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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29626	The famine of the word threat[e]ned to Israel, and Gods call to weeping and to mourning being two sermons preached on the fast day, Novemb. 13, 1678, and on the fast day, April 11, 1679 / by James Brome ...	Brome, James, d. 1719.; Brome, James, d. 1719. Gods call to weeping and to mourning.	1679 (1679)	Wing B4856; ESTC R18967	48,082	74

Imprimatur Guil. Sill R. P. D. Hen. Episc Lond. à sacris domesticis May. 26. 1679. THE Famine of the Word Threatned to ISRAEL AND GODS CALL To Weeping and to Mourning BEING TWO SERMONS PREACHED On the Fast Day Novemb. 13. 1678. AND On the Fast Day April 11. 1679. By JAMES BROME A.M. Rector of Cheriton in the County of Kent LONDON Printed by M. Clark for Richard Chiswel at the Rose and Crown in S. Pauls Church-yard 1679. To the Right Worshipful JAMES BROCKMAN Esq My most honoured Friend and Patron And his Vertuous Consort Madam LUCY BROCKMAN THese Sermons finding so favourable an acceptance at your hands and being so generally desired and called for by all the neighbourhood I thought it my duty to prostrate them both at your feet and usher them out into light under your most auspicious Patronage These perillous Times into which we are fallen as they call for a serious Humiliation on all sides so do they command our joint-endeavours to promote it and if I can be any way instrumental to this good work in the publication of these Papers as it is the utmost of my design so likewise of my desire unless it be further to give hereby a testimony of my real gratitude for the manifold favours so frequently conferred since I had the honour to be under your wings upon Your most obliged Servant James Brome The Famine of the Word Threatned to ISRAEL c. SERMON I. AMOS viij Vers 11 12. Behold the days come saith the Lord God that I will send a Famine in the Land not a Famine of Bread nor thirst for Water but Hearing the Words of the Lord. And they shall wander from Sea to Sea and from the North even to the East they shall ran to and fro to seek the Word of the Lord and shall not find it IT was ever an act of great mercy and kindness in the God of Heaven and Earth that he never issued out his Judgments in the World but he gave timely notice of them before their approaches to awaken mens Consciences either by timely Repentance to divert them or else by Vigilancy and Prayer to prepare against them I might give you sundry instances that this is the certain method of Gods proceeding with mankind Thus before he destroyed the Old World and washed away their pollutions by the general Innundation Noah the Preacher of Righteousness was the Harbinger of that news and he forewarned them what would follow their continual disobedience and perseverance in Iniquity After the same manner did he deal with Sodom with Gomorrah and with Niniveh But I need look so far back Israel a people of Gods own choosing had sufficient experience of his loving kindness and patience and forbearance in this particular Though that Generation of men were a sort of people so refractory and stubborn so stiff-necked and disobedient so unsufferably wicked and such notorious transgressours that God might in justice have swept them away with the Beesom of Destruction without giving them the least space of time to consider of their ways or amend their doings I say though he might have opened all the treasuries of his Vengeance and sent down his arrows in great numbers upon their heads by reason of their manifold provocations against him yet did he never do this but first by his Prophets and Messengers for warned them of what would happen he did not strike till he dealt with them as the Angel did with Balaam Numb 22.31 open their eyes that they might see the blow was coming he did not proceed to sentence till he had first convicted them and represented their guilt in a true Mirrour before them he did not make them examples of his Justice till he had first declared what it was had provoked him and what such wilful provocations did deserve at his hands thus did God still temper his Mercy with his Justice forewarn them that they might be fore-armed And for this very end and purpose was this precaution which God gave Israel in the words read unto you Behold the days come saith the Lord God that I will send a Famine in the Land not a Famine of Bread nor a Thirst of Water but Hearing the Words of the Lord c. From which words I shall discourse 1. Of the Nature of that Judgment which is here threatned to Israel and shew you the dreadfulness of it It is a Famine but not of Bread nor of Thirst for Water but Hearing the Words of the Lord. 2. I shall consider the reason of this denunciation what was the ground and original of it and what it was that caused God Almighty to threaten that people with so severe a Judgment 3. I shall endeavour to shew how they might and we may prevent the like Judgment which seems at this time to hang over our heads 1. I begin with the first of these the Nature of that Judgment which is here threatned to Israel 't is Famine A sore Judgment indeed the very name of which is sufficiently dreadful and terrible were it but onely a corporal punishment For if by Famine the Prophet had only meant scarcity of Bread or extream want of Victuals Gen. 43.1 such a Famine as hapned in Canaan in the Patriarch Jacobs days or such a Famine as fell upon Samaria in the days of Elisha 2 Kings 6.25 when an Asses head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver and the fourth part of a Kab of Doves dung for five pieces of silver that indeed would have been a sore evil by the fearful effects that would have followed and ensued upon it For to see men and women fainting for lack of Bread and ready to prey upon and devour each other to hear their Children and Sucklings Lament 2.11 12. rending the Skies with their bitter ejulations and crying to their Mothers Where is Corn and Wine whilest their souls were ready to be poured forth in their Mothers bosom nay to behold women eating the fruit of their own wombs 2 Kings 6.28 and children become a feast to their Mothers that newly bore them as it hath hapned many times through the extremity of hunger this must needs be a very doleful calamity which would grieve the heart and afflict the eyes of all such as did behold it And yet this corporal Famine though to us it appears to be the greatest of Evils is nothing to that Famine which is here threatned to Israel which was the Famine of Hearing the Words of the Lord or the scarcity and want of Heavenly Bread by depriving them of all holy Ordinances and Duties For certainly this is meant when God threatens to send a Famine amongst them that is utterly to subvert the whole Jewish Church and Religion to banish them from his Temple and all their legal sacrifices to deprive them of all their Rites and Ceremonies and Sacraments which were most dear and pretious to them take from them the Law with which before he

they regarded not the persons of the Priests and favoured not the Elders And indeed as nothing doth more provoke God than such a scoffing humour and such a contemptuous usage of his Servants and Messengers so nothing doth sooner precipitate his Judgments nay nothing can be a more certain prognostick that they are even at the door than that is for there can be no worse symptom to a people than to laugh at the only means to cure them and if this once grow common it must needs make their condition desperate for then it comes to Gods turn to laugh and to mock too Because I have called and ye have refused Prov. 1.24 15 26. I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded but ye have set at nought all my counsel and would have none of my reproof I also will laugh at your calamity and m●●k when your fear cometh Now if this was one reason why God resolved to send a Famine of the Word amongst the Jews to abolish their Worship and banish them from their Priests because they made so light of them nay did even take a pride to despise and contemn them to vilifie and abuse them what can we expect less in this Nation who have far surpassed that people in this scoffing vein Search the Annals of all History and compare the manners of all the Nations of the Earth with ours and you shall find this vice no not even amongst Turks and Heathens so predominant as it is in ours and he that considers the base and unjust accusations the vile and ignominious obloquies the sordid and unworthy aspersions the black and malitious calumnies in a word the general despite and contempt that is thrown upon the present Ministry of the Church of England may cause him justly to believe that God hath very great reason to revenge this injury by depriving them of such Pastors whom they use so despightfully 2 Thess 2.11 12. and to send them strong delusions to believe a lie that they might all be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness I wish that this mischief had not spread it self so universally over the face of this Nation but alas the disease is grown now so Epidemical that the Priest affords matter of sport for all companies and he that can be so ingenious to have a fling at him shall be cryed up for a man of great wit and attainments though in other things he is looked upon as very mean and inconsiderable nay our Children too like the Jewish I mentioned before have drawn in these prejudices with their very breath for a man can scarce walk the streets in many places but he shall hear some of them speak something contemptible of a Minister if he chance to pass by as if those who were formerly reputed the glory of Christendom were now to be esteemed the very refuse of the people nay the off-scouring catharmata ludibria the laughing stocks and the most hateful of all mankind I remember that it was part of the Liturgy in the Greek Church of old to praise God that out of his infinite condescension he had given them Ministers and Teachers not only of the same nature and infirmities with themselves but also of like guilt and under the same condemnation because thereby having in themselves a sense of their own infirmities and knowing the burden of sin and the subtilty of Satan they might the better know likewise how to offer up Sacrifices and Oblations both in behalf of themselves and the people but how is the scene altered when instead of prayers we meet with curses and the failings of some are either imputed to all or else magnified to so high a degree as if we were the Pests and Grievances of the Nation And now if God look upon the dishonour done to his Ministers as done to himself if St. Paul speak true 1 Thes iv 8. that they who despise them despise not men but God according to that usual saying Every mans messenger is as himself I cannot see why God should any longer suspend his judgments from us who stand guilty before him of so foul a misdemeanour why should he not deprive us of those persons whom we thus set at nought and use so contumeliously and it may be some of us would be glad if God should do so but should this happen to us I dare very confidently affirm that we should find it by too woful experience the greatest curse yet that ever befel this Kingdom 2. A second reason that might enforce God to hasten such a judgment upon Israel by rooting out their Religion was their depriving the Priests of that Lot and Portion which he himself had set apart for their use whoever knows any thing of the Jewish Oeconomy cannot possibly be ignorant that the Jews by a more especial injunction of God himself were commanded to pay the tenth of all their substance to the Priests who served at his Altars which tithes God was pleased to call his own and to sanctifie himself commanding that no part of it Levit. xxvii v. 30 31. whether it was good or whether it was bad should be so much as changed by any of the people now notwithstanding all this so covetous and worldly minded were the generality of the Jews that they made no conscience to defraud God of his own and the Priests of that which was allotted for their share and though when God reproved them for their unjust and fraudulent dealings towards him they did justifie themselves and expostulate the case with him and were so insolent as to ask him the question notwithstanding they could not but know their guilt Wherein they had done him any injury God deals very plainly and tells them that it was in robbing him of his Tithes and his Offerings Will a man rob God Mal. iii. 8. yet ye have robbed me but ye say wherein have we robbed thee in tithes and in offerings Well but what was the fatal consequence of such filthy defraudations what did they get by their Rapine and their Sacriledge the next verse tells you the curse of God was their reward Verse 9. Ye are cursed within curse for ye have robbed me even this whole nation And may not we justly dread the same curse whose defraudations are as great and Sacriledg as insufferable for though there is a certain portion of tithes set apart for our present Ministers under the Gospel which our pious and good Aucestors have bestowed upon the Church and the Laws of our own Nation have ratified and confirm'd and God himself under the Gospel doth allow and commend yet such is the unsatiable avarice of some worldlings amongst us that they make no conscience to defraud the Ministers of their due nay have the impudence in their vulgar discourse to assert very commonly that it is no sin to cheat the Parson as if the taking away the Corn which belongs to me were not as