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A51229
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A sermon preach'd before the King at St. James's, April 16, 1696 being a day of publick thanksgiving for the discovery of a horrid design to assassinate His Majesty's person, and for the deliverance of the Nation from a French invasion / by ... John, Lord Bishop of Norwich.
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Moore, John, 1646-1714.
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1696
(1696)
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Wing M2554; ESTC R321
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17,039
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38
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might take possession from the malice of their cruel Enemies that thirst after their blood and from a vast number of dangerous Accidents which are not to be imputed either to their own folly or the ill will of other men He also protects the Reputation of the Innocent and delivers them from the Slanders of lying Lips he secures mens Estates not only from the Assaults of Robbers and Thieves but from the violence of Fires Tempests and Floods and from all other Casualties But though there is no Creature so small and inconsiderable that God does not take care of it yet for the most part the Acts of his Providence are more apparent and discernable in the ordering and management of the greater portions of the World his hand is more visible in the government and disposal of Countreys and Kingdoms than of particular Places and Families of Kings and Men in Authority than of private Persons whether in their ruin when they turn their hearts from the Lord their God and give themselves up to commit evil or in their Preservation when they do that which is right in his eyes and keep the Covenants and Statutes which he has commanded them And it is to the extraordinary Providence of God that we are beholden for this joyful Occasion of assembling our selves together who hath delivered our King from the hands of cruel and barbarous Men that had conspired to Assassinate and Murther his Sacred Person and preserved our Nation from an Invasion for which all things were prepared and made ready by a Powerful Neighbour with design to conquer our Countrey and to bring that Bondage and Slavery upon us under which his own Subjects do labour and groan Had God justly incensed by our Iniquities permitted these Hellish Plots to have taken effect against the Person of our Dread Sovereign and the Land of our Nativity it is not easy to conceive the Fears Horror and Confusion with which we should have been overwhelmed nor the Rage and and Cruelty with which our Enemies would have follow'd their Blow to have obtained a full Conquest and made us compleatly miserable We could with no reason have expected the least degree of tenderness or pity from them who had so far divested themselves not only of Religion but Humanity it self as to murther the Father of their Countrey under whose Protection they for many years had lived safely neither should we have had more ground to hope for favour from that Prince by whose Arms we were to be invaded who in his whole Conduct seems to have greater regard to the amplifying of his Glory and Power and the enlargement of his Dominions than to the honesty of his Cause and the Rights of them with whom he does contend and whose Mercy or even Faith and Justice the unhappy whom he has conquered have no reason to applaud Neither perhaps are these Failings so much to be charged upon the Ambition of his Natural Temper as upon an unenlightned Zeal he has to promote a Religion which allows men to do very many ill things For where Popery has a full Influence upon men they will break through all Tyes Natural Civil or Divine to serve that Interest Neither Laws nor Edicts nor Promises nor Oaths nor Vows nor sense of former Kindnesses have been found Bands strong enough to hold them There are indeed Doctrines taught in that Church which are great hindrances to good Life and dispose men to violate the Moral Duties of Nature and Religion without any great shock of their Consciences or fear of Future Punishment They get rid of their Fears by the Doctrines of Penance Purgatory Masses for the Dead and make their Consciences easy by those of Equivocation Absolution and that they are not bound to keep the Faith they have engaged to Hereticks which is the good Name they are pleased to give us whom they will not allow to have any Right to Truth or Justice or so much as to their own Lives Hereupon many of that Communion think it no Sin at all to kill us and the most zealous and bigotted among them believe it a Good Work and that they shall merit Heaven by doing God and their Church such Laudable Service Since these Principles have found Entertainment in the World what Havock has been made of the Lives of Men what Effusion of Christian Blood During a short Reign in our own Kingdom Men and Women of Holy and Peaceable Lives to a great number were burnt at the Stake because they would not embrace Opinions devised by the Church of Rome and imposed for Articles of Faith which are not contained in the Holy Scripture nor known to the Primitive Christians In the Countrey from whence we now were threatned with an Invasion as we are inform'd by some of their own Authors the Throats were cut of near a Hundred thousand Protestants in the space of a few days When Tidings of it reach'd the Court of Rome his Holiness the Pope received them with in-expressible Joy he went to St. Lewis's Church in Procession to give God Thanks for the Success heard Panegyrical Orations on that Occasion with extreme Satisfaction and Pleasure granted ample Indulgences and on a Medal stamp'd for that purpose he caused this Hellish Tragedy to be represented as the work of an Angel Which none could have undertaken before they had by a long custom of sinning brought themselves to hope that there were no Invisible Powers no Angels nor God to observe the Wickedness of men and to punish it Queen Elizabeth sat a long time on the Throne lov'd and honour'd by her Subjects for her Wise and Righteous Government and yet there was hardly any part of her Reign without a Plot carried on by her restless Enemies of that Religion At one time several Gentlemen Zealots of the Roman Church some of whose Accomplices had undertaken to make out That it was Lawful to take off Princes excommunicated and that if Right and Justice are ever to be violated it is allowable in such Cases as tend to advance the Catholick Religion did readily and chearfully enter into a Conspiracy and bind themselves by an Oath to Murther her Majesty But the Providence of God which now discovered the late Traitors brought then their black Contrivances to light and they suffered condign Punishment for them But of all bloody Designs that Popish Counsels have hatch'd and they seem to outdo all others there is none that had so contracted its Venom and Malignity together like the Rays of the Sun in a glass and which in the most compendious manner would have destroyed so many and of such high Quality as the Gunpowder Plot. Caligula wish'd the People of Rome had but one Neck that he might cut it off at one Blow and the Horrible Cruelty which the Pagan Tyrant had only in his Wishes and Speculation the Christians of the Church of Rome would have put in Practice and with one Stroke have
A SERMON Preach'd before the KING AT St. JAMES's April 16. 1696. Being a Day of Publick Thanksgiving for the Discovery of a Horrid Design to Assassinate His Majesty's Person And for the Deliverance of the Nation from a French Invasion By the Right Reverend Father in God JOHN Lord Bishop of NORWICH Published by His Majesty's Special Command LONDON Printed for Will. Rogers at the Sun over-against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet MDCXCVI The Bishop of NORWICH's THANKSGIVING-SERMON Before the KING AT St. JAMES's April 16. 1696. A SERMON Preach'd before the KING at St. JAMES's PSALM L. 15. I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me THE Goodness of God which inclined him to create so great a number of Beings of whose Service he could have no want having all Perfections contained in his own Nature and essential to it moved him ever since they did exist to preserve them Among the Creatures of several Kinds and Ranks which God brought into the World to some he gave a Capacity to discover his Being and that he was the Maker of all things and did conserve and govern them who by considering the Works of his Creation and either viewing them singly or comparing them together must discern Wise Design Exact Order Mutual Fitness and Subserviency one to another every where among them and thence necessarily conclude that the Author of all these Productions is endued with Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness and that it is most reasonable for them who have receiv'd so Noble a Nature from him to reverence love and honour him for it But what he did enable his Creatures to find out by their Reasoning Faculties he has manifested more fully to them by Revelation as well what concerns the Excellency of his own Nature as what relates to them and their Dependency upon him He has taught them that he is their Sovereign Lord of whom they hold all and that it is their Duty to worship and praise him for his Loving-kindness that as he only can furnish them with the common Supports of Life so they are to pray to him for them that as he will rescue them out of danger so they ought humbly to recommend themselves to his Care and Protection and after he has made a way for their Escape heartily to return him Thanks for their Deliverance Thus to be grateful to our Principal Benefactor is not only agreeable to Natural Light and Justice but the great Law of our Religion I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me In the Text these Two Propositions are plainly contained 1. That Deliverances are from God 2. That it is our Duty to glorify and honour him for them In treating of the first I will shew 1. That all Deliverances are from God 2. That some are more evidently so as having the plain and visible Marks of his Hand impress'd upon them 1. That all Deliverances are from God Before I enter upon the Proof of which I would premise 1. That this Assertion does not imply That God will deliver us if we do nothing our selves towards obtaining our Safety he has promised that his Grace shall attend and promote our honest Endeavours but gives no ground to the idle and negligent to hope for his help who will make no use of their Natural Powers derived from him for their own Preservation 2. Neither from hence does it follow That God will encourage men in the pains they themselves take to get out of Trouble if they do not humbly address to him for his help The calling upon him in the day of trouble being the express Condition upon which he will deliver us 3. Nor though men pray vehemently to God have they the least reason to expect he will fetch them out of those Dangers they have run themselves into by being engaged in any wicked Design Should Robbers Pyrates Murderers Assassines Traytors to their King and Countrey pray for the Success of their Villany and that they may escape the Stroke of Justice God would be so far from granting their Petitions that he would take their Prayers for a new Injury and Affront and abhor their Sacrifice as much as their Sin 4. Neither are these things to be so strictly understood as if the wicked should never escape out of any danger for they sometimes may call upon God and he may have so much regard to their Prayers as to take them out of the hands of their Enemies who may be worse than themselves to induce them to repent and return to him and their Duty they may humble themselves before God and he defer the Calamity to a further time which he had threatned to bring presently upon them Thus upon the Humiliation of Ahab who did evil above all that were before him God delays the Execution of the Judgment he had denounced against his House unto the days of his Son Moreover very bad men sometimes do deeds of Charity and Mercy and God suffers their few Good Works for a season to cover their many Evil ones so that they are not always brought immediately to Light and Punishment God also may permit the Wicked to succeed in their Evil Designs in order to correct and reform his own People when they trust more in the Arm of Flesh than in God their Saviour and when upon any loss or disappointment they grow uneasy and ungrateful and do not retain a due sense of his great and manifold Mercies Lastly The Wicked often do prosper and are suffer'd to climb high not out of kindness to them but that their fall may be the greater and that the Divine Vengeance may be the more conspicuous in their final overthrow These things being premised I proceed to observe That Deliverances are of several sorts both with respect to them for whom they are wrought and with respect to the Evils from which they set us free Some are confined to single Persons or reach but to private Families or Towns and some extend to whole Countreys and Nations indeed to all the Race of Mankind as that Transcendent Deliverance in the Redemption of the World by our Lord Jesus Christ And as the Redemption Christ did purchase for us with his Blood was the most comprehensive taking in the whole Stock of Men so was it the most valuable as rescuing us from the power of Sin which brought the Wrath of God upon us and from the wages of Sin everlasting Punishment which is the greatest of Evils As to single Persons God guards their Souls against the Designs of their spiritual Enemies the World the Devil the Flesh either by keeping them out of the way of the Tempters or by enabling them to overcome their Temptations so as they shall not be hurt or led captive by them It is also to the Goodness of God that particular men owe the preservation of their Health Life Reputation and Estates He defends their Lives from the malignity of Diseases from the covetousness of Oppressors who would kill that they