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A32016
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Gods free mercy to England presented as a pretious and powerfull motive to humiliation : in a sermon preached before the honourable House of Commons at their late solemne fast, Feb. 23, 1641 / by Edmvnd Calamy ...
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Calamy, Edmund, 1600-1666.
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1642
(1642)
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Wing C253A; ESTC R19544
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47,198
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60
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mercies Pray to Christ to looke upon thee as he did on Peter The Cock crew once and Peter wept not the Cock crew twice and Peter wept not because saith Ambrose Christ did not looke upon him But as soone as ever Christ looked upon him then he wept Aspexit Christus flevit We Ministers are as the crowing of Peters Cocke we cannot make you ashamed and confounded for your evill doings unlesse Christ looke upon you The Lord Jesus in his mercy cast his eye upon us this day that we may all of us goe out and weep bitterly as Peter did The very brute beasts have bin wrought upon by mercie Some write though others contradict it of the Elephant that because it wants joynts it cannot kneele if it once fall it cannot rise and therefore when it sleeps it sleepes leaning upon a tree Now the hunts-man observing upon what tree it sleeps desirous to take it comes in the day time and sawes that tree almost asunder and when the Elephant comes to leane upon it the tree falls and the Elephant with it Then comes the hunts-man and lifts up the Elephant which he takes so kindly that ever after he followes the hunts-man where ever be pleaseth This story may be applyed divers wayes When we were all fallen in Adam by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree unable to rise againe Jesus hath lifted us up from hell O let this mercie melt us into obedience When we were all falne of late yeares in this Kingdome into a desperate condition God by the King and Parliamant hath raised us up to a hope of better dayes O let us be ashamed to be disobedient to this God There is another famous story of one Androdus dwelling at Rome that fled from his Master into the wildernesse and tooke shelter in a Lions Den The Lion came home with a thorne in his foot and seeing the man in the den reached out his foot and the man pulled out the thorne which the Lion tooke so kindly that for three yeares he sed the man in his den After three yeares the man stole out of the den and returned backe to Rome was apprehended by his Master and condemned to be devoured by a Lion It hapned that this very Lion was designed to devour him The Lion knowes his old friend and would not hurt him The People wondred at it the man was saved and the Lion given to him which he carried about with him in the streets of Rome From whence came that motto Hic est homo medicus leonis hic est leo hospes hominis Beloved in the Lord the great God by the help of you and the House of the Lords hath plucked many thorns out of our feet O let us not now bring forth thornes and briers Let not our hearts be drie and barren as the thorny ground Let us not kicke against God with our feete while be is plucking out the thornes that trouble us Let us not be worse than the brute beasts But if all this will not prevaile suffer me I beseech you to remind you under new expressions of what hath beene before said and to offer some new motives unto you 1. If the beginnings of hope that now appeare and these inclinings of better dayes will not work upon us to bumble us for and from sin God will take away all our hopes all his mercies from us and give them to a Nation that will make better use of them And as I said in my last Sermon which I preached before this Honourable assembly he will repent of the good things which he intended to bestow upon us Remember what I hinted before of Saul that if hee had tarried for Samuel God would have established the kingdome unto him But now saith Samuel thy Kingdome shall not continue How do we know but that if we humble our selves and enter into covenant to be Gâ—… people and seeke the Lord with all our heart but that God may establish us to be his choice people for ever But if we harden our hearts against God and his wayes God will say unto us tâ—…is day I thought to have made you a happy kingdome but now your happinesse shall not continue 2. When God hath done much for a Nation and that Nation sinnes with his â—…ercies God will not onely take away his mercies but will send curses instead of blessings For so it is said Josh. 24. 20. If yee seeke the Lord and serve strange gods then will he turne and do you hurt and consume you after he hath done you good God may out of his free mercy prorogue and demurre our ruine but be will never remove it till our Nationall sinnes be removed 3. If God should heale us help us and lengthen out our tranquillity and make a reformation among us yet it would be but a lame cure if we be not confounded and ashamed for our evill wayes It will be but a skinning over of our disease and a daubing of us up with untempered morter a smothering of the fire which will breake out the more afterwards But a perfect cure can never be expected from God till thâ—…re be a Nationall humiliation and refoâ—…mation 4. Adde lastly if God should shew us mercy this mercy will be accursed unto us if we be not humbled and reformed A mercy abused is no mercy Mercy turned to sinne takes away the comfort of the mercy and turneth the mercy into a curse As the raine that falls upon the Sea is made salt by the salt water And that which falls upon moorish grounds breeds Toads and Serpents So all the goodnesse and mercies of God falling upon wicked impenitent and irreformed hearts breed nothing but the verâ—…â—…f sinne and iniquity Mercy is like the water of jealousie of which â—…e read Numbers the fifth If the woman was innocent it made her fruitfull but if guilty it made her rot So the mercies of God if we be good make us more fruitfull It is Maximum aptissimum motivum medium obedientiae But when they fall upon a wicked spirit they make him the more rotten and the more wicked The Lord blesse these considerations unto you For the conclusion of all I will do two things 1. I will name some particular sinnes which are most opposite to the mercies God hath done for England and beseech the representative House of England to be confounded and ashamed to commit such sinnes any more 2. I will name some speciall and heroicall Uses which you are to make of Gods mercies besides this in the Text 1. I will name some particular sins c. 1. Be ashamed O house of Egland to forget the mercies you have received from God It is a great mercie that we have mercies to remember and if wee refuse to remember Gods mercies God will take order that we shall have no mercies to remember Let not the brand of the chiefe Butler be justly fastned upon us Yet did
Christ to send the Christian Religion among us Christ made haste to convert England Some say that James the brother of John some Sâ—…mon Zeâ—…tes some that Peter and Paul but all agree that Joseph of Aâ—…imathea preached the Gospell here and here he died And that which makes much for the mercy of God to this happy Island the first Christian King that ever was in the world was King Lucius a Britaine and the first Christian Emperour was borne in England even Constantine the Great And when wee came afterwards to be wofully drowned with Popish heresies and Idolatry the first King that ever shooke off subjection to Antichrist after he was discovered by Luther was King Henry the eighth and the first King that ever wrote in Print that the Pope was Antichrist was King James of famous memory God hath made us not only Protestants but reformed Protestants We have enjoyed the Gospell of peace and the peace of the Gospell for almost an hundred yeares In this Century God hath multiplied deliverances upon deliverances we have had our 88. and our Gunpowder deliverances but as Benjamins messe did exceed all his brethrens and as Josephs shease was lifted up above the sheaves of his brethren so the mercies of these two last yeares do farre exceed all the mercies that ever this Nation did receive since the first Reformation mercies that deserve to be ingraven in every one of our hearts And if Achilles was happy in Alexanders judgement because he had a Homer to record his fame It would no doubt be a great honour to this Kingdome if it had a better Homer to Chronicle the passages of these late yeares Give mee leave to name and but to name some few of them First The bappy Pacification betweenâ—… Scotland and England God hath freed us from Civill warres which of all warres are most uncivill from intestine warres warres that would have eaten out our owne bowels from warres of Protestant with Protestant which of all warres are most cruell Odia proximorum sunt acerrima Secondly The mighty turne that God hath made in this Kingdome for the better for wee were all upon the Tropicks turning to Popery as some that are most moderate do now confesse The ill affected party had got a mighty faction men in authority power pits were digged for the Righteous Gallowses provided for Mordecai because hee would not bow to Haman dens of Lions for Daniel because he would not leave praying fiery furnaces for the three children because they would not worship the golden Image dungeons for Jeremy because he would preach the truth with boldnesse We were like firebrands in the fire like birds in the snare but God Almighty hath made a blessed turne of things for the better the enemies are throwne into the dens dungeons they prepared for the godly the pits they digged for others they themselves are fallen into the enemies of the Church hang downe their heads and the godly begin to lift them up Our Isaacs are delivered and the Rammes are caught in the bush and as the Wiseman saith The Righteous is delivered out of trouble and the wicked commeth in his stead The wicked shall be a ransome for the righteous and the transgressours for the upright Thirdly The Protestation against all Popery and Popish Innovations next to that Protestation from which we beare the name of Protestants the greatest mercy God hath brought a great deale of good to this Kingdome by it Fourthly The great hope we have of a reformation of the Church and State We may now say in some good measure as it is Canticles 2. 11. The winter is past the raine is over and gone the flowers appeare on the earth the time of the singing of birds is come You know the birds sing early in the morning at the break of day and the flowers appeare at the beginning of the Spring Blessed be God here is a faire spring towards the day begins to dawne Reformation begins to blossome and we hope that the winter of adversitie is past and gone unlesse our new sinnes do provoke God to repent of the good he intends to do unto us as hee dealt with Saul for his new transgression after hee had thought to have established him King 1 Sam. 13. 13 14. Fifthly The many grievous yoakes that God hath freed us from so many as that the day would hardly suffice to repeat them God hath delivered us from Civill yoakes and from Spirituall from Monopolies from the late Canons mounted up against all good men but now turned against themselves from the Star-Chamber and from the terrible High Commission that wrack and torture of conscience and conscientious men which was appointed like the dogs in the Capitoâ—…l to scare away theeves but hath for the most part barked onely at honest men from those two terrible Oathes the Oath ex Officio and the Oath of the late Canons whereby the Prelaticall party thought for ever to rivet themselves into the Kingdone and to be above the hurt of the King and Parliament this Oath is now made the great Canon to shoot them downe Sixthly The discovery of the secret underminers that have for these many yeares laboured to blow up our Religion and under the name of Puritan to scare all men from being Protestants God hath done to us as he did to Ezekiel he hath opened a doore in the wall to behold all the trecheries that are plotted in secret there is nothing devised against Church or State but God raises up one Eâ—…isha or other to discover it in so much as we may say of England as Balaam of the Israelites Surely there is no â—…nchantment against England neither is there any divination against the Houses of Parliament Here are six mercies Now there are also divers circumstances with which these mercies are apparelled that are as remarkeable as the mercies themselves as we say of some things that the curious workmanship of them is more worth than the things themselves as in a Watch or Clocke so these circumstances are as glorious and as observable if not more than the mercies themselves and these are likewise six First for God to doe all this for England and to doe it in a legall way in a Parliamentary way This is the first Circumstance It was that which our enemies did much threaten that wee should never see Parliament more but blessed be God we doe see it to our great joy and comfort It was the happines of England that in her first reformation she was acted by authority Our reformation began from the head and not from the feet And it is now no little blessing That this second reformation beginnes from the heads of our Tribes in the old and good way of a Parliament and not by a popular tumult Secondly to doe it in a peaceable way It is with us as it was in the building of Solomons Temple Here is no noise of hammers or axes but all in a quiet