Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A30293
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A sermon preached before the late King James His Majesty at Greenwich the 19 of Iuly 1604 together with two letters in way of apology for his sermon : the one to the late King Iames His Majesty : the other to the Lords of His Majesties then Privie Councell / by John Burges ...
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Burges, John, 1561?-1635.
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1642
(1642)
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Wing B5720; ESTC R313
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21,287
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32
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one faith one baptisme one religion the sweetest bands And assuredly whosoever should goe about to set up severall Religions should also goe about to sever the Prince and the people Thus have I bin bold this day but it is before the Lord and before his anointed Now for the Vse which belongeth unto my deare Soveraigne I humbly beseech your Majesty and speake it with a kneeling heart as becometh me and in the feare of God to stirre up your owne most noble spirit and to set your heart to seeke the good of your people for the house of God God gave you as this day to be borne for the good I am perswaded of all Christendome God hath brought you to this goodly Kingdome and established you in it with wonderfull peace and acceptance God hath given you goodly knowledge and it appeares in publique how able you are to teach all the duties of all Kings Now I beseech your Majesty remember what great things God hath done for you and answer him in goodnesse and set your heart as I know you doe to seeke the good of his people and specially of the house of God and be assured that so long as you shall maintaine and advance the house of God God will establish your house and your posterity so long as they shall uphold the Lords true service or else assuredly this Word of God hath no truth in it Now for the house of God that which is to be done is first to repaire it well and then to keepe it so The repaire requireth two things first that the people be built up in knowledge I thinke the Kings Majesty knoweth it not would God he did know it that there be very many of his poore subjects wonderfull ignorant the people in many places are naked and Aaron hath made them naked I meane the Ministry a naked Ministry hath made a naked people the Lord helpe them and incline the Kings gracious heart to pity them The other thing for the repair of the house of God is that the inside of the Lords house the gold of the Temple be looked to I meane that with knowledge there be joyned the power and practice of religion in a good conversation And herein beseech the Kings Majesty to give leave unto his poore servant to informe him that which perhaps he knoweth not that from the occasion which some foolish turbulent and proud spirits spirits of separation have given there is a name of common scorne cast upon every man that setteth his face towards the practice of true godlinesse Wherein I beseech your Majesty to consider if the life and soule of Religion be let out what will become of the body of it will it not fall and grow ugly and rot and become a shame unto it selfe Now as the things are to be looked to for the repaire of the house of God so to keepe it in a good repaire two other things are to be cared for First that the common enemy may be suppressed It was a noble speech and blessed be God that put it into the Kings royall heart to say He would shed the last drop of his blood rather then tolerate another Religion But the Lord will not suffer one drop of that precious blood to be shed that is prepared to be shed for him The other thing is to establish peace in the Church it selfe A worthy worke and fit for a King It is true and all men know it that while we have striven which way to entertaine Christ best as the Tribes of Judah and the ten Tribes did about the receiving home of David their King Shebah the Sonne of Brâ—hri hath wickedly blowne the trumpet of seperation and much hurt hath come in the Church of God by our unbrotherly and unfruitfull contentions for which godly men have beene much grieved the division of Ruben were great thoughts of heart But now thanked be God the hearts of men are more moderate and disposed to peace that a very little thing a small matter as I am perswaded would establish this Church of God in so good tearmes of peace as it never saw In which respect I am bold to speake unto your Majesty but I speake unto a most gracious King and to a wise King that can tell how to pardon things somewhat foolishly spoken when they are spoken from a well meaning heart I could speake it upon my knees if the place would beare it but my soule shall kneele before my Soveraine I beseech your Majesty take unto your selfe that Princely worke to strike through a peace in this Church of God I will not direct but pray leave to tell a story It is reported of Augustus the Emperour that supping with one Pollio he was informed that a servant of Pollios had broken a christall glasse of his Masters a foule fault if he had done it willingly if negligently a fault but for this the poore servant was adjudged to be cut in peeces and cast to the fishes a marvailous sore sentence for such a fault The Emperour reversed the sentence and thought it punishment enough to the servant to have bin in feare of such a punishment and after breakes all the glasses that they might not be occasion of like rigorous sentence afterwards I will not apply it but do humbly beseech your Majesty to use your owne most godly wisdome now to make peace in the Church when so small a thing will doe it that so the Bishops may love the poore Ministers as brethren and Ministers reverence the Bishops as fathers in the Lord as Hierom adviseth and every honest man wisheth they should doe The second Vse is to his Majesties servants and attendants to whom I may speake more freely but yet with reverence and as becometh me to beseech them that seeing it is the office and desire of the King to seeke the good of his people and specially of the house of the Lord they doe their faithfull service herein to the King and take heed that they hinder not any of his godly purposes towards his people or the house of God Curse ye Meroâ—h said the Angell of the Lord curse ye the inhabitants thereof because they came not out to helpe the Lord to helpe the Lord against the mighty If they were subject to a curse that came not out to helpe what shall such be as come out to resist to hinder The last Vse is to us all the Kings loyall subjects to stirre us up to be thankfull to God that hath given us a King that seekes our good and the good of Gods house and that we strive to walke worthy of such a blessing in all loyalty and reverence And if any man be otherwise minded let the Lords hand finde him out yea surely it will finde him out and make him an example And secondly this should admonish us to serve God and please him that so we lose not the benefit of a good King which the people sometimes doe for their owne wickednesse
of me But when I review some ambiguous speeches thereof in which your Majesty had great reason to suspect undutifull intentions in me I wonder more at that divine providence that carried me unawares upon such things as gave occasion of distaste to your Majesty to me of humbling under your displeasure which my sorrow should have bin the lesse if your Majesties dislike had broken out in a tempest of indignation and not in a melting griefe of a sweet and Princely spirit Now God even so deliver my soule out of all adversity as I was farre from purpose of grieving my Lord the King and as my heart is wounded for the griefe of your heart And yet unto this one affliction hath come another that all that faithfull Councell which I meant to have conveyed closely unto my dearest Lord as a word in season and which I thought my selfe bound unto as I would answer it to God to whom I had vowed it is now spilt and made not unprofibable onely but intolerable through an evill taste which my supposed intentions gave unto it And yet that my misery might want no weight there is this added that whiles the markes which your Majesty tooke notice of were as much hidden from the common hearers sight as they were from mine owne thoughts I am judged to be now committed for the Doctrines which were found and generall and never out of season for any State And so as I spake to the Lords with teares I am casually an occasion of that which is no honour to your Majesty for whose honour I entended that service and desire to sacrifice all things but my soule And these are the respects for which your poore prisoner is abased As for imprisonment it is in a sort but to be locked up in my Study and death it selfe were but to fall asleepe nor can I be disgraced in the world in which I never had or sought gracing Now for remedy I have but two receipts the one of prayer to God that can recover your favour to me the other of humble suit unto your Majesty for reliefe not so much out of prison as out of your Majesties displeasure Together with which suit I doe humbly present unto your Majesty upon my knees an account more sincere then cautelous of such things as your Highnesse desireth to be answered in First Some things I spake in mine owne phrase unpremeditate as that of the swelling of Princes hearts c. and of their mariage by their pictures and some things I aleadged out of Comines as of a fall from a horse a sharpe ague smiting in the wits division in the house c. in all which I take God to witnesse against my soule if I had any thought of aiming at or so much as knowledge of those respects which I was conceived to glance upon but spake therein as Balaams Asse did to his Masters understanding not to his owne Secondly for the generall discourse of the graciousnesse of Princes to their Subjects and the arguments and amplifications thereof I confesse upon my knees unto your Majesty that taking notice to my hearts griefe of the generall murmurings and complaints which every man heares sooner then your Majesty or your neerest servants as that you grace not your people you speake not to them you looke not at them you blesse them not and therefore say they you love them not fearing whereto the divell might carry such conceits I thought my selfe bound in conscience as on the one side by sundry Sermons and in sundry places to reprove all unthankfull and undutifull thoughts toward so gracious a King so on the other side in your owne presence to propone such generall discourse as your Majesty might make use of for your owne good and all ours that live as it were by your breath and yet without touch to your reputation in your peoples hearts For which I not onely did intend but so provide in my particular applications to your Majesty as I dare say that the honest hearers did reverence you the more as many testified at the instant by their teares arguments of good and not of bad affections toward their Soveraigne Thirdly and as for my speech of two beasts to be hunted away the tame beast and the wilde the flatterer and the false informer being an allusion to a speech of Diogenes I protest upon my knees unto your Majesty I ment not any two particular persons but kindes of such evill instruments of which there is no doubt but your Majesty hath more then two about you though I know them not Fourthly as to the point of the generality of a Princes favours and that simitude of Monopolies used in discourse thereof I likewise upon my knees crave leave to protest that I spake it not as thinking your Majesty to be strict hearted or handed or because I knew that some have ingrosed your favours but because that also is muttered of as if your favours were not immediate nor tole-free and because it hath beene the ordinary mishap of the best Princes to be so inclosed I thought it my duty ad majorem cautelam to advertise that under a generall discourse unto a wise Prince which I thought none could possibly and certainly apply unto particularities unlesse the fault were both certaine and open Fiftly For the second part of my Sermon and that discourse of furthering Religion I doe upon my knees crave leave to protest before the God of heaven that I spake nothing as doubting of your Majesties owne purposes and integrity of heart or to detract from the honour of your former proceedings amongst us which unhappily and unwillingly I forgot to relate but because I thought it my duty to stirre up your pure minde unto those things which belong unto your royall power and duty therein to which I confesse my heart moved me the more earnestly because it is generally complained that Popery and licenciousnesse grow upon us that the new and unwonted urging of the Ceremonies and Subscription beyond Law whereby six or seven hundred of the ablest Ministers in the Land are like to be put out the generall depraving of religious persons if they be conscionable under the scorne of Puritanisme as if the body of Religion standing upright men would yet cut the throat of it the connivency at Papists and Jesuites and too little regard of religious men the dignifying of such in the Church as never were of best desert gifts and report the withdrawing of Ecclesiasticall causes from the Parliament though in present and in your Majesties dayes safe yet in the President and succession of doubtfull consequence computed with the insolencies and brags of the Papists make many men sigh and grieve and say in secret that these things may be the tracies to Popery and that though your excellent Majesty intend the contrary yet being in your owne purposes led out onely against Dothan of the Puritans you may at last unwillingly and unawares finde your selfe inclosed