Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n
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A44417
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A sermon preach'd before the King and Queen at White-Hall, January XIV. 1693/4 by Geo. Hooper.
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Hooper, George, 1640-1727.
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1694
(1694)
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Wing H2708; ESTC R26068
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13,466
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36
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of saying we did not Know his Will we should alledge in our Justification that we were not willing to Doe it Through our humane Infirmity we did mistake in the Duties of our Religion but our Infirmity was this That we were unwilling to obey A much more absurd return than the careless Servant made in the Parable of the Talents Lord I knew that thou wert a hard Master and didst expect Obedience at my hands and therefore I would not understand thee But it is not our Duty only to inquire the Will of God it is our Priviledge and Honour to be able to understand it It s Study is the noblest Exercise and its Attainment the highest Ambition of a Rational Mind the Knowledge so great a Favour that we should have endeavoured after it at any price Should have bought that Learning with the expence of our Liberty And to be permitted to Understand should have offered to Obey That way the generous Appetite of Science should have mov'd in an Intelligent Creature nor has God in his ordinary method vouchsafed to reveal himself to Man on any other Condition His Disciples are to be his vow'd Servants to such only will he appear and certainly with no other will he dwell Ever since the first ungrateful Attempt to Know his Will by Transgressing it a Readiness to obey has been made the Preparative to that Knowledge and Obedience the Preservative the very Nature of his Doctrine requiring in us some Praedisposition a probationary Obsequiousness without which it will not be imparted and God having done it that Honour as that the Vnworthy should of themselves be render'd Vnqualified and Vncapable justly praecondemn'd to this Darkness now to whom is reserved the blackness of Darkness for ever For to the Vngodly says God What hast thou to do with my Law seeing thou hatest to be reformed and hast cast my Words behind thee Be thou ignorant as thou art as thou pretendest or deservest to be and await the Issue For a Desire to Know while we care not to Doe is such an impertinent saucy Curiosity as can never be gratified by our Lord and not to Doe what we already Know is so highly affronting that there remains no bolder a Presumption but to pretend to further Information nor can a lesser Punishment for the Abuse of this Knowledge be expected than its Forfeiture The Doctrine of God however it may be esteemed by Men is valued by the Author a Talent committed to the Hopeful only and the Promising nor to any but upon Account If we put it to no Use it will of its own Nature rust and diminish may be lost through Negligence or stoln by our Enemy or taken away by the Great Owner But if we exercise and employ it it will encrease and multiply of it self and by the natural Effect of our Industry and will besides be wonderfully bless'd and augmented by the Special Favour of our Lord who is gone indeed into a far Country but so as still to oversee assist and direct the honest Care and dutiful Labour of his Servants below For to our assured Encouragement the miraculous Power that first openly introduced the Christian Doctrine still invisibly attends it to cherish as heretofore the willing Beginning of its Disciples and to help on their obedient Endeavours And this Will whoever will Doe not only will Know it in orderly Consequence but he shall Know it supernaturally enabled by Divine Grace our Performance as certainly rewarded here with a progressive Knowledge as it shall be hereafter with the Joys of our Master and his Immediate Beatifick Vision FINIS
Dr. HOOPER's SERMON BEFORE THE King Queen At Whitehall Jan. xiv 1693 4. A SERMON Preach'd before the King Queen AT WHITE-HALL January xiv 1693 4. By GEO. HOOPER Dean of Canterbury and Chaplain in Ordinary to Their MAJESTIES Publish'd by Their Majesties Command LONDON Printed by Tho. Warren for Walter Kettilby at the Bishop's Head in St. Paul's Church-Yard MDCXCIV A SERMON Preach'd before the King and Queen JOHN vii 17. If any one will do His will he shall know of the Doctrine whether it be of God UPon our Blessed Saviour's Appearance among men there must have been much Inquiry and Dispute concerning Him His Miracles and his Doctrines were both of them singular and extraordinary they amazed and confounded the World his mighty Works making a change in the course of Nature and his surprising Discourses tending to as great an alteration in the Doctrines they had received from their Fathers and Rabbies Neither of them could be oppos'd his Actions not to be deny'd and his Words not to be contradicted and yet the People knew not well what to think were not come to a Resolution whether he was to be believ'd whether he spake from God or Himself or it may be from an evil Spirit The People were astonished at his Doctrine he spake it with that supernatural Authority Never man spake like this Man was the Return the Officers sent to apprehend him make in this Chapter to their Masters the High-Priest and Pharisees Neither did any man ever do like him for when Christ shall come will he do more miracles than this man was the Challenge of those that did believe And that the rest believed not on him who had done among them such works as no man had done was judg'd by our Lord in this Gospel to be the great Aggravation of their Sin For his Works were evident unexceptionable Testimonies of his Mission and to them he frequently remits the Vnbelievers for their full Conviction And yet for all this there were not many who believed on him those not the Rulers or the Learned neither continued they long in that just and well-grounded Perswasion Those who had seen his late great Miracle of the Loaves had fed of it had satisfied their Hunger and their Doubts almost all left him in a very little while for one hard Saying Many of his Disciples went back and walked not with him insomuch that the Twelve were asked Whether they would depart from him also And when afterwards he came up to Jerusalem there was great murmuring concerning him Some say he is a good man some say nay but he deceiveth the people They knew not how he should know Letters who had never learn'd and therefore in the best construction they would make Was not his Doctrine from himself and of his own Devising Now from the Reflection of these Surmises he here justifies himself in such a manner as retorts all the blame of those Doubts upon the Vnbelievers themselves giving them a plain account of this their Ignorance which thus perplexes them My Doctrine says he is not my own but from him that sent me and so much you could not but have known had you been rightly qualified for it But that after which you seem to be so curious and inquisitive you are not very likely to understand in the Method you take and the Disposition you are of if ye would discern the Will of God ye must be willing to do it He that will is desirous and ready to do God's Will he shall know it This is the Truth directly and primarily intended by the Text relating to the Doctrine as propounded to be known There is too another Consequent to this and to which the Words may extend regarding the same Doctrine as known already If any one will or shall do the will of God which he now knows in part he shall know it better and further be more confirmed and advanced in that his Knowledge by the Practice The first Proposition is this If any one is willing to do the Will of God as soon as he may have the Favour to be acquainted with it he when it shall be told him shall not fail to know and discern it And this Willingness to do we are to understand to be such as may answer in some measure to the Dignity Reasonableness and Necessity of the Work the Doing the Will of the great God a Will the most wise the most holy the most just most worthy to take place to which it is our Honour our Perfection and our Happiness to conform and no less our Duty and our Interest we that have been created by the Power of his Almighty Will ever since sustained by its gracious Providence still dependant and eternally obnoxious to the Favour or Displeasure of his final Will to be hereafter declar'd when he shall come to call us to account for that part of his Will he has already injoyn'd The Will of this our great LORD he that is thus willing to do will first be as earnest and zealous to know diligent and heedful in his Attention punctual and exact in his Inquiries lest he should be defective or mistaken when he comes to act in an Affair of so high a Nature and of such weighty Consequence And such a desire to know it must be confess'd would certainly follow But this may not seem at first sight to have been meant here by our Saviour and though he reflects upon his Auditors Unwillingness to do yet their Eagerness to know must we not suppose him to admit For very great Multitudes follow'd into Deserts to hear him and much Discourse and great Debates there were concerning him and his Doctrine But notwithstanding all this Appearance of Willingness to hear and to be inform'd there might have been no such great desire to know For Curiosity and Inquisitiveness is satisfied often with something short of Knowledge It is enough sometimes to have went to the Place whither others throng to have made up one of the Assembly and to have seen the fam'd Preacher Men too when they hear do not always attend their Eyes gaze and their Thoughts wander Or if they do it may be to the graceful Meen the sweet Voice the elegant Style the pathetick or the rational way of the Discourse and not to the merit of the Argument and purpose of the Doctrine Though they went not out into the wilderness to see a Reed shaken with the wind yet they might go to see a Man that cur'd such a Neighbour to be present at some strange sight themselves to be able to report a Miracle of their own knowledge or to be Guests at one of those wonderful Entertainments Or else they might have went to hear one who spar'd not the Greatest who rebuk'd the High-Priests and corrected the Scribes and Pharisees They might too have heard so much as not to be ignorant and yet not so much as to know as much as would let them understand