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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A61631 Twelve sermons preached on several occasions. The first volume by the Right Reverend Father in God Edward Lord Bishop of Worcester.; Sermons. Selections Stillingfleet, Edward, 1635-1699. 1696 (1696) Wing S5673; ESTC R8212 223,036 528

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than the Peoples holding a Rod over them which the best Princes are like to suffer the most by and bad will but grow desperate by it Good Princes will never need such a curb because their oaths and promises their love and tenderness towards their people the sense they have of a Power infinitely greater than theirs to which they must give an account of all their actions will make them govern as the Fathers of their Country and bad Princes will never value it but will endeavour by all possible means to secure themselves against it So that no inconveniency can be possibly so great on the supposition of this unaccountable Power in Soveraign Princes taking it in the general and meerly on the account of reason as the unavoidable mischiefs of that Hypotheses which places all power originally in the people and notwithstanding all oaths and bonds whatsoever to obedience gives them the liberty to resume it when they please which will always be when that Spirit of Faction and Sedition shall prevail among them which ruled here in Corah and his company 2. Another pretence of this Rebellion of Corah was the freeing themselves from the encroachments upon their spiritual priviledges which were made by the usurpations of Aaron and the Priesthood This served ●or a very popular pretence for they knew no reason that one Tribe should engross so much of the wealth of the Nation to themselves and have nothing to do but to attend the service of God for it What say they are not all the Lord's people holy Why may not then all they offer up incense to the Lord as well as the Sons of Aaron How many publick uses might those Revenues serve for which are now to maintain Aaron and all the Sons of Levi But if there must be some to attend the service of God why may not the meanest of the people serve for that purpose those who can be serviceable for nothing else Why must there be an order of Priesthood distinct from that of Levites why a High Priest above all the Priests what is there in all their office which one of the common people may not do as well as they cannot they slay the sacrifices and offer incense and d● all other parts of the Priestly Office So that at last they make all this to be a Politick design of Moses only to advance his own Family by making his Brother High-Priest and to have all the Priests and Levites at his devotion to keep the people the better in awe This hath always bee● the quarrel at Religion by those who seldom pretend to it but with a design t● destroy it For who would ever have minded the constant attendance at the Temple if no encouragements had been given to those who were imployed in it Or is not Religion apt enough to be despised of it self by Men of prophane minds unless it be rendred more mean and contemptible by the Poverty of those who are devoted to it Shall not God be allowed the priviledge of every Master of a Family to appoint the ranks and orders of his own servants and to take care they be provided for as becomes those who wait upon him What a dishonour had this been to the true God when those who worshipped false Gods thought nothing too great for those who were imployed in the service of them But never any yet cryed but he that had a mind to betray his Master to what purpose is all this waste Let God be honoured as he ought to be let Religion come in for its share among all the things which deserve encouragement and those who are employed in the offices of it enjoy but what God and Reason and the Laws of their Country give them and then we shall see it was nothing but the discontent and faction of Corah and his company which made any encroachment of Aaron and the Priesthood any pretence for Rebellion But all these pretences would not serve to make them escape the severe hand of divine justice for in an extraordinary and remarkable manner he made them suffer the just desert of their sin for they perished in their contradiction which is the next thing to be considered viz. 2. The Iudgment which was inflicted upon them for it They had provoked Heaven by their sin and disturbed the earth by their Faction and the earth as if it were moved with indignation against them trembled and shook as Iosephus saith like waves that are tossed with a mighty wind and then with a horrid noise it rends asunder and opens its mouth to swallow those in its bowels who were unfit to live upon the face of it They had been dividing the people and the earth to their amazement and ruine divides it self under their feet as though it had been design'd on purpose that in their punishment themselves might feel and others see the mischief of their sin Their seditious principles seemed to have infected the ground they stood upon the earth of a sudden proves as unquiet and troublesome as they but to rebuke their madness it was only in obedience to him who made it the executioner of his wrath against them and when it had done its office it is said that the earth closed upon them and they perished from among the Congregation Thus the earth having revenged it self against the disturbers of its peace Heaven presently appears with a flaming fire taking vengeance upon the 250 Men who in opposition to Aaron had usurped the Priestly office in offering incense before the Lord. Such a Fire if we believe the same Historian which far outwent the most dreadful eruptions of Aetna or Vesuvius which neither the art of Man nor the power of the wind could raise which neither the burning of Woods nor Cities could parallel but such a Fire which the wrath of God alone could kindle whose light could be outdone by nothing but the heat of it Thus Heaven and Earth agree in the punishment of such disturbers of Government and God by this remarkable judgment upon them hath left it upon record to all ages that all the world may be convinced how displeasing to him the sin of faction and sedition is For God takes all this that was done against Moses and Aaron as done against himself For they are said to be gathered together against the Lord v. 11. to provoke the Lord v. 30. And the fire is said to come out from the Lord v. 35. And a●terwards it is said of them This is that Moses and Dathan and Abiram who strove against Moses and against Aaron in the company of Corah when they strove against the Lord. By which we see God interprets striving against the Authority appointed by him to be a striving against himself God looks upon himself as immediately concerned in the Government of the world for by him Princes raign and they are his Vicegerents upon earth and they who resist resist not a meer appointment of the people
man's power to hinder than in the earth to hinder the falling of rain upon it If therefore sense and reason may prevail upon mankind not to fancy themselves under invisible chains and fetters of which they can have no evidence or experience we may thence infer the soul's capacity of rewards and punishments in another life since happiness and misery are set before them and it must be their own voluntary choice which brings them to either of them When either by their own folly they run themselves upon everlasting ruine or by making use of the assistance of divine grace they become capable of endless Joy But since men have not only a power of gorverning themselves but are capable of doing it by considerations as remote from the things of sense as Heaven is from Earth it is not conceivable there should be such a power within us if there were not an immortal soul which is the subject of it For what is there that hath the shadow of liberty in meer matter what is there of these inferiour creatures that can act by consideration of future things but only man Whence comes man to consider but from his reason or to guide himself by the consideration of future and eternal things but from an immortal principle within him which alone can make things at a distance to be as present can represent to it self the infinite pleasures and unconceivable misery of an eternal state in such a manner as to direct the course of this present life in order to the obtaining of the one and avoiding of the other And thus much concerning the supposition here made of the loss of the soul and its immortality implied therein I come to consider the hazard of losing the soul for the gain of this world For although our Saviour puts the utmost supposable case the better to represent the folly of losing the soul for the sake of the world yet he doth imply the danger may be as great although a man's ambition never comes to be so extravagant as to aim at the possession of the whole world The whole world can never make amends for the loss of the soul yet the soul may be lost for a very inconsiderable part of it although all the wealth and treasures of the Indies can never compensate to a man the loss of his life yet that may he in as great danger of losing upon far easier terms than those are It is not to be thought that those whom our Saviour speaks to could ever propose such vast designs to themselves as the Empire of the whole world was but he tells them if that could be supposed it were far more desirable to save a soul than to gain the world yet such is the folly of mankind to lose their souls for a very small share of this present world For the temptations of this world are so many so great so pleasing to mankind and the love of life so natural and so strong that inconsiderate men will run any hazard of their souls for the gain of one or preservation of the other The highest instance of this kind is that which our Saviour here intends when men will make shipwrack of faith and a good conscience to escape the danger of their lives or with Iudas will betray their Saviour for some present gain although very far short of that of the whole world And if I be not much mistaken it is upon this account that our Saviour pronounces it so hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven because in such difficult times of persecution on the account of Religion as those were such men would be shrewdly tempted to venture the loss of their souls in another world rather than of their estates in this For it was the young man's unwillingness to part with his great possessions to follow Christ which gave him occasion to utter that hard saying It is on this account St. Paul saith the love of money is the root of all evil which while some have coveted after they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows It was on this account that Demas forsook Paul having loved this present world and that the friendship of this world is said to be enmity with God and that our Saviour saith no man can serve two Masters for either he will hate the one and love the other else he will hold to the one and despise the other ye cannot serve God and Mammon which doth suppose that these two doth require two contrary things at the same time for if a hundred Masters did all require the same thing a man might in doing that be said to serve them all But when Religion requires that we must part with all for that and the world requires that we must part with Religion to preserve our interest in it then it is impossible to serve God and Mammon together for we must hold to the one and despise the other But what then Is there no danger of the loss of the soul for the sake of this world but only in the case of persecution then some may say we hope there is no fear now of mens being too rich to go to Heaven Thanks be to God that we live in times free from such dangerous tryals as those of persecution are and wherein men may quietly enjoy their Estates and the best Religion in the world together but although there be no danger of splitting upon the rocks there may be of sinking with being overcharged or springing too great a leak within us whereby we let in more than we can be able to bear And supposing the most prosperous and easie condition men can fancy to themselves here yet the things of this world are so great occasions of evil so great hindrances of good that on these accounts men always run a mighty hazard of their souls for the sake of this world The Devil knew well enough where his greatest strength lay when he reserved the temptation of the glories of this world to the last place in dealing with Christ himself when nothing else would prevail upon him he was yet in hopes that the Greatness and Splendour of this world would bring him to his terms And surely if the Devil had not a mighty opinion of the power of these charms of the Kingdoms and Glory of this world he would never have put such hard terms to them which were no less than falling down and worshipping him which we do not find he ever durst so much as mention before till he held this bait in his hand And although our Saviour baffled him in this his strongest temptation yet he still finds that far less than what he here offered will bring men in subjection to him How small a matter of gain will tempt some men to all the sins of lying of fraud and injustice who pawn their souls and put them out at interest for a very small