade through a Sea of Bloud should in an instant of time change their note and welcome him as with the voice of many waters clapping their hands shouting for joy and crying Hallelujah so as nothing else could be heard but God save the King This is the lords doing and it is marvelous in our eyes This is the day which the Lord hath made let us be glad and rejoyce in it For from this day did God begin to magnifie our Joshua in the sight of all his people And now our Joshua stands on his own terra firma and might truly say as Caesar did Veni vidi vici where-ever he came and whatsoever he saw he overcame for with no other preparation than that of the joyful sound of Trumpets he approached the Royal City the Fortress and Metropolis of the Nation or rather the great City came forth to meet him That City which had sent forth many Messages after him with a Nolumus hunc regnare We will not have this man to reign over us and had spent vast Treasures and hazarded the lives and souls of many thousands to take away his life now cast themselves at his feet imploring his Pardon offering their Lives and Estates in defence of his and set open their hearts wider than their gates to entertain him And those who with Shimei had cursed their King most bitterly were some of the first that came with Acclamations to welcome him home The Example of this City as it usually had done influenced all the lesser Cities which like those of Canaan spued out those independent Arbitrary Tyrants that held them in subjection to make room for his peaceable Officers who under God restored their Judges as at the first and their Counsellors as at the beginning And now his Majesties own house being not yet setled he makes it his first care to fix the Ark of God among us restoring the Priests and Levites to their Offices and Inheritance and to recover the Spoils of the Church and consecrated things from those sacrilegious Achans that had purloined them and hid them in their own Tents And though he destroyed not the sacrilegious persons yet he hath well-nigh destroyed Sacriledge it self And this is another act whereby God magnified our Joshua for by giving unto God the things that are Gods God hath given unto Caesar the things that are Caesars The next memorable act ingraven on our side of this Royal Arch is the banishing of those false Prophets and depriving them of those wages of Iniquity which were given them as a reward for cursing the King and deceiving the People among whom there being none like to our English Balaam the very Blunderbuss of that Age that had less Religion and as little Reason as the Ass he rode on was deservedly executed by the Sword of Justice With these there fell in a great measure those several Sects Parties and Factions of Jebusites and Madianites Hittites and Perisites which they had raised who though they were irreconcilably divided from each other yet they unanimously conspired against the Israel of God Onely it will stand recorded as a defect not so much in the Government of Joshua as on the inconstancy and importunity of some of the Elders and Princes of the Congregation that the Land was not wholly cleansed from them in his days but by their wiles and subtilties their clothing of new Errours in the habit of old Traditions and their decking of old Errours and Heresies in new forms of Godliness they extorted an Indulgence and Toleration to the insnaring of such as were unstable and the grieving of those that were stedfast to whom they were as so many Briers and Thorns to vex and disquiet them The Acts of Oblivion and all Indulgences under which as in the Cities of refuge even bloud-guilty men might have lived securely have been so far from suppressing their enmity and causing them to live peaceably with their Brethren that they have rather taken encouragement from them as to turn the grace of God into wantonness so to return the Kings Clemency into new Affronts and Confederacies against him But these mischiefs notwithstanding those two Sacraments of Baptism and the Supper of our Lord by which we have an entrance into and an inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven assigned to us are duly administred to all that will rightly receive them And as by the Law of Moses the uncircumcised and such as partook not of the Paschal Lamb had no inheritance among their Brethren in the Kingdom of Israel so we are taught that they can have no inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven who will have no Communion with the Church of God in the use of these Sacraments There was a time when the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence and the violent took it by force but now when the Kingdom of Heaven seems to offer violence and to take us into it by force though our Jesus hath by his own bloud provided for us a Laver of Regeneration and in great love prepared a Feast of fat things even his own flesh and bloud to preserve our Bodies and Souls to eternal life the Doctrine of Resistance to the Commands and Institutions of the King of Heaven is as boldly put in practice as that of resisting the Supreme Power on Earth is preached in our Conventicles For what
THE HISTORY OF JOSHUA Applied to the Case of King Charles II. In a Thanksgiving SERMON Preached at St. Peters Exon. On the 29th of May 1684. By THO. LONG one of the Prebendaries LONDON Printed by J. C. and F. C. for Daniel Brown at the Black Swan and Bible without Temple-bar MDCLXXXIV To the Right Worshipful Sir Copplestone Bampfield Kt. and Bar. One of his Majesties Deputy-Lieutenants And JUSTICE of the Peace for the County of Devon HONOURED SIR THis small Present comes as a grateful Acknowledgement of the many Favours received from your Worthy Family Your Grandfather was my first Patron and a great Encourager of my Ministry Your Father did me very considerable Kindnesses in the late distracted times Your Self have been my Generous Landlord in the House where I had my Education from my Childhood and on all occasions you have expressed your real Affection as to the Loyal Clergie in general so particularly to my self the meanest of them Which Considerations have obliged me to prefix your Name to this Thanksgiving-Sermon and to subscribe my self Exon. May 30. 1684. Your most humble and obliged Servant THO. LONG JOSHUA 3.7 The Lord said unto Joshua This day will I begin to magnifie thee in the sight of all Israel that they may know that as I was with Moses so I will be with thee WHen Moses by the unsearchable judgment of God was denied an entrance to the promised Land and brought under a sentence of death Numb 27.12 that the hopes and happiness of Israel might not die with him he makes an earnest Prayer to God for Joshua whom God had appointed to be his Successor v. 16 17. That the congregation of the Lord might not be as sheep without a shepherd and v. 23. he gave him a charge and instruction how to go in and out before the people to conduct them to Canaan and commended him to the Prayers and Counsel of Eleazar the Priest who had been after the death of Aaron his own faithful Counsellor And by these means God put the spirit of Moses and some of his honour upon Joshua that all the congregation of Israel might be obedient v. 20. And indeed there was not any so qualified for the Government of that people as Joshua was The Succession to great Kingdoms and Governments as old Brithwold said of this of England is Gods care and he will provide for it and in his will and pleasure the people ought to acquiesce But it was not so with those with whom Joshua had to do of whom Moses testified Deut. 31.27 I know thy rebellion and thy stiff neck while I am yet alive with you this day ye have been rebellious against the Lord and how much more after my death They had by their murmurings and provocations and the golden Calves which they had set up worried that good man to death And Joshua was to encounter not onely with that stubborn people but with many Nations that were confederate against him strong and fenced Cities whereof every one was made the seat of a King Reges vocantur singularum ferè Civitatum Domini which are reckoned in number thirty one And the death of Moses in such an extraordinary manner had raised great prejudices in the hearts of the people both against Moses and his Successor who hated him the more for his love and zeal for the true Worship of God whereof they had such experience for Joshua being with Moses in the Mount when the Law was delivered he first discovered the murmurings of the people Exod. 32.17 When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted viz. at the setting up of their Calves he said unto Moses There is a noise of War in the Camp He saw also how greatly the Lord was displeased at the Rebellion of Core Dathan and Abiram against Moses and Aaron and when Eldad and Medad became Field-Chaplains and prophesied in the Camp he perswaded Moses to forbid them Numb 11.28 And that small Party which adhered unto Joshua were tired out by their tedious journeying through the Wilderness and were now brought to the like straights as they had been at the Red-Sea so that nothing but a Miracle could reclaim the people and preserve Joshua from being swallowed up by them The River Jordan at whose brink they were brought had at this time overslowed its banks as if it had conspired to meet and joyn with the madness of the people to cut off Joshua But this extremity the God of Israel made his opportunity to deliver and exalt Joshua The Lord said unto Joshua This day will I begin to magnifie thee in the sight of all Israel that they may know c. This day i. e. from this day forward as the Syriack renders it I will give an * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Earnest and Assurance that I will exalt thee not onely draw thee out of all that contempt and distress to which thou art reduced but I will begin now and in due time perfect that Honour and Dignity which I have designed for thee both in the sight of all the Canaanites whom I will cast out before thee and in the sight of all Israel who have been so rebellious against thee that they may know that as I was with Moses and gave the people a passage through the Red-Sea So I will be with thee and cause thee to pass over this swelling Jordan and subdue not onely thine own people but all the Nations of Canaan under thy feet And Sicut fuit verbum meum in adjutorium Mosis as I conducted Moses by my word and counsel so I will guide thee Having thus considered the Text it seemed to represent the form of a Triumphant Arch consisting of two Pillars like unto those of Solomon's Porch 1 King 7.21 Jachin and Boaz This signifying In him i. e. in God is strength and the other He will establish I the Almighty God will establish thee the distressed King of Israel Honour and majesty will I lay on thee thy glory shall be great in my salvation Psal 21.5 I know it will be very acceptable to all good men especially to such as are so neerly concerned as our selves to see the ancient Monuments of Gods miraculous favours to Kings and Governours and such as live in obedience to them preserved and revived And they may serve as Pillars to support our weak faith in Gods power and our Loyalty to the King when it begins to decline I therefore desire your patience while I read you as well as my dull eyes will permit those Inscriptions of Gods great power and the Prerogative of his Magistrates which are engraven on these two Pillars of the Text the first of which shews us what great things God did for Joshua the second what good things Joshua did for God or rather God wrought by Joshua to magnifie him c. Over the first Pillar is written Ego Deus tuus on the second Te Regum meum and the Key-stone that
difficulties notwithstanding God had begun and still went on to magnisie Joshua in the sight of all the people for God having given rest unto Joshua after many victories and deliverances he appoints a solemn Thanksgiving And having built an Altar to the Lord God of Israel ch 8. 30. he assembles all Israel their Elders and Officers their Judges with their women little ones and strangers and read unto them all the words of the Law v. 34. the Blessings that should be granted them on their obedience and the Curses that would befal them on their disobedience together with those Forms of Thanksgiving All which Moses had written and caused to be recorded as in a publick Liturgie for the use of the succeeding Generations Deut. 31.27 c. and they blessed God singing the Song of Moses and sacrificing Peace-Offerings with the Forms prescribed by Moses for there was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua read not before all the Congregation of Israel v. 35. And particularly Joshua's next care was to revive those two great Ordinances of the Lord Circumcision and the Passover the one being the Seal of the Covenant which he made with Abraham to be his God and the God of his seed and to own them for his people the other as a Memorial of his wonderful deliverances of them from their bondage under Pharoah in Egypt To which our Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist do succeed These by the long omission and neglect of them while they were in the Wilderness were fallen into contempt but by Gods special command to Joshua were to be renewed ch 5. 2. And none of those that observed not these Ordinances were to have any inheritance in the Land as neither we unless we duely partake of the Sacraments of our Jesus shall be admitted into Heaven whereof Canaan was a Type When these Ordinances were duely administred God appeared to Joshua v. 9. and said This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt and then also God sent his Angel to go before them as Captains of the Host of the Lord v. 14. to fight their Battels And to compleat the magnificence of Joshua he appoints Cities of refuge for those who had been ignorantly and unawares betrayed to kill their brethren that they fell not by the revenging Sword but might live quietly among their Brethren Thus the Lord continued to magnifie Joshua casting out before him many Nations greater and mightier than he crowning him with Victories Peace and Plenty and having served God fully and governed his people faithfully being an hundred and ten years old he was gathered to his Fathers having setled the People and established the true Worship of God in the Land of Canaan And gave the Israelites a land for which they did not labour and cities which they built not vineyards and oliveyards which they planted not Josh 24.13 Thus did God perfect that great work by which he begun this day to magnifie Joshua in the sight of all the People And now I doubt not but you will give me leave to lead you through this Triumphant Arch and by way of Application shew you on the Reverse the Memorials of those wonderful works whereby God hath begun to magnifie our Joshua in the sight of all his people And that we may begin at the foundation of this Fabrick let us first consider to what a low ebb the affairs of our Joshua were reduced and how the wrath and rage of his enemies overflowed all bounds when he came to the brink of this Jordan After the never-enough-lamented death of the Royal Martyr his Royal Majesty had a great part of a howling Wilderness to pass through he was hunted from Mountain to Mountain and from one Kingdom to another people destitute of all comforts and forsaken of all but his God onely and in him as David in the like condition at Ziglag he encouraged himself For as long as he retained the Ark of God and resolved with Joshua though all Israel should corrupt themselves yet he and his house would serve the Lord he could not doubt but God would restore him and bless him as he did Obed-edom and all his house the same promise being applied to all true Israelites which was made to Joshua Heb. 13.5 I will not leave thee nor forsake thee And indeed there was no visible power sufficient to preserve and restore him like to that of his care for the Ark of God the true Religion and solemn Worship which had been banished with him He had not Treasure from the Pope and Conduct from the Emperour the Courage and Constancy of some within the walls the united Strength and Counsels of others in the Field he did not trust in his Sword or Bow in Chariots or Horsemen all these were rather combined against him The Christianissimus was an enemy to him abroad as well as the Antichristianissimus at home but he was still Defender of that Faith which God promised to defend against all the gates of Hell None except old Caleb whom God supported against otherwise-insupportable difficulties appeared for him And God alone it was who sent such a Spirit of Giddiness and Division among his enemies and so exhausted and dried up their spirits and courage that the dividing the waters of Jordan and drying up those mighty streams was not more wonderful The Prophet David accounts it an argument of greater power to restrain the madness of the people than the raging of the Sea Psal 65. And all this was done at the approach of the Ark of God by his Majesties gracious Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical affairs which so bowed the hearts of his people as the heart of one man that they sent back this Loyal Invitation Return thou and all thy houshold I do not plead for Miracles as a ground of Faith and Obedience now I leave that to the Church of Rome which if ever it wrought a true Miracle in these later Ages it is this That they should so captivate the understandings of so many and some otherwise-wise men as to make them believe their false ones after so many Impostures have been discovered When the Israelites were setled in Canaan and did eat of the Corn growing in the Country the miraculous Manna ceased Josh 5.12 And we who live in a Country where the Bread of Life is so plentifully dispensed unto us which was confirmed by so many undoubted Miracles may not expect any new Miracles or Revelations we have a more sure word of prophesie 2 Pet. 1.19 whereon to ground our Faith and direct our Obedience And if we believe not the Doctrines and Promises of Christ and his Apostles neither will we believe if one arose from the dead Luke 16.31 Yet as God shews equal wisdom power and goodness in upholding the Earth and in his dayly governing of and providing for all his Creatures as in the first creation so he doth still manifest as much of his infinite wisdom power and goodness