Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A42495
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A sermon preached in St. Pauls Church London ... February 28, 1659 being a day of solemn thanksgiving unto God for restoring of the excluded members of Parliament to the House of Commons ... / by John Gauden.
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Gauden, John, 1605-1662.
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1660
(1660)
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Wing G370; ESTC R24048
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65,030
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124
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such children nor have so learned Christ as to expect his Kingdom to be of this world though in it yet not after its methods of the sword but by the word of truth and spirit of patience thus came the King of Sion the other by the sword of blood is a rare project for Muncer and Knipperdolling for Hacket and Arthington when they can be merry in peoples miseries with populus vult decipi decipiatur people have a mind to be deluded and t is fit they should be so when credulous people will believe in any spirit an hundred to one but some lying spirits and deceivers false Christs and false Apostles will come among them who shall make them believe light is darkness and darkness light that good is evil and evil good that their iron chains are bracelets of gold that factious Conventicles are purest Churches that Synagogues of Satan are the truest Jews or children of Abraham that partial Conventions and Senates sifted and purged affronted and bafled by tumultuary or armed force are full and free Parliaments Which name and thing of Parliament every sober and understanding English man justly venerates and highly esteems in their due and only true constitution so Parliaments are justly honored as flos corona gentis the cream flower and crown of a Nation the anchor and center under God of Laws Liberties Lives and honors of all that is dear to us in this world yea of our Religion too A Free and full Parliament is the very Palladium pacis publicae the best preserver and restorer of our peace publick health and all honest interests the most august and honorable Assembly in the world Quo sol illustriorem non aspicit as Bishop Andrews calls it in his Tortura Torti pag. 291. the best tempered constitutions of spirits and humors of power and counsel in a Nation the oracle of publique wisdom the magazine of publique strength the source and fountain of publique order and authority the treasury of our riches the sanctuary of true Religion the ark in which the Church of England is embarqued the Conservatory of both sanctity and civility the best umpire of our civil differences the most equanimous Censor and reformer of manners the grand Trustees of Church and State when so full and free as becomes men of conscience and honor Who would not submit their honor estate liberty life and all things temporal to such a Judicature of his Country-men such Arbitrators of the publique choise But to cry peace peace to the body when the whole heart is faint when the whole head is sick when the very brains are beaten out when the vital and best spirits of a Nation are almost expired and exhausted when the military and pretorian insolence shall stand over the Senate or Parliament as Hercules with his club over Hydra's many heads This partiality is such a tyrannous imposition on reasonable men as if they were commanded to believe and declare that a part is equal to or more than the whole that glow-worms are brighter than the Stars and Meteors or Comets more benigne than the Sun and Moon that all the wisdom and piety of a Nation were contained in a Knapsack as the Holy Ghost was carried in a Cloak-bag from Rome to Trent Men need but count the pole or tell noses to tell what a free and full Parliament means which comprehends all the Representatives and Trustees chosen by the Nation besides the Peers who were the great Council to the Prince Peace as health includes the good constitution of the whole but cheifly of the most Noble principal parts peace of Church and State at home and abroad will be far from that Nation whose publique counsels are at variance and their cheif Councellors are either fighters against themselves or oppressors of one another to serve some partiall which must needs be a Sinister base and bad interest for no counsel is good in or out of Parliament which is not for the publicks good in which every legal and just interest is contained Indeed it s a meer cheat put on the poor Patient the daughter of my people when vaine and empty words of peace peace are used and yet either the sword or the exactor or the oppressor devoureth every way and every day when God and man his word and the violated Laws peoples sad experience and tired patience their exhausted estates and dayly alarms proclaime there is no true peace no honest and just no safe and secure peace which indeed is not to be expected while such Witch-crafts are imposed and such wicked purposes partially and violently promoted utterly to deceive undo and destroy a people which brings me to the fourth particular Fourthly The {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} lye or fallacy which the Spirit of God by way of Irony expresseth they have healed thus they pretend and brag but slightly {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} super leve ut leviculum tanquam rem nihili {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} LXX despicientes vili-pedentes cum illusione Syr. cum ignominia verbis mendaciorum suorum Chald. Thus Translaters and interpreters render the word variously but to the same sence arguing the little respect of piety honesty equity and charity or humanity which was in these vaine glorious and ungracious healers who either wanted skill or will or power and influence or due authority or they were slighters and contemners of the publiques health onely intent to their private wealth and advantages They never searched the bottom of the Nations great crying sins disorders and sufferings nor applied seasonable just and meet remedies to either yea they festred and enflamed the lighter hurts to greivous ulcers small faults offences mistakes differences and jealousies which did arise in Church and State they either dressed these scratches with Vinegar and gall onely with sharp and picquent corrasives without any lenitive or moderation or else by a dilatory negligence and supercilious carelesnes they let publick distempers and hurts run on till they were less capable of any cure or patient of good applications Yea and by a superfluity of wanton cruelty they either widened the wounds and made their probes their punniards or else dressed them with poysoned spunges while they seem to purg them as one that is killed by a glyster or potion And at best by a most impupudent hipocrisie they have skinned over the hurts with some shew of setling what was shaken and of reforming what was amiss when indeed no men did more deform the beauty or ruine the welfare hinder the healing of the publique than these Healers by their enormious sins and outragious lusts by their unjust and violent actions by their partiality and impotency of their passions by their evil eyes their fowle breath and their rough hands which are the instruments of bad hearts and base minds Little or no publique healing is expectable from men that are
we have wrestled for many years Indeed your City ows some Reparation now payd it to the whole Nation not only for the advantages it hath from all parts but for the disadvantages which all have suffered not from the ill intentions but from some tumultuating dispositions which as Porpusses were pregnant in your sea of people when our troubles first began I hope God hath prepared blessings for you and by yours for the whole Nation by opening your eyes humbling your hearts disposing your minds and exciting your spirits to thoughts of Justice and Piety of Repentance Restitution and Peace We have had wounds and hurts enough healings and strong Delusions too many It is high time if it be Gods time to speak comfortably to Zion and tell her Warfare is accomplished to pour in the Balm of Gilead by sober and aquanimious Counsels to bind up by orderly just power what hath been long broken to make up the grand defects in our Government and to lay foundations of future peace and happiness in Righteousness and Truth That the enemies of our now Religion and this reformed Nation may not rejoyce in our continued miseries and say So would we have it I have sought to do my duty if some think I have overdone it I must crave your patrociny to assert that which by your acceptance seemed to be your sense as well as mine and is as I hope the sense of all honest and judicious men For men that are fanciful fanatick we need them not to make us happy I am sure they have made a shift to make us very miserable And if God had not in mercy set bounds to the rage of that sea and the madness of that people they would have made your City an heap of ashes and our Countrey a field of Blood It will be your Wisdom Honour and Happiness to keep in the bounds of just moderate religious and sober Counsels to aim at legal honest and tried wayes of settlement to apply to such Physicians as you find most able and faithfull so will health and salvation break forth upon you and the three Nations which is the earnest prayer Of your humble servant in Christ J. GAVDEN A SERMON PREACHED Before the Lord Mayor Aldermen c. of London IER. 8.11 For they have healed the hurt of the Daughter of my people slightly saying Peace peace when there is no peace BEing called to this publick service by the piety and civility of this great City Right honorable and worthy Auditors I could not well tell how to avoid it because it seemed so good a work nor yet upon so short warning how to accept of it being so great a work if either I regard the importance of the occasion which looks like a door of hope opened to the healing of these Nations and composing of their sad distractions by the counsels of a full and free Parliament and by the assistance of regular and orderly power Or if I consider as I ought in prudence the difficulty and danger of touching though in order to heal the old sores and fistulating ulcers of this Church and State which are now vetuscentia mala annosi morbi inveterate dolors obstinate evils and pertinacious maladies not only impatient to be touched freely and searched throughly but are prone to plead as the Devils in the Gospel who had possessed the poor man now a long time against all health and recovery Many men like Canters and Lazars are in love with their wounds and ulcers getting their living more easily by keeping their sores open raw and running than if they should quite heal them up I am further conscious not only to the touchiness of the times and the tenderness of many mens minds who are only for lenitives and oyles for soft smooth and supple applications even to their most desperate hurts but to that my own native parrhesia or freedom of speaking which is both customary and consciencious not that I affect unseasonable severities of speech and such rudeness under the pretence of freedom as rather exasperates the wound and inflames the humor than purgeth allays or easeth them But I profess to chuse not to preach at all than to preach timorously or precariously Vt Lugdunensem Rhetor dicturus ad aram as if I should ask men leave to be honest or were afraid to speak the Word of God to them When I am called to speak in Gods name I must be Parrhesiastes as well as Ecclesiastes I am to do it as a workman that needs not to be ashamed either for his ignorance or cowardise or indiscretion whether men will hear or forbear the whole counsel of God must be delivered in its season so as becomes the words of soberness and truth for the Church or Pulpit must not be a sanctuary for insolency or a burrow or a retreat for rudeness No however men may become our enemies for speaking the truth yet it is better so than to have God our enemy for smothering it when it is just and seasonable and such it is when necessary and soveraign to heal the hurt of a Church or State It hath been my fate frequently to offend some men when I have been most intent to serve them by Texts and Sermons which I thought most apt useful and innocent When I preached at the Court Anno 1640. upon that Heb. 12.14 Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see God When before the long Parliament at its first convening upon Zach. 8.19 Therefore love the truth and peace When at another great and epidemick Assembly upon 1 Cor. 3.19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God Of all three though wholsom and innocent Texts and I hope accordingly handled yet I heard some unpleasing Ecchoes and reflexions the sore and itching ears of some men in all ages are such that they will not endure {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} healing or sound and wholesom doctrine though the pain riseth from the soreness and inflammation in themselves and not from the plaister or hand which honestly applies it yet they are prone as in fell boils and acute tumors when touched though but gently to fly upon those that are next them and cry aloud O you hurt me when the hurt is within and from themselves Sound parts will endure free and rough handling such as are unsound do most want it and therefore if we will be faithful to God to our own souls and to our hearers we must not flatter their sores to their ruine but rather chuse to heal them though at present we be thought to hurt them nor shall our labor of love be in vain either in the Lord or before good men who at length will finde by experience that the wounds of a friend which let out the putrified matter of painful tumors are better than the kisses of an enemy which do infidis cicatricibus cuticulam