it or deferre it till his rooting vp of the Tares and winnowing the Chaffe from the Wheat It is an excellent saying of Chrysostomes in his sixe and fortieth Homilie ad populum Antiochenum God doth neither exact punishment of all men in this life lest thou shouldest despaire of a Resurrection and desist to expect a future Iudgement neither doth he suffer all men to goe vnpunished lest thou shouldest surmise his prouidence to be deficient but he punisheth and doth not punish in that he punisheth hee awakens the Sluggard with lessoning him that euen heere hee taketh notice and account of his offences in that he doth not punish hee summons the Insolent to a more fearefull Assises and strict Iudgement to come Thus haue I detayned you as Soiourners in a strange Land you haue all this while trauailed in the East where to your eyes haue beene presented the Iustices and Tribunals of Ephesus It might bee here expected that hauing finished this as I may well feare so tedious and irksome a voyage I should in the Port where our Ship is now arriued make some collation and application of that which in those remote Countries wee haue discouered I must confesse that the Climate is not the same the Meridians diuers the Cities many Degrees distant the one sometimes the Metropolis of lesser Asia the other at this time the Light and Pharos of great Brittanie And truely amongst other accidents wherein I cannot but note a great difference this is not the least vnremarkable that in the same cause which the Towne-clerke and my selfe haue vndertaken to manage my felicitie hath surmounted his in that my Auditors haue not been Demetrius or the Craftsmen in a turbulent Theater but the Pillars of peace and quiet in a Sanctuarie of Pietie where if my weake oratorie hath beene deficient the presence of Iustice hath I doubt not engrafted that which my Text aymes at with a silent Sermon and reall perswasion of its owne I shall thinke mine owne taske sufficiently discharged if I haue in such wise vnfolded the points deliuered that without much difficultie your selues may be so farre Preachers as to make the vses and applications your owne the Time suites the Occasion suggests my Text directs If Demetrius and the Crafts-men haue a matter against any man the law is open and there are Deputies let them implead one another To GOD the Father GOD the Sonne and GOD the Holy Ghost one essence and three Persons be rendred all Praise Honour and Glorie Might Maiestie and Dominion from this time forth for euermore Amen IVDAHS PREROGATIVES Deliuered In a Sermon at Saint MARIES in Oxford vpon the foure and twentieth of March being the day of thanks-giuing for his MAIESTIES happie and prosperous succession to this his Crowne of England c. An. 1619. By EDW. CHALONER Doctor of of Diuinitie and Fellow of ALSOVLES Colledge in OXFORD LONDON Printed by W. STANSBY 1623. IVDAHS PREROGATIVES IVDG 1. Vers 1. Now after the death of Iosua it came to passe that the children of Israel asked the Lord saying who shall goe vp for vs against the Canaanites first to fight against them and the Lord said Iudah shall goe vp GOD which created Man of the dust of the Earth hath in his Schoole of Nature framed a discipline so proper for our weake capacities and vsed a method therein so sutable and correspondent to our inbred dulnes that our meditations which Serpent-like feed vpon the dust or as Narcissus consume their very marrow vpon that earthly Cottage which they inhabite should not want euen there volumes I may say wherein to reade most excellent admonitions of our frailty as necessarie dependance vpon him In euery person are they engrauen in ordinarie Characters and in a lesser print so the Sonne hath them to view in the decease of his Father the Husband in the departure of his Wife the Seruant in the losse of his Master but they seeme to be written in Capitall letters in Funerals of Princes wherein as in one common booke the subiect reads not oftentimes so much his Princes as his owne mortalitie The Tribes of Israel might well hang vp their Harpes vpon the Willowes erect Banners of Sable and crie Alas that Moses alas that Iosua our victorious Captaines are dead and this they might well doe in remembrance of what was past but let them reflect an eye vpon the state and condition they are now in let them from the top of Nebo discouer the potencie of their Enemies whom they had incensed the Cities whose walls mounted to Heauen which they were to besiege the Giants and Monsters of men whom they were to encounter and lastly their owne dis-joynted and confused regiment being as Sheepe without a Shepheard and they might now with teares confesse that in out-liuing them they suruiued but their owne obsequies and that it had beene good that either these men had been neuer borne or else that being borne they had neuer died And with this mournefull Preface doth my Text beginne the summe whereof is a passage betwixt the Children of Israel and GOD the one in distresse crauing the other in mercie adjudging who should goe vp for them in the pursute of the warres with the Canaanites Wherein for our better proceeding may it please you to obserue with mee a Petition and a Grant In the Petition we discouer Viz. First The ground or motiue of it it was an Interregnum or a Vacancie intimated in the death of Iosua Now after the death of Iosua c. Viz. Secondly Whom they petition the Lord. It came to passe the Children of Israel asked the Lord c. Viz. Thirdly What they petition Who shall goe vp for vs against the Canaanites first to fight against them c. The Grant is Who should goe vp Iudah And the Lord said Iudah shall goe vp Thus haue I set out before your eies the seuerall parts of my Text I trust that Wee which perswade our selues to bee the Israel of God and euen now iourneying to a Canaan which is aboue shall not need arguments to stirre vp our attention to listen to what befell Israel in their passage into Canaan whilest I discourse first of their Petition and that of the ground or motiue of it being an Interregnum or Vacancie intimated in the death of Ioshua and comes in the first place to be handled Now after the death of Ioshua c. Ciuill gouernement vnder a supreme Magistrate is so naturall to a State that the Common-weale which is destitute of it altogether is like to one of those mis-shapen Blemmij Iul. Solin cap. 44. whom ancient Geopraphie hath made an headlesse Nation and that which is not linckt and vnited in one ouer-topping Scepter is as a bodie each member whereof liues by a seuerall soule and is prone as in the Tale of Menenius Agrippa to ioyne in a ciuill combustion against his fellowes Liu. hist lib. 2. And both these prodigies jumped together in the State of
Physitian that hee hath an Apothecary to compound his Medicines or an Astronomer that a Smith makes his Instruments but yet shall wee imagine the Sonnes of God destitute or without Schooles nay compleate Accademies of these and other Sciences Ioseph antâ—q Iud. lib. 1. c. 2. Seth saith Iosephus liu'd in an wonderfull happy state with his sonnes they were all of a towardly disposition and inhabited their Countrie in marueilous tranquilitie without sedition they found out the knowledge of Astronomy the which against the malignitie of Fortune they wrote vpon two Pillars the one of Brick the other of Stone I will not dispute the certainty of this though Iosephus affirmes that one of them was to be seene in his time in Syria thus much is certaine that the Houses of those Patriarches were very Schooles of all these Disciplines I call to witnesse the Arke the fabricke and building whereof was a very Lecture of exquisite Mathematicks Buteo de arca Noe. Berosus Annian Histor Scholast in Gen. Ioseph antiq Iud. lib. 1. c. 7. as Buteo vpon this point hath learnedly declared I ioyne that sudden spring of rare knowledge immediately after the Floud some mentions Chams Astrologie others Abrahams Lectures to the Egyptians there are not wanting that specifie the Wisdome which Ioseph taught the Senators of Pharaoh to be the Arts which that Country hath been alwaies proud of and it is worth the inquirie Ps 107.22 what that Kiriathsepher or Citie of Letters among the old Canaanites doth import Iudg. 1.19 plaine it is that Moses is noted in the seuenth of the Acts Acts 7.21 to haue been learned in all those Sciences and it is not credible that the Egyptians within that small space of time comparatiuely being but seuen hundred and sixtie yeares after the Flood besides hauing their liues shortned should attain vnto that exactnesse in all Arts which the long-liued Fathers before the Floud in one thousand sixe hundred could not Well hitherto the Schooles of the Church were contented to share in the fortunes of the temporall state thereof to be Pilgrimes vpon earth and to trauell from place to place and what maruell then if the tracts of them bee somewhat the more obscure Le ts see the Arke but once stationary and the Church wel secured from enemies then what more eminent thing in the whole Land of Iurie then these Schooles they are no more couched in valleyes but seated vpon Mountaines vpon which ground as Iunius obserues they were termed Gibha Iun. de accad which is as much with the Iewes and Syrians as an hill or high place as also Labratha which amongst the Armenians and Egyptians the neighboring Nations of the Iewes signifies a place of descent and so in the first of Samuel and the tenth what was the place where Saul meetes the Prophets descending with their Tabrets and Psalteries but an high place and the Hill of God As who would say that Schooles of Learning and Pietie are the Beacons which must giue light to the whole Land and therefore ought to be seated in the most conspicuous places I cannot tell whether the Court enuied the Countrey this felicitie sure I am that anon after a Kings Palace was conuerted into an Accademy and himselfe Regius professor in the same which confutes that common conceite had of Plato's Common-wealth Plato de repub lib. 5. that it is but an Idea of what hee would haue and not what euer was for who can deny it to be in Israel during the raigne of Salomon where they were guiltie of that happinesse to haue a Philosopher to bee their King and their King a Philosopher I passe by his bookes of Prouerbs Ecclesiastes and Canticles which Hierom diuides into Morall Hieron comment in 1. Ecclesiast Theoricall and Supernaturall obseruing in them Ethickes Physicks and Metaphysicks I omit his learning in the Mathematicall Disciplines wherein it is meant as I suppose that he excelled the Children of the East and the Wisdome of Egypt their chiefe learning consisting in those kinds I will not trouble you with his Lectures of Plants and Beasts foules and creeping things whereof a Gesner is fitter to discourse then a Preacher Gesner de stirpibus â—ist animal thus much let me say of them before I passe farther that he which thinkes Schooles euen of these subiects superfluous calles Salomons Wisdome into question and prooues his owne folly in confuting him Well Schooles being thus enobled by a King had sacred Heralds to draw from thence forth a perpetuall pedegree of their descents to shew how they branched themselues into sundrie Families in Bethel Gilgal and Iericho 2. Kin. 2.4 1. King 18. vnder the auspicious conduct of Elias and Elisha they had likewise the Kings Chroniclers to register their fortunes amongst the acts of the Kings to tel the diuine protection they enioyed by the meanes of Obadiah Ier. Lament â— 7. they wanted not Ieremie to insert their dismall disasters into his lamentations and yet after all this to prooue the immortall temper they are of they giue the world to vnderstand that they liu'd when their Countrie died and that in Captiuitie it selfe they were free Then was their pouertie and exile beautified with the rich and incomparable learning aboue all the Chaldeyes of Daniel Hananiah Dna 1.20 Genebrard l. 2. Cronol Montan. in Apparatu Ambros in 1. Cor. 14. Mishael and Azariah from thence issued that skilfull Scribe and perfect Rabbi in the Law Ezra whom the Iewes make the Founder of that Accademie in Hierusalem in which Gamaliel taught and in which our Sauiour disputed amongst the Doctors Luk. 2. But leaue we the old Testament and come we to the new and whom doe wee first salute there but Iohn admidst his Disciples who as Porphyrie to Aristotle reads an Isagoge to Christ a preface to the Gospell whom doe we next meet but our Sauiour himselfe whose conuersation with his Disciples was nothing else but a Schoole and Lecture of pietie I should burden your patience in recounting the seuerall Sects amongst the Iewes Acts 6. â— as Pharisies Saduces Herodians and others each of which had their petty Accademies the Libertines Cyrenians and Alexandrians which had their Colledges Sigonius de repub Hebr. lib. 2. c. 8. Scribes and Doctors of the Law that wanted not their Synagogues which were Schooles of Religion and were so frequent that Iurie it selfe seemed nothing else but one entire Vniuersitie of Prophets and Prophets Children and what maruell Dico illorum hominum saith Austen non tantum linguam Aug. contra Faustion lib. 22. c. 24 sed etiam vitam fuisse propheticam totumque illud regnum gentis flebraea quendam magnum quia magni cuiusdam fuisse prophetam that is not onely the language but life also of those people was prophetical and all the Kingdome of the Iewish Nation was euen a great Prophet because the Prophet of a great one And now
refuge pointed out euen all this Canaan of ours was a Sechem and a Ramah euen our Citie of refuge to all the persecuted nations of the world Then did the light of the Gospel no lesse then the lights of Heauen at the prayer of Ioshua stand still in the midst of our Firmament vntill we had subiected our enemies to the obedience of it But Ioshua's though their fame and glorie bee of immortall temper and therein they seeme to outstrip the condition of man yet their earthly Tabernacles are not of so durable mettall as not to suggest vnto suruiuing Ages that they possesse so much of Man in them as makes them mortall They are lent vnto vs for our sakes but wee must restore them againe for their owne sakes And vpon the setting of such Sunnes how euer the necessitie of Natures law doe lessen the griefe of it yet the succeeding darknesse is not therefore awhit the lesse both the sonnes of Iacob and we must acknowledge in it our selues subiect to the chances and vsuall misfortunes of the night It is true indeed that the Canaanites both there and here were much diminished and brought vnder yet were they not wholly as yet cast out they dwelt still amongst the people God and were as a thorne in their sides and now or neuer when the Ioshua's are gone when the Cloud by day and Pillar of fire by night seeme to be vanisht are they in hope either to expell Israel out of the Land or at least ere a new Sunne should arise to compound for a toleration And let any speake whether in this point also the Children of Israel and wee shared not alike in our dangers after the death 's of our Ioshua's And if wee did then doubtlesse the same reasons must enforce vs also as did them to seeke for some one or other in our Ioshua's rooms to goe vp before vs. But of whom should we aske It is thought that the Children of Israel went to the high Priest in those dayes and therefore some would conclude that wee should aske of the Pope whom they faigne to succeed Aaron in the high Priests Office But before wee condescend to this two things are to be proued vnto vs First that there is a Vrim and Thummim fixt in his Chaire wherein God doth as visibly deliuer his Oracles as he did in the high Priests breast-plate otherwise the reasons will not be alike And secondly that the Pope is the true successor of Aaron and not rather of Adonibezek against whom wee wanted one to goe vp for vs for to whom may more properly be applied that saying of Adonibezek in the seuenth Verse of this Chapter Threescore and ten Kings hauing their thumbs and their great toes cut off gathered their meat vnder my table Then to the Pope whose cutting and paring of the authoritie of Princes and treading their Crownes vnder his feet speake no lesse Wee should haue also asked him they say who should goe vp to fight for vs that was indeed expected his Breues were readie drawne but I wis hee would haue serued vs with one of his Carpet Kings that could neither haue fought for vs for want of thumbs nor gone vp before vs for want of toes Well if wee were not to aske of the Pope of Rome should wee aske of any other Pope at home which some make to be the people But alas amidst so many Canaanites they lurked and whispered seditions in euery corner what abstract Statist could bow the hearts of so many thousands as it had beene the heart of one man and if some such were to bee found yet Crownes and Scepters as wee haue shewed are more then of a humane mold or a Gold-smiths composition they are of God Then to God were we to goe and as the Israelites to some extraordinarie reuelation so we to the ordinarie course which he hath established amongst vs for the knowing of who should goe vp before vs. Truly it was no small thing that wee were to aske of God in this case It was First who should goe vp to fight therein is intimated the behoofe of militarie skill Secondly against the Canaanites therein is specified genus belli the kind of warre which was to be vndertaken against the Canaanites of the Israelites it was to be performed ore gladij with the edge of the sword but against ours whom Christ is to destroy with the power of his Word it is rather to be acted gladio oris with the sword of the mouth not Marte but Mercurio not basta but calamo Thirdly it was who should goe vp for vs not pro se for himselfe onely or but for his owne lot as who should fight onely in questions of supremacie but pro nobis for vs also in the common cause and driue out the Canaanile as well out of the Countrie as the Court and the Suburbs as the Citie And Lastly it was who should goe vp to fight against the Canaanites first that is in the forefront of the battell in the first ranke and be able not onely to be directed by others but learned also to act himselfe and that inter primos primus chiefe amongst the chiefe and for such a man God and none but God hath answered that we should haue him in Iudah in the Tribe of the Kings in the seminarie selected by him for the furnishing of Leaders It was neither the combination of Inferiours nor the plot of Superiours nor the well-wishes of Forreiners that shapes vs our answere but it was the Lord that appointed vs a Captaine and such a one as was able to goe vp and expertagainst the Canaanites and willing to bee for vs and most worthie to be first and all this in domo lacobi in our Iudah that beautifull Garden wherein for so many Ages the soueraigntie of this I le hath taken root O Lord it is thine owne right hand that hath planted it water it with thy dew from aboue and blow vpon it that the Spices thereof may flow out that there neuer faile of that Stocke a Iudah to goe vp before vs vntill the full and perfect fruition of that Canaan which thou hast appointed for vs. This grant for Iesus Christ his sake to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be rendred all praise honor and glorie might maiestie and dominion from this time forth for euermore Amen THE GENTILES CREEDE OR THE NATVRALL KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. Deliuered in a Sermon by EDWARD CHALONER Doctor of Diuinitie and Fellow of ALL-SOVLES Colledge in OXFORD LONDON Printed by W. STANSBY 1623. THE GENTILES CREEDE ACT. 14. v. 17. Neuerthelesse hee left not himselfe without witnesse in that hee did good and gaue vs raine from heauen and fruitfull seasons filling our hearts with food and gladnesse THe vse of miracles in the Apostles time Caiet Tom. 2. opusc tract 1. de conceptione Virginis cap. 5. as Caietan shewes out of Gregorie if not onely yet specially in respect of Infidels serued to make the