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A56701
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A sermon preached at St. Paul's Covent Garden on the day of thanksgiving Jan. XXXI, 1668 for the great deliverance of this kingdom by the means of His Highness the Prince of Orange from popery and arbitrary power / by Simon Patrick ...
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Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing P847; ESTC R18296
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19,982
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42
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follow and attend every one of them if we will heartily receive the present Favour that he doth us We find this true in his Spiritual Blessings He not only prevents us with the Blessings of his Goodness and is found of them that seek him not but when we do set our selves seriously and diligently to seek after him he not only graciously meets us as the Father is said to do to the Prodigal Son but is desirous to dwell with us and to take up his abode in us He would not give so little as a Pardon to a returning Sinner but his Holy Spirit the joys and comforts of an holy Life an assurance of eternal Bliss All his Laws likewise whereby he governs us not only gives inward Peace and Satisfaction to our minds when we are ruled by them but the happiness of our Bodies and of our Families and of whole Kingdoms and Churches inseperably twisted with the faithful observance of them For by these we come to be united in the most sweet and pleasing Relations of Familiars and Friends Nay his whole Religion if we would receive it secures the rarest Friendship among Men that is imaginable It Sows the Seeds of Love and Kindness of Peaceableness and Christian Communion of mercifulness and good works in their highest Perfection which must needs spring up into such a Familiarity as the Heathens themselves accounted the greatest Blessing in the World. There is nothing more demonstrable than this and it is no less plain that as all his Spiritual Blessings draw Temporal along with them so likewise the outward Blessings he bestows are intended as pledges not only of more Mercies of the same kind but likewise of diviner and nobler favours to our Souls There is no deliverance he gives us from temporal Calamities but he designs should draw us nearer to him who is the Fountain of all Good. He would give us himself together with it he would fill us with his love and increase our confidence in his goodness make us more fruitful in all good Works and dispose us to such a sense of him and of our duty that we may be every way happy together with all those who enjoy the same Blessing in common with us This is the Use we ought to make of all the marvellous Works of God which have been done among us far surpassing all our expectations They declare that God is near us He comes to see what entertainment we will give him He opens the door to see how we are disposed to receive him But let us not presume he is only near we may put him away and his Mercy from us VVe may shut the door against those divine Blessings those heavenly Graces which he would introduce into our Hearts 3. On these let us set our affections and since Gods presence with a People is the greatest matter of praise as these words intimate for he gives thanks for Gods wondrous works upon this account because they declar'd him to be with them let this be the principal cause of our joy this day because we hope true Religion will be more than ever promoted unfeigned godliness countenanced prophaneness and debauchery every where curbed regular and orderly piety incouraged all our unnatural heats quenched and our rigors abated brotherly love and kindness peace and concord firmly established For if we rejoyce merely because we hope peace and quietness will be secured plenty and abundance flow in upon us trade and commerce quickned riches increase and grow to a greater height and the strength and power of the Nation much exalted we may justly fear we shall have none of these long to rejoyce in but God will find some way as unexpected as our deliverance to punish us for our ingratitude to him Did not Jerusalem presume it was for ever secured after such a miraculous preservation as that in the days of Hezekiah for which the Psalmist it is probable in my Text gives the highest thanks to God And yet this very City in process of time was burnt with Fire not to mention the preceding calamities before this came the Temple destroyed and the People carryed Captive into a strange Land. And after God had inspired the heart of Cyrus to send them back to their own Country and given them such favour in the sight of the Heathen that they built their City and their Temple again and grew a very great Nation it s very likely that sleepy and careless minds might dream they were now under such a peculiar care of Heaven that no evil should henceforth befal them And yet they were again miserably harazzed and afflicted by Antiochus with a rage against them that differed little from madness The very same Confusions hath impiety made in the Christian World and that by the hands of contemptible Instruments Those that they dispised and thought themselves able to resist though they had been far stronger than they were got the the Mastry of them when the Sins of Christians had taken their Defence and Protection from them Many Examples of which have been observed by divers Authors out of Salvian What was it saith he that abandon'd Spain to the Vandals Were they the strongest of all the barbarous Nations No such matter but God would show these two Things First how much he hated the lusts of the flesh for he delivered the impure filthy Spaniards into the hands of a chast People And then he put them under the yoâ—e of the weakest Enemies that he might show it is not strength which prevails but something else they being over-run not by the force of their sluggish Enemies but by the Power of their own vices And how came France also to be vanquisht Why at that time it was but one great gulph of riot one Brothel-house of filthiness and uncleanness And when some objected and said these Gothes and Vandals are all Arian Hereticks sure God will give us the better who are good Christian Catholiques Alas replies that good Father what a folly is it to rely on this fancy what do you talk of being good Catholiques when almost all Religion is dirided by us what can the Prerogative of a Religious Name profit us what good can it do us to boast that we are the Faithful and they the Hereticks When we live as wickedly as the wickedest Heresy can make us we our selves could be no worse if our Opinions were as bad as theirs Once more how came these People to take the confidence to invade Africk had they an infinite number of Legions whereby they might hope to prevail No we are expresly told by good Authors that they were very small forces wherewith they wasted themselves over to those shores But it was an hand from above saith Salvian which carryed them thither to punish the horrid Vices of those Countries the whole Territory of Africk being nothing less than one huge House wherein all vices met and dwelt together It is a madness then unless we could shew some priviledg protection we have to secure us from those punishments which have come upon others to plung our selves into â—â—ose vices that Irreligion that Filthiness that Debauchery which hath undone so many They are the more deadly in us after such a deliverance as this They will cry to Heaven for vengeance on such Miscreants as are not satisfyed to have undone a Kingdom once or twice but in defiance of all that they have seen with their eyes as well as of what they have heard from the Report of ancient Times will proceed on still in their Trespasses to undo it over again God of his infinite Mercies inlighten our Eyes that we may see these things and strike our Hearts that we may consider them and implant in us such a reverend Sense of himself and of his righteous Providence that we may fear before him and obey him for our Good all the days of our Lives Amen FINIS
A SERMON Preached At St. Paul's Covent Garden On the Day of Thanksgiving Jan. XXXI 1688. For the great Deliverance of this Kingdom by the Means of his Highness the Prince of Orange FROM POPERY and ARBITRARY POWER By SIMON PATRICK D.D. Rector of St. Pauls Covent Garden LONDON Printed for Richard Bentley at the Post-house in Russel-street in Covent-Garden M DC LXXXIX To the Right Honorable WILLIAM Earl of Bedford Knight of the Noble ORDER OF THE GARTER My most honored LORD and PATRON My Lord I Had not the least thought either when I penned or preach'd this Sermon to publish it to the World but have been overcome to yield to it after a long resistance which is the reason it comes forth so late by the importunity of a great number of my Parishioners who perswade me they shall reap some profit by the Reading as they tell me they did by the Hearing of it If they so do they are bound very much to your Lordship for it by whose Eavour I was promoted to this Place where your Kindness hath not grown less to Me but so much increased That I cannot but take this Opportunity to assure your Lordship it shall never be forgotten by My Lord Your most Humble and Affectionate Servant Symon Patrick Feb. 7th 1688 / 9 Psalm LXXV 1. Unto thee O God do we give thanks unto thee do we give thanks For that thy Name is near thy wondrous works declare AS it is impossible to look upon the Curious Frame of the World and consider the Admirable Contrivance and Harmony in every part but we shall be inclined to Reflect upon a Supream and Almighty Wisdome which was the Author of it So we cannot take notice of the several Wonderful Events that fall out in the World beyond all Humane Expectation the strange Changes for instance and unlookt for Revolutions that there are in our own Affairs but it will dispose us to confess the Providence of God who with a Careful Eye doth superintend and see to the Government of every thing that he hath made The First of these is the Foundation of that Admiration Reverence and Awful Regard which we pay to the Divine Majesty As the latter is of that Devotion of Mind which we express in Humble and Hearty Prayers and Thanksgivings to him For were we never so sure that there is a God who Created all things by his Power yet we should not think of addressing our Supplications to him and offering him our Thankful Acknowledgments did we not also believe that his Care extends it self even as far as this Earth and reaches unto us the Children of Men. That 's the ground of this Hymn which the Divine Writer Composed in consideration of some Remarkable Passage of that Providence And that 's the Occasion which hath brought us now together to acknowledge with Thankful Praises as wonderful I am sure as unexpected a turn in the Assairs of this corner of the World as ever was In which if we do not see a Finger of God it is because we are Blind or which is worse shut our Eyes against the most evident Tokens of a Divine Hand Which hath given us Reason to express our Joyful Resentments in such Words as these Vnto thee O God do we give thanks unto thee do we give thanks For that thy Name is near thy wondrous Works declare What the Occasion of this Hymn was will be seen in the Progress of my Discourse In the entrance of which I cannot but take notice that the Psalmist was so full of Admiration Love and Joy when he consider'd what God had done for them that he was Transported thereby out of the Method of common Writers Who are wont to proceed from the Relation of Matters of Fact to set down the consequents of them and the Passions which they are apt to produce But here his Heart was pressed with such a mighty Sense of God's Goodness that he bursts out at the very first word into as Pathetick a Strain of Thanksgiving to him as can be conceived before he Relates what he thanks him for His Affection was suitable to the Benefits they had received both were extraordinary which Transported him to the greatest heigth of Devotion And that doth not so much follow Art as Nature which can attend to nothing else when it is possessed with Delightful Passions According to which Method of the Psalmist I shall in the First Place Treat a while of the Duty of Thanksgiving And then Secondly Proceed to show that the Works of God's Providence in the World ought to excite us thereunto And Thirdly that the more wonderful those Works are the greater in all Reason ought our Thankfulness for them to be And Lastly if I have time for it that we have this Reason for it among others that when God doth any wondrous Works they are an earnest of some greater Blessings he further intends to bestow if we do not unthankfully deprive our selves of them for his wondrous Works declare that his Name is near I. I begin with the Duty of Thanksgiving About which you must not expect an exact Discourse because it is not here to be considered in it self so much as in order to something else It will be sufficient to gather together such passages in this Book of Psalms as will in a plain and familiar manner express the Temper of a thankful Mind and shew withal from whence it arises I. And it begins in a diligent observation of the Benefits which are done unto us Of which if we take not a special notice they will be like the things that pass by a Blind Man's Eyes of which he never speaks and with which he is not at all affected Therefore after the Psalmist had so often Repeated this as the Burden of his Song O that Men would praise the Lord for his Goodness and for his wonderful Works to the Children of Men Psal CVII 8 15 21 31. he concludes all with these Remarkable Words which shew us the Fountain from whence these Devout Acknowledgements spring Whoso is wise and will observe these things even they shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord. None but wise observers can have any Sense of God's Goodness in the greatest Benefits which he bestows upon them Especially in such Providences as were brought about by a long Chain of Events one of which drew on another in a silent manner If a Man's Eyes be closed or if they roll about in unsteady and giddy motions he cannot take notice of such Objects as present themselves unto him nor receive their Salutations with any Sense or Acknowledgment And it 's the same case if a Man be lull'd Asleep in the Lap of sensual Pleasure or be grubbing like a Mole in the Earth If he attend I mean only to his own Private Gain and Advantage if he hath a thousand Projects in his Head for himself which busie all his Thoughts or be of a murmuring discontented Humour at