Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A23768
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A sermon preached at Hampton-court on the 29th of May, 1662 being the anniversary of His Sacred Majesty's most happy return / by Richard Allestry ...
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Allestree, Richard, 1619-1681.
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1662
(1662)
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Wing A1164; ESTC R22785
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20,182
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53
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Kings that we might live in godliness and honesty and still they were the same who sought the Lord their God and David the King But why David their King for could his Kingdome disappear and be to seek of whom the Lord had said I have sworn once by my Holiness I will not fail David Psal. 89. And his Throne therefore was as sure as God is holy But yet the Lord had said to the people of Israel If ye doe wickedly ye shall be destroyed both you and your King There are other sins besides Rebellion and Treason that murder Kings and Governments Those that support their Ills by their dependencies and use great shadows for a shelter to rapacity oppression or licences or any crying wickedness these prove Traitors to Majesty and themselves strike at the root of that under which they took covert fell that and crush themselves National vices have all Treason in them and every combination in such sins is a Conspiracy If universal practice palliate them we do not see their stain it may be think them slight but their complexion is purple Common blood is not deep enough to colour them they die themselves in that that 's sacred Nay these do seem to spread contagion to God as if they would not let the Lord be holy nor suffer that to be which he swore by his holiness should be for the Psalmist cries out Where are thy old loving kindnesses which thou swarest unto David But sure some of God's oaths will stand if not those of his kindness those will by which he swears the ruine of such sinners and God that is holy will be sanctified in judgement upon them Yea upon more then the offenders for the guilty themselves are not a sacrifice equal to such piacular offences Innocent Majesty must bleed for them too If you doe wickedly you shall be destroy'd both you and your King Thus when God would remove Iudah out of his sight good Iosiah must fall and the same makes them be to seek David their King But how David their King when 't was Zorobabel for with Theophylact and others I conclude he must be meant in the first literal importance of the words It was the custome of most Nations from some great eminent Prince to name all the Succession so at once to suggest his Excellencies to his followers and to make his glory live Now without doubt David was Heroe enough for this and his valour alone sufficient to ground the like practice upon And though we do not find that done yet we do find his piety and his uprightness made the standard by which that of his Successors is meted Of one 't is said he walked in the waies of David his father of another he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord but not like unto David his father And because David went aside and was upright with an Exception once therefore it is said The Lord was with Iehoshaphat because he walkt in the first waies of his father David But besides this his very name is given to two Zorobabel and the Messiah both which were to be the restorers of their people the one from Sin and Hell to re-establish the Kingdome of heaven it self the other to deliver his people from Babel and to repair a broken Nation and demolish'd Temple And for this work God bids them seek David their King The waies from Babel to Ierusalem from the Confusion of a people to a City that is at unity in it self the City of God where he appears in perfect beauty and where the throne of the house of David is must be the first waies of David in those he walk'd to Sion and did invest his people in God's promises the whole land of Canaan In those Zorobabel brought them back to that land and Sion And in these our Messiah leads us to Mount Sion that is above to the celestial Ierusalem does build an universal Church and heaven it self And all that have the like to doe must walk in those first waies fulfill that part of David and must copy Christ. Such the repairers of great breaches must be these are the waies to settle Thrones the onely waies in which we may find the goodness of the Lord which to fear is the third direction and my last part They shall fear the Lord and his goodness 3. That Israel who came but now out of the furnace should fear the Lord whose wrath did kindle it whose justice they had found such a consuming fire as to make the Temple it self a Sacrifice and the whole Nation a burnt-offering is reasonable to expect but when his goodness had repair'd all this to require them to fear that does seem hard That that goodness which when it is once apprehended does commit a rape upon our faculties and being tasted melts the heart and causes dissolution of soul through swoons of complacency that this should be received with dread and trembling is most strange Indeed the Psalmist saies There is mercy with God that he may be feared for were there not we should grow desperate but how to fear those mercies is not easie 'T is true when God made his goodness pass before Moses shewed him the glory of it as he saies in those most comfortable attributes the sight of which is beatifick Vision Exod. 34. 6 c. The Lord the Lord God merciful and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin if that which follows there be part of it forgiving sin and that will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation if this be one ray of the glory of goodness if it dart out such beams alas 't is as devouring as the lake of fire his very goodness stabs whole successions at once and the guilty may tremble at it for themselves and their posterity But if those words doe mean as we translate those very words Ier. 46. 28. I will not leave thee altogether unpunish'd yet will not utterly cut off not make a full end of the guilty when I visit iniquities upon the children but will leave them a remnant still then there is nothing dreadful in it but those very visitations have kindness in them and his rod comforts and this issue of his goodness also is not terrible but lovely To fear God's goodness therefore is to revere it to entertain it with a pious astonishment acknowledging themselves unworthy of the crums of it especially not daring to provoke it by surfeting or by presuming on it or by abusing it to serve ill ends or any other then God sent it for those of piety and obedience not to comply with which is to defeat God's kindness and the designs of it If when they sought the Lord he was found of them and came to his dwelling-place onely to be
A SERMON PREACHED AT HAMPTON-COURT On the 29th of May 1662. BEING The Anniversary of His Sacred Majesty's most happy Return BY RICHARD ALLESTRY D. D. and Chaplain to His MAJESTY LONDON Printed by I. Flesher for Iohn Martin Iames Allestry and Thomas Dicas at the Bell in S. Pauls Church-yard MDCLXII TO The Right Honourable EDWARD Earl of Clarendon Lord high Chancellor of England and Chancellor of the University of Oxford My Lord TO vouch your Lordships commands for the publishing this Discourse I might reasonably think would be to libel your judgement and the prefixing your Name to it and this mean address would look rather like revenge then homage or obedience if I did not know that low performances are due to the transcendency of such a subject as I then discours'd upon and such a Patron as I now dedicate to So I lie prostrate under my great Arguments here insufficiency is Art and Rhetorick And the truth is my Lord it was not this which made me so sollicitous to avoid your injunctions but apprehensions of the unusefulness of the Discourse it self When God's most signal methods of all sorts do not seem to have wrought much conviction when neither our own dismal guilts nor miseries nor most express miracles of deliverance have made us sensible but after the equally stupendous 30th of Ianuary and 29th of May and the black time that interven'd we are still the same perverse untractable people when luxury is the retribution made for plenty licence for liberty and Atheism for Religion whil'st miracles of mercy are acknowledg'd only by prodigies of ingrateful disobedience and on the other side when factious humors swell against all Laws as they would either over-flow those mounds or make them yield and give way to them when Declarations and Decrees which were infallible when they came only from a party of a part of a Parliament are neither of force nor esteem when they have all solemnity and obligation that just and full authority can give alas what hopes of doing any thing can a weak Harangue entertain But my Lord since you are pleas'd to command I give up both it and my understanding to your Lordship and the weaker the Discourse is so much the more pregnant testimony is it of the obsequiousness of My Lord Your Lordships most devoted and most humble servant RICHARD ALLESTRY HOSEA 3. 5. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their King and shall fear the Lord and his goodness HE had said in the words before that the children of Israel shall abide many daies without a King and without a Prince without a sacrifice and without an image or altar and without an Ephod and without Teraphim Now when they shall have been for many years in such a state of helpless desolation shall have no King under whose shadow they their laws and rights might hope for shelter no Prince to guard them from the sad calamities of wild confusion or usurping violence shall have no exercises of religion to allay and soften those calamities and give them comfort in the bearing of them no Altar to lay hold on for security against them or to stretch out their hands towards for deprecation of them no nor a God to put an end to this sad state nor any means of direction what to doe under it no Ephod to ask counsel at nor yet the pageantry the fallacy of these no Teraphim for Ephods nor Image for a God the same destruction having seized these and their worshippers the people and their Idols going into Captivity together and the onely true God having forsaken them Now when the Prophet had denounc'd this state of Woe which was to dwell with them so long as that their very expectations of deliverance should be dying having continued threescore years and ten a longer and more wearisome age of patience then life he then proceeds to sweeten all by telling them of a return and what things they shall doe in it and they are three First Seek the Lord their God apply themselves to his Worship and Obedience and cleave to him for so the word is rendred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lev. 19. 31. and Ieremy repeating this c. 30. 9. words it shall serve the Lord their God and David their King Which is the second thing they were to doe As the Ecclesiastical state was to be setled so the secular too upon its just foundations Religion and Loaylty both running in their ancient current Thirdly They shall fear the Lord and his goodness not onely tremble before him who is the Lord that did exert his power in their destruction but shall much more revere his goodness that did flow out in such plentiful miraculous expresses of deliverance Now these being not onely prophecy what in that juncture they would doe nor onely duties what they were to doe but also counsels and directions immediately from God what they were best to doe the onely prudent and safe course according to the policies of heaven the direct view of these particulars in reference to that state of theirs is not an unconcerning prospect at this season which is the Anniversary of an equal return and therefore I shall lay them so before you and the reflexion on them in our practice shall make the application 1. They shall seek the Lord their God is my first part and the Lord 's prime direction for the repairing of a broken Nation Neither indeed can any other course be taken for till we have found him while he does hide his face nothing but darkness dwells upon the land or if any light do break out 't is but the kindlings of his anger so he expresses Deut. 31. 17. This people will forsake me and break my Covenant then my anger shall be kindled against them and I will forsake them and hide my face from them and they shall be devoured and many evils and troubles shall befall them so that they will say in that day Are not these evils come upon us because our God is not amongst us This absence is onely another word for desolation Be thou instructed ô Ierusalem saith God by Ieremy c. 6. 8. lest my sould depart from thee and I make thee desolate a land not inhabited As if without him there were nothing else but solitude in Cities and in Courts and all were desert where he does not dwell Yea there is something beyond desolation Hos. 9. 11 12. As for Ephraim their glory shall flee away like a bird from the birth and from the womb and from the conception though they bring up their children yet will I bereave them that there shall not be a man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yea wo also to them when I depart from them And it must needs be so for let our state be never so calamitous if God be not departed there is comfort in it and a deliverer at hand If we are in the place of dragons his presence