war a great deal of Bloudshed Firing of Cities insufferable depopulation of all that comes to hand ch 21. there is Spiriting of Women enforced and unlawful marriages enough for the charge of a Judge or the Inquest of a Jury and all this for want of a Judge to punish and restrain them But these are matters of daily infliction it is Micah and his house that is most apt to escape and be pitied And hence you may observe how forward the Israelites were to blame yea to revenge the outrage committed on the Levite's Concubine The like say they was never seen in Israel nay they were for the excision of a whole Tribe to expiate it But as for this Micah and his house no man said a word against it but passed it over as if it had not been an evil in Israel though as injurious to God and as prejudicial to Society as any other evil of the land can be and indeed is the motive why I would have you so earnestly to fix your eye upon it Nay I am prone to think that though you should rout the whole Confederacy besides yet if you let this escape with a Touch me not for I am holier than thou there will never be want of work for the Judges nor the worst of their Executioners as long as the world endures I confess their is another sort of men among us not altogether of Micah's house but of Micah's principles and acquaintance perfidious false-hearted Conformists Men that can gorge themselves upon the fat of the Altar and yet for a fuller meal let out their barns to a Conventicle and their Vicarages to the Preachers of them that can with the Apostate Apostle take the Sop the maintenance of the Church from the hands of Christ and yet at the same time have it in their hearts to betray him known by their Lisping to be Ephramites Men that have the lingua and holy dialect of Israel but withal an accent a Sibboleth and twang of their own who BLOOD-like take to themselves the Priests habit but upon no other design nor for no other end than to steal away the Crown Innocent Church-men in shew but downright Pensioners to the Faction dealing through their Traiterous practices and deceitful behaviour with the poor Church their Mother as the Priest did ch 19. by his abused Concubine hew her to pieces limb from limb bone from bone and then send them to all the Tribes the several parties and factions of the land to make Protestants of them This is also an evil in the Land and if not looked after and restrained how right soever it be in some mens eyes they 'l soon fill Micah's house with their neighbourhood and in a little while more turn Priests themselves unto him I might be as long winded in the cause as one of Micah's Priests but my time and your business forbids However You are called hither to see what Evil is done in the Land be perswaded therefore I pray you neither to be Ignoramus's nor Gallio's in the case a like resolv'd not to see or not to care for these things Not as if I would have you to deal by those Ephramites of the Mountain as Herod did by the Baptist of the Wilderness cut off their heads to oblige every idle dancing daughter much less to think that no atonement nor settlement is to be made without the fore-skins of all the Philistins of the Land This looks too much like a Presbyterian root and branch or what is much the same an Independent Wallinfordian Massacre A debate so horrid and barbarous that it made the very Atheist who records the story to quake and tremble A little severity and rigor Juridically apply'd is enough and most becoming the gentleness the Candor the Ingenuity of the Church of England whose Mercies are not Cruel whose Hands are not Bloody whose neither Principles nor Temper ever lead further than to Conquest or to Peace always hating to hew Agag to pieces or to destroy the Amalekites as the Israelites were forc'd to do till not one of them be left alive never aiming at more than to Humble or to make Tributary to provide that her Adversaries be modest or tractable Obedient or submissive which indeed is the End and design both of Government and Law and without doubt to blindfold the one or to cramp the other when open and notorious malefactors are concern'd instead of righting you 'l injure us and instead of keeping us in Peace Love and Unity as the Law and the Makers thereof design you 'l expose us to all the malice and peevishness of a perverse and froward generation To day made Execrable and to morrow a Victime now Condemned and anon Executed every way expos'd to insolence and humor to parties and factions to violence and oppression and in short to whatsoever seemeth right to them that are resolv'd to do wrong I have but one word more and that is to provoke you to a constancy in this your care That you may not do as some are observ'd and said to do by the Venemous creatures of the Land where they live set a day to destroy them and rid their land of them which they observe with the greatest strictness and severity imaginable searching all their holes destroying all their nests and harbors and sparing neither young nor old but if once that day be over they suffer them ever after freely to encrease and breed nay to abide under their very thresholds and to crawl into their chambers never after minding nor concerning themselves with them till the year be out and the day again return upon them Sirs it is not the time of an Assize a day when you are instigated by a Sermon or a charge that will destroy this sort of Vermin or rid our land of their breed it must be your daily Vigilance and care otherwise afore the next return the Nation will be as full and as much over-run with them as ever it was and the brood as numerous as viperous and as difficult to Master as now it is And thus have I shewn you That when there is no King in Israel nor no Subordinate Magistrate there or they neither willing nor ready to punish the Offenders in Israel every one will do everything and all will come to confusion Wherefore from those days wherein such evil is done from the Evil that is done in those days and from the Curse and Plague of having no King at all or none under him to punish Offenders in Israel let all those who wish well to Sion to the Church and the State there say Now and ever good Lord deliver us To whom Father Son and Holy Ghost Three persons One God be ascribed all honour glory power and dominion now and for ever Amen KORAH And His COMPANY PROVED To be the Seminary and Seed-plot OF SEDITION and REBELLION IN A SERMONOn Numb xxvi 9. Preached at the Assizes held at Bury St. Edmunds for the County of Suffolk
late Calamities which lasted not full twenty years were well reflected upon there would be found more Tyranny to have been exercised more outrages to have been committed more injustice to have been done by the Assemblers and Senators of those days than ever there can be found among all our Kings since we have had a Monarchy or what 's altogether the same since we have been a Nation 3. A King supposeth one Hereditary a King with an Heir and known Successor at hand to step into his place as soon as ever he himself is gone Hence the Israelites full sensible of the want of such a King call unto Gideon rule thou over us thou and thy son and thy sons son ch 8.22 profering thereby an entail and inheritance and intimating that they should never be well nor out of danger till they had a King not a Judge for so Gideon was and had done as great and as valiant things as ever any Judge had done but a King and a King with Off-spring and Progeny to succeed and to rule without any interregnums or new choice which had too too often proved factious and tedious and mostly fatal Thus the loosness of Laish was ascribed to this inconvenience there was no Magistrate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 no heir of restraint no certain and apparent Successor to the Throne ch 18.17 And indeed interregnums are always pregnant of mischief and of misery never any of them hapned in Israel and yet happen they did and ever will where there is not a certain Heir to succeed but they brought along with them all manner of Confusion and Oppression which very thing made the Israelites so eager to have a King with Posterity and Succession attending never happening till King Davids time and from the reign of Solomon his Son and Successor never put by as to Judah from the Primogeniture and right Heir This is a most certain truth that none illegitimately born could inherit Thou shalt not inherit in our fathers house say the Gibeonites concerning Jephtha ch 11.2 for thou art the son of a strange woman but if legitimate and first born of the family there was no proscription no Bill of Exclusion to be made nothing being ever accounted more horrid and vile among the Israelites than to snarl disturb interrupt or displace the Inheritance Nay though there had been more wives in the case the wrong loved and the right hated yet the first-born of the hated was to have the Inheritance the right of the first-born is his Deut. 21.17 So that to set limits to the Monarch or to minorate and depress him in his Prerogative Supremacy Succession is to rob Israel of her King and in truth to put no difference between a King and an Elder of the Sanedrim or at the best between a King and an ordinary Judge put on and off according to the humor and insolence of every designing prevailing Faction Certainly it is not a Purple Robe nor a Reed put into the hand that will make Israel a King the Jews so served our Saviour and withal bowed the Knee unto him saying Hail King of the Jews but says the Text they first stripped him and then they mocked him and in sooth if Kings come once to be stript of their own Robes I mean their Jura regni their Preheminences Regalities Dignities whereby they come to be Kings and to excell others I cannot see but they are worthily made the People's scorn and though Princely clad yet no better than a Supposititious Perkin or a bare King of Clouts Nay I cannot see but that if King Adonibezek notwithstanding his eight Kings prostrated and captivated by him be himself to be bound and shackled at the will and by the Votes of his Subjects He must be adjudged to be himself enslav'd and as far in reality from being a King in Israel's sence as those very Captivated Kings were who lay gathering their Meat under his Table with their Thumbs and their Toes cut off But to end this The Rabbins have a saying that there were three things enjoyned the Israelites whilst they were in the Wilderness to be performed by them when they entred into Canaan 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to root out the memory of Amalek to choose them a King and to build them an House for a Sanctuary the first whereof if they had proceeded regularly as Scickard upon Maimonides observes was to choose them a King It s true they displeased Samuel in doing it 1 Sam. 8.6 nay God tells them that by so doing they had rejected him also vers 7. from which and other like places the Rota-brained Republican takes an occasion to Blaspheme God and the King and to decry their Government as if it were not only Tyrannical but Antitheocratical and yet God promised Abraham soon after that he promised him the Land that Kings should come out of his Loins Gen. 17.6 and by prediction from Jacob that the Scepter should not depart from Judah till Shiloh came Gen. 49.10 and as they were going to the Land he informed them what manner of King they were to choose when they came thither Deut. 17.15 Yea and when choice was made of Saul God owned him and promised blessings along with him provided they would but fear God and walk in his ways 1 Sam. 12.14 nay the Scripture brands all the Male contents and those who refused to congratulate his Choice for Sons of Belial 1 Sam. 10.27 So that if the Israelites offended in asking a King it was in formâ non jure petendi in the manner of asking and not in the thing it self either because they did it in a Seditious Tumultuating manner affecting Innovation in the Government as some do conceive or in an affrontive way to Samuel their present Judge as others imagine or to a wrong and evil design hoping thereby to make an alteration in the established Religion of the Land as a third sort think All which were not only evil in themselves but very culpable and justly provoked God to say that He would give them a King in his Anger however the desiring or having a King was not evil in it self for God gave them one upon their request and when that Person was dead he appointed them another even David a man after his own heart and under that kind of Government he continued them so long as he continued them in Canaan Which intimates that the having a King in Israel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of a Soveraign power with a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with an Heir of restraint at his back was one of the blessings of the Land of Canaan and the most proper Government that a Nation can wish for or have which endeavours after a peaceable and happy settlement Judges will not do alone neither Joshua nor the High Priest must presume too far nay the Sanedrim it self must be modest and humble these and every one of these in their proper Spheres may help on the blessing but to
which were either 1. Secret and concealed and not so much as mentioned by them in the fray or 2. Divulg'd and made the common argument and pretence 1. Secret and conceal'd which for ought that I can find was their ambition and discontent inwardly repining at the grandeur of Moses and Aaron and fretting at their own disappointments looking on themselves through and by reason of that establishment as for ever lost touching all future hopes of greatness Now this Korah was of himself Cousin German to Moses and Aaron the eldest son of Izhar brother to Amram their father Exod. 6.18 A Levite of the family of the Kohathites to whom belonged the charge of the most holy things within the Sanctuary and the chiefest place next unto Aaron and his Priests about it Num. 3.19.31 which one would have thought might have been preferment enough for the man But because the first-born of Izhar and moreover Cousin German to Moses and Aaron who then had the power and the government in their hands he thought his birth-right and blood might have been better consider'd at least so far forth as not to have had himself and his family thrust down for ever into the rank and class of ordinary petty Levites much less to have Elizaphan the son of the youngest family of the Kohathites made Prince over the sons of Kohath even over this very Korah who was of the elder house and himself in the interim neglected Num. 3.10 all which put together raised his indignation and spleen and set him first against his King and then against his Priest who should not have degraded if they had not preferr'd him and was the first occasion as the Rabbins say that caus'd him to take men Of the like nature was the disgust that Dathan and Abiram had taken for they were of the posterity of Reuben Num. 16.1 who was the first-born of Israel Gen. 49.3 but forasmuch as he defiled his fathers bed his birth-right was given from him 1 Chron. 5.1 that is to say the Government to Moses the Priesthood to Aaron the double portion to Joseph all lost in Reuben but by his sons sought to be recovered which was the occasion also of their taking men and joyning themselves with Korah hoping by him and his Company to re-enstate themselves and their posterity into that Power and dignity that Empire Priesthood Estate that originally and of old belong'd unto them And I am apt to think that if all after-Mutinyings and Rebellions were look'd into yea that of this very day the like disappointments disgusts degradations would be found at the bottom of them all But Rebellion hath always a mask and vizard a Samuel's mantle to cover its ugliness Look we therefore 2. Into the reason pretended and spread abroad to draw in the populacy after them which was Usurpation in Aaron Tyranny and breach of trust in Moses the popular and usual pretence that hunts down government and gives birth and encouragement to all manner of anti-regal anti-priestly factions and perhaps hath caused more Properties to be alter'd more Birth-rights to be lost more Liberties to be invaded more Religion to be defaced yea and more Arbitrariness and Tyranny to be set up and exercised in the world than any one thing else besides Hence says Korah to Aaron in behalf of himself and his Company you take too much upon you seeing all the congregation is holy and the Lord is among them Num. 16.3 and hence again Dathan and Abiram with their company in reference to Moses Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us out of a land that floweth with milk and honey to kill us in the wilderness unless thou make thy self Altogether a Prince over us a Prince absolute and uncontrolable Num. 16.13 which if either of them be your design of you Aaron to appropriate the Priesthood or of you Moses to engross the Government to your selves then farefall Pharaoh and his Kingdom may Aegypt have us before Canaan the land of thraldom before the land of promise if we must be slaves and tyrannized over then to our furnaces again where we had Patriarchs to govern us and Priests of our own to rule us where as we were slaves to others we were Princes our selves And how of late did the like but false pretensions prevail with and befool us whither did the out-cries of an Arbitrary Government of a proud and usurping Priesthood hurry us As for the Church her Beauty was defaced to have her Purity restored they prophan'd her Temples plunder'd her Revenues destroy'd her Discipline poisoned her Proselytes with a thousand follies and phrensies call'd indeed New Lights but the black Enthusiasms of the Prince of darkness and all to reform her so they murdered the best of Kings for the good of Subjects wrung the Scepter out of his hand and tore the Crown from his head to make him a great and a glorious Prince so were we slaves to our own slaves a company of Tagaroons hired with our purses to command our persons and whatever else was ours many were no better than Servants and Prisoners in their own homes than Tenents and Farmers to their own estates and this to preserve the Rights and Liberties of the good People of England the right forsooth of Plundering Oppressing Murdering But for my part I wonder that the good people of England did not all as one man rise up in rage and stone those notorious impudent Impostors who so long abused their credulity cheating them of their goods and inthralling their persons and as much as in them lay damning their Souls I wonder I say that the English Nation should be so dispirited and crest-faln as like Izzachars Ass to be daily loaden with blows and burdens and tamely to couch under them that they should be so stupid and insensible of such intolerable wrongs and oppressions but more that any of us all after such sad and woful Tragedies acted should be for the Furnace and Thraldom of Aegypt again ever any more doat upon the holiness of the Party or the sweet Song that the Syren makes And so having considered the Motives that induced them to the Conspiracy look we into 3. The Judgment passed upon it This is that Dathan and Abiram who strove against Moses and against Aaron when they strove against the Lord in shew no more than a striving against them but by interpretation and in guilt a striving against the Lord. The iniquity whereof appears 1. In that it was a striving against his right and power to make an establishment among them as if the setting up of Moses and Aaron over them the one in the Government the other in the Priesthood had been an invasion upon the peoples right and not in the power of any no not of the great God himself to do it which opposition in as much as it was against the decrees of Heaven is said in my Text to be striving against the Lord and Numb 16.11 to be a gathering
do or can harden themselves unless they be their fathers own sons in principles as in blood I know not may perhaps pity but I am afraid never reform And yet verily there is a generation of men in the world who need none of this repentance who have been neither enemies to their King nor opposers of their Priests who in the heat of the mutiny have been neither Schismaticks with Korah nor Rebels with Dathan but fidi Achates trusty and Loyal Subjects good old Barzillai's who are feign God knows to be content with their olim meminisse their wounds and scars and dy'd garments from Bozrah the services they have done and the sufferings they have undergone yea and others who following their fathers steps have fought with beasts at Ephesus ventur'd at the dens of Lyons stood the shock of Schismatical envy and Democratical fury and whenever the records be search'd I wish their names and their merits may not be overlook'd But and if this be that Dathan and Abiram or if these be the sons of that Dathan and Abiram whose names are to be branded to all posterity for their Schismatical rebellious doings what ought to be done to those that have been thus faithful and loyal valiant and serviceable ever striving against the strivers and as need requir'd resisting the resisters unto blood Verily Silver and Gold I have none but what I have give I heartily unto you may the blessing therefore of Aaron and of his rod fall upon you and follow you may the King of Jeshurun whose Champions and worthies you have been with his oyl and his fatness reward you and when the day of account comes may you never be found Rebels to your God more than you have been unto your King Remark we 3. That Sedition and Rebellion are two such sins that will destroy the whole fabrick of Government though never so well rear'd and run it eftsoon into confusion and slavery if not timely and carefully prevented They 'l divide the house and if the house be divided truth it self will tell us that it cannot stand Humanity will turn into cruelty nature and friendship into Faction and fury to kill one another will be called valour to disobey the King accounted loyalty plain robbery and oppression the best of zeal and Religion the Sword the bloody heedless devouring Sword the only Lord Chief Justice of the Land We shall soon see an overthrow of all order and Law a confusion in our duties both to God and man and a Kingdom which for its pleasure may be a Paradise for its Light a Goshen for its plenty a Canaan chang'd into a Chaos a worser Chaos than that which the world came out of for a word put an end to that God spake and the world was made Psalm 38.9 nay God divided the light from the darkness and he called the light day and the darkness he called night and the Evening and the Morning were the first Day Gen. 1.5 But if these take place Evening and Morning will be both alike we may know their beginning but never their ending darkness and horror of darkness till we our selves if we be not careful fall thereby into the pit of darkness Wherefore let me perswade you you who are this day to number the people and to view the several inheritances among us that there be no Mutineer nor Rebel in our Tribes or families To be careful and jealous in that your enquiry that none such pass your Tribunal much less go off from you with Ceremony and Complement too customary a thing with some as if you were lovers of their Nation and would build them Synagogues It is not their being an holy Congregation that will make them when they are Seditious Holy neither will your punishing them be a slaying the people of the Lord. We live you see in an age full of Sedition and Conspiracy where neither our Moses can well keep his Crown upon his head nor our Aaron his Ephod upon his breast the Seditious Levite on one hand the Rebellious Reubenite on the other are so industriously concern'd in the undermining and supplanting them both that if heaven interpose not to defend the one and to root out the other both Moses and Aaron Priesthood and Government must sink and fall together Wherefore to your respective Stations and Charge and know 1. That Dathans Conspiracy is still on foot in the land alive and alive like to be The Cause saith one of our late Regicides lies in the bosom of Christ and as sure as Christ arose the Cause will rise again I believe saith another of them no less Prophet than the former that at long running there is not a man that fears the Lord will have any reason to be sorrowful for engaging in the Cause for though the Lord hath been pleased to let it be as it were the Sun-setting for a night yet it will certainly arise next Morning very gloriously again Neither was it for ought that I cand find ever thorowly brow-beaten or hiss'd off the stage These saith the publishers of their death all dy'd in the Faith Saints who through Faith of the Gospel have entered into rest Nay who of the Company of them especially if they were famous either in the Assembly or in the Congregation ever went unto their graves from that day to this without an Herse full of Scripture Scutcheons and Religious Labels The memory of the Just is blessed precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints enough to give credit to the worst of Causes and to draw all the Saints of the land after them And yet with horror be it spoken some of them have had their bowels burnt alive and went down into the earth like Dathan others of them liv'd and dy'd in the company of Korah and never repented them of their sins though stained with the blood of the best of Kings and the devoutest of Prelates Shall I re-mind you of what one of the Korathites still living hath said of himself That he hath often searched into his heart whether he did lawfully engage in the late War against the King or did well to encourage so many thousands to it and that he cannot as yet see that he was mistaken in the Cause neither dares he repent of it nor forbear to do the same if it were to do again And yet this man lives and repents him not nay hath his Company with him still to whom he preaches Sedition as of old and with whom thousands of the Dathanites and Abiramites of the land do Confederate whereby you may see the stubbornness and hopes of the Faction and how the good Old Cause will go on if God by his judgments and the Magistrate by his care and severity prevent it not Awake and know 2. That the Cause not only lives but there are multitudes in the Land ready fixt and prepar'd to carry it on dissatisfied Reubenites who for their own or their fathers sins