Selected quad for the lemma: earth_n

Word A Word B Word C Word D Occurrence Frequency Band MI MI Band Prominent
earth_n king_n lord_n psal_n 6,173 5 7.6754 4 true
View all documents for the selected quad

Text snippets containing the quad

ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A27356 City security stated in a sermon preached at St. Pauls August 11th, 1661 before the right Honourable the Lord Mayor / by William Bell ... Bell, William, 1626-1683. 1661 (1661) Wing B1809; ESTC R12348 22,139 32

There are 2 snippets containing the selected quad. | View lemmatised text

City Security STATED IN A SERMON P●eached at St Pauls August 11th 1661. Before the Right Honourable THE LORD MAYOR By ●illia● Bell B. D. late Fellow of St John Baptists Colledg 〈◊〉 and now Chaplain to his Majesty in his Tower of LONDON LONDON Printed for John Baker at the Sign of the Peacock in St Pauls Church-yard 1661. City Security PSALM 127. the latter part of the first Verse Except the Lord keep the City the Watchman waketh but in vain THere is a naturall necessitous humility lodged in persons of mean and low spirits men of no parts or no knowledge of their parts or who have no just esteem of them And there is an artificiall flagitious humility when like the Hawk men stoop for a quarry 2 Sam. 15.5 6. Thus Absalom stole the hearts of his Fathers subjects out at their mouths by his treacherous kisses And there is a penall calamitous humility when God trips up the heels of insolent persons such was that of proud Nebuchadnezzar Dan. 4.33 when devested of Empire and Reason Humiliatus erat quid humilis non erat humbled because not humble And there is a Celestiall gratious humility when men of eminent parts and place own God as the fountain of all they have and are that fills and feeds their Channells A royall virtue indeed when Kings acknowledge their Thrones to be set upon Gods foot stoole and though in all Causes and over all Persons as well Ecclesiasticall as Civill in their own Dominions Supream heads and Governours yet pay their ho … … nd fealty to the King of Kings in confessing they are all this under God and his Christ It is the method of proud men to compare themselves with their inferiours and as the Pharisee to cry out Lord what am I not like those that measure themselves by the declining Sun and so seem taller than they are But the humble person compares himself his power his wisdome his holinesse his honour with those of God and as the Publican cries out Lord what am I As those that measure themselves by the Sun at noon and their bedwarfd shadow and are more than they seem It is Moses his Title of Honour to be stiled Gods servant And Davids chief ambition to be a Nethenim in the house of God The threshold of whose Temple was a step above his Throne and he takes a degree to be a Porter at it Rev. 4.10 The Elders cast down their Crowns at the feet of God And as all subordinate Powers give in at the presence of the King as Stars return their light to the Sun at his arising so even Kings lower their Scepters when God exalts his since the best of them are but the off-sets thereof The most absolute Monarchs are thus far relative that they subsist by God there being no independency in reference to him There are no designes be the means or men that carry them on never so potent that come not to naught if blown upon by God Nor is any instrument so impotent that with God is not efficacious Phil. 4.13 This is the ground of St Pauls omnipotency I can do all things through Christ which strengthneth me Proud Babel that was raised in Rebellion against God was razed in confusion by him Zech. 4.6 7. But where not an Army nor strength but the Spirit of God builds there even the head stone is laid and the shouting is grace grace God blessed the Aegyptian Midwives Exod. 1.21 by his building them houses for their supporting the houses of the Israelites And he who blessed them for their work blessed them in it And as he suited the reward to the work so he suited the work to his own promise for he had pronounced that primitive blessing of Increase Gen. 1.28 and Multiply on that people and man cannot substract where God will multiply No nor yet multiply where he will substract He who keeps the key of David opens the barren Rev. 3.7 and shuts up the fruitfull Womb And as from one Vine one fertil Wife Psal 128.3 he can draw forth the blessing of Clusters of Children for him that feareth him Verse 1. 1 Kings 11.3 so from seven hundred Wives and three hundred Concubines the product to Solomon was but a single Rhehoboam so farre as Scripture undertakes the Genealogy but one Grape from so many Vines and that too but such an one as men gather of Thornes who like Ivy plucked down the house he pretended to support Both the fruit of the common Womb the earth is Gods for The earth is the Lords and the fullnesse thereof Psal 24.1 and that of every particular one too of every Mother as well as that generall one Psal 12● 3 for Children are the inheritance of the Lord and the fruit of the Womb is his reward So that there is neither fertility nor security plenty nor safety without God for except he build the house they labour in vain that build it Except he keep the City c. Which words are whether written by Solomon Scope of the Text. Eccl. 8.4 or by David for Solomon as is most probable the words of a King and there is power and truth in them as they are a proof of the necessary concurrence of divine providence to the undertakings of men And the procedure of the argument is a minore ad majus from the lesse to the greater that that providence is so particular as to extend to the Oeconomy of every private family except the Lord build c. that is Clarius Castalio in loc nisi augeat rem familiarem familiam unlesse he improve the estate and houshold haeredes liberos the heirs the children there can be no increase or improvement of either by any And yet that providence is withall so generall as to comprehend the polity of a whole City Except the Lord keep the City c. The name of a family shall rot unlesse God shall vouchsafe to preserve it by a numerous and perfume it by a gratious succession of generations And the City shall be buried in its own ruines for all its fortifications of dead earth its Walls and Towers and of living earth its Militia and Magistrates unlesse God shall supervise and blesse all Except the Lord keep c. Division The words are a mod●l Proposition The Proposition The Watchman waketh but in vain The modus or limitation Except the Lord keep the City I shall not mangle the words by any more minute division of them that I may not part God from the City the Watchman from God vigilance from the Watchman nor successe from his vigilance But I shall speak to it by way of Explication and Application 1. By way of Explication in unfolding these four particulars First What is intended by the word Watchman Secondly What is meant by the City Thirdly What is the purport of this phrase of Gods keeping the City Fourthly I shall insist on what
men besides women and children and purified besides the unclean the captives ninety seven thousand slain and died of the plague during the siege an hundred thousand And the City lost and razed through the factions of the seditious and zealous They are Josephus his words And indeed sedition and blind zeal will go far toward the destruction of a City In grand Cairo Historians tell us there died in one year of the plague no lesse than eighteen hundred thousand persons And what havock it made not long since in the Westerne parts Rome Naples Genoa c. your weekly News Books could inform you To come nearer home how hath God harassed these Lands by incursions of Romans Scots Picts Danes Saxons and Normans by Civil dissentions betwixt King and Barons York and L●ncaster when as one wittily alludes the red Rose blush●d for the bloud it shed and the white Rose grew pale through the blood it had lost What depopulation and waste hath the plague made in severall parts of the Nation to instance but in one at a distance fifty seven thousand and more in the City of Norwich in six moneths where now is scarce the fifth part of that number of inhabitants To come home to this City in the year 1593 there died of the plague seventeen thousand eight hundred and ninety among which the then Lord Maior and three Aldermen In the year 1563 twenty one thousand five hundred and thirty In the year 1348 fifty thousand were buried in one Church-yard that of the Charter-house The vast numbers of those that were hereby gathered to their Fathers in the first of King James and King Charles the first is within the memory of many of you and therefore needs not my record And but gently to touch the yet green wounds of our last twenty years contracting how hath this City been sindg'd in severall limbs of it by fire and scar'd by triumphant enemies marching through the bowels of it and some Swords and blood drawn in it And there are and have been new diseases new feavers gleaning and reaping in it And though the plague God be thanked hath not yet War and its daughter poverty hath shut up many houses in it And though I am confident no City in the world is better constituted for the Ecclesiastical Civil and Military Polity of it yet all these unquestionable experiences will peremptorily convince us that Except the Lord keep the City c. 2. Reasons But 2. this truth may be as experimentall● so also rationally asserted Wherefore to back this strength of History we shall bring up a reserve of six Arguments three whereof immediately refer to God and the other three respect the Magistrate 1. From God or Watchm●n Three Attributes of God especially give in a valid testimony to this truth that Except the Lord keep c. 1. His Omniscience 1. His Omniscience God and God only knowes all the enemies of a City and all the designes of those enemies All things are naked and open before him Heb. 4.13 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 anatomiz'd as every capil●●ry v●in to the Hawks eye of the accurate Chyrurgion Verse 12. No such dissecting knife as the wisdom of God it pierceth to the dividing as●●n●er of soul and spirit and of the joynts and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts John 2.25 and intents of the heart He needs not that any should testifie of man for he knows what is in him better than the Artificer doth the springs and wheels of any movement One man cannot judge anothers heart but by some overt ●ct It therefore is a very blasphemous expression to say We know such an one as well as he that made him There are three Indexes or discoverers of the mind The Countenance the Tongue the Hand All these may and have Matth. 6.16 put a fallacy upon man The Pharisees were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 men of most mortified countenances but corrupt principles and they caught the people in this net who could not see the graves for the painting 1 Kings 13.18 That lying Prophet by a smooth tongue and a well couched story betrai'd the man of God to a sodain and sad destruction And the rough hands of Jacob cheated the dim sight of Isaac Gen. 27.22 How often have these combin'd and a well dressed lye an innocent look and siding for a while with a party let in a Spye and Traytour into a Garrison past all the Guards to the ruine thereof Thus Judith captivated th● heart and then cut off the head of Holofernes Judith 13. And what walls are proof against a golden Ass or the wooden horse of an insinuating Sinon The Philosoper conscious of his sincerity wished he had a window to his breast that his very thoughts might be visible to all the world Man is diaphanous or transparent to God who made the eye without such a window The heart of man is deceitfull above all things to others to himself Jerem. 17.9 but he that framed it knows every winding in that labyrinth and can trace it without a clue The Watchman passeth him that can give the word But how many have had the word in their mouths who yet have betray'd the City But there is no word save that of Immanuel God with us that can preserve it The Lords all-seeing eye can pierce into a Spanish Council a Romish Conclave an Hellish Vault and discover and scatter an insolent invasion and Powder-treason He knows all thoughts before they are every embryo stratagem against a City and no ambush is hid from nor is there any counsel against him No such overseer than as God who is never overseen 2. Omnipresence 2. Except the Lord keep c. Because of his Omnipresence Entèr praesenter Deus est ubique potentèr present to all times for this King indeed and personally never dyes and to all places he fills Heaven and earth Jer. 23.24 Magistrates below are forced to delegate Officers under them to see by the perspective of others eyes and hear by the Otacousticon of others ears and e●k out their short armes with others hands To ape an omnipresence by Lieutenants Judges Vice-royes Deputies Constables and the like And treachery in one of these may bring ruine on the whole body The Governour of a Garrison endeavours to be every where by his Council Orders Officers Main-guard Ou●-guards Reserves Centinels Perdu's Scouts Spyes Pe●●ols Rounds and Grand-rounds But God is all these and above them and they are all nothing without him He is a Centinel at every door a Master a Father in every Family in the City Ma●● 1.6 Ephes 3.15 for except he build every particular house they labour but in vain that would raise it He is present to every person and to every action of that person He is not as a Watchmaker who having fram'd and put together a piece of Clock-work winds up the springs or draws up the