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A49119
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The history of Joshua applied to the case of King Charles II in a thanksgiving sermon / preached at St. Peters, Exon. on the 29th of May 1684, by Tho. Long, one of the prebendaries.
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Long, Thomas, 1621-1707.
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1684
(1684)
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Wing L2970; ESTC R38031
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17,673
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33
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in over-ruling the perverse wills and contrary dispositions of men bringing Good out of Evil and Peace and Order out of all the Confusions which are intended and acted by them as in any miraculous work And if any thing in this late Age comes near to the nature of a Miracle that Series and Succession of unparallel'd Wonders for twenty years together granted to our King may be so called If therefore it were a Wonder in Nature to see Jor and Dan forsake their course and stand on an heap while Joshua passed over it was no less to see multitudes and streams of people in an about Thames and Isis forsake their wonted Channel and * Amnisque cucurrit qua non pronus erat flow back to their Head and Fountain from whom they had ran so long over so many Precipices To see those great men that thought themselves as immovable as the Mountains skipping like Rams and the little hills like young sheep at the presence of Joshua and the Ark of God Psal 114.4 To see that Prince who had been so long and often near to be shipwrack'd on dry land to be owned and guarded as Soveraign Lord and Commander of the Seas and those Ships which as so many Tygers and Vultures roved up and down to make him a Prey as so many Doves flying to him as to their Ark with Olive-branches in their mouths to assure him that the Deluge was over was very strange but much more wonderful it was that those slouds of people that had lift up their voice threatning present death at his first approach and that if he pass'd the Seas he should wade through a Sea of Bloud should in an instant of time change their note and welcome him as with the voice of many waters clapping their hands shouting for joy and crying Hallelujah so as nothing else could be heard but God save the King This is the lords doing and it is marvelous in our eyes This is the day which the Lord hath made let us be glad and rejoyce in it For from this day did God begin to magnifie our Joshua in the sight of all his people And now our Joshua stands on his own terra firma and might truly say as Caesar did Veni vidi vici where-ever he came and whatsoever he saw he overcame for with no other preparation than that of the joyful sound of Trumpets he approached the Royal City the Fortress and Metropolis of the Nation or rather the great City came forth to meet him That City which had sent forth many Messages after him with a Nolumus hunc regnare We will not have this man to reign over us and had spent vast Treasures and hazarded the lives and souls of many thousands to take away his life now cast themselves at his feet imploring his Pardon offering their Lives and Estates in defence of his and set open their hearts wider than their gates to entertain him And those who with Shimei had cursed their King most bitterly were some of the first that came with Acclamations to welcome him home The Example of this City as it usually had done influenced all the lesser Cities which like those of Canaan spued out those independent Arbitrary Tyrants that held them in subjection to make room for his peaceable Officers who under God restored their Judges as at the first and their Counsellors as at the beginning And now his Majesties own house being not yet setled he makes it his first care to fix the Ark of God among us restoring the Priests and Levites to their Offices and Inheritance and to recover the Spoils of the Church and consecrated things from those sacrilegious Achans that had purloined them and hid them in their own Tents And though he destroyed not the sacrilegious persons yet he hath well-nigh destroyed Sacriledge it self And this is another act whereby God magnified our Joshua for by giving unto God the things that are Gods God hath given unto Caesar the things that are Caesars The next memorable act ingraven on our side of this Royal Arch is the banishing of those false Prophets and depriving them of those wages of Iniquity which were given them as a reward for cursing the King and deceiving the People among whom there being none like to our English Balaam the very Blunderbuss of that Age that had less Religion and as little Reason as the Ass he rode on was deservedly executed by the Sword of Justice With these there fell in a great measure those several Sects Parties and Factions of Jebusites and Madianites Hittites and Perisites which they had raised who though they were irreconcilably divided from each other yet they unanimously conspired against the Israel of God Onely it will stand recorded as a defect not so much in the Government of Joshua as on the inconstancy and importunity of some of the Elders and Princes of the Congregation that the Land was not wholly cleansed from them in his days but by their wiles and subtilties their clothing of new Errours in the habit of old Traditions and their decking of old Errours and Heresies in new forms of Godliness they extorted an Indulgence and Toleration to the insnaring of such as were unstable and the grieving of those that were stedfast to whom they were as so many Briers and Thorns to vex and disquiet them The Acts of Oblivion and all Indulgences under which as in the Cities of refuge even bloud-guilty men might have lived securely have been so far from suppressing their enmity and causing them to live peaceably with their Brethren that they have rather taken encouragement from them as to turn the grace of God into wantonness so to return the Kings Clemency into new Affronts and Confederacies against him But these mischiefs notwithstanding those two Sacraments of Baptism and the Supper of our Lord by which we have an entrance into and an inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven assigned to us are duly administred to all that will rightly receive them And as by the Law of Moses the uncircumcised and such as partook not of the Paschal Lamb had no inheritance among their Brethren in the Kingdom of Israel so we are taught that they can have no inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven who will have no Communion with the Church of God in the use of these Sacraments There was a time when the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence and the violent took it by force but now when the Kingdom of Heaven seems to offer violence and to take us into it by force though our Jesus hath by his own bloud provided for us a Laver of Regeneration and in great love prepared a Feast of fat things even his own flesh and bloud to preserve our Bodies and Souls to eternal life the Doctrine of Resistance to the Commands and Institutions of the King of Heaven is as boldly put in practice as that of resisting the Supreme Power on Earth is preached in our Conventicles For what
a scandal and contradiction is it that they should pass for true Protestants among us that were never Christians and boast themselves the chiefest Ministers of Christ the Head that cut themselves off from all Communion with the Body of Christ his Church and make their Children pass through the fire to Moloch rather than through the Baptismal water to Christ That would rather confederate in a Covenant for Bloud with some Sons of Belial than partake of the Bloud of that Covenant of Peace which the Son of God invites us to Certainly the Bloud both of their King and of their Saviour must seem very vile to those that can thus trample them under their feet And notwithstanding the Cry of Persecution I think it our bounden duty and an act of Christian Charity to practise our Saviours Prescript upon these distracted people and compel them to come in to his House and to his great Supper that as St. John Baptist says they may be preserved from the wrath to come Mat. 3.7 for otherwise God can as well raise up Children to Abraham out of those stones as St. John says pointing as some learned men think at those very stones which Joshua set up in the midst of Jordan as make them Children of his Kingdom which nothing can do but a Miracle of Mercy whereof they can have little hope that despise the easie and ordinary means of their Salvation And now to convince these men behold another Wonder That notwithstanding all these impotent Commotions those two great Luminaries and Ordinances of Heaven the light of the Gospel and the comfortable influences of Government do stand still over our Land as the Sun did over Gibeon and the Moon in the Valley of Ajalon neither the blustring of the Northern Winds nor the interposition of infernal Mists consisting of gross darkness and new lights together have been able to hinder the dispensation of those heavenly blessings to the comfort of all humble and faithful Souls and as well to the admiration as to the regret and confusion of our enemies And may they ever so stand till all the enemies of the established Religion and Government be so destroyed that there be not one of them left And now I dare for once to appeal to the people as Joshua did ch 23. 14. Ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord our God promised to his Church in these later days The Sun of Righteousness was promised Malachy 4.2 to arise with healing in his wings and it was foretold Isai 49.23 that God would send Kings to be nursing fathers to his Church and nothing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord our God promised us he hath in a good measure healed our Divisions removed our Prejudices and Enmities and established the Vniformity of his Worship among us and rolled away the Reproach that lay upon us But if with Jessurun we shall grow wanton and kick against God and bite and devour one another he hath threatned to bring upon us all the evil that is written in his Law till he have destroyed us from off the good land which he hath given us Josh 23.15 He can as he hath done once already turn the Sun i. e. the Gospel into darkness and the Moon i. e. our Government into bloud he can remove the Ark of his presence and Worship and roll back the reproach of Egypt upon us and write Ichabod upon the whole Land Wherefore as we have heard and seen the great works of God for the magnifying of our King so let us consider the duties which we owe to God and the King that we may rightly celebrate the joyful Solemnity of this day And first let us sing our Te Deum let us ascribe unto the Lord the praises due unto his Name for all those Acts of Grace whereby he hath magnified the King for with his own right hand and with his holy arm hath he gotten himself the victory and therefore not unto us O Lord not unto us but to thy Name be the honour and glory of all those great things which thou hast done for our King and for us whom thou hast committed to his charge It is he that giveth victory unto Kings and hath delivered David his servant from the peril of the sword Let us therefore that are all partakers of his mercies joyn together in singing our Magnificat with one heart and one mouth My soul doth magnifie the Lord and my spirit hath rejoyced in God my Saviour for he hath regarded the low estate of his servants he that is mighty hath magnified us and holy is his Name He hath shewed strength with his arm and hath scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts he hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek he hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away He remembring his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel as he promised to our forefathers Abraham and his seed for ever Secondly Let us beware how we do so much as in our thoughts despise or undervalue much less seek to cast him down whom God hath so wonderfully exalted It is hard fighting against God and our murmurings against so good a Governour are not against him onely but against the Lord. Haman being asked what should be done to the man whom the King delighted to honour Hest 6.6 answered Let the royal apparel be brought which the King useth to wear and the horse which the King rideth upon and the Crown royal be set upon his head But what shall be done to the King whom God delighteth to honour that King whom God prevented with blessings of goodness and gave him his hearts desire that King on whose head he hath set a Crown of pure Gold and crowned that Crown with inestimable mercies and loving kindnesses that King that trusteth in the Lord that hath been born upon Eagles wings and fixed on the Rock that is higher than himself against whom though the people did rage and their Rulers took counsel together yet with a Non Obstante he hath set his King upon his holy hill of Sion He hath laught his enemies to scorn and vexed them in his sore displeasure What shall be done to such a King What why there are some who are of a far worse mind than Haman was that would deal with him as the Jews did with Christ their King they have platted a Crown of Thorns and would set it on his head and put a Reed in his hands instead of the Royal Scepter and instead of the Royal Robe clothe him with Curses railings and mockings as with a Garment and nail him to the Cross and pierce his royal sides with their Tongues sharper than swords or spears that thirst for his heart-bloud and cry as they did His bloud be upon us and our children not considering