Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	henry_n	john_n	son_n	19,667	5	5.2650	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63885	A sermon preached at the anniversary meeting of the Sons of clergy-men, in the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, December 4, 1684 by Francis Lord Bishop of Ely, and president of the society.	Turner, Francis, 1638?-1700.	1685 (1685)	Wing T3286; ESTC R3975	13,286	36

A SERMON Preached at the Anniversary Meeting Of the SONS of CLERGY-MEN In the Church of St Mary-le-Bow DECEMBER 4 1684. By FRANCIS Lord Bishop of ELY and PRESIDENT of the Society LONDON Printed by John Playford for Henry Bonwick at the Red Lyon in St. Pauls Church-yard 1685. To the Right Worshipful the STEWARDS Of the late ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF Clergy-Men's Sons And the rest of the Governours of the Charity for Relief of the poor Widows and Children of Clergy-Men My most Honoured Friends THough I could heartily wish you had been pleased to reserve for some better occasion the just power you have with me and that you had demanded some other proofs of the due regard I must have to all your motions instead of obliging me to publish this very plain discourse yet I should not make you a suitable return for all the Honour you have done me should I obstinately refuse whatever you earnestly request but whatever credit I may lose if I have any to lose I shall not think I have lost my labour if I can perswade my Brethren of the House of Levi to take special care that this Charity begin at home this great Charity of Religious Education The best portion that any Parents can leave their Children the only considerable Portion that many of the best Clergy-men can leave theirs and one of the best Legacies they can leave this Corporation will be such well bred Children as will deserve that Character St. Paul bestows on Timothy Who will naturally care for your state For to make our Children as perfectly good Christians as they ought to be will be the most effectual means to tye them fast to the Interests of this Body the stiff abetters of the good Old Cause in Scotland have ignorance and impudence enough to Christen their Children into the solemn League and Covenant as if that were the Covenant of Grace and so do some of them call it Let us show as much zeal and more according to knowlege by bringing our Youth to keep their Baptismal Vow and then they will never fail to Honour and Love the Church in which they were Born and Baptiz'd But especially Let all the Sons of Church-men be so well Tutor'd and Taught that they may be secur'd and settled in this resolution to live and dy true Sons of the Church of England As I am one of the meanest of those Sons so I am My most Honoured Friends Your most faithfull and most humble Servant Fran. Ely A SERMON Preached before the SONS OF THE CLERGY GENESIS XVIII v. 19. For I know him that he will Command his Children and his Houshold after him and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him THese words are part of a great and worthy Character which God was pleased to give of Abraham the Father of the Faithful who at his Hospitable Gate had newly entertain'd three Sacred Guests whom though the Patriarch at first apprehended to be but Men yet we may justly suppose they were more than Angels for since one of them is all along styled the Lord and since Abraham makes Addresses of Adoration and Prayer directly to him Unless we could allow the Socinian Doctrine That it were Lawful to Worship a reature and the Roman Doctrine of Praying to Angels It seems at least piously credible that those who put on humane shapes to visit Abraham had Divinity about them and represented no less than the Three Adorable Persons of the Blessed Trinity and therefore our Church reads this for the First Lesson upon Trinity Sunday In memory of this Glorious Apparition to Abraham one of the Church-Historians gives Bozomen l. 2. c 4. this account That once every Year there was kept a Festival Day where under the Doctor 's Oak as they call'd it where they suppos'd Abraham sate in the plains of Mamre all Three Religions Jews Gentiles and Christians had a Customary meeting where they offer'd Sacrifices to their God according to the different Rites and Ceremonies in use among them untill the great Emperour Constantine prohibited any more of the Jewish or Heathenish Conventicles to be kept there Commanded the Place to be purg'd and order'd a Christian Temple to be erected wherein only the followers of Jesus as the true Children of Abraham should be conven'd to Celebrate an Holy Anniversary Such a Solemnity as this which our Gracious King hath Licens'd us to observe in memory of our Fathers who Commanded us their Children as Abraham did his to keep the way of the Lord And in Charity to their Widows and Orphans to do good and distribute unto them for with such Sacrifices God is pleas'd In the words may be easily observ'd these Four Parts 1. First here is establisht the Duty and Authority of Parents to propagate true Religion to their Children and the obligation of their Children to receive it from them For the due exercise of that Paternal Power and of this Filial obedience is requir'd by Almighty God Respectively of both Parties requir'd in the Persons of Abraham and his Descendants that he should Command his Children and his Houshold after him to keep the way of the Lord. 2. Secondly here is a just and strong presumption that especially such Fathers of Children as be also Fathers of the Church will most effectually perform this important charge and that the Children of such Ecclesiastical Men will also most conscientiously do their part to observe the Directions of their Parents and to follow their holy examples This was a thing that God took for granted of Father Abraham that he would take upon him to Teach as one having Authority and that his Godly Dictates would be admitted by all whom he owns for his Sons I know that he will Command his Children c. 3. Thirdly here is the full extent of that duty which lies upon Parents and this upon Children those to give and these to receive good Precepts that they should keep the way of the Lord And then that way is made plain before them it opens it self into these two ways to do Justice and Judgment 4. Fourthly here is the ample recompense of doing these duties with extraordinary application it shall derive a Temporal and Eternal Blessing upon the heads of such well-governing Parents and such well-Disciplin'd Children for these rewards are imply'd sufficiently by that promise that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him 1. Here is establish't the Duty and Authority of Parents to propagate true Religion to their Children and the Obligation of their Children to receive it from them For the due exercise of that Paternal Power and this Filial Obedience is requir'd by Almighty God respectively of both Parties requir'd in the Persons of Abraham and his Descendants that he should Command his Children and his Houshold after him to keep the way of the Lord. That all Parents

have a Commanding Power over their Children is so certain that the first and surest Foundation of Government was laid on Paternal Right From God the great King of all the Earth or from the Son of God by whom he made the World and by whom he governs it From this Almighty King-maker the first and greatest Monarch was the first Man whom the Apostle styles the Son of God and he was also the Father of all his Subjects Whoever the second was and probably it was Methuselah who liv'd some Centuries in Adam's Lifetime and dyed immediately before the Flood the Third was Noah he that began again the Government of a New World Then Nimrod the first Tyrant lift up himself and then we hear of Melchizedeck a King and Priest to whom Abraham paid his Tithes And so we come to Abraham himself He was the chief and Head of the Holy Line as I may call it and what his Character was appears from that Address the Children of Heth made to Abraham Hear us my Lord thou art a Prince of God or a mighty Prince among us Now though I grant that Universal Monarchy was gone long before this though I do not deny that before this time the Dispersion of Men the Confusion of Languages and the necessity of other Accidents had introduc'd some other forms of Government as Elective Monarchies Aristocracies and perhaps Democracies which Governments where they are Lawfully settled and Establish't must for Conscience-sake be obey'd yet if we believe this Book of Genesis concerning the Original of humane Society we cannot disbelieve this account that the Original of such a Government as was necessary to support that Society was grounded upon Paternity and that Abraham as the Father of his Family exercis'd this Dominion to Command his Children not only those Begotten of his own Body but those also Born in his House or within his Territories But then since the World it self was made by God with this great end and design that he might have a Church upon Earth as St. Paul tells the Heathen Athenians Acts 17. God hath made of one Blood all Nations of Men to dwell on all the face of the Earth and hath determin'd the times before appointed and the Bounds of their Habitation that they should seek the Lord That is seek how to Worship and serve him What more effectual means could be us'd or what more natural method than that the same persons who brought us into the World should be oblig'd to bring us into the Church and to qualify them for this great work of Evangelists these two necessary things were provided for First God declar'd his Will how he would be Worshipp'd and serv'd to our first Parents and after them to the Patriarchs to the intent as the Patriarch David states it that when they came up they might shew their Children the same And as he gave our Fore-Fathers such a Supernatural Revelation as if they would keep it safe that would abundantly secure them from being Deceiv'd so he gave all Parents such a Natural intense affection towards their Children as made it hard for Parents to be the Deceivers of their own Children in the most important of all concerns That upon which depended no less than Eternity Upon this account the Commonwealth of Plato whose notions some would fain be reviving could be no Soil for Religion to grow in For his Community of Wives destroys the Principles of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Natural Love to the Children of their own Bowels a Principle upon which is founded the greatest security next to that of Gods promise to his Church that Men will be faithful and careful in delivering to posterity any thing of true Religion But to come home to my Text when God renew'd his Covenant with Abraham 't is plain he trusted him as chief of a Chosen Family with a Prophetick or Preaching as well as Ruling Power And the Priestly Office as well as that of Governour together with the double Portion was to be continued and settled upon his First Born though upon the Transgression of Reuben the Governing part was transferr'd to Judah the Priesthood to Levi and the Double Portion to Joseph And which is very remarkable the Sign of this Covenant with Abraham being Circumcision a painful and Bloody Ceremony as the Wife of Moses calls it yet from Abraham to Moses so many Hundred years all the Numerous and almost innumerable Multitudes of the Children of Israel were upon pain of Death oblig'd to submit to the Knife and to embrace the Religion of their Fore-Fathers without any Written Rule of Faith afforded them that we know of yet they were bound by vertue of Tradition from their Fathers concerning the Doctrine and Miracles which God vouchsaf'd to Abraham This Parents Transmitted to Children and the Chiefs or Elders of Israel for such we find there were when Moses was first sent to them deliver'd to the lower or younger sort of God's people Yet I am far from asserting this Delivering of Religion from hand to hand downward from Parents to Children to be always the only means or at any time the Infallible means to keep the Faith whole and undefiled I am well aware that from one sinful Generation to another Parents and Children have so fail'd they in delivering and these in receiving that which God revealed of himself and his Divine Will that Idolatry was all the Religion most Men had left them I only alledge this to be ever indispensably the Duty but I do not pretend it was constantly the Practice of Persons so neerly Related to one another And the stiffest defenders of the Oral-Tradition way in the Church of Rome may be as easily refuted as were those Sceptic Philosophers that denied Motion but had nothing to say when the Cynic rose up and walkt so they who maintain it to be impossible that ever their Faith should have chang'd need only be shew'd how much they themselves have alter'd it how they have sought out many Inventions and this for one as if their Fathers and Mothers adding to them if they please their Nurses too were the only Guardians even of the Christian Religion and Trustees for the Depositum of the Faith as if neither the Scriptures were able to make us wise unto Salvation nor the Church Representative or the Priests Lips could preserve Knowledge saving Knowledge nor propagate it so infallibly as the familiar Colloquies of those who have so often turn'd it into Old Wives Fables But if the Fathers of our Flesh as the Apostle calls them are not to be altogether relyed upon yet to go on to my Second part 't is to be hop'd such Fathers as be also Spiritual Fathers will never fail in this duty of Commanding their Children to keep the way of the Lord. And that such Instructors and Directors of the Tribe of Levi shall never fail in the Church that Gracious Promise or Prophecy is our abundant Security Thus saith the Lord the