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
A SERMON Preached at the Oxfordshire Feast AT St. MARY LE BOW November 15. 1694. By Samuel Walker M. A. Non memini me legere malâ morte mortuum qui libenter opera Charitatis exercuit habet enim multos Intercessores Impossibile est multorum preces à Deo non exaudiri Hieronymus Published at the Request of the Stewards Imprimatur Jan. 23. 1694 5. Guil. Lancaster LONDON Printed by Fr. Leach for the Author 1695. TO THE STEWARDS OF THE Oxfordshire-Feast For the Year 1694. Gentlemen YOur Kindness and Request hath obliged me to publish the ensuing Discourse of Brotherly Love and Christian Charity God grant that you and I and every Christian may increase in that and every good Grace and Vertue in this Life that at the last Day we may partake of the Mercy of God unto Eternal Life through the Merits of Jesus Christ our Lord is the hearty wish of Your most Affectionate Country-man and Humble Servant S. W. 1 THESS IV. 10. But we beseech you Brethren to increase more and more NO sooner had our Blessed Lord the glorious Son of the Eternal God compleated that grand mysterious work of our Redemption but he sent his Disciples to preach the Gospel not to some few selected people whom he better loved than the rest of mankind but to all the Nations of the world for so their Commission runs Mat. 28. Go preach the Gospel to all Nations And among other Gentile places the happy news the glad tydings of the Gospel was affectionately delivered and charmingly preached by St Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles to the Inhabitants of Thessalonica the Metropolis of Macedonia Where his Doctrine found such kind entertainment that a great multitude of devout Greeks believed and of the chief women not a few Acts 17. v. 4. But no sooner had the good Apostle preached unto them the Resurrection of the author and finisher of our Faith but the malicious ill-natur'd Jews with certain lewd fellows of the basest sort assaulted the house of Jason for Paul's sake carrying both the Apostle and Disciple before the Magistrates of the City accusing them of Tumult and Sedition representing them troublers of the World and Enemies to Caesar so that the good Apostle was under a constraint to depart from Thessalonica which made him leave his new Converts unsettled not throughly established in the Faith But yet so firm and solid was the foundation which he had laid that all the black Regiment of Hell with the Prince of the Powers of Darkness could not extirpate nor overturn it The sleight and the cunning the violence and force of all the false Prophets could not court them to embrace another Doctrine nor fright them into an Abhorrence of that which they had received from St Paul Who hearing from some of his Brethren and Fellow labourers of their stedfastness in the Faith wrote this Epistle to congratulate their constancy their perseverance in the same and to arm them against all temptations all afflictions which might attack their sincerity and assault their Christian fortitude and having thus confirmed them in this Chapter he exhorts them v. 1. to please God by abounding more and more in all the duties of piety v. 4. to keep their bodies pure and undefiled v. 6. he dehorts them from fraud and oppression v. 9 10. he commends their fraternal love and charity for saith the Apostle of them Ye exercise it towards all the brethren that are in Macedonia And without vanity and self-reflection my beloved Brethren and Fellow Countrymen I must commend your charity and love which you have often shewed one to another but we beseech you brethren that ye increase more and more Now the reason why St. Paul addressed himself in this humble courteous language of intreaty is I conceive that his Doctrine might the better charm their affections and be the more firmly rooted in their hearts that love might lead them to the practice of their duty rather than fear frighten them into a compliance with it The Apostle who had taken some with a holy guile experimentally knew that that Obedience is more sincere which proceeds from a principle of love than that which is compelled by fear My body and external parts may be forced but no compulsion can prevail against my soul That 's the most sweet and welcome Obedience which is voluntary and unconstrained A Lion peradventure may be stroaked into a bondage but sooner will he be hewed in pieces than beaten into a chain That is surely an imperfect kind of Obedience which bows men to their duty by threats and terrors there is very little of the heart in such performances which can therefore find very little acceptance with God our Saviour who would have the ground of our Obedience to be love John 14. v. 15. If you love me keep my commandments The drift and design of St. Paul was to incourage his Thessalonians in their vertuous practices in their Christian progress and therefore he beseeches them to increase and that he might the better prevail with them he adds that christian appellation of Brethren I beseech you Brethren But how the Apostle a Jew born at Tarsus in Cilicia could call the Thessalonians Grecians by birth Brethren may perhaps be questioned For the satisfaction therefore of such a Curiosity it may be observed that the word Brethren is variously used as well in the Book of God as our common language for not only they are called Brethren that are born of the same as Jacob and Esau but they also who derive their Original from the same stock so Abraham and Lot though but Brothers Sons were called Brethren People of the same Nation such as follow the same Art or Trade that are partners in the same Office or Employment are called Brethren Paul and Sosthenes fellow-labourers in the work of the Ministry are so called 1 Cor. 1.1 but in neither of these respects doth Saint Paul call the Thessalonians by that Christian name but because they were brethren in the Christian Faith and they may properly be called brethren that profess the same Faith worship the same God and in the same manner are members of the same Church and through the merits of the blessed Jesus are interessed in all the priviledges belonging to the Sons of God This is a Spiritual brotherhood and in this sense we are all Christians and as such we are brethren in Christ Jesus And therefore my beloved I shall use the loving language of the Apostle to perswade you to that excellent duty of Charity upon our solemn Feast-day which is a Feast of Love and Charity which you have often exercised to the lowly branches of your Country to your honour But we beseech you Brethren to increase more and more Highly reasonable necessary for us and incumbent upon us is the practice of this great and honourable duty if we consider that God Almighty is our merciful Father that he daily feeds and cloaths us that