Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n
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A62608
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A sermon preach'd before the Queen at White-Hall, March the XXth, 1691/2 by John, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.
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Tillotson, John, 1630-1694.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing T1245; ESTC R16847
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15,855
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37
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of our happiness could change and the foundation of it be removed If God could be otherwise than powerful and wise and good all our hopes of happiness would be shaken and would fall to the ground But the Divine nature is not subject to any change As he is the Father of lights and the Author of every good and perfect gift so with him is no variableness neither shadow of turning All the things of this World are mutable and for that reason had they no other imperfection belonging to them cannot make us happy Fourthly God is such a good as none can deprive us of and take away from us If the things of this World were unchangeable in their nature and not liable to any decay yet they cannot make us happy because we may be cheated of them by fraud or robb'd of them by violence But God cannot be taken from us Nothing but our Sins can part God and us Who shall separate us saith the Apostle from the love of God shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword We may be stripp'd of all our worldly comforts and enjoyments by the violence of men but none of all these can separate us from God I am persuaded as the Apostle goes on with great triumph that neither death nor life nor Angels nor Principalities nor Powers nor heighth nor depth nor things present nor things to come nor any other Creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nor any other Creature Here is a sufficient induction of particulars and nothing left out of this Catalogue but one and that is Sin which is none of God's Creatures but our own This indeed deliberately consented to and wilfully continued in will finally part God and us and for ever hinder us from being happy But if we be careful to avoid this which only can separate between God and us nothing can deprive us of Him The aids and influences of his Grace none can intercept and hinder the joyes and comforts of his Holy Spirit none can take from us All other things may leave us and forsake us We may be debarr'd of our best friends and banish'd from all our acquaintance but men can send us no whither from the presence of God Our Communication with Heaven cannot be prevented or interrupted Our Prayers and our Souls will always find the way thither from the uttermost parts of the Earth Fifthly God is an Eternal God And nothing but what is so can make us happy Man having an immortal Spirit and being design'd for an endless duration must have a happiness proportionable For which reason nothing in this World can make us happy because we shall abide and remain after it When a very few years are past and gone and much sooner for any thing we know all the things of this World will leave us or else we shall be taken away from them But God is from everlasting to everlasting He is the same and his years faile not Therefore well might David fix his happiness upon God alone and say Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is none upon Earth that I desire besides thee When my heart faileth and my strength faileth God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever Sixthly God is able to support and comfort us in every condition and under all the accidents and adversities of human Life Outward afflictions may hurt our Body but they cannot reach our Soule and so long as that remains unwounded the spirit of a man can bear his infirmities God is intimate to our Soules and hath secret wayes whereby to convey the joyes and comforts of his Holy Spirit into our hearts under the bitterest afflictions and sharpest sufferings He can enable us by his Grace to possess our soules in patience when all other things are taken from us When there is nothing but trouble about us He can give us peace and joy in believing When we are persecuted afflicted and tormented He can give us that ravishing sight of the Glories of another World that stedfast assurance of a future Blessedness as shall quite extinguish all sense of present sufferings How did many of the primitive Christian Martyrs in the midst of their torments and under the very pangs of death rejoyce in the hope of the glory of God There are none of us but may happen to fall into those circumstances of danger and of bodily paines and sufferings as to have no hopes of relief and comfort but from God none in all the World to trust to but Him only And in the greatest Evils that can befall us in this life He is a sure refuge and sanctuary and to repeat the words of the Psalmist after the Text When our heart failes and our strength failes God is the strength of our hearts and our portion for ever Now what would any of us do in such a Case if it were not for God Human nature is liable to desperate straits and exigencies And he is not happy who is not provided against the worst that may happen It is sad to be reduced to such a condition as to be destitute of all comfort and hope And yet men may be brought to that extremity that if it were not for God they would not know which way to turn themselves or how to entertain their thoughts with any comfortable considerations under their present anguish All men naturally resort to God in extremity and cry out to him for help Even the most profane and Atheistical when they are destitute of all other comfort will run to God and take hold of him and cling about him But God hath no pleasure in fooles in those who neglect and despise him in their prosperity though they owe that also entirely to him but when the evil day comes then they lay hold of him as their only refuge When all things go well with them God is not in all their thoughts but in their affliction they will seek him early Then they will cry Lord Lord but he will say to them in that day depart from me ye workers of iniquity for I know you not Here will be the great unhappiness of such persons that God will then appear terrible to them so as they shall not be able when they look up to him to abide his frowns And at the same time that they are forc'd to acknowledge him and to supplicate to him for mercy and forgiveness they shall be ready to despair of it Then those terrible threatnings of Gods Word will come to their minds Because I called and yet refused I stretched out my hand and no man regarded But 〈◊〉 set at nought all my counsel and would have none of my reproof I also will laugh at your calamity and monk when your fear cometh when your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind when distress and anguish cometh
troubled at it Thus man walketh in a vain shew and disquieteth himself in vain courting happiness in a thousand shapes and the faster he follows it the swifter it flyes from him Almost every thing promiseth happiness to us at a distance such a step of Honour such a pitch of Estate such a Fortune or Match for a Child But when we come nearer to it either we fall short of it or it falls short of our expectation and it is hard to say which of these is the greatest disappointment Our hopes are usually bigger than enjoyment can satisfie and an evil long fear'd besides that it may never come is many times more painful and troublesome than the evil it self when it comes In a word man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards He comes into the world naked and unarm'd and from himself more destitute of the natural means of his security and support than any other Creature whatsoever as it were on purpose to shew that he is more peculiarly the care of a Superior Providence And as man of all the Creatures of this lower world is only made to own and acknowledg a Deity so God in great wisdom hath so order'd things that none of the other Creatures should have so much need of Him and so much reason to acknowledg their necessary dependance upon him So that the words of David are the very sense and voice of Nature declaring to us that Mankind is born into the World upon terms of greater dependance upon the Providence of God than other Creatures Thou art he says David there to God that tookest me out of the womb thou madest me to hope or thou didst keep me in safety when I was upon my mother's breasts I was cast upon thee from the womb thou art my God from my mother's belly Be not far from me for trouble is near Trouble is always near to us and therefore it is happy for us that God is never far from any of us For in Him we live and move and have our being And when we are grown up we are liable to a great many mischiefs and dangers every moment of our lives and without the Providence of God continually insecure not only of the good things of this life but even of life it self So that when we come to be men we cannot but wonder how ever we arriv'd at that state and how we have continued in it so long considering the infinite difficulties and dangers which have continually attended us That in running the gantlope of a long life when so many hands have been lifted up against us and so many strokes levell'd at us we have escaped so free and with so few marks and scars upon us That when we are besieged with so many dangers and so many arrows of death are perpetually flying about us to which we do so many ways lie open we should yet hold out twenty forty sixty years and some of us perhaps longer and do still stand at the mark untouch'd at least not dangerously wounded by any of them And considering likewise this fearful and wonderful frame of a human Body this infinitely complicated Engine in which to the due performance of the several functions and offices of life so many strings and springs so many receptacles and channels are necessary and all in their right frame and order and in which besides the infinite imperceptible and secret ways of mortality there are so many sluces and flood-gates to let Death in and Life out that it is next to a miracle tho we take but little notice of it that every one of us did not dye every day since we were born I say considering the nice and curious frame of our Bodies and the innumerable contingencies and hazards of human Life which is set in so slippery a place that we still continue in the land of the living we cannot ascribe to any thing but the watchful Providence of Almighty God who holds our soul in life and suffers not our foot to be moved To the same merciful Providence of God we owe that whilst we continue in life we have any comfortable possession and enjoyment of our selves and of that which makes us men I mean our Reason and Understanding That our Imagination is not let loose upon us to haunt and torment us with melancholick freaks and fears That we are not deliver'd up to the horrors of a gloomy and guilty mind That every day we do not fall into frenzy and distraction which next to wickedness and vice is the sorest calamity and saddest disguise of human nature I say next to wickedness and vice which is a wilful frenzy a madness not from misfortune but from choice whereas the other proceeds from natural and necessary causes such as are in a great measure out of our power so that we are perpetually liable to it from any secret and sudden disorder of the Brain from the violence of a Disease or the vehement transport of any Passion Now if things were under no government what could hinder so many probable evils from breaking in upon us and from treading upon the heels of one another like the Calamities of Job when the hedge which God had set about him and all that he had was broken down and removed So that if there were no God to take care of us we could be secure of no sort no degree of happiness in this World no not for one moment And there would be no other World for us to be happy in and to make amends to us for all the fears and dangers all the troubles and calamities of this present life For God and another World stand and fall together Without Him there can be no Life after this and if our hopes of happiness were only in this Life Man of all other Beings in this lower World would certainly be the most miserable I cannot say that all the Evils which I have mentioned would happen to all if the Providence of God did not rule the World but that every man would be in danger of them all and have nothing to support and comfort him against the fear of that danger For the nature of man consider'd by it self is plainly insufficient for its own happiness so that we must necessarily look abroad and seek for it somewhere else And who can shew us that good that is equal to all the wants and necessities all the capacities and desires all the fears and hopes of human nature Whatsoever can answer all these must have these following Properties First It must be an all-sufficient good Secondly It must be perfect goodness Thirdly It must be firm and unchangeable in it self Fourthly It must be such a good as none can deprive us of and take away from us Fifthly It must be eternal Sixthly It must be able to support and comfort us in every condition and under all the accidents and adversities of human Life Lastly It must be such a good as can give perfect