Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n
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A97012
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A sermon preached at the Oxfordshire feast at St. Mary le Bow, November 15, 1694 by Samuel Walker, M.A. ; published at the request of the stewards.
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Walker, Samuel, M.A.
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1695
(1695)
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Wing W414; ESTC R42867
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8,197
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26
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he provides abundantly for us in this life his mercies are renewed to us every day and every morning is a fresh instance of his goodness in him we live move and have our being and these obligations should ingage us to love him with all our hearts and our neighbour as our selves to promote the interest and welfare of our brother if he is in misery to help him in want to relieve him if in trouble to comfort him if ignorant to instruct him if wicked to admonish him in the spirit of meekness if godly to incourage him and imitate his pious example let his condition and state be high or low noble or ignoble thou mayst be useful and serviceable to him in praying to God in his behalf Thus the vilest mortal that rakes a kennel the poorest beggar that craves an alms may shew his charity to the greatest King In this sense the deaf the blind and lame may do good to themselves and the Church of God This is our duty and ought to be our practice to love all men fervently without exception to pray for them constantly without intermission and heartily without dissimulation If we consider in our most sober thoughts and serious meditations that God Almighty is our bountiful Benefactor that he daily loads us with his benefits and multiplys his blessings upon us This consideration will surely move our affection and compassion to their proper objects in raising up the drooping spirits of those who lay low in the world filling their bodies with good things and their hearts with joy and gladness Thus we should imitate the divine Goodness we should refresh others with some of those comforts which daily flow upon us from the fountain of eternal bliss God Almighty requires us to acknowledge his bounty by our kindness to those who are unable to resist a low and contemptible state and too weak to overcome it Not to act like the sordid earthly Mortal who wants if I may so speak the good nature of the Gadaren's Darling the brutish Hog to pity and compassionate the miseries and calamities of his fellow creatures his own flesh who like a standing Pool is confined within his own filthy black and deadly banks but God requires us to act like men full of bowels of compassion to be ready to every good work to help the miserable to relieve the distressed to support the weak to comfort the broken-hearted continually to give our helping hand to those of a low fortune and to promote the interest of our indigent brother to pour the wine of gladness and oyl of comfort into the wounds of our neighbors body or soul whether they be afflicted like Lazarus with the sores of poverty and want or like Gehazi covered with the Leprosie of their own sins thus the merciful man acts dealing his bread to the hungry cloathing the naked visiting the afflicted soul filling the poor with good things seeking all opportunities of doing good bringing forth the blessed fruits of Righteousness and Mercy for the merciful man like the kind and lively stream disfuseth his love liberally into his neighbouring soil and gives fatness to the poor and barren land Secondly The constant practice of our blessed Lord commends this duty of increasing more and more in charity and mercy for he went about continually doing good giving eyes to the blind feet to the lame understanding to the ignorant and wisdom to the simple curing the diseases of the body healing the distempers of the soul quickning those who were dead in trespasses and sins And if we who call our selves his disciples do not abound in gentleness meekness and love in acts of benevolence and beneficence he will not own us as his Sheep nor give us a Mansion in his Fathers House If we do not imitate him in those works of kindness and love to our Brethren the Son of God will not acknowlege himself our Lord nor will he give us any Reward in the life to come but that which he hath prepared for unprofitable servants and disobedient Children If we call our selves his Members and walk not in conformity to him our Head we deceive our selves provoke him to wrath and he will take no pleasure in us Thirdly Our most holy and excellent Religion obliges us to perform works of charity and mercy and to continue in the performance of them for that exhorts you to increase in every good work Col. 1. v. 10. To be kind one to another tender-hearted Ephes 4. v. 32. But to serve one another by love not to be weary in well doing Gal. 5. v. 13. To be filled with the fruits of righteousness which are unto the praise and Glory of God Phil. 1. v. 11. Without these holy dispositions and divine acts you cannot be sincerely Religious nor bear such fruits by which our heavenly Father is glorified Therefore saith St. Peter add to your faith vertue to vertue knowledge to knowledge temperance to temperance patience to patience godliness to godliness brotherly kindness to brotherly kindness charity for if these things be in you and abound they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the work of the Lord. And now my beloved Brethren Natives of that delightful and well-situated City in whose situation the goodness of the Lord hath greatly appeared for God hath blessed her Inhabitants with all things conducive to the health of their bodies as a sweet serene Air neither too mild nor too severe pleasant Rivers fruitful Hills and Vallies full of fatness And God hath provided for the health of their souls spiritual Physicians indued with wisdom and knowledge who administer milk to the infant Christian and to the strong they apply more solid and substantial nourishment For that glorious City is adorned and beautified with a famous University which is admired abroad and preferred at home by all but the contenders for a parallel Some of her venerable body late ingenious Members are at this instant the reverend and laudable Pastors of the most honourable Churches in this magnificent City and are as much the Honour and Renown of the Metropolis as she is the Splendor and Glory of the Nation Now my Fellow Countrymen of that pleasant and fruitful Country which is superiour to most inferiour to none I beseech you strive with a spiritual Ambition and holy Emulation to exceed the rest of mankind in Piety Charity and Mercy strive to excel each other in Courtesie Friendship and Generosity in Peace Goodness and Love that others may walk by the light of your bright and splendid examples in the blessed path of brotherly love and Christian Charity which leads to eternal life Oh let not your Charity grow cold to your Brethren your own flesh kindle it into a holy and generous flame that the poor and lowly Cottages of your Country may be warmed by the heat of your compassion and mercy The man that hath no affection for his own Country deserves not to be a member of any
for he will be kind to none he neither follows the Example of Christ nor obeys the Doctrine of his Gospel who prefers his private interest before the publick good blameable then in the superlative degree are those men which having been advanced by their Country and injoying a prosperous fortune a plentiful portion of this world refuse to perform those kind Offices by which they have been raised Such black ingrate such prodigies of unthankfulness have not the Spirit nor natural Love of that noble Heroic Roman who preferred the good of his Country before and above his own Life for he sacrificed the one for the preservation of the other Such Men deserve not the Name of Christians for they have nothing of the genuine temper of the Gospel Spirit nay such Men are strangers to natural affection as well as to a holy Catholic Charity and are not so morally vertuous as many of the Heathens Surely such Men have no Souls or no value for them that consider not affectionately the many obligations due to their native Christian Soil that are so wilfully blind as not to see the benefits and blessings they have received and so obstinately unthankful that they will not acknowledge the hand which frankly gave them But I hope better things of you my beloved Countrymen that as you have already begun to exercise your benignity and Charity so you will increase more and more in that excellent Grace and Vertue for the same Commandment of God which obligeth you to day will be of the same force to morrow the same kind of Tribute thou payest this day will be no less due the next for every day brings a new obligation of that Obedience which we owe unto the living God This Life of ours is as it were a Journey the Commandments of God are the ways of it there is not a more frequent expression in the sacred Pages than walking in the Law and Statutes of the Lord walking in the ways and paths of God and they who are not exercised day and night in the Law of the Lord do not walk in the paths of God but rather stand still in the way of Sinners for Gods Servants must not imitate Ahaz's Sun that moved gradually backward nor Joshua's Sun that moved neither backward nor forward but David's Sun that appears gloriously array'd like a Bridegoom out of his Chamber and rejoyceth as a young man to run his race and he runs in vain that runs swiftly setting out but faints before he arrives at the mark for such a racer will never obtain the prize and it is as fruitless to begin in a vertuous course and not to continue in it to the end Such a man will be never able to say with St Paul I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness He that will be Paul's Scholar must persevere in the good course he hath begun to walk in his Doctrine is to increase and his Practice answerable to it I press towards the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus Phil. 3. v. 14. It is not sufficient to know the way of Righteousness and to make some progress in it there must be a daily and constant abounding a going on in the good and the right way or else we can have no comfortable hope of that glorious Crown of Eternal Life The Apostle beseeches you to encrease more and more he frequently pressed this laudable Duty he exhorted his Philippians to abound in love his Corinthians to abound always in the work of the Lord Nor is he singular in this he hath many Joint-labourers Timotheus and Silvanus St. Peter also accords with him in the last words of his second Epistle Grow in Grace saith he and in the Knowledge of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ And growth there is not an addition a daily increasing more and more Gods Husbandry hath no time to lye fallow nor will he suffer the branches of his Vine at any time to be unfruitful nay he expects from it a great increase and therefore he prunes off the bad branches dresses trims and cultivates the goodones that they may bring forth more fruit John 15. v. 3. Hast thou then been exercised in the School of Virtue in the performance of a pious Duty of a vertuous Office thou hast done well but not enough for constancy and perseverance are required in all the works of the Lord. Hast thou been charitable continue in the practie of that sweet noble and divine grace hast thou been devout proceed in thy devotion hast thou been meek and humble deck thy self still with lowliness of mind hast thou been bountiful slack not thy liberal Hand abound more and more in piety and charity do good to all Men saith the Apostle but especially to the Houshold of Faith when it stands in need of your charity increasing in this heavenly Vertue more and more Every creature almost in the World yields you a motive a perswasive to the Duty The Sun is restless in her rounding course the Moon and all the Stars move as constantly in their courses as the Days and Time the flaming Fire is always ascending the liquid Water even running the sprightly Air in perpetual motion Let us therefore not stand in the way of Sinners nor set in the Seat of the Scornful but walk in the Law of the Lord and exercise our selves in it Day and Night Where is the Husbandman that doth not dig his Garden dress his Orchard till and manure his Lands that they may yield a good increase a plentiful crop in due Season and should not a man be more industrious more careful for his Soul than his Garden or Orchard is not his Eternal State preferrable to Temporal Possessions and all the good things of this Life And how do they then value and esteem those precious Jewels their immortal Souls who neglect the Doctrin of the good Apostle in my Text that inwardly adore the Mammon of Unrighteousness and say in their hearts to a wedge of Gold thou art our hope and our Confidence and lay no foundation for Eternal Life by the works of Charity and Mercy Some men there are but not members of this honourable Society whose Mouths are full of Charity but in their Hands are no Gifts they give large Portions with their Mouths but kindnesses from their Hands are very difficult to be seen felt or understood this lip-love and mouth-charity is condemned by the Apostle because it consists only in words not in deed and to say God bless you to a Brother that is naked and wants Cloathing or I wish you well to a Sister that wants Food are no better than airy empty Compliments and do no more fill the belly and warm the back than a golden dream doth fill the pocket and inrich the Man Jam. 2. v. 15. If a Brother or Sister be naked or destitute of daily Food and one of you say unto them depart in peace be ye warmed be ye filled Notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful for the Body what doth it profit them Finally My Beloved Brethren that you may be incouraged to practice the Duty of the Text consider the great advantages and blessings peculiar to a holy pious Charity The first is that the merciful charitable Christian hath the promise of Gods protection in the day of distress and danger of his favour and loving kindness in the day of his visitation Psal 41. v. 1. Blessed is he that considereth the poor the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble v. 2. The Lord will preserve him and keep him alive and he shall be blessed upon earth and thou wilt not deliver him into the will of his Enemies v. 3. The Lord will strengthen him upon a bed of Languishing thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness Prov. 19. v. 17. He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord and that which he hath given he will pay him again Prov. 28. v. 27. He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack he that encreaseth more and more in charity shall find favour with God which is better than life it self Prov. 11. v. 25. The liberal Soul shall be made fat and he that watereth shall be watered also himself These are the good Blessings of this Life which God hath promised to the Righteous Merciful man Secondly Spiritual Blessings and those of the Life to come are likewise promised to him as you may read Psa 112. v. 9. He hath dispersed abroad he hath given to the poor his Righteousness remaineth for ever that is he shall be remembred not only in this Life but in the Life to come 1 Tim. 6. v. 17. Charge them that are rich in this World that they trust not in uncertain Riches but in the Living God that they do good that they be rich in good works laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come that they may lay hold on Eternal Life In a word unless we show it to our Brother God will show none to us they who have not charity for their fellow Christians will receive none from the hands of the Lord when they stand most in need of it We shall all be judged at the last day according to the works of Mercy therefore I beseech you to increase more and more in Charity and Mercy that the Son of God may welcom you into his heavenly Kingdom with a Come ye blessed Children of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the World FINIS