deprest Thus though they themselves were the most inconsiderable Party in the Nation yet they have so managed the matter by shifting sides as their Interests led them to it that they who could not have stood it out by their own strength yet by joining themselves to those who needed such an accession and were willing to support themselves by it came not only to preserve themselves but to make a much more considerable Figure among us than without those their Practices and our own Follies they could ever have pretended to They had Art enough on the one hand to make one side maintain vigorously some indifferent things while they could on the other hand engage the other to as obstinate an opposition to them They knew well that in this Dispute which side soever lost they must needs gain both by the weakening that it gave us and by the advantages that it furnished them For while we grew afraid only of one another and angry only at one another they were no more lookt after and so they had opportunities to work so long under ground and unobserved that they had almost quite undermined us before we were sensible of our danger And when they could conceal it no longer but that the Mask must fall off they even then could so far work on our mutual Animosities as to make us Instruments for doing half their work while some were so far deluded as to be their Tools in the destroying our Civil Liberties and others who had complained of the former had yet no sooner an opportunity offered them than they struck in to overthrow all the Security that we had for our Religion under the pretence of enjoying a Toleration when the price of it was the owning a Dispensing Power that must needs have devoured all in a little time So that both sides have deserved by Turns this Reproach That our Enemies could manage their Passions so as to graft their own Designs on them and to make them grow out of them only with this difference That the last deceived are certainly the more inexcusable since they had seen and censured other mens Errors and yet fell into the same Follies themselves when the Designs were become more barefac'd and by consequence Errors of that sort were the more Criminal This we have all felt so long that it may be now reasonably expected that the Experience of past-times and the publick and solemn Promises that were made in the late Distress should now bring us to a right temper and that we should now join all our Forces together for we shall have occasion for our whole strength while we struggle with such powerful and vigilant Enemies 3. But the second Artifice which comes nearer to that in my Text has been no less succesful to Them than fatal to Us and that is The vitiating all our Notions of Religion and the corrupting the Morals of the whole Nation It is plain that they thought it was a good step to bring us over to their Religion once to make us have none of our own True Morality can never bear a Religion that dissolves all Duties and dispences with all Obligations nor can a sense of Religion once rightly awak'ned bear the impositions of Tyranny Superstition and Infallibility Therefore it was necessary for them to propagate Atheism among us since men that had no Religion could easily be brought to profess that which is next to none and that agreed best with their Interests And this they carried on in one respect very avowedly for in their Books they studied plainly to prove That men could have no Certainty for the Christian Religion unless they took it on their word and so they set themselves to weaken the force of all those Arguments by which the Truth of the Christian Faith is proved and to put the whole Authority of it upon the Testimony of the Church This was no small comfort to the Atheists who from the common Principles of Sense saw the unreasonableness of believing or submitting implicitly to the Authority of the Church and so were glad to be told that this was all the Evidence that could be brought for Christianity it self But the debauching our Morals was that which seemed chiefly necessary for the compleating their Designs and in this their Agents had too much matter to work upon The folly and hypocrisie of some that in the late Times had given great Advantages against the profession of Religion was a handle that they failed not to make use of to render all secret Prayer the reading the Scriptures and the observation of the Lord's Day together with all the shews of Piety ridiculous Morality was thought the effect of a mean Education and of a narrow Mind True Piety was despised as a Cant The strictness of Virtue the fidelity to the Vow of Marriage Chastity and Sobriety were put out of countenance as signs of ill-breeding or of a weak and superstitious temper It look'd big and gallant to laugh at Religion to despise the Worship of God to affront those that Ministred in Holy Things and to set up for the most avowed Disorders on that Day which is dedicated to the Worship of God. The open practice of the blackest Vices was a good step to assure a man of their favour and to make him pass for one on whom they could depend Instruments of Vice were ready to carry on the Design and as if we had been to be drawn to their Idolatry by the same sort of persons that were sent in by Balak to corrupt the Israalites their Balaks had likewise their Moabitish Women to send among us which was practised almost as barefacedly as when Zimri brought in Cosbi before the door of the Tabernacle in the face of the whole Congregation This was a Train that being once laid and having taken fire could not but prove fatal to a Nation that is but too apt to be corrupted and the effects of it we feel to this day For Vice having over-run us so entirely as once it did we cannot be soon freed from so infectious a Disease which wheresoever it once takes root drives it so deep that it cannot be easily extirpated When a Nation is once given up to pleasure and to a profuseness of living to Falshood and Treachery and to all the arts of dissembling and supplanting one another it must be the work of an Age to bring men back to a decent Frugality and Sobriety to an exactness of Truth and a strictness of Virtue Nature will be long of the side of Pleasure and Interest these things being soon learned and foarce ever forgotten Out of a due reflection on all these things we must come at last to know the Righteousness of the Lord God has disappointed the Councels of our Enemies and made all their Diviners mad they have been taken in their own Craft and in the Net which they laid for us was their own foot taken In every step that they made a Spirit of Giddiness
Die Mercurii 6. Novembris 1689. ORdered by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled That the Thanks of this House be given to the Lord Bishop of Salisbury for his Sermon Preached yesterday before this House And his Lordship is hereby desired to Print and Publish the same Jo. Browne Cleric Parliament A SERMON Preached before the House of Peers IN THE ABBEY of WESTMINSTER On the 5th of November 1689. BEING GUN-POWDER TREASON-DAY As Likewise The Day of his Majesties Landing IN ENGLAND By the Right Reverend Father in God GILBERT Lord Bishop of SARVM LONDON Printed for Ric. Chiswel at the Rose and Crown in St. Pauls Church-yard MDCLXXXIX THE BISHOP OF SALISBURY'S Sermon before the Lords November 5th 1689. A SERMON Preached before the HOUSE of PEERS IN THE ABBEY of WESTMINSTER On the Fifth of November 1689. Micah VI. Verse 5. O my People remember now what Balak King of Moab consulted and what Balaam the Son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal that ye may know the Righteousness of the Lord. THERE is somewhat in Ease and Prosperity that does so weaken the Minds of Men who are apt enough even without that softning to forget all the Good they receive and both the Author of it and the Instruments made use of by him in it that it is necessary to call upon them often to reflect on what is past and that not only on these visible Blessings of God to them that fall under the observation of all the World but on the secret methods as well as the hidden designs of Providence We are naturally apt to flatter our selves so much that we do easily imagine that the happy things which at any time befal us are the effects of our Wisdom or the rewards of our Vertues if a worse principle does not corrupt us and make us ascribe them either to Fate or Chance No Nation had ever such a wonderful series of Blessings that did so distinguish them from all the World round about them and gave them such signal Evidences of God's Power and greatness of his Mercy and severity of his hatred of Idolatry as well as of the Authority of their Law and Religion as the Iews had and yet never was there any Nation under Heaven that was so apt to forget all this and to revolt from God into that very Idolatry which they saw him punish so severely in others Never was there a more amasing Scene than that which they had seen in Egypt in the Red Sea and on Mount Sinai the Miracles came so thick one after another they were both so various and extraordinary and they were so often and so long repeated that to one who lays together all that they saw in a course of Forty years it appears as astonishing a part of that History as any of all the Miracles recorded in it that a People which had such a wonderful Evidence given them for their Religion should yet have been so bent to Idolatry and so apt to forget God and all that he had done for them No Nation now in the World can be in this respect so guilty as they were because none have seen such Miracles But setting aside extraordinary things it may be affirmed without any arrogant preferring our own Nation to others or any partiality for our selves in imagining that we are God's favourite People that within this last Age or if we will carry up the matter to so blessed a Period as the Reformation that ever since that time we have had as many of the distinguishing Characters of the Iewish Nation upon us both in the Blessings that we have received from God on the one hand and in our Ingratitude to him on the other as any under Heaven The wonderful conjuncture of Circumstances that concurred to give the Reformation its first footing among us The terrible but short lived shaking it had in Queen Mary's time which served only to awaken and to prepare the Nation to the long and glorious Reign of Queen Elizabeth The discovering and defeating all the Designs that were laid both against her Person and Government The signal overthrow of the boasted Invincible Armada The Uniting the Island afterwards under one Head by which we were delivered from the danger of War within our selves The many Rebellions of the Irish which gave occasion to so vast a Colony to be sent thither which rendred that Island that had been an Incumbrance on the Government before so useful to it The encrease of our Trade the many Colonies that we have sent into America The preserving us during our Civil Wars from being made a prey to our Neighbours and from Strangers getting footing among us The putting an end to Anarchy and Enthusiasm in so serene a manner in the Year 60. the long continued Peace and Happiness since that time and the preserving us from our own Follies and the restraining those Passions which had like to have been fatal to us if the precipitated haste of our Enemies had not brought us to our Senses again before it was too late But to come to the repeated Deliverances of this Auspicious Day when one Train that was laid to blow up the Nation in its Head and Representatives that was so well managed and brought so near the Critical Minute was just then discovered and prevented and now again when another that was laid to destroy both Church and State not only in their Representatives but in Person has been not indeed discovered but happily prevented and brought to nothing For our late Conspirators were not so cautious as to hide the Fuel that was prepared for our Destruction since we saw them persecute in so many other places of Europe at the same time that they talked of Toleration here among us When I say we have had such a Series of Deliverances as perhaps cannot be matched in History since that of the Israelites coming out of Egypt there is but one thing wanting to make the Parallel compleat and that is our Ingratitude The Israelites were always murmuring both against God and against the Instruments whom he had raised up for their Deliverance and after all that they had seen to render Idolatry detestable to them yet they were always apt to relapse into it But here the Parallel agrees too exactly for it is but too apparent that upon every new Instance of Gods care of us we have given also new Instances of our Rebellion and Ingratitude of our not only forgetting his Mercies but Repining at them and of our hardning our selves in our Vices and ill Nature God charged his Ancient People in the Words before my Text O my People what have I done unto thee and wherein have I weariâ—â— thee testifie against me for I brought thee up out of the Land of Egypt and redeemed thee out of the House of Servants and I sent before thee Mâ—ses Aaron and Miriam These Words may be applied to this Nation in some respect more literally than to the
Jews for they might have said that God had wearied them by giving them a Religion that had so many troublesom and costly Rites in it though on the other hand these were nothing in Comparison of the Rites of Paganism round about them but what can we object to God's methods towards us He has given us a plain and simple Religion he has delivered us from all Bondage both in our Spiritual and Temporal Concerns and he has sent us mighty Deliverers Aarons in the Church and Moses and Miriams in the State an Elizabeth and a MARY as well as an Edward a Charles and a WILLIAM But because a general View of too many things may tend to Evaporate our Thoughts rather than to fix them There is in the Words that I have read one Particular set before the Israelites which carries indeed a great variety of Instruction in it They are called on to remember what Balak the King of Moab Consulted and what Balaam the Son of Beor Answered In order to the setting this in its true light it will be necessary to take a short view of that Transaction When the Israelites after their long march through the Wilderness were â—ome near the Border of the Land which God â—ad given them two Kings that were in their â—ay Sihon King of the Amorites and Og the the King of Bashan not only refused them passage through their Kingdoms which they had desired in a Regular and Peaceable way but not satisfied with this they carried the Matter further and brought together their Forces to stop their march but they were defeated and their Kingdoms were conquered Upon this Balak King of Moab apprehended that he might likewise become a Prey to them so he fancying according to the Idolatry of that time that there were Peculiar Gods for every Nation and that the Successes of a Nation depended on the prevalency of the Deity that protected it sent to Balaam who was a Prophet held in Veneration in those Parts hoping that if he could be got to curse them then the Divinity which inspired him would espouse the Quaâ—rel It were too long a Digression here to examine Balaams Prophecy who seems to have acknowledged the true God and to have haâ— Divine Inspirations He had a strange mixture in him an Awe of God and yet a love 〈◊〉 Money he was a Prophet of God and yeâ— a Servant of the Devil he either could noâ— or would not falsifie the Divine Enthusiasm that were Imprest on his Mind and yet 〈◊〉 could give the most effectual Council possible to Balak for his first debauching the Israelites and then destroying them The most probable account of Balaam's Inspiration is this that God continued for some Ages after the Flood to raise up in several Nations Prophets by an immediate Commission to be his Witnesses against Idolatry and against the Corruption of the Traditional Religion which was handed down by the first and long-liv'd Patriarchs But so imperfect was this Conveiance though the long Lives of the Fathers gave it advantages which it could never have since that time that Men did very quickly corrupt both their Religion and their Morals and in Abraham's time Idolatry had got strange footing all the World over Men in all Ages have had a strange biass to a sensible Religion and to a visible Object of it In many of these Nations it is highly probable that God raised up both Prophets and Preachers of Righteousness that so they might be without excuse And as Noah warned the Old World and Lot the Men of Sodom before those Terrible Judgments of God which destroyed them fell upon them so Melchisedeck and Balaam seem to have been inspired Persons in whom God made the last Essay upon these Nations But with this difference that the former was a Person that did in all things answer his Character whereas the other was only passive in his Inspirations but these had no effect upon himself so that while he Preached to others he himself was a Reprobate For though God made such impressions on his Imagination as gave him views of future Events and furnished him in the expressing them with a due degree of Sublimity of Stile yet these neither came from his Heart nor could make any Impression upon it He loved Balak's Presents which are called the rewards of his Divination so well that he would gladly have done any thing to have deserved them at his hands yet he was so restrained by the Divine Prohibition that he refused to go to him at first But a second Message carried by more Honourable Messengers enforced with a Promise of Promoting him to great honour and of doing whatsoever he should desire of him was a Bait which he could not reject so his Heart being set on going God so far gave way to it that he suffered him to go that from the Prophesies which he should be forced to Pronounce there might be a further Declaration made of his Blessing the Israelites not only in the Success and Prosperity that was then to attend upon them but in that wonderful view that was given him of a Star that at a great distance of time should shine and that then a Scepter should rise out of Israel to which all the Nations round about should submit for out of Iacob should he come that was to have Dominion Balak according to his fond and Superstitious Notions fancied that the offering many Sacrifices and the giving Balaam a new Prospect of the Israelites in several Places would have changed the Matter and so he gave him three different views of them at every one of which there were Seven Altars built and a Bullock and a Ram were offered on every one of these Altars but all the Preparation that Balak made and all this shifting the Scene of often had no other Effect but that reitterated Blessings on the Israelites were Pronounced at every time And when this provoked Balak so much that he would have no more of Balaam's Prophesies he then of himself gave forth the most express and positive one of them all in favour of the Jewish Nation of their Success and of that vast Glory that should accrue to them when that Prince whose appearance should be accompanied with a Star should come But though Balaam as he said himself had no power to speak any thing but the words which God should put in his mouth in which it seems he was so intirely Passive that he was not at all Master of himself when he fell into those Trances yet after those Essays he had vainly made to Curse them he offerâ—d an advice to Balak that had a more certain Effect than all the Curses that were desired from him could have had which was this he knew well that God's favour to that People was Conditional and so could last no longer than they should continue observing their Part of the Covenant therefore he Counselled Balak to endeavour first
and Infatuation seemed to have been poured out upon them I need not repeat things that must still be fresh in all your memorie and I hope will be so long for we must ever acknowledge that we owe our Preservation and Deliverance much more to Their Folly than to Our own Wisdom When we were broken to pieces they used Arts on design indeed to divide us further but they helped to reconcile us When we were guilty even to madness of believing every Promise that they made us they took care to let us see how little regard they themselves had to any of them When we could not believe that they would break any of our Laws they broke through them all at once and shewed us what feeble things either Promises or Laws are when Heresie stands in their way And thus God in his just and righteous Judgments suffered them so far to precipitate all matters that they ruined their own designs by their over driving them We must have acknowledged that God had been just and righteous if he had delivered us over as a prey unto them We had by our contempt of the Gospel and by the ill use we had made of all his Mercies and of all former Deliverances provoked him to cast us off and when we consider the extreme Miseries into which he has cast other Churches the long Oppression and the hard struggle through which Scotland has pass'd and the pangs in which Ireland continues still being now a Scene of Blood and Misery and like to be so yet for some time if we do not more effectually interpose for bringing their Deliverance to a quicker Conclusion and if we compare with all this the gentle Visitation that we have had and that has pass'd over us in so easie and harmless a manner that few broke their sleep or interrupted their method of living for it We must in our reflections on these things change the signification of the word Righteousness and instead of using it in the sense that imports strict Iustice we must take it in the other that imports Mercy and Goodness for who can reflect on these Two Fifths of November without adoring the riches of God's Mercy and Goodness to us in them both The former was in it self a great Deliverance but its Consequences were not so signal as might have been expected If that cursed Train had wrought the designed Effect it had been indeed the most fatal Blow that ever was given but after all the Nation tho' cast by it into a most dreadful Convulsion would probably have had strength enough to have recovered it self the Crime would have been revenged and the Nation for ever purged from all such Instruments of Cruelty The Circumstances of the Discovery and the Judgments of God on the Conspirators had particular Characters of his Righteousness in them as the prevarications and denials of the Criminals had also their Characters of that cursed School in which they had learned the depths of Satan The whole thing was such a Contexture of the Wickedness of Man on the One hand and of the Mercy and Goodness of God on the Other as is indeed without an Example in the Histories of former Times But without derogating from the Blessing of such a Wonderful Preservation it may be affirmed That as the Danger which we lately run was greater so by Consequence the Deliverance which had its beginning this day is not only the fresher Blessing and so the more sensible to us but is likewise the more Important in it self of the two The Gunpowder-Treason was a Personal thing but the late Conspiracy was National The former was levelled at the person of one King and some of the Branches of the Royal Family but the latter was against the Crown it self by which one half of that Authority that belongs to it was to have been surrendred up to Rome and the other half must have become tributary to France Our Religion must indeed have suffered highly by the one but it was to have been quite extirpated by the other A great many had perished in a quick and sudden fire by the one whereas the end of the other would have been that we must all have languished in such slow fires as Inquisitors might have made for us or under the studied Cruelties of Dragoons according to the French Pattern if we would not have consigned our selves over to Everlasting Burnings by renouncing our Religion Our Laws and Liberties might have suffered in the One tho' Spain at that time was not in a condition to have made so great a Conquest But all must have gone now when they had so vast a Power so near them as France is to have supported and compleated that Destruction of our Liberties which was so barefacedly begun and that had already made so great a progress among us And when I have named France I have said all that is necessary to give you a Compleat Idea of the Blackest Tyranny over Mens Consciences Persons and Estates that can possibly be imagined where every Thing that the Subject possesses is at the Mercy of a boundless Power and of a Severity that has no mixtures either of Truth or Goodness to govern or allay it and by which Subjects are treated with as much Cruelty as Enemies are with Barbarity That has broke thro all that is Sacred among Men and has bid Defiance both to Heaven and Earth This is a short view of that from which we are now a second time delivered I need not enlarge on the particular Characters of the Hand of God in our Deliverance These were too visible not to have been observed by all Men and they are yet too fresh in our Memories to be forgotten by any but that which few are apt either to reflect on or to remember is the Design of Heaven in all this that so we may understand the loving Kindness as well as the Righteousness of the Lord in it We had by our Sins and our Divisions brought our selves very low we had provoked God and irritated one another therefore he has made us to see and feel the Effects both of our Sins and Follies that so we may be brought to repent of the one and to correct the other Let us then resolve to turn to God in good earnest and not to provoke him any more lest if we stir up his Wrath again against us his Displeasure break out upon us in as terrible a manner as has been hitherto again and again designed by our Enemies but still prevented by his watchful Providence Let us grow ashamed of those Vices which have so dispirited and corrupted the Nation that we were both fit for Destruction and had made our selves an easy Prey to our Enemies being so shamefully degenerated from the Vertues of our Ancestors Let us compose our Minds to softer Thoughts of one another that those Animosities which have arisen from some small Diversities in Opinions and Ceremonies may be allayed and that we may make such Observations on the Practices of our Enemies as from these to form righter Judgments of Things and so come to such temperate Resolutions as to love one another at least if we cannot be so wise or so happy as to agree all our Differences And let us in a more particular manner rejoice in the Goodness of God who now gives us the hopes of happy Days under the Man whom he has made so strong for Himself whom he made first the Instrument of saving the best Church and People upon Earth after our own and who now again has been put on to preserve and rescue us as if he were born to be the Deliverer and Darling of Mankind God be blessed for it we have now a King and Queen whose Examples we hope shall have a great an Influence over us for making us truly Good as their Government has for making us really Happy Let us then study to be Peaceable and Obedient to them and thankful to God for them and then we need not fear what either the Balaks or the Balaams that are contriving our Destruction and consulting the Methods of doing it can project or set on foot against us For if we are at peace with God and united at Home we may assure our selves that the course of Blessings which has hitherto followed Him whom God in his Providence has set over us shall not be interrupted but by a glorious Progress of Triumphs it shall be carried on till both the Balak that is now set on our Destruction shall fall before him and those Balaams that divine for her and that prophesy falsly be put to confusion Which God of his great Mercy grant for the glory of his great Name through Jesus Christ. Amen FINIS Books lately printed for Ric. Chiswell THE Doctrine of Non-Resistance or Passive Obedience no way concerned in the Controversies now depending between the Williaâ—â—â— and the Iacobites Jacobi Usserii Armachani Archiep. Historia dogmatica Controversiae inter Orthodoxos Pontificios de Scripturis Sacris Vernaculis nunc primum 〈◊〉 Accesserunt Ejusdem dissertationes de Pseudo-Dionysii scriptis de Epistola ad Laodicenos ante hac inedite Descripsit digessit notis atque Auctuario 〈◊〉 pletavit Henricus Wharton A. M. R. Archiep. Cantuar. à Sacris Domest 4º A Discourse concerning the Unreasonableness of a new Separation 〈◊〉 Account of the Oaths With an Answer to The History of Passive Obedieâ—â—â— A Discourse concerning the Ecclesiastical Commission opened in the Ierusalem-Chamber Octob. 10. 1689. Fasciculus Rerum expetendarum fugiendarum cum Appendice undertaâ—â— to be Printed upon Subscription by Richard Chiswell is now finished 〈◊〉 will be ready for delivery on the 25th day of this instant November at 〈◊〉 Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard to which place all Subscribâ—â—â— are desired to send in their second Paiment and their Acquittances for 〈◊〉 First Verse 3. Numb 21. 21. Numb 22. 7. Verse 13. 15. Verse 20. Numb 24. Verse 17. 19. Numb 23. 24. Numb 24. 10. 17. Numb 22. 23. Numb 25. v. 1. v. 4. 5. Ps. 106. Numb 16. 31. v. 8. Ps. 112. 8 .9 Ps. 116. 5. Prov. 10. 2. Mar. 1. 19.