Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A53926
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A sermon preached at the funeral of Sir Henry Johnson, Kt. who was interr'd in the chappel at Popler, November the 19th. 1683 / by Samuel Peck ...
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Peck, Samuel.
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1684
(1684)
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Wing P1037; ESTC R33040
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13,357
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29
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That 't is Eternal 5. And lastly That which is the chief of all you have here the Believers Right and Title to it we know 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very top of Faith we are sure As certainly assured by Faith that we shall have it as if we did now possess it So sure is it so certain are we of it that the Apostle speaks in the present Tense 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not we shall have but we have an House not made with hands Eternal in the Heavens Thus you have in the Terms and Epethites which the Apostle gives this Building in the Text a shadow or glimpse of Heaven of that Blessed and Glorious Estate which the Faithful enjoy after this Life The fulness whereof no Tongue can utter or Words express for saith the Apostle Eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor can it enter into the heart of man to conceive what things God hath prepared for them that love him O! Who then would be an Atheist who would be irreligious or prophane and so at once cut himself off from all hopes of all this Glory Surely Religion is not an idle empty Thing that brings such rewards to all the serious Professors and Practisers of it 'T is not in vain to be holy and to serve God in good earnest There is a reward for the righteous and our labour in the Lord shall not be in vain to us The wicked indeed may be said to have an house and an eternal house too prepared for them in another world but 't is a sad one Tophet is prepared for them of old saith the Prophet the pile whereof is fire and much wood and the breath of the Lord as a river of brimstone continually kindling it A state of Sorrow weeping and mourning for ever and ever But the House or Dwelling-place of the Righteous hereafter is in the Heavens an House of Light of Joy and Rejoicing wherein they shall sing Praises and Hallelujahs to the Lamb that sits upon the Throne for evermore O how should the belief and hope of this push us on to the greatest perfections of Holiness and severities in Religion if thereby we may attain to an assurance of our right to this heavenly Habitation How should this make us contemn the world with all its inconsiderable nothings How should this bear us up under and chearfully carry us through all Afflictions and Troubles all reproaches and scorns in this World In a Word How should the hope and prospect of this Glory of this Coelestial Palace and Eternal life to come steal us against death vanquish from our souls all slavish fears of the dissolution of these bodies and moderate our Sorrow forour departed Frien ds and Relations who have given us any hopes that they have but changed this earthly house for that glorious Building of God Eternal in the Heavens where we hope one day to meet and enjoy them and they us without Sin Sorrow or Fear of parting more for ever and ever I have said what I intended on the Text But I have now another Subject to enter upon of which it is but fit and necessary somewhat be spoken that is Sir HENRY JOHNSON whose Remains lye yet before us And here I could be large but both the Time and the particular Acquaintance which most of you had with him commands Brevity Nor is it so much my design in what I have to say to praise the Dead whom our Praises can neither reach nor profit as to provoke you that are living to imitate him in what is good and praise-worthy And to let you see 't is possible for a man to be great and good too I shall omit to speak of him as he once stood in those Relations of an Husband Father or Friend in every of which there are many will testifie he deserved an Euge but shall consider him only as a Christian and here let his own works speak for him both living and dying Some of which I shall set before you from my own Observation and others from credible and undoubted Information All the Time I have known him now near fourteen Years I have observed him religiously inclined not only free from the gross debaucheries and sinful excesses of this Atheistical and corrupt Age wherein he lived from those open Vices and Immoralities which many of his rank are tainted with and are not at all ashamed of but very serious in his Discourses grave and exemplary in his whole deport No encourager of Faction or Rebellion no friend to or favourer of Prophaneness or Irreligion but the contrary a Countenancer of Religion and Loyalty this I know I doubt not to say without fear of Controul that Sir Henry Johnson was one who both feared God and honoured the King a pair of Vertues as inseparable as Commendable which I wish more were endued with that make as great a figure in the Word now as he once did As to the former of these his Religion towards God I need mention but this one Demonstration of it That commendable and Religious Order that he constantly kept up in his Family by Prayer reading the Scriptures and good Instructions to the members of it especially upon the Lords Day or Sundays which he was a strict observer of This I my self have sometimes seen and those of his Houshold can bear Testimony to the truth of it and I have often heard him say that those Servants that would not submit to and comport with this Discipline were no servants for him I wish more Gentlemen were of his mind so that he seemed to have taken up Joshua's Resolution As for me and my house we will serve the Lord. As to his good works his pious and charitable deeds both in his Life and at his Death I presume not to give an exact Account of them from my own knowledg but as I am informed and in recounting these I know no reason why that charritable Act of his to the Poor of Wapping in the late dreadful Fire there may not be remembred Since many of you know he was the first and chief Mover to obtain a Contribution to their present necessities and I know a liberal donor thereto himself which was a great a publick good work In the time of his life for divers Years last past besides his most private acts of this nature he every Sunday or Lords Day relieved Forty or Fifty poor Persons at his own house and that not with the Fragments of his own Table but with good and wholsome Diet provided on purpose for them and as he fed the poor in his life so he did not forget them at his Death having in his last Will bequeathed several Legacies to chairtable uses some of which I had an account of As To Two Hospitals Christ-Church and Bridewell To the Poor of Trinity House To the Poor of the East India Alms-house in this Hamlet To the Poor of Shipwrights Hall in Ratcliff To the Erecting and maintaining of an Alms-House for six poor Persons in Blackwall He hath also given Monies for the placing out of several Poor Children at Albrough in Suffolk and for the maintaining of a Weekly Lecture at Saxmundum in the same County By these Charitable deeds he hath built his own Monument more lasting than those of Brass or Marble And I wish every man to whom the Divine Bounty hath liberally given the good things of this World would but go and do likewise And now I shall commit him to his bed of rest when I have said this one thing more That during his last long and tedious sickness in which I was sevral times with him he had many excellent expressions of God and the state of his own Soul I could mention divers and the occasions of them but then I should be tedious I will only recall some spoken to my self I bless God saith he for this affliction I would not have been without it for all the world And again when I told him I should visit him oftner if his ilness would admit me He replied I thank God I am never alone God is always with me and Christ is my Visitant who is above all to me and who I trust will work all in me and for me He often spoke of the Vanity of the World and not withstanding the large share God had given him of it declared himself willing to leave it Adding this with great earnestness and vehemency of spirit being sensible he was not wholly without enemies and what good man is I sreely sorgive all the world In a word When he received the Holy Sacrament which I administred to him in the time of his sickness as he received it with good devotion so he afterwards expressed himself very thankful to God for that opportunity blessing him for the refreshment he found in his soul by it I could mention more expressions of this nature that fell from him but I forbear These with the manner of his delivering them begot in me I confess a belief that he had upon his mind a real sense of God and a savoury relish of the great things of Eternity yea and an hope too of a better inheritance in the other World than he hath left behind him in this even of a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens To which blessed and glorious Estate God of his Infinite Mercy in his due Time bring every Soul of us for the sake of his Beloved Son who died for us Christ Jesus the Righteous To whom with the Father and Holy Spirit be Glory for ever and every Amen ERRATA In the Epist. 1. 17. for gloss r. glose page 11. l. 7. for if r. of page 13. l. 4. for lato r. luto FINIS Hab. 2. 13. 2 Pet. 3. 11. Phil. 3.20 Joh. 3. 13. 14. 1 Cor. 15. lat end
Isa. 38. 12. a little pining sickness quickly dissolves and makes an end of it For our strength saith Job is not the strength of stones nor our flesh as brass No our Earthly House is not framed of such strong and lasting materials 2. And like a Tent or Tabernacle it stands in continual need of repairation being shaken with every wind and shattered with every storm Nor is our Food or Physick or any other means which we use as daily props and preservatives to this Earthly House sufficient to support it without the Divine Protection There are so many Thousand casualties we are daily subject to that nothing less than a Divine Providence could preserve these Tabernacles one day And when by Sickness or Age they are tottering and falling nothing less than the same Power can repair or restore them 'T is God only that brings down to the grave and then saith return again ye children of men No wonder therefore that the wicked who by their obstinacy in sin withdraw themselves from under the Divine Protection and Providence do not live out half their days as David observes Psal. 55. 23. 3. Once more As a Tabernacle hath no foundation so no certain continuance in any place 't is here to day and carried to another place to morrow shewing us that the inhabitants are but strangers No more can we assure our selves any fixed habitation or abode in the body We are here to day and gone to morrow standing this hour and pulled down the next growing in the morning and like the grass in the evening cut down and withered Our Souls are but strangers in these Tents I am a stranger in this Earth saith David And I beseech you saith Saint Peter as pilgrims and strangers abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. Nay our bodies in respect of continuance are more uncertain than any Tabernacle Other Tabernacles may be removed this must God will certainly take it down it shall not continue when this earthly house shall be dissolved it must be so no help for it no avoiding of it That Decree can never be reversed It is appointed to man once to dye and after this the Judgment Heb. 9. 27. 1. O how preposterous then is the Care of most men whose contrivance is chiesly for the body to gratifie and please the flesh and to provide for it For it's Covetousness Ambition Voluptuousness which the Apostle calls the lusts of the flesh As if God sent them into and continued them in the World for no other end but as Cooks to dress up their bodies as well as possibly they could for the Worms As if they believed these earthly houses should stand for ever contrary to daily experience or that there were no habitation for the soul after the dissolution of this Tabernacle contrary to Divine Revelation The universal cry of the World saith David Psal. 4. is Who will shew us any good What shall we eat and drink Or wherewith shall we be cloathed And how shall we do to live in this hard World Never once asking their Souls in good earnest Soul what wilt thou do for that Bread which came down from Heaven How wilt thou do to be saved What shall thy state be eternally And what hope or assurance hast thou of an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens And how wilt thou be made meet to be partaker of that inheritance of the Saints in light Col. 1. 12. These things are not in all their thoughts Awaken thy Reason O man Is not thy Spirit an Heavenly Plant the immediate product of the Divine breath of the Eternal Wisdom and Power of God Is it not the impress and image of the glorious Trinity in its immortality in its noble faculties and capacitiy of honouring and enjoying the chiefest Good And shall not the life of this Soul run parallel with the life of God and line of Eternity Or do you think our Blessed Lord overvalued it in saying it should profit a man nothing to gain the whole world and lose his soul Mat. 16. 26. And is not thy body earthly frail and fading Do you not find it now and then tottering as if it were ready to drop down And is not the welfare of thy body involved in the welfare of the Soul and that for ever What madness is it then to take so much care for the former and so little for the latter To make so much provision for the Flesh and none for the Spirit To prefer Dirt before that which is Divine that which is bruitish before that which is the Picture of Gods own Perfections To love and admire the Box above the Jewel the Clay walls above the Treasure and to let the Vessel sink and yet presume to preserve the Passenger that saileth in it Certainly were not men poysoned with Atheism drowned in sensuality or scared and become sensless it were impossible they should act so much beneath the principles of a right Reason as well as of all Religion 2. And as inconsistent is it with Religion and Reason to be proud of our bodies of our earthly tabernacles tho never so fairly built For their excellency saith Job passeth away their beauty fades daily the poor Cottage decays of it self and must shortly to the dust to the house of corruption and rottenness and become a prey to the most contemptible worms O who can be proud of so mean a thing as a moth can crush Job 4. 19. a Fly choak or a single hair destroy and dash in pieces Yet such are our bodies which we take so much eare and are apt to have so high a conceit of But which is more the Lord beholds every one that is proud to abase him To be proud of it will provoke God to abolish it If we dote too much upon our dwelling-place he can quickly turn us out for at the breath of his mouth we perish at the blast of his nostrils we are consumed Let not our hearts therefore be puffed up with pride of nor perplexed with over-much care for these tabernacles that cannot long continue that are no better than a vapour which appears a little while and then vanisheth away Jam. 4. 14. 3. But let us from henceforward reckon it a matter of no small import and concern to us all seriously to reflect and consider how we are provided for the fall and dissolution of these tabernacles of our bodies 'T is our Saviours advice Matth. 24. 44. to be always re ady Down they shall dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return and how suddenly we know not for at our best estate we are altogether vanity Psal. 39. 5. 't is prudence to consider it not enough to talk of it to say we know it we believe it but as the Wise man adviseth Eccles. 7. 2. to lay it to heart to cast and consult with our selves in this as in other matters saying Hence I must and whither then whither must my next remove