Selected quad for the lemma: kingdom_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
kingdom_n	church_n	word_n	world_n	3,040	5	4.5870	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44442	Sermons preach'd at Eton by John Hales ...; Sermons. Selections	Hales, John, 1584-1656.	1660 (1660)	Wing H274; ESTC R6396	49,653	58

contumely and disgrace for our greatest glory is to be his and not our own You are not your own you are bought with a price saith the blessed Apostle When therefore speaking of Jerusalems house he calls it yours this was I told you a term of reprobation and signified that it was no more his he would no longer own it From this word yours I went forward to the next word house which is the next step in my Text and finding that this word might bear a double interpretation I drew from it a two-fold lesson First I told you this word house might signifie the Temple wherein he then was when he spake these words Hence therefore in that we might well understand him to threaten that he would therefore leave the Temple desolate I drew a lesson teaching us to consider and lay unto our hearts those fearful judgments which God did many times pour out even upon Churches and Chappels and Houses dedicate to Religion and service of God when they were abused to Superstition or Hypocrisie Secondly I told you this word house might by a Figure signifie the City Jerusalem or rather that whole Estate and Kingdom for it is an usual phrase in Scripture by these words the House of Israel and the House of Jacob to express that whole Common-wealth Hence therefore in that we may understand him to threaten the ruine of the whole Estate and Kingdome of the Jewes I drew a second lesson teaching us to consider the judgements of God many times poured out upon whole Kingdomes without respect when the people shall relapse from God and fall to sinne Now this lesson which then I onely pointed at but came not so near as to touch it I purpose at this time by Gods grace fully to unfold and insist upon For it is a lesson above all others teaching us to take heed unto our waies and to prepare our selves to undergo the good pleasure of our God And so much the rather deserves this point to be carefully lookt into because in this judgement of God upon whole Kingdomes something there is which seems to crosse that justice by which the world is govern'd I have heard that in the Civil Law it is a matter of danger and will bear an action if a man speak evil of a whole Society or a whole Nation And the reason is given because there is no Society no Nation so bad but there may be found some good persons amongst them The B●●otians were generally held for blunt and dull-spirited men yet they yielded Pindarus one of the prime and chiefest Ethnick Poets The Scythians were accounted barbarous yet they gave the world Anacharsis one of the best Philosophers The Idumaeans were held for aliens and strangers from the Covenant of grace yet unto them we owe Job that most glorious pattern of patience But Beloved our God regards not what is written in the Pandects he governs not the world by the Civil Law but out of a law of his own not onely speakes evil but doth worse unto whole Nations amongst whom notwithstanding some righteous persons are Ah sinfull Nation a people laden with iniquity a seed of evil doers Princes of Sodom people of Gomorrah These be the names by which he styles the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem amongst whom I doubt not but many good men were though no other yet Esay the Prophet who spake these words And as he gives them all without regard of difference one name so he makes them all good and bad to drink alike of one cup of captivity notwithstanding there were many among them of great uprightness witness Daniel and his fellowes Again Theodosius the Emperour when the inhabitans of Thessalonica had in a wantonness and tumult slain one of his men in revenge sent in his souldiers upon the City and without examination and inquiry who were guilty who were innocent slew with a great slaughter all that came to hand This fact of his so farre displeased St. Ambrose at that time Bishop of Millaine that he put the Emperour from the Lords Table forbad him the Church and ere he would restore him made him in publick bewail his errour and crave forgivenesse of God for it Thus indeed it was betwixt St. Ambrose and Theodosius the Great But a greater then Theodosius God the great Emperour of East and West he will do thus and much more in this kind and no St. Ambrose must dare to question the justice of his action Last of all in the world that which makes sinnes many times scape unpunished is the multitude of offenders Noscio saith a heathen man in the Historian an suasurus fuerim omittere potiùs praevalida adulta vitia quàm hoc assequi ut palam fieret quibus vitiis impares simus Sins many times do reign amongst men and spread themselves so farre and wide that no strength of the Magistrate is able to suppresse them and therefore many times men think it best wisedom to let such sinnes alone for he that goes about to amend them shall but betray his weaknesse But Beloved God will not be out-braved by any sin be it never so universal it is not a multitude that can countenance or uphold iniquity against him he will not regard or pitty the loss of so many lives or be remorsefull at the shedding of so much bloud For it is not onely true which the Prophet saith That a thousand yeares with him are but as one day but in the case we now speak of a thousand a million a whole world of men are no more with him then one man Caligula the Emperour wantonly wished that all the people of Rome had but one neck that he might strike it off at a blow Beloved when the Lord Chief Justice of Heaven and Earth shall sit to do judgement upon sinners all the world hath before him as it were but one neck and if it please him as once it did under Noah he will strike it off at a blow I know the world sometimes doth acknowledge a necessity of such proceeding though joyned with some injustice Habet aliquid ex iniquo omne magnum exemplum c. Exemplary punishments and publick reformation can never take place without some wrong to some particulars but the wrong which doth befall some few is largely recompensed and made up by the good that redounds unto the whole There was a law in Rome that if a Master were slain by one of his servants all the servants under his roofe were to dye for it also accordingly was the practise For when Pedanius was slain by his slave 400 of his servants were put to death This severity they thought fit to practise so to secure the lives of men and to restrain such mischiefes as might come by the insolency of servants Yet Beloved that Mans reason may take no offence at these proceedings and be scandalized that in these common calamities no greater difference is made betwixt the good and bad we will first

that he delighted himself much in often feasting and being reproved for it by some friends of his he gave them this answer If feasting were not a good thing men would not honour God and the Saints so much with it Lo here Beloved the natural consequence of Church-feasts they are nothing else but an Apology for luxury For when the Ministers of God shall out of these and the like places reprove superfluity of diet the people have their answer ready If this were a fault then why is Christ and his Saints thus honoured with it This splendor of feasting and eating in memory of the Saints hath a little dazel'd the eyes of some great persons St. Hierom although a great Clerk and singular contemner of secular superfluities yet we see in what a strange passion he was when he wrote his book against Vigilantius And what think you might be the cause of so much heat Understand you must that there was a custom in the Church in sundry places for men and women young and old of all qualities and conditions upon the Vigils of the Martyrs to come together by night and meet in Church-yards and there eat and drink upon the Tombs of the Martyrs This corruption Vigilantius had reproved And good cause I think he had so to do Nox vinum mulier when men women maids shall meet together by night in Church-yards to eat and drink I think your own discretion will easily suggest unto you what fruits were like to come It seems the Churches found some which they liked not well of for by common consent these kinds of meetings have been long since laid down and in some Churches express Canons by Synods have been made to decry them Yet the maintenance of this was that great matter which cast St. Hierom into so great choler Yet these men have brought feasts into the Militant Church what shall we think of those who have brought feasting into the Church Triumphant There was an error in the Church very ancient and very general called the error of the Millenaries which arose immediately after the Apostles times and strongly prevailed with almost all the Fathers of the Church before the Nicene Council These men taught that there would be a time when our Saviour should come from Heaven and raise out of the dust all those that were his and reign with them here on earth a thousand years in all abundance in all secular pomp imaginable Would you know what b●essings these men did expect in that imaginary Kingdom Let Irenaeus Bishop of Lyons in France tell it you who was one of the great Patrons of that error and lived within two hundred yeares of Christ He bringing in our Saviour discoursing to his Disciples concerning the state of that Kingdom amongst other instances of great happinesse there to be found makes him report this There shall be saith he in a field ten thousand vines every vine shall have ten thousand branches every branch ten thousand stalks every stalk ten thousand clusters every cluster ten thousand grapes and every grape viginti quinque metretas five and twenty pottles of wine More to that purpose doth that Father speak by which he evidently betrayed what a childish gross conceit he had of the spiritual Kingdome of Christ which he took to be like Mahomets Paradise and measured out the Kingdome of Heaven by meats and drinks which above all things in the world that carry any necessity in them are the most vain Again for the better countenance of this outward jollity in the Church I see some men have attempted to entitle our Saviour Jesus Christ himself unto it for First it is espied in Scripture that our Saviour is often found at feasts Now for the rest that which the Scripture cannot do Tradition shall help us out in for in the Second place Tradition will instruct us that the seamlesse Coat which he wore was of a precious stuff and admirable texture Thirdly Tradition will tell us that he had a silver cup wherein at his last Supper he gave the Wine and that this cup is to be seen at this day in some one of the Parish-Churches of Rome Fourthly in the publick Treasury of the Common-wealth of Genoa there is a Charger made of an holy Emerald a very rich and precious piece If we consult with Tradition that will tell us and the whole Common-wealth of Genoa doth believe it that this was the dish wherein our Saviour Christ had his diet served Thus Beloved we who should frame the world to fit Christ have framed a Christ to fit the world And if we hearken but a little to the belly the issue of all will be this not onely the World but the Church Religion Heaven Christ himself will turn to good-fellowship If the world joyn with the belly and meats it doth what becomes it Habent enim qualitatem symbolam they sympathize all three for as God shall destroy both it and them so must this world pass away and the form of it onely let Christians and the Churches hope be immortality Give me leave to conclude with the very words with which I began What then remains but that we take the counsel which St. Ambrose gives us Tanquam defunctus c. THE FOURTH SERMON MAT. 23.38 Behold your House is left unto you desolate SEverity in God seems to be a quality not natural but casual and occasioned unto which in a manner he is constrained besides his nature {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} For God saith Trismegistus hath but one onely property one quality and that is Goodness Prior bonitas Dei secundum naturam posterior severitas secuncum causam illa ingenita haec accidens illa propria haec accommodata illa edita haec adhibita saith Tertullian The prime quality in God is goodnes for that is natural severity is later as being occasioned that is eternal this is adventitious that is proper unto him this is but borrowed that inwardly flowes from him this is forreignly fixed upon him We usually observe that if we would know things what they are by nature and of themselves we must consider their first actions and operations which voluntarily flow from them before that either Art or Custom hath altered them Beloved will you know the truth of what I but now spake that God of himself and by his nature is onely good then observe his first actions into which his own nature carried him Number all his acts from the Creation till the Fall of Man and you shall find in them nothing but goodness When he created this beautiful frame of Heaven and Earth Men and Angels in that wonderful order who counselled him or what moved him thus to do He was of himself all-sufficient and needed nothing why then did he thus break out into action certainly because he was good For goodness otium sui naturá non patitur hinc censetur si agatur Goodness is a restless thing alwayes in doing and