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A30449
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A sermon preached before the King at Whitehall, on Christmas-Day, 1696 by the Right Reverend Father in God, Gilbert Lord Bishop of Sarum.
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Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.
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1697
(1697)
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Wing B5905; ESTC R21549
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13,405
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35
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that asks it Our Faculties are not only under a great depression but a vast disorder Appetite and Passion do soon fire us and are not easily resisted we may have some good Minutes but we have many more weak and bad ones We do plainly perceive that without some inward assistance to cure and rectify our Nature we cannot go through with the business of Religion Our Saviour has assured us of this and he has made the condition of our attaining it to be that which is both in it self easy for nothing can be easier than to have a thing for the asking and is the properest Method possible to keep alive in us great and powerful impressions of God which are the Seeds and Principles that must reform our Natures and mould them unto the likeness of God Before the Son of God was sent forth there were some general Ideas of God's hearing and answering of Prayer and of his furnishing his Worshippers with an inward aid But it was our Saviour only who made it a part of the Covenant that he came to establish between God and man That a Divine Power should be conveyed into the Faculties of all such as should earnestly pray to him by which they should be enabled to pay him that sincere Obedience of which he is pleased graciously to accept and in consideration of which he does through the Merits and Intercession of Christ pardon all our other errors and defects This is now to us a foederal promise we may depend upon it and with all humble confidence claim to it The Fourth great design of God's in sending forth his Son was That he might give the World the most powerful of all motives to work either on their hopes or fears by offering them both a full assurance and a particular description of a Future State Some notices of this were still in the World but they were both doubtful and dark The greatest Assertors of it among the Greeks and Latins did it but faintly They proposed it rather as an opinion that was highly probable and fit to be believed than as that which was certainly true The hints given of it in the Old Testament are very general and may be made capable of other senses By it the Jews might be inclined to believe not only another State but the Resurrection of the Body but the account they contain of it is very defective Our Saviour brought it to Light he not only affirmed it in many expressions that were so full and so plain that it is not possible to doubt any longer about it without rejecting his Authority He gave a very express proof of the possibility of the Resurrection by his own rising from the dead He went further and assured us that we should then be made like unto Angels That our Bodies should shine as the Sun that we should be for ever with God inheriting that Kingdom which was prepared for us previous to this he told us That we shall hear his voice by the power of which we shall be raised out of our Graves and be judged according to all that we have done in this Life and that the micked shall go into everlasting punishment and the righteous into life eternal This being then so evidently delivered and so fully described by him we have in it given to us exceeding great and precious promises with the greatest encouragement possible to undertake that course of Holiness which he has set before us in consideration of the glory which with it he hath also set before us We are assured by him that if we go through Life in an imitation of his Example and an Obedience of his Laws as well as in a submission to those Sufferings by which he may think fit to exercise our Faith and Patience we shall at last escape out of this evil World and from these Vile Bodies We shall arise above the depressions of Sense and Imagination and the disorders of Appetite and Passion We shall drop our Bodies with all the necessities and weaknesses that hang about them and shall arise into a state of pure and clear light into a state of purity and perfection into the fellowship of Angels and Saints and be brought to see and enjoy God to all Eternity And that too with all the fulness of comprehension as well as of joy that our Faculties in their utmost enlargement and elevation are capable of These are the hopes that the Son of God has given us I will not turn the prospect and give the black face of that dismal Eternity which he has at the same time denounced against the impenitent The joy of this Day agrees not so well with that as withthe other more lovely and more animating prospect which we ought to carry ever in our Thoughts that so we may lay hold on that eternal life which he who cannot lye has thus set before us These are the great ends for which God sent forth his Son They are all worthy of God as they are the greatest that the Human Nature is capable of But what are we the better for all this if we come not under the influences of it if we are only brought to have chaster thoughts of the Divinity a decenter way of Worship with correcter Expressions and more reasonable Opinions but come not under the vital Energy of it If neither our hearts nor our lives are made the better for it we do very little consider or pursue the ends for which the Son of God was sent into the World Can we imagine that all this was designed for no higher end than to bring men under some forms and to bind them to some opinions This amounts to little and must needs give but a mean Idea of a Religion that with how much pomp soever it might be introduced seems now to have very little effect on the great numbers of those who profess it This alone disposes the World more to doubt of it than all that prophane minds can draw from any part of it as a prejudice against it Then shall these be the most effectually confuted when the World shall see many instances of such true Christians over whose Thoughts and Actions this Religion bears sway Human Nature is too universally corrupted to expect great numbers of such but a happy mixture of some of these among the Crouds of those who are called Christians but are the reproaches of their Profession would give another air of Authority to all that we can say in behalf of our Faith If we could at the same time appeal to such who are the living Apologies for Religion This ought to be the noble Ambition of those whom God has eminently distinguished from the rest of Mankind and exalted above them To be patterns to others to follow is an honour far beyond the Authority of Commanding them The Examples of those in great posts will be both followed and observed in that which is good as well as in that which is bad Happy they who live so as to convince the World of the power that Religion has over them and that give such an Essay of the beauty as well as the purity of true Holiness as disposes the rest of Mankind to love it as well as to follow it Let us all then consider for what ends God sent his Son into the World that we may comply with them and correspond to them Let us fill our minds with great thoughts of God with just ones of our selves and with the generous Principles of Virtue even in its most Heroical instances Let us study the Doctrine of Christ that we may be enlightened by it and have it in all its branches distinctly before our thoughts and in our memories that so we may ever know how to conduct our selves by it And let the pattern of our Saviour's holy Life and Deportment be ever as a Picture before us that we may always study and copy after it Let the Meditations of what he suffered for us and for our Sins be ever tender upon our minds to humble us when we reflect on our Sins to give us deep horror for what is past and great cantion for the future That so we may learn to value those Souls that were to be purchased at such a price as well as these Sins that were to be expiated by such a Sacrifice Let us not sink under the sense of our frailty since we have great assistances at hand such as will strengthen us against all difficulties and will enable us to resist all temptations and in the end to be more than Conquerors All this is offered to us through him in whom as the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily so out of that fulness we shall all receive grace proportioned to our occasions to our necessities and to those services in which we are to be imployed Finally Let us with joy look beyond Life and Mortality and all the fading glories of this World Those scenes that change so often and so suddenly Let us look beyond Sense and Matter and all that train of Vanity and Vexation that accompanies them unto those Regions above where dwelleth Light and Love and Life for evermore Let us look unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our Faith whom God sent forth into the World to seek and save lost Sinners of whom we ought to reckon our selves among the Chief To whom with the Father and the H. Ghost be all Honour and Glory both now and evermore FINIS Gen. 49. 10. Dan. 9. 25. Neh. 2. 5 6. Ezra 1. 2. Ezra 6. 8. Heb. 1. 3. ver 4. ver 6 7. Ps. 97. 7. Deut. 32. 43. Heb. 1. 8 9 10 11 12. ver 13 14. Heb. 2. 2 3 4. ver 5. 7. ver 16. Heb. 3. 7. ver 2. ver 5 6. Numb 13. 6. Eus. Hist. l. 5. c. 28.