Selected quad for the lemma: sin_n
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A35074
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A sermon preached at Holy-Rood House, January 30. 1681/2. before Her Highness the Lady Anne. Tho. Cartwright ...
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Cartwright, Thomas, 1634-1689.
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1682
(1682)
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Wing C704; Wing C704A; ESTC R170908
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23,302
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36
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the score to the commission of such horrid Crimes against both the King and the People and yet not have their names once called to an account for any injustice But we have too much cause to say of the Spawn of these Blood-suckers Gen. 49. 7. as Jacob did of Simeon and Levi Cursed be their Anger for it was fierce and their Wrath for it was cruel I mean the Worshippers of that Scythian Diana which was once fed with so many inhumane Sacrifices and to which as to another Molock so many men of Parts and Piety of Courage and Loyalty aswel as Children were compelled to pass through the fire Not to swim along with the stream of their Rebellion was present drowning Crede aut jugulum dabis might have been their Motto considering how many mens lives and fortunes were sacrificed to their revenge and passion there was no need nor noise of liberty of conscience when that Religion was rampant Now if these were Saints who were Scythians If these were the Children of God which are the Sons of Belial If these were the Failings of the Righteous which are the Crimes of the Wicked Let them wipe their mouths as clear as they can they were taken bloody handed and their treachery deserves to travel in a Proverb to the end of the World till they can wash either their hands or mouths in innocence from this great Transgression Some of the more moderate men if indeed there can be any moderation in Rebellion perhaps if they had not found it easier to lay on their Hounds than to rate them off would have desisted sooner but yet they remembred so much of their Practice of Piety I mean of Machiavel's Instructions that they would neither stand so close to the King as well as they lov'd him as to be oppressed with his ruine nor yet so far off but that when his ruine came they might be able to rise upon some parts of it They pretended to deserve aswel of the Traytors and Usurpers then as they do now of the King and as Godly as they were the Crown and Church-lands were a great Gain to them they thought it a mortal sin to rob either but not so much as a venial one to buy the stollen goods But to think that any Reasons of mine or Convictions of their own should make them believe that this sin might be laid to their charge were to entertain a better opinion of their Piety and my own Parts than either of them deserve Never was any Parricide committed with so high an hand as this it was done by the joynt agreement and contrivance of the two Imps of Rebellion those Brethren in iniquity whom Faction coupled and Interest divided for they strugled together in the Womb of Ambition till the elder was indeed craftily supplanted by the younger who carried away the long expected Fruits of the others Plots and Practices This made them so very busie when the work was over to shift off the guilt of this execrable Act from the one to the other and whether of the two Harlots was indeed the true Mother of this Monstrous Birth you will best know by attempting to divide it Solomon would have judged it to belong to her who would rather part with it all than accept of half and then the Elder Brother is the principal Murderer Their case in short was this The One granted Commissions to fight against the King but yet they would be thought to have provided for his Personal Safety in a Parenthesis of fair Words they could not sleep in their Beds for fear of the King 's being murdered and the other judged it as lawful to behead him The one gave the Council and the other the Stroke The one laid the Train and the other fired it The one devoured the Prey and the other gave a Blessing to it The one carried on the Rebellion in the four first Acts of the Tragedy and the other were the bloody performers of the fifth The one sharpned the Ax and the other stroke with it The one brought his Royal head to the block and the other severed it from his shoulders The elder of the Twins bound his Father and the Younger butchered him The one first murdered the King of Great Brittain the other the Person of Charles the First Vel neutrum flammis ure vel ure duos they run at least parcel guilty and both of them certainly washed their hands in his blood how desirous soever they have been since to wash them of it But to whether of the two the sin is more properly chargeable I had rather a better Casuist would resolve them Between them I am sure they have brought the greatest scandal upon the Protestant Religion and the English Nation imaginable making it as much the Scorn and Reproach as before it was the Envy and Glory of the World Pudet haec opprobria nobis Et dici potuisse non potuisse refelli God grant our Posterity may learn to be ashamed of those Actions which have brought such an obloquy and disgrace upon us as to make us the sole object of publick execrations and curses And that especially considering what a vast Treasure they squandred away to purchase his destruction who was the chief Instrument of their preservation and in fine their own destruction too for Quid tu si peream ego What became of the Peerage when Prelacy and Kingship were run down Then was a time when Actaeon-like they were worried by their own Hounds till they had learned that Nemo gratis malus est that they had bought their iniquity at a dear rate and better they had never been born than that the guilt of their iniquity should lie so heavy upon them and the punishment devolve as it did upon so many thousands besides them But like blind Sampson so they gratified their own revenge they were utterly regardless how many they destroyed in plucking down the glorious Fabrick of Church and State about their ears No calling drank so deep of this bitter cup in that unnatural War as ours the States loss was not to be expressed but the Churches not to be imagined for our Priviledges and Revenues were not only taken from us by those Jews who would have Crucified Christ himself as they did his Vicegerent to get his Garments but our office it self lay ableeding and was drawing to its last gasp if a Miracle of Providence had not sent us such a Sovereign such a Nursing Father as God hath now blessed us with to revive it Now if when so many frightful circumstances meet together to wring tears from our eyes at the resentment of such an inconceivable loss do not ingage us in a serious lamentation and if our sobbs do not grave the remembrance of our Martyr'd Sovereign in our hearts in Characters as great as was the Crime of His Murderers we are more insensible of God's Dealings and our own Demerits then becomes us There were more Judases than one
give you Epimetronti something more than the measure of an ordinary Sermon upon such an Extraordinary Theme and Time at least when your patience gives me over endure the rest as an easie Penance for the heavy Sin of the day And I hope you will not think that I shake hands with my Text whilst I take this just occasion of showing you how well it does accord with the Time comparing the Eternal stain of this day with the Sin of that and the guilt of the Regicides with that of the Jews by which we may be the better convinced that as the King himself of his Princely Pity to us did so had we need to cry aloud for our Pardon humbling our selves and renouncing that abhorred murder of God's Anointed Servant and our lawful Soveraign least when he come to make inquisition for Blood his innocent Royal blood be still justly required of us and our Posterities Now though the Charitable Martyr hid his Enemies sin in such a terminus diminuens as the close Phrase of this sin yet the faithful Minister may not 't is for him to search it that he may see whether it be not like that of Cain greater than could be forgiven The sin therefore though but express'd in two words must be explain'd in many more 't is a comprehensive Villany its name is Legion never any sin had so great a train of Hell as this it is like a Mathematick Line divisible in semper divisibilia I shall but reckon up its Aggravations as the unjust Steward did his Masters debts of a thousand set down but fifty and yet I expect to tire my self and you too before I leave it Gentle Language does but water Sin and make it grow again and he who treats it civilly is guilty of its increase which I would be loath to be of Rebellion and yet should we strain courtesie with this the most plausible term we could give it would be Murder a sin which like an armed Gyant will first or last set upon its Authors and rend them with inward torments And 't is therefore above all other sins so hedg'd about with Thornes even in this life 't is ten to one but Vengeance meets it 'T is scelus infandum a wickedness too great for any expression The Act it self is abominable but the Object makes it execrable a sin out of measure sinful such a stupendious Villany it was as our posterity will hardly find Faith enough to believe 'T is the Murder not of a private man but of a King the best of men And if Alexander's killing of Calisthenes was in Seneca's Judgment crimen aeternum what shall so damnable a Paracide this Regicide be in ours If ever any Corps deserved to swim in Teares 't was his And if ever any Villany did match that of the Jews in the Crucifying of Our Saviour 't was theirs in the Beheading of Our most gracious Sovereign For he was not such a Pharoah to us as to change a Kingdom of Free-men into an House of Bondage He neither enslaved us in our Persons Labours Possessions nor Vnderstandings and 't is a great Truth which may be said without danger of Flattery that His Son walkes after him nay so much greater was His care for us than himself that how much soever our encroaching fingers itch'd to be tampring with his Prerogative as they still do with His Son's he took care we should be abridged no liberty of the Subject unless it were a Licence of destroying our selves of which we in this Age seem as fond as in the last and so far was He from invading our Rights that none was ever so forward to part with his own in which I pray God His Son Our gracious Soveraign walk not too much after him diminishing it in so many particulars as left him open at last to the losing of all the rest Witness the Petition of Right passed by him in June 1628. An Act of such Royal grace as might easily have put us into an extasy of admiration In so much as that when he passed that Bill he almost dealt with his People as Trajan did with his Praetorian prefect put his Sword into their hands and bid them use it for him if he ruled well if not against him he acted rather like a Steward for his people than a Lord over them and so would his Son do too if we would let him Had he without any tryal of Law made his pleasure pass for Sentence and lop'd off these rebellious Members and the rest of the Senators heads as Tarquin did Poppyes Had he made them feel such times as Tacitus describes where no man durst be vertuous least he should be thought to out-brave his Prince and yet to complain of their hard usage had been Capital and had his Subjects like Naboth been stoned for their Vineyards they might have used the Churches arms Prayers and Tears not Swords or Guns as they did against him but God knows so far was he from bearing justly the vast load and guilt of all that blood which had been shed in our unhappy Wars which some men would needs charge upon him to ease their own Souls that he was evermore afraid to take away any mans Life unjustly than to lose his own He resisted our enemies to the blood and chose to lose His own Head rather than one hair should fall from ours So that next to God and his good Angels we were most beholding to him for our safety Rerum prima Salus una Caesar He was indeed the Tutelar Angel of his 3 Kingdoms whom when God called to himself he quickly sent a destroying Angel among us And yet such was the touchiness of those times and it more than begins to be the same in these that though he intended not only to oblige his friends but his enemies also being perswaded that he could neither grant too much nor distrust too little yet his matchless favours did rather exasperate than win them their poysoned hearts turning all into venome The Martyr saw it clearly before he dyed and His Son cannot choose but see it now that malice is not abated by time nor appeased by any good turns Mâ—…chiav l. 3. c. 6. And that the Prince who would be wary of conspirators should be most jealous of those to whom he has afforded most savours With what monstrous ingratitude was his indulgence repayed whilst it forced him to observe that his letting some men go up to the pinacle of the Temple was a temptation to them to cast him down headlong and that others hydropicke insatiableness learned to thirst the more by how much the more they drank in so much that the fountain of his Royal bounty could not satisfie them An Epidemical disease it is which rages as much among the people of this age as of the last Nor is it any wonder that he did not answer the unreasonable expectations of these people For the least they expected from him was