Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A28181
|
A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons, November 5, 1689 by P. Birch ...
|
Birch, Peter, 1652?-1710.
|
1689
(1689)
|
Wing B2938; ESTC R19813
|
10,539
|
40
|
Doctor BIRCH's SERMON Preached before the Honourable House of Commons Novemb. 5. 1689. Mercurii 6 Die Nov. 1689. RESOLVED THAT the Thanks of this House be given to Doctor Birch for the Sermon Preached before them Yesterday at St. Margarets VVestminster And that he be desired to Print the same And that Sir Thomas Clarges do acquaint him therewith PAUL JODRELL Cl. Dom. Com. A SERMON Preached before the Honourable House of Commons November 5. 1689. By P. BIRCH D. D. In the Savoy Printed by E. Jones and are to be sold by W. Nott in the Pall-Mall and R. Taylor near Stationers-Hall 1689. JOHN XVI 3. And these things will they do unto you because they have not known the Father nor Me. THIS is the Reason our Lord assigns of the Jewish Zeal against his Followers why they put them out of their Synagogues and thought whosoever killed them did God Service And the Account so well agrees to their Successors in the same bitterness of Spirit that it can be no Immodesty in us to ascribe that Ignorance to a part which Christ himself charges for the same cause upon the whole Visible Church of God. The Jews at that time had all the Advantages of Possession They had a Church of God's own founding One that had continued in a constant and visible Succession for many Ages That had no need of the Modern Arts to found its Doctrines on the Credit of a Dream or cast out Devils where Men were hired to be possest but which had seen the Rod of Moses strike a Living Stream out of a Rock and the Sea divided to give them passage and protection One which had the Oracles of God committed to it and which truly sate in Moses's Chair And therefore for these Rulers of God's chosen People the High Priest and all the State of the Elders to be charg'd with Folly to see their Statutes and Ordinances in danger to be set at naught and themselves robbed of their Prerogative by a few illiterate Fisher-Men were Provocations that seem'd to justifie their Zeal and make their Fury Religious For to tell them They knew not God was next to affirming He had left himself without Witness And To reject their Authority was to Resist the Ordinance of God who had said The Priests Lips shall preserve Knowledge and the People shall seek it at their Mouths But on the contrary our great Prophet and Teacher who knew what was in Man and how little all these boasted Privileges would avail in the sight of God plainly charges these Unnatural Heats upon their Ignorance They knew not that a God of Mercy and Compassion excuses no Wrath that is cruel and that fierce Anger was not made for Man They understood not how great the Presumption was to fancy his Cause needed the support of their Sin That nothing which is Evil and Injurious can be made fit for our Election and that no Intention is good which puts us upon the choice of Ill Means And for this Reason to the end his Disciples should not be offended nor prefer Authority to Truth does our Saviour here affirm These things will they do unto you because they have not known the Father nor Me. The Words are plainer than any Comment would make them and they are designed in their First Intention to arm the Holy Apostles against the Malice of their own Country-Men They were the First Persecutors of Men who believed in the same God with themselves For what we read of Socrates Anaxagoras and others being condemn'd by the Court of Areopagus was not for Worshipping the Gods in a wrong manner but for Contemning all But in every Age we find the Jews Constant Promoters of the Heathen Cruelties And if we may guess at the Reason of their Passion by the first Spring of it it does not seem to be a true Zeal for their Law lest the Christians should only change the Customs which Moses delivered them but rather an Indignation or Envy to be so much over-matched by their Glorious Works and Excellent Abilities St. Luke relates Act. 5. That by Vers 12. the Hands of the Apostles were many Signs and Wonders wrought among the People then rose up the High Priest and they that were Vers 17. with him and were filled with Indignation and laid their Hands on the Apostles and put them in the Common Prison Afterwards when they could not silence these Witnesses of our Lords Resurrection they Vers 33. took Counsel to slay them and so literally fulfilled the Praediction in the Text. But this is written likewise for our learning who come after for no Prophecy of the Scripture is of a private or proper Interpretation it ought not to be confin'd to that single Occasion upon which it was first uttered but is a standing Instruction for all the Succeeding Necessities of the Church And therefore we who now celebrate a Deliverance wherein this Scripture is fulfilled in our Ears who labour under the like unjust Sentence as the Apostles once did and still hear Murder called a Sacrifice unto God may safely conclude that the Admonition belongs to us of the Present Generation no less than it did to them who first received it and though we have no great hopes it will convince Gain-sayers yet it may serve to fortifie our selves and to make us all sensible of Gods Mercy in so long escaping that Fury which first made Jewish Zealots and then Christian which particularly inspired the Conspirators of this Day and which we have reason to Fear was not buried in their Graves but will be always urging to the like Attempts For which Good Purposes I shall endeavour some account 1. Of the Falseness of that Principle upon which these Violences are generally built namely That they are Designs for God and Hallowed by their being so 2. Of those Mistakes which corrupt and misguide our Zeal to intemperate Degrees And 3. We may reflect on that wonderful Act of God's Providence in so eminently protecting us and the Gratitude we owe Him who so does His Marvellous Works that they ought to be had in Remembrance And I. If we enquire what it was which so far transported the Jews against the Holy Apostles we shall find it none of the weighter Matters of the Law Judgment or Mercy for these the Apostles observed better than themselves but that which inflam'd their Zeal was Traditions of their own the Commandments of Men and not of God. And of this our Saviour convinces them Matth. 15. in an eminent instance They had a custom of Devoting their Goods by Vow this the Pharisees adjudged Obligatory though a Father were in want and so made the Vow take place of the Commandment now it is hardly imaginable how they came to prefer this mad Practice to so plain and natural a Duty but that our Lord insinuates the Reason The Vow was of their own devising and that made them so fond of it Here then we have a plain discovery what
makes our Zeal intemperate it is that which makes every Affection so the being Lovers of our selves and leaning to our own Understandings for this never fails of making us seek to impose upon other Men one effect of which always is that we proportion not our displeasure to the weight of the things contended about but to the opposition we meet with and this easily leads us into a Fond Belief that the Goodness of the Intention will sanctifie our Excesses It was St. Paul's own case whilst he liv'd a Pharisee he says Act. 26. That he verily thought with Vers 9. himself he ought to do many things contrary to the Name of Jesus of Nazareth and yet we never find this pleaded as a Justification of his Fact but though he obtained Mercy because he did it ignorantly 1 Tim. 1. 13. in Vnbelief yet he still confesses himself to have been a Blasphemer and a Persecutor and Injurious and he afterwards pronounces That whosoever does Evil that Good may come his Damnation is just The Reason of this Declaration we find to have been a Slanderous Report that he Rom 3. 8. held the contrary And it seems to have been a Calumny upon our Saviour himself for before his Exposition of the Decalogue Matth. 5. he forewarns his Followers That they should not think he came to destroy the Law and the Prophets and the following words shew the great Reason he had to do so For verily I say Vers 8. unto you till Heaven and Earth pass one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law till all be fulfilled This is spoken of the Moral Law for the Ceremonial ceas'd at his coming and the Judicial was of no force but in the Common-wealth of Israel and the profession is of absolute Necessity to the receiving of the Gospel For if that were not agreeable to the Common Principles of Good and Evil implanted in us already we could have no sufficient Motive to obey it because the same God who is the Author of our Faith is also Author of our Reason and gave us that to judge of our Faith by so as for him to evacuate any Moral Command is to contradict himself To say there may be new Rules of Justice Temperance or Fidelity is no better sense than that there may be a new Truth in a Necessary Proposition For the Law written in our Hearts was at first given us to guide Mankind to the End of his Creation and therefore must be as Immortal as our Nature That which was restored by the Sanctions of Christianity was this very Law and as such it was received by the World. And it could not be received upon any other account For the Learned part of the World was before instructed that True Religion and Vndefiled was ever the same only Time and the Necessities of Men have varied it in the manner of expressing it It was always true That God is the most Excellent Being in Himself and the greatest Benefactor to us and therefore to love and serve him out of a prevailing sense of his Goodness was always to be Religious and he that in every Nation thus worked Righteousness was accepted of him So likewise in the Duties relating to one another the Reason of them never changes though the Laws vary which are built upon it We must for instance live in some Society or other because one part cannot say to another I have no need of thee and therefore we are bound for our own good to all those Duties by which Societies are supported We may all want our Neighbours Assistance and therefore ought in good Reason to supply him in his turn If we do not our Neighbours Justice in their Possessions we cannot long expect to be safe in our own And in all these cases it is Equity and Right Reason which makes the Law Obligatory though that determines the particular Act. The common Reason of Mankind obliges us not to invade one anothers Property but it is the Municipal Law of the Country which teaches us what it is to do so by defining what shall be esteem'd Theft Murder or Adultery When therefore we find Constitutions to vary this is not an Alteration in the great Fundamental Principles of Reason but it arises from the different Circumstances Men are under or at most only proves that one Body of Men is not so wise as another And for this cause the old Christian Apologists who best understood the Things they wrote about did not begin their Method of Conversion where the Modern Controvertists do by trying the strength of a Mans Faith and gageing his Credulity by first propounding of a Mystery But they represent the Doctrine of Christ as an higher and a more excellent Improvement of Morality than ever was before They deny not that the same Virtues are found in the Heathen Moralists which are in the Christian but they affirm these are better taught and encouraged by more certain Promises of an Eternal Reward As for the Powers now claimed to give away Heretical Kingdoms to dispense with the Faith of Treaties to commit Massacres in cold Blood and the like Works of Darkness these were never thought a part of Religion and had they been so this alone had been a sufficient Conviction that it was not from God. And therefore we need not wonder that those Unbelievers who border on Christians that teach such things continue in their Infidelity For so far as they believe these a part of Christianity so far they are in the right not to own it and there is no way to convince them but by separating this Corruption from the Truth of the Gospel In a word there must be some defect in every Action that thwarts the Original Design of all Religion And though we cannot always see the Deficiency of a Cause yet we may be fure there is one where-ever the product is bad and consequently whatsoever Passion hurries us on to Actions of Fraud or Injustice it can be no part of the Wisdom from above or an effect of saving Knowledge but of the blindness of our Minds as our Saviour declares in the Text. II. It was next propounded to consider How Men come to he misled into so gross and palpable an Error and by what Steps and Degrees their Zeal becomes so intemperate Now the Zeal we have either for or against any thing does evidently depend upon the Judgment we make of it and consequently it is perverted whenever it is ill placed and must necessarily err when it hath not Knowledge for its Guide So that to recount all the Errors that mislead our Affections were an endless Task because they are as numerous as the ways by which we come to be mistaken In general every inordinate desire is able to make our Zeal so and at the same time persuades us we do well to be angry Pride Covetousness or Ambition or whatsoever rules the Man and carries the main of our Actions after