Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A81881
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The vanity of human respects. In a sermon. / By William Darel.
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Darrell, William, 1651-1721.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing D269B; ESTC R175904
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10,543
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27
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Him as well as That which He prescrib'd Himself GOD say they with the Old Pagan Maximus is too vast to enter Whole into Man's Vnderstanding He must be taken in Pieces and some must be contented to worship One Symbol and some Another as they judge convenient He is not so nice as Divines make Him 'T is Honour He requires without quarrelling at the Manner And therefore all Religions are good if supported by Morality Thus do these Men extol every Perswasion and are of None themselves They erect a new Pantheon yet adore no other Divinity but their own rambling Imagination Now that this fair Discourse vents foul Falsities 't is evident to All who are not resolv'd to be deceiv'd Whosoever hath cast but one Glance upon the Scripture cannot but know That as there is but One GOD and One Baptism so there is but One True Faith and that he who will not acknowledge this Church to be his Mother cannot have GOD for his Father Yet after all this Doctrine is so varnisht over with the specious Colour of Reason so sweetned with the bewitching Allurements of Liberty that Many admire it Some embrace it and Others have not Courage enough to condemn it They either imagine that Silence speaks loud enough their Dislike of it or it is not their incumbent Duty to be so Zealous for GOD's Honour as to expose their Own to the Capricio of Men from whom they cannot expect any Civility seeing their Malice is not aw'd by the Majesty of their Maker But for God's sake D. C. and your own do not let any Human Respects tie your Tongues when Zeal for your Maker's Honour commands you to speak If Impiety dare appear bare-fac'd give your Piety the same Freedom and be not more fearful to defend your Maker than his Enemies are to unthrone Him. Fly from them as from Men struck with the Plague and do not scruple to separate your selves from Those who have separated themselves from GOD. But if it be your Misfortune once to fall in so deprav'd a Company and God knows 't is an Accident may frequently happen in this Great City run not into it a second Time They are sick of a Mortal Disease and nothing is more Natural than to catch it To hant a Sinner is the next Degree to be like him Cum perverso pervertêris Do not say so monstrous a Blasphemy sounds too gratingly in the Ears of a Christian ever to be heard without Indignation Alas Alas Sins are but like Out-landish Monsters which at first fright us but in Process of Time delights us Neither be inveigl'd by the specious Name of a Friend for How can you in Prudence put one Grain of Trust in a Man who disavows all Fidelity to GOD from Whom he can both Hope and Fear more than from any Creature breathing But I confess few have so great a Respect for a Companion as for his sake to unmake their very Maker that is To deny His Being to whom they owe their Own. This servile Deference is only incident to Those who have lost all Conscience by redoubled Sins And then seeking a Remedy worse than the very Evil they perswade themselves there is no Hell Below to punish Crimes no GOD Above to recompense Vertues Nor will they be perswaded out of this Temerarious Tenet till Experience forces them to feel their Mistake Human Respects take their Range more ordinarily among Those who profess a Religion but dare not embrace the True One although they know it The Devil raises a thousand Black Imaginations in their Heads and their own Cowardize as many more And then these Aery Fancies which take their Terror from Apprehensions alone quash all Resolution but to Profess openly the Religion A-la-mode and Interiourly That which they are convinc'd to be the True One. But let me tell You D. A. This petty Piece of Policy will not do This Jumbling and Blending of Religions together makes but a Babel of Confusion which GOD detests Jehu was convinc'd of the Truth of the Mosaick Religion but to ingratiate himself with his Ethnick Subjects he plac'd the Calf on the Altar However this monstrous Mixture of Devotion was no better than Impiety and so the Holy Ghost hath publish'd to Posterity That He walked in the sinful Path of his Predecessor Jeroboam Which is as harsh an Epitaph as could be Ingraven on his Tomb. Do not then deceive your selves Dear Brethren by imagining you comply with your Obligation when you Erect a Temple to the True Religion in your Heart and an Altar to a False One on your Tongue St. Paul assures you Confessio autem â—it ore ad Salutem That a Publick Confession of the Truth is a necessary Requisit to Salvation But Oh Sir What will the World say if I leave The Religion in which I was Born to profess Another which is the continual Subject of Pulpit-Execration the common Theam of Railery and the never-failing Topick of all Invectives I must confess these Bugbears have frighted more than one Soul into Hell. But consult your own Reason a little I beseech you and then tell me Whether such weak Objections ought to oversway your Obligation or such childish Sophistry argue you into Damnation First If it be your Misfortune to have been Born and have spent the greatest Part of your days in a False Religion the greater is your Misery and therefore you cannot forsake that Error too soon which hath deceiv'd you so long Embrace rather a new-offer'd Light and do not sleep in an old Darkness Be not cruel to your selves seeing it hath pleas'd GOD to shew you Mercy Secondly I grant Our Religion hath not only been aspersed by the open Professors of Impiety but even by Those to whom a counterfeit Zeal gave a place among the Vertuous But you must know 't is no Crime to be Condemn'd but to be Guilty Was our Blessed LORD a Drunkard because the malitious Scribes and Pharisees term'd Him so Was He an Enemy to Caesar because Gaesar's Enemies affirm'd it Or Did He lay an Horrid Plot to subvert the Government because the Jews laid this Treason at His Door No no CHRIST's Enemy's Crimes and Perjuries could not blast His Innocence nor could yet His Church's Foes ever black its Reputation in the Opinion of Men who are greater Friends to Truth than Malice and who rather follow the Light of Reason than the Torrent of Faction Let Men call you then Superstitions Cruel and Idolatrous if you joyn your selves to Our Church the Sin is Theirs the Vertue of Patience Yours if you bear the Accusation without any other Concern than for your Persecutor's Sins And I am sure so great a Blessing ought infinitely to out-vy the greatest Malediction which can flow from the most inveterate Malice This is true Sir But after all the World will talk nor will all the Sincerity of my Intentions ever be able to perswade Men to put a savourable Construction on my Proceeding Spleen will blaze
THE VANITY OF Human Respects IN A SERMON By WILLIAM DAREL ISA. LI. Vers 7. Fear not the Reproach of Men neither be afraid of their Revilings Published with Allowance LONDON Printed for John Tottenham in London-House-Court in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1688. THE VANITY OF Human Respects IN A SERMON On LUKE II. Vers 49. Did you not know that I must be about my Father's Business GOD was not content to give us One Pledge of His Kindness by assuming our Nature but would add a Second by espousing our Miseries Those Showres of Tears with which He first saluted the World at His Nativity were scarce dried up when He permitted the Lance to open a Way to Streams of Blood that we might read His Kindness in as many Characters as He poured out Drops and that our Eyes might be Spectators as well as our Ears Witnesses of His Affection But as our Sins cry'd out aloud for a Saviour so did our Blindness plead as earnestly for a Leader A Redeemer's Death indeed could make us cease to be Bad His Life was requisite to point us out a Method to be Good And therefore He was pleas'd to leave us His own Life as a Model to frame ours by and to buy the Glory of His Body with the Price of those Vertues with which we must purchace the Happiness of our Sâ—uls He taught us Poverty at his Nativity bereaving Himself of all Things though He created All He preach'd us Obedience at his Circumcision and Patience at his Death But in this Day 's Gospel He gives us a Document as necessary to be learnt as it is hard to be put in execution viz. Nesciebatis in his quae Patris mei sunt oportet me esse Do you not know that my Affection to you must give place to that Love I bear my Father That all the Ties of Flesh and Blood are too weak to restrain me from my Duty Dear Christians Hear this Great Preacher and perswade your selves that it was not so much a Desire of satisfying his Parents which open'd his Sacred Mouth as of instructing you in a Point that perchance you all know though I fear sew practise Alas we live in so Complementing an Age that One false Step in regard of a Companion carries us into greater Convulsions than a Thousand Treasons against GOD. We lead Lives at Random as if we could be Sav'd by Proxy or as if the Fear of offending a Debauch'd Friend were a just Reason to offend GOD. Infine Our Judgments are so deprav'd by Heathenish Principles enacted by Christians that most Men Alas choose rather to be really Bad than to be thought Good A strange Frenzy I confess and a most Couragious Cowardize to stand the Stroke of a Thunder-bolt and to tremble at the Touch of a Tongue which takes its Point from our own Imagaination Give me Leave this Day to arraign human Respects from this Pulpit which Jesus Christ condemn'd in the Temple Be not angry if whil'st I accuse this Vice I fall not in It my self out of a Fear of displeasing Those whom I cannot please without betraying my Character and their Salvation I will draw my Discourse into Two Heads viz First I will discover the Intriegues of the Wicked to with-draw their Fellow-Creatures from the very Root of Godliness the True faith And then I will arm These with Weapons capable to over-come the strongest Human Respects which have always been the most fatal Obstacles the Devil can put in their way who seek the Truth Secondly I will address my Discourse to Those who in spight of all Opposition have embrac'd the True faith of Christ and will lay before them such Motives as shall be able to perswade any Man of Reason into a Resolution of bearing up close to the Duties of his Religion without which Compliance Faith is but a sounding Cymbal a specious Name and an insignificant Nothing 'T IS a great Happiness to Walk in the Way which leads us to Eternal Felicity and an Unhappiness above Expression to run in this World towards a Misery without Redress because Endless Those run the Fortune of the First who embrance a True Faith and Those the Misfortune of the Second who hugg a False One. So that we ought in Prudence to imploy all our Care to be in the Right And yet O Heavens our Study is to be in the Wrong notwithstanding as if our own Reason were too weak to work our Ruin our Companions lend us an Hand and We poor Creatures lay hold of it out of Civility though the Complement cost us our own Salvation 'T is a stupendious Thing to see what Divines this Corrupted Age and I may add too this Corrupted City hath brought forth and nourished and also how docile Scholars are in learning those Maxims they should never hear of without Horror Some teach raw Youth That poor Men here below grope in the Dark That Things beyond this World flote on Vncertainties And therefore That those black Stories of Hell those diverting Fables of Heaven are only fit to take place among the Romantick Tales of a Poetick Brain That the most Sparky Wits of Antiquity could never discover the least Glimmering of any other Divinity than Fortune And Why should We blind Batts pretend to discern a Being those Eagles never espied These Blasphemies edg'd with Wit and back'd with the Authority of Those whom Fools have plac'd in the Front of the Virtuosi are receiv'd by Youth which would fain find a Veil for the blackest Crimes as Oracles dropt from Heaven This Discourse is follow'd by Peals of Applauses every one cries The Gentleman hath Reason though in reality he hath no more than to deceive his Hearers nor Those than to be deceiv'd But if some are not overcome by this canting and modish Piece of Sophistry then He sits down in the Chair of the Scorner as the Psalmist expresses it and for want of Reason laughs his Auditory into his Atheistical Belief I must confess Railery hath more augmented-this Impious Doctrine than any other Engin either the Craft of Satan or Malice of his Emissaries ever set a running For though I can't tell how it comes to pass yet certain it is That whosoever patiently bears a Railery is judg'd defective in his Intellectuals And such is the present Perswasion of Mankind that it is a lesser Blemish to be esteem'd voyd of Grace than Wit. And then the Fear of losing a Place in the Academy of Wit or of being quite cut off from the Conversation of Men of Parts frights poor Creatures into a Resolution of embracing a Religion which hath no other Articles than to deny All. But because nothing but a Desire to Die as Beasts can perswade Men thus to Live like Them and that Few are so indulg'd to Sense as quite to lose it Therefore Others better acquainted with the Inclination of the Times will grant that there is a GOD. But then they turn Him into a Latitudinarian as if Any Worship satisfy'd