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A61862
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A sermon preached at the assizes at Hertford, Jvly viii, 1689 by John Strype ...
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Strype, John, 1643-1737.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing S6025; ESTC R685
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13,242
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36
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A SERMON Preached at the ASSIZES AT HERTFORD IVLY viii 1689. By IOHN STRYPE M. A. Vicar of Low-Leyton in Essex IMPRIMATUR Iulii 22. 1689. C. ALSTON LONDON Printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard MDCLXXXIX To the Right Worshipful Richard Hutchinson Esq HIGH-SHERIFF of the County of HERTFORD SIR I Acknowledge it a Satisfaction to me that this plain SERMON preached at the late Assizes found such a general good Acceptation both from the Iudges and Gentry insomuch that many of them put you upon obliging me to make it publick But it added much to the satisfaction that the subject matter of the Discourse was so well approved by so great a Body of Honour and Quality as then appeared Nor does it a little tend to the Reputation of that County that the Magistrates and Gentry thereof allow so well of Discourses of this nature shewing hereby their True Affection to the Protestant Religion and to Christian Peace and Love and how sensible they are of the singular Mercies and Deliverances vouchsafed by God to this Nation both in former times and of late especially Sir You have the honour to be reserved for the First Sheriff of Hertford-shire under the Auspicious Reign of KING WILLIAM and QUEEN MARY And it was your Happiness as well as your Honour that you were laid aside from serving that Office the last Year after you were pricked and published in the Gazette in the List of the High Sheriffs as being judged no doubt too good an English man and too true a Protestant to serue the Turn that was then driving on I have you see in compliance with your desire exposed what I preached to publick view praying God it may be of some benefit to you and all others that shall take the pains to read it for the promoting of Christian Wisdom and Sobriety and then I have my end I am SIR Your very much obliged humble Servant IOHN STRYPE A SERMON Preached at the Assizes at Hertford IVLY viii 1689. I SAM XII vii Now therefore stand still that I may reason with you before the Lord of all the righteous Acts of the Lord which he did to you and to your Fathers I Come not here to instruct Judges not to teach Magistrates their Duty As this would not become me to do so neither I presume do they need it whose great Wisdom And Gravity is able to direct them in the Businesses that lie before them Their Office indeed is as Weighty as 't is Honourable to distribute Justice to see good Laws well executed to right oppressed Innocence to bring Wickedness to Shame in a Word to maintain the Kings Peace and the Churches Peace a Great and Divine Employment But where there be Principles of Loyalty and a Love of Iustice planted in the mind accompanied with Piety to God and a grave Iudgment and many Years Experience these are far better Monitors than the best Preachers can be And I am persuaded I have Men enriched with such Endowments to be my Auditors at this Time. That I may not therefore seem to misdoubt your Integrities or Abilities Right Honourable and Right Worshipful nor expose my self to the Censure of too much Assurance and Presumption and yet that I may speak in some proportion to this present occasion I have chosen these Words which are part of the Charge of a great Judg in Israel of whom the Scripture gives this Character That he went from year to year in circuit to Bethel and Gilgal and Mizâ—â—h and judged Israel in all those places And so you see the Words may be suitable in respect of the Person that spake them And they were delivered at a very great and solemn Convention of People as yours now is and so they are suitable in regard of the Auditory that heard them And the Matter of them being a serious Exhortation to reflect upon God's Goodness and their own Ingratitude can neither now not at any time else be unsuitable for Ministers to preach nor Christians to hear Here then we have Samuel the Judge beginning his Charge Now therefore stand still that I may reason with you before the Lord of all the righteous Acts of the Lord which he did to you and to your fathers The Word which we translate Let me reason with you is a Law Term among the Hebrews signifies To plead and contend in Iudgment for some wrong done And is as much as if the should have said Let me plead on God's side against you A good Judg is alwaies an Advocate on God's behalf and zealous in his Cause Israel had wronged God dealt unjustly with him How so By sinning against him For every Sin is an Injury done to God. Samuel now stands and takes God's Part against them by shewing them how gracious God had been to them and how well he had deserved at their Hands by his Mercies and Favours expressed towards them for so the Word which we render Righteous Acts often signifies And by shewing them withal how illy they had requited the Lord disobeyed his Commandments and rebelled against their Heavenly King. And that his Expostulation with them from the Topic of God's Goodness might make the deeper impression upon them he descends in the following Verses to enumerate the Righteous Acts of God towards them When Iacob was come into Egypt and your Fathers cried unto the Lord then the Lord sent Moses and Aaron which brought forth your Fathers out of Egypt So that their Escape out of Egypt was one of these Righteous or Merciful Acts of God to them And then it follows And made them dwell in this place This place that is The Land of Canaan where they now were That was another of these eminent Favours or Righteous Acts of the Lord. And when they forgat the Lord be sold them into the hand of Sisera Captain of the Host of Hazor and into the hand of the Philistins and into the hand of the King of Moab and they fought against them And they cried unto the Lord c. And the Lord sent Ierubbeal and Bedan and Iephtbah and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your Enemies on every side and ye dwelled safe They had Enemies it seems round about them that plotted and combined to destroy them but GOD alwaies interposed for their safety This is a Third Mercy of GOD vouchsafed them And upon these three signal Manifestations of GOD's Goodness to them the Prophet Samuel grounds his reasoning with them For indeed they were Favours of that nature that the Iews could not think of them but they must needs have been touched with a quick sense of the Distinguishing Love of GOD to them and under what mighty Obligations they were to Him as namely to review them again I. That GOD had brought them away from Egypt where they were a poor miserable oppressed People under intolerable Slavery crouching to an insulting proud Tyrant who laid
VI and I am afraid those Complaints may more truly be taken up against them in these degenerate backsliding Daies of ours I appeal to your selves for the Truth of these things Thus good hath God been to us and thus froward and disingenuous have we been to him III. And now in the third Place let me expostulate and reason with you upon the whole matter Is it possible that the goodness of God hath had no better Success upon us Have we thus required the Lord foolish People and unwise What strange Stupidity possesseth us that we carry our selves so untowardly toward the best Friend we have in all the World Was ever more disingenuity or folly known Disingenuity to affront so good a God to be so base there where we have been so kindly dealt with and Folly too in exposing our selves to the Effects of that Fury that is begotten of Kindness abused Let us at last be persuaded to leave these Courses Oh! be not so weak to suffer so vile a thing as Sin to impose upon thee What Shall I dishonour my God Shall I displease him Shall I be guilty of so gross Ingratitude to my dearest Benefactor And all this only to gratifie a Lust Shall I sooner listen to a Passion to a Folly than to my God Hath Sin deserved better of me than God hath Oh! far be it from me And certainly this Expostulation will take hold of all Men that have any Spark of Ingenuity in them For these things that I am now discoursing touch upon the tenderest part of the Soul and make a very close Address unto the igenuous Part of it I shall propound one or two good Counsels to you with reference to the present Discourse and so make an end I. In reference to the Mercies of God in general endeavour to bear and keep up a quick Sense of them alwaies upon your Minds Oh! bear about with you these Marks of Divine Love and Favour The Remembrance of them will be of excellent Use for the checking us in our Careers of Sin and the forwarding us in the Course of Piety for a Man can scarcely think of God's Goodness to him and at the same time play the Villain and the Rebel against him But on the contrary God's Mercies will enkindle a Love of God in our Hearts and if we love him we shall obey him and do and suffer any thing for his sake And therefore I say let not the goodness of God depart out of your Minds but frequently call upon your Souls as David did upon his Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name Bless the Lord O my Soul and forget not all his Benefits II. and lastly as to the Mercy of the Protestant Religion in particular the Counsel I would give you in relation to this is that we walk answerably unto it and that our behaviour be such as may become it And there are two things that are great Ornaments unto it and that will set a mighty Lustre upon it and indeed are indispensably required by it The one is a Peaceable Spirit and the other a Holy Life Peace and Holiness which are both joyned together in one Verse Follow peace with all men and holiness and they are recommended unto us by the most prevalent Argument that can possibly be invented because without them no man shall see the Lord seeing the Lord in Heaven in Glory being made Partakers of the blisful Vision depends upon the pursuit of Peace and Holiness First Peace That venerable sacred inviolable thing Peace the great primary Law of our Holy Religion the truest distinguishing Character of a right Christian the best Prop and Pillar of Christianity Quid est Christianismus si Pax absit said Erasmus What is Christianity it self without Peace As though it could not subsist without Peace that there could scarce be Christianity without it Nay it is the Happiness of Heaven There is nothing there but a sweet union of Spirits and harmony of Souls and in a word it is the Name that GOD himself is called by viz. The God of Peace And therefore this is to be preserved sarta tecta by all the care and means possible And because our difference in Opinion is so apt to do violence to this Sacred Badg of Christianity let us take great care whatsoever our Judgments be that it have not that very bad influence upon any of us And to remedy this either let us sacrifice our private Opinions to Peace which is of far greater value than our Opinions can be or if we do not that yet by providing by all possible means against disturbances and clamour and all bitter zeal And that we may do partly by concealing our different Judgments and having our Faith to our selves as the Apostle adviseth partly by complying with and submirting to the Customs of the National Church as far as we can possibly that so far as lies in us we may live peaceably with all men partly by being modest in our Sentiments not confident or stiff in our own Conceits apt to think charitably of those that differ from us not fond of a Party nor crying I am for Paul and I for Apollos nor cherishing Prejudices against all that are not of our own way It is a thing of a very bad consequence and oftentimes falls out to the breach of Christian Peace and Love that we usually espouse a Side and then we are partial to our selves and very critical in espying faults in others and rigorous in censuring and condemning the Practices of all besides our own Party It brings to my mind a Passage that we read in our Books of a certain Bishop of Lendon in King Henry II. his Reign This man discoursing one day with a Friend of his concerning this temper saith he When I first entred into a Monastery I was wont to blame very much the sluggishness of my Governours When I became a Prior I would complain of Abbots Afterwards arising to the Honour of an Abbot I favoured my fellow-Abbots but ceased not to reprehend Bishops And lastly When I was a Bishop my self I began to see how much more easie a thing it is to find Faults than to mend them By which he did shew in himself the temper of most men how apt they are to favour their own side and how diligent to accuse their Superiors and how ready to be angry with all of a different Order Sect or Perswasion And withal upon maturity of Years and Judgment he gave us to see how unreasonable and childish this is and therefore that it is much better to be of a charitable modest Spirit to cover some defects that we espy in others and not to think our selves without fault alwaies remembring that There is nothing perfect under the Sun. And this would prove an excellent means for the composing and pacifying the Minds of Christians to one another and for the promoting of Peace Let us then labour after the things that make for peace Let us seek peace and ensue it and approve our selves the true Disciples and genuine Followers of the loving and peaceable JESUS by being peaceable and peace makers our selves He was of a peaceable Spirit and underwent much for Peace sake and was the great Pacificator between GOD and Man the infinite Benefits whereof such as the Pardon of our Sins and the blessed Hope of everlasting Peace we Christians feel to our great and endless Comfort the consideration of which Blessed things brought about by our great Peace-maker should make us Friends and Sons of Peace Secondly To Peace join Holiness and indeed the one is a proper Door and Entrance into the other The peaceable Christian is the only probable Man to make a truly holy Christian. When the Soul is calm and the storms of Passion and Contention are all lay'd and still then the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Peace and Love enters Let not the profession of Christianity serve thy turn without the Spirit and Life of it Be very conscientious in all the great and divine Laws of it Mortification and Self-denial Justice and Temperance Humility and Patience Meekness and Charity Love and Good-will subduing our Humours and bridling our Passions and bringing our Spirits under Discipline and framing our Minds more and more to a relish and delight in holy Exercises to a love of God to a contempt of the World to an ardent desire to be admitted into that Coelestial State above This is the true divine Life and Spirit that becomes all the Professors of the Gospel that should be their chief End and their great and earnest Care as they would walk worthy of that holy Name whereby they are called And when all is done after all our talk and dispute after all our heats and contests after all our Books and Writings there is nothing so effectual to make God our Friend nothing so much adorns our Excellent Protestant Religion and better secures it to us and our Posterity In a word nothing treasures up so much solid Peace and holy Assurance unto our Souls as the sincere honest application of our selves to the Practicals of RELIGION FINIS ERRATVM Pag. 23. in the Margin read Thom. Beacon 1 Sam. 7. 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ver. 8. Ver. 9. Ver. 10. Ver. 11. Ex. 1. 14. Ch. 2. 23. Tho. Deacon in his Preface to his Iewel of Ioy. Psal. 103. 2 3. Heb. 12. 14. Heb. 13. 20. Rom. 14. 22. Gilbert Foliot God. Caral of Bishops