Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A43457
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A sermon preached before the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London at Guild-Hall Chappel, upon the second of September, 1679 being the day of their humiliation in memory of the late dreadful fire / by Henry Hesketh ...
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Hesketh, Henry, 1637?-1710.
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1679
(1679)
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Wing H1616; ESTC R18213
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13,713
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44
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Edwards Mayor Jovis Quarto die Septembris 1679. Annoque Regni Regis Caroli Secundi Angliae c. XXXI o. This Court doth desire Mr. Hesketh to Print his Sermon preached at Guild-Hall Chappel before the LORD MAYOR and Aldermen on the second of this instant September being the day of Humiliation for the dismal Fire in the Year 1666. Wagstaffe A SERMON Preached before the Right Honorable The Lord Mayor AND ALDERMEN OF LONDON AT GUILD-HALL CHAPPEL Upon the Second of September 1679. Being the day of their Humiliation in Memory of the late dreadful Fire By HENRY HESKETH Rector of Charlewood in Surrey and Chaplain in Ordinary to His MAJESTY LONDON Printed by A. Godbid and J. Playford for Will. Leach at the Crown in Cornhill near the Royal-Exchange 1679. To the Right Honourable Sir JAMES EDWARDS LORD MAYOR of LONDON And to the Honourable Court of ALDERMEN RIGHT HONOURABLE WHen I first received your Commands for the publishing of this Discourse I dare not say but that I did secretly rejoice But not upon those vain Reasons that perhaps some may invidiously suppose but only that I had hopes thereby given me that the Truths therein were as favourably entertained as I am sure they were honestly intended and therefore the more likely to have some good effect upon them that heard them I am very sensible both how meanly they were delivered and how homely worded but my Lord Your acceptance supplies both those Defects And if they may in any little measure promote the great Ends of Preaching and be serviceable to any in the Purposes of Religion but especially if they may induce this City to pursue the Methods to Honour and Safety and to Divine Protection the great Ensurer of both I shall have great cause to rejoice in my labour and bless God for the Success of it In humble hopes of which I shall instantly address to him who can give all these Effects and who is always ready and forward to do so even God Almighty Who that he may still continue his Mercies and Compassions to this City is and shall be the Prayer of Right Honourable Your most obliged and obedient Servant HENRY HESKETH LAM 3.22 It is of the Lord's Mercies that we are not consumed and because his Compassions fail not IT is the Duty of Man to rejoice before the Lord with reverence to mix humility with his Eucharists and to contemper his Joy in Divine Mercy with seriousness and fear And it is his happiness that he may do something like this in his most solemn Mournings The Causes of Man's Humiliation and Sorrow are very rarely pure and unmixt but Mercy mingleth it self with his Judgments and the Sun shines even in the midst of the Shower Even in the Valley of Action there is a Door of Hope and some Cause of Joy when there is so of Mourning And a great part of Man's Wisdom consists in this in knowing how rightly to contemper these two neither so rejoicing as to become vain nor sorrowing so as without hope Men may rejoice in God's Kindness even when they mourn under the Effects of his Wrath and when they mostly lament their own Misery They may joy in Divine Mercy when they humble themselves under a sense of their own great Demerits they may yet rejoice that their Misery is not answerable to them and when they mourn the most deeply considering how they deserve to be consumed they may triumph to think they are not so This was the condition of this People when the Prophet composed this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and therefore amongst their most passionate Lamentations there are ever now and then interspersed Expressions of Praise And it is no unpleasant Reflection to consider That in this ours also nearly resembles it We have been brought into the Fiery Furnace by our Sins but we have been brought also out of it by Divine Mercy The Fire hath kindled upon us to high degrees but we have been plucked as a Fire-brand out of it We have been brought down even to the grave but we have been brought up again from it The Judgment threaten'd to destroy us utterly but it did not We were near being consumed but we were not so In these Circumstances I cannot but think it will concern us to reflect equally upon both these Conditions that we may order our Sacrifice according to the Exigents of both mingle Incense with our Trespass-offering and put Honey into our bitter Herbs confess our many great Sins that we may be humbled and consider God's greater Mercies that we may be exalted It was those that brought us into danger it was these that brought us out of it And therefore I do not know a more becoming Service for this Day than to give Glory to God in both Cases in the one by acknowledging our Sins and the justness of his Wrath in the other by giving the Praise of our Deliverance only to his Mercy And to our Recognitions of his Mercies that we were not consumed add our Prayers and humbly implore the continuance of the same that as we have tasted them so we may still that as his Compassions have not so they never may fail towards us In which Words there are two Things chiefly observable First Something plainly supposed or implied and that is That they were very near being wholly consumed and justly might have been so Secondly Something plainly expressed and that is That they were not consumed and that it was only of Divine Mercy that they were not I do not forget that this is designed for a Fast and a Day of Humiliation and therefore I take notice of the first and I cannot but observe how God hath turned our weeping into joy and therefore cannot but observe the latter They are both now happily complicated in our Circumstances and to consider duly of both will make a very meet Service for this Day In speaking to the first I shall only offer at three Things I. A little refresh your Memory in calling your Thoughts to the Consideration of our Judgment and Danger almost consumed II. Suggest how just and deserved it was III. Press the sober Memory of it according to this Days pious Designation In speaking to the latter I shall offer at three Things too I. Consider our happy Rescue from this Consumption we are not consumed II. Enquire to what we owe our Recognitions for it Gods Mercies III. Search by what Methods these Mercies and these Deliverances the Effects of them may be assured still unto us not to fail Which things I suppose will well enough answer the Design of this Day and the Purport of this Text. I. I begin with the first General and therein with the first thing proposed the Intimation of the Danger we were in almost consumed This is sufficiently implied in this Recognition and answerable to our common way of speaking in the like cases When we would express a great Danger we commonly say Without God's great Mercy we
cannot without Trouble mind many things at once therefor God cannot To us clear testimony of this is given by him that cannot err nor deceive and if a Sparrow fall not to the ground without our heavenly Father certainly such grand Occurrences do not happen without his Government And he that understands the Reasons of his own Religion will not need to be contended with about this matter Religion teacheth all Men to look upon God as the prime Origin of all Things and Prayer and Praise are the two principal Services of it and we therefore pray to God for Mercies that we want and praise him for those we enjoy because we believe they issue from him and are disposed by him These things are equally argumentative in all Cases but there are some that carry their own Convictions with them had Men no great sense of Religion to induce them to a consonant belief Sometimes Rescues from Evils carry such clear Signatures of Divine Efficiency upon them that no Man can well be unobservant thereof but be strongly prompted to confess with the Egyptian Sorcerers in another case This is indeed the Finger and Power of God And truly I know not why I may not entitle this so to him upon these two accounts I. In respect of the then present Deliverance from this Consumption For my part I have often thought I could see as clear Signatures of God's merciful Interposition in stopping the Fire as Traces of his Anger in the progress of it I know not but the one had evil Instruments to promote it but I am sure the other in some places had none to obstruct it And as if God purposely intended to remark his Mercy in it you may yet see it stopped in places where one would not only judge it unlikely but next to impossible it should do so among rotten dry weak Buildings which should rather invite a Flame than give check to it But so Mercy recovered its Empire over Justice and it pitied the Almighty to triumph in farther Executions His Compassions said it was enough and fixed Bounds to the proud Flames and signalized themselves as much in the Rescue as Justice had before in the Execution II. In respect of the sudden Recovery and Rebuilding of the City again He that in the midst of such Desolations and Ruins should have predicted the Restoration of this City to that Glory it is now in in seven years time would hardly have escaped the Censure of a false Prophet but been thought to tell things as far exceeding Belief and Hope as Ezekiel did when he prophesied Life to dry Bones And for this I dare appeal to the sober sense of all that hear me among whom I am very confident few ever hoped to live to see half of that perfection which we now for a great while have been joyful Spectators of But so God inspired Men with Zeal and Industry and blessed their Labour to almost incredible measures and henceforth the Men of this City must appear Men of great Spirits to whom nothing is impossible nothing difficult especially when God saith Amen to their Resolutions But I must not forget to let you know in the midst of these Blessings what moved God to effect them the Text tells us clearly his Mercy nay Mercies in the plural nay his bowel tender Mercies as the Original imports And I would fain know what can be set up in competition with it Alass how vain how groundless how much their own confutation and shame are all those Thoughts that shall make God a Debtor to Man and enable Man upon any Merit in himself to challeng Blessings from him I have been always apt to believe and yet am That those that stand upon Terms with God have least reason to do so and those furthest from meriting any thing at his hands that pretend a possibility of doing so I never yet saw or heard any that when it came to the Test durst stand to it Tutissimum est saith the great Advocate for it It is safest to renounce our own and relie on Christ's Merits And All Men when they come to dye do so too And I think that an ill Doctrine to maintain in Life that all Men renounce and flie from at Death God knows and he that best knows hath told us That Man at his best state is altogether Vanity and at his worst is a Lye and much worse His Righteousness is so very little that it can claim no Blessing and his Wickedness so very great that it deserves nothing but Cursing And how improper and unbecoming it is for such a thing to strut it out and Stand upon Terms with God judge ye But my Brethren let other Men talk at what vain Rates they will I am sure we have enough to reduce us to humility and shame and that is by reflecting upon the Sins and Debaucheries of this Generation I pointed at this before and therefore shall not now cloy you with ungrateful Reputations I only beg as the Prophet doth verse 40. of this Chapter Let us search and try our ways and if we do we shall not need any other Method to preserve us from Vanity We shall soon find enough to humble rather than exalt us The only difficulty upon this Search will be to resolve whether our Sins have not surmounted God's Mercies and whether we have not confronted the Miracles of Divine Kindness with almost as great Miracles of our own Unworthiness Do you thus requite the Lord O foolish People and unwise And dost thou O Lord work Deliverances for such Both these are equally strange equally surprising Let the one be matter of our Humility and the other the magnifying of thy Mercy Not unto as O Lord not unto us but unto thy Name be the praise for thy Truth and for thy Mercies sake Let the People praise thee O God Let all the People praise thee O let the whole Nation extoll and magnifie thee Let them say alway Blessed be the Lord who hath pleasure in the prosperity of his Servants who hath not punished us as we deserved but in his Judgment remembred his Mercy and saved us for his Mercy and Compassion's sake But I have one thing more yet for which to entitle God and his Mercy to our preservation and that is the implacable Rage and Malice of our Enemies against us Of this we have fresh and daily Evidences and by the way I do not know but we may be obliged to them for it They pull of their Vizard and by this tell us what they are and what we are to expect and to whom also to fly for protection from them When Disappointments do but the more inrage them when to be defeated in one hellish Project makes them more earnest in another when nothing will reconcile them nothing discourage them we have just cause to say It is of God that we are not consumed to report in earnest that of the Psalmist Unless God keep the City the