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A63882
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A sermon preached before the King on Easter-Day, 1684 by Francis Lord Bishop of Rochester ...
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Turner, Francis, 1638?-1700.
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1684
(1684)
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Wing T3283; ESTC R38918
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14,934
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35
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A SERMON Preached before the KING On Easter-Day 1684. By Francis Lord Bishop of Rochester and ALMONER to His MAJESTY Published by his Majesties special Command LONDON Printed by J. Macock for R. Royston Book-seller to His most Sacred Majesty at the Angel in Amen-Corner 1684. Hosea VI. 2 3. After two days will He revive us in the third day He will raise us up and we shall live in his sight Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord his going forth is prepared as the morning and He shall come unto us as the rain as the latter and former rain unto the earth SUCH an August and Solemn Assembly as this how well does it suit with those Glorious Titles the Ancient Fathers bestow upon Easter-Day the Feast of Feasts the Solemnity of Solemnities the Queen or Empress of all the Churches Festivals And well may the Christian Church be allowed to pay the highest observance and greatest reverence to the memory of his Resurrection Whom God hath raised up to be a Prince and a Saviour as St. Peter styles Him to be our God and our Lord as Saint Thomas calls him when even the Gentile World whom ever they took upon them to worship as a God their natural Religion dictated to them this That Feasts in Honour of Him should be observed The Roman Emperour Tiberius as Eusebius relates upon that amazing Story he received from his Lieutenant Pontius Pilate concerning our Saviours Death and Resurrection was very desirous to have Deified our Lord Christ But by the special Providence of God the Senate found a pretence to cross that Design of Tiberius for Christ would never be beholding to the Secular Heathen Powers to advance his Divinity which was to astonish the World into its belief by a quite contrary method of suffering their Persecutions and dying for it But since all the Triumphs of Christ that were the consequence of his Death and Passion began from his Resurrection Because he was obedient unto death even the death upon the Cross therefore God also hath highly exalted him again God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ which implies that Christ was made more The Christ that is more The Anointed Son of God by his being the first-begotten from the dead this Day then we must needs allow this Day a preference to all others in our Christian Calendar This is foretold As the Day of his Power when the people should offer him free-will Offerings with an holy worship when he was first enabled to declare All power is given unto me in Heaven and earth This is the Day which Christ has call'd properly His Father Abraham desired to see my Day and he saw it and was glad to see it then when he received Isaac from the dead in a Figure a Type of Christ This is the Day which the Lord hath made I could alledge a great consent of the Antients interpreting that Passage of the Psalmist as Prophetical of Easter-Day a Festival that we hear of in as old a Record and as venerable a Piece of Antiquity as is the Story of Polycarp St. John's Disciple a Festival which Constantine the first Great Christian Emperour commanded by a special Edict to be observed which Socrates our Ecclesiastical Historian assures us that in his time no Hereticks had impudence enough to disparage nay that all of them kept it Now methinks 't is exceeding strange that so many of our Schismaticks should have so much zeal as they pretend to have for the Weekly Festival and none for the Annual Commemoration of our Blessed Lords Resurrection that the Lords Day being confessedly derived from this Day every Sunday but as a shadow of Easter Yet some almost Judaizing in the Doctrine of the Sabbath should refuse to join with the rest of the Christian World in honouring of this Day whence the other one and fifty Days in the Year had all their beginning and borrow all their Glory But as for you that come hither on the score of Devotion I may address my self to you as the Angel began to those that had the honour to hear the first welcome News of this Day Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth that was crucified He is risen The Christian Saints of old when they met upon Easter-Morning the one accosted the other with this Salutation Christ is risen the Custom still continues in the Greek Churches to which the other joyfully echoes and replies Yes Christ is risen But I will not say with the Angel Ye seek Jesus He is not here Indeed he was no longer there in his Monument but he is here in the Blessed Sacrament which shall be in the worthy Receivers as Seeds of the Resurrection 't is Irenaeus's expression to make our vile Bodies like his glorious Body and he is here in the Text as I shall clearly shew though it were but an obscure Prophecy to the Jews as every Prophecy is a Mystery till it be fulfilled yet now 't is turn'd into the plain Story of this time to us Christians 't is a demonstration if it pleases Christ to open our hearts as he did those of the two Disciples that went to Emmaus when he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures and all the Prophets the things concerning himself That Christ ought to have suffered those things and to enter into his Glory for unless he open our eyes as he did theirs while he opened the Scriptures to them we may be but as they were slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken Saint Paul who tells some parts of this Story concerning the Resurrection more punctually than even the Gospels have done tells us that Christ rose the third Day according to the Scriptures The Resurrection is the only Article of our Creed that has the circumstance of time particularly annexed to it and this he says was according to the Scriptures that Christ rose the third Day Which are those Scriptures then For he must needs mean those in the Old Testament and which are those None more plain than this place of Hosea which therefore I have chosen to discourse upon though it be not so commonly observed and though it be left for an exercise of our Christian Industry which should be much employ'd in searching the Scriptures for this is a Text not quoted in any place of the New Testament Yet I shall not deny but this Prophecy might also signifie that reviving or restoring of Gods people from their woful Captivity in which they were as it were dead men and dry bones as the Prophet Ezekiel calls them Recovering their Liberty was like receiving new life after those two days or two calamitous times first of the Assyrian Captivity then of the Babylonian and then a third glorious Day broke out joyful and happy to them upon the Victories and Triumphs of the Great Cyrus whom the Prophet Isaiah calls by his Name some Ages before he was born Who hath said
the reason he has left will rather oblige him to sit down under a wild suspicion that his Life is a waking Dream that the Heaven and the Earth and all things else about him are but false representations made by some hidden accursed power that is always deluding his fancy and that there is nothing in the World but the Devil and himself fit Companions for one another And having thus discours'd Historically of the Matter of Fact which the Prophet delivers in the Text I shall now proceed to consider but very briefly of the Mystery of Faith the consequence or effect of these great things that Christ either did or suffered for us so the power of his Resurrection as St. Paul calls it is also set down in these words He shall revive us He shall raise us up again and we shall live in his sight He shall come unto us as the rain as the latter and former rain unto the earth This Similitude is taken from a thing that is most common that is Rain and yet this Philosophical or at least this Experimental Age will allow me thus much That the richest Notes and the most undoubted Conclusions in the Book of Nature are such as we draw from the most vulgar and therefore the most constant Observations Therefore of all the Similitudes upon which the Divine Prophecies and Parables in the Old and New Testament are turn'd and form'd there are no Comparisons so frequently used as these between the products of Nature and the growth of Grace between the Fruits of the Earth and the encrease of heavenly Vertue and Glory in the humane Soul and Body no temporal Blessings are so often promis'd or so constantly perform'd to put us in mind of the Spiritual as the sending of the former and the latter rain the shining of the Sun on the just and on the unjust the watering the earth and blessing it and making it very plenteous The Church is every where represented as God's Husbandry as God's Vineyard and Christ himself is by himself resembled to a Corn of Wheat that fell into the Ground and dy'd as if he had said The Corn of Wheat this my Body the Corn of Wheat which falls into the ground and dies this is my Body which is given and broken for you To the same intent and purpose 't is observable that the Ceremony of waving the Sheaf of the first-fruit of the Harvest on the next day after the Feast of the Passoever was appointed in the Law of Moses as a significant Type of the Resurrection or of Christ's reviving and raising our mortal Bodies as His Sheaves with him and 't is yet more observable that God's peculiar Providence over-ruling the blind Jews to defer their Feast until Saturday that year when our Saviour suffered order'd it so that they wav'd the Sheaf exactly on the first Easter-morning when Christ arose But these effects on our Bodies are not the only or the greatest effects of Christ's Resurrection the Power and Wisdom of God in it is greater still in comparison of this Wisdom the Apostle counted all things no better than dung good only as that is to manure the Ground to prepare it for that good Seed and for this blessed Rain that should come upon it that was all that all the knowledge of the World was good for to those who knew not Christ But of what consequence now to our Souls as well as our Bodies is the Knowledge and Belief of this prime Fundamental Article The summ of all this Because Christ did and suffered all this for us therefore did God his Father give him by the Holy Spirit a power to raise up himself first and then all that are his with all manner of Resurrections both of Soul and Body from all manner of Deaths to which they were obnoxious Therefore the Scripture in some places uses the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is his full and intire Resurrectim the whole 6th of the Romans and most of the 5th is upon the force of his Passion and his Resurrection where 't is made the Idaeal Cause the very similitude and pattern of our Resurrection and more than so a vital influence is supposed to be derived from him upon us to assimilate or make us like him as well in our Souls as our Bodies that as we have been planted together in the likeness of his Death we shall be also in the likeness of his Resurrection For this implanting viz. in our Baptism supposes a drawing of Vertue from Christ and is secur'd on his part to our lives end there is imply'd not only our Obligation but our Ability by the power he gives us that we also should walk as he did after this day forty days together in newness of life supposing that none can raise their hearts from the World and be thus renewed but by thinking on these things And this falls in with my third and last Part the Obligation upon our parts or the Condition imposed upon us if we mean to reap advantage from this revealed Doctrine of Christ's Resurrection and ours then must these Principles be pursued extreamly home and we must go on throughout the whole course of our lives to practise accordingly Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord For in the very next words to those of my Text the Prophet takes up this lamentation O Ephraim what shall I do unto thee O Judah what shall I do unto thee For your goodness is as a morning cloud and as the early dew it goeth away It seems that these men whom the Prophet had to do with were men of good intentions but so they say Hell it self is full of good intentions that is 't is full of those that one time or other intended to do well but here was their great mistake they thought the great work was done as soon as it was but intended Alas we are apt to take every faint endeavour and every feeble attempt for overcoming the World But then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord that is if we proceed in taking just pains with our selves till we love what we know or else we know nothing yet as we ought to know He that loveth not knoweth not God for God is love That Jesus Christ came into the World to save Sinners this is not only a faithful saying but avowed with good reason by the Apostle to be worthy of all men to be received but every thing in Nature is received according to the capacity and figure of the worthy or unworthy Receiver Our Christian Philosophy 't is a most noble speculation Angels delight to pry into it Unbelievers themselves will acknowledge in their sober moods that our main Body of Divinity is a piece of magnificent Wit admirably refin'd and strongly knit together But because they want a soul for it to ponder and contemplate these great and amazing Truths till they come to practise as they ought therefore the men