Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
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A49131
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A sermon against murmuring preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter Exon on the XXIXth of May, 1680 / Thomas Long.
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Long, Thomas, 1621-1707.
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1680
(1680)
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Wing L2982; ESTC R180131
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20,243
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36
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A SERMON AGAINST Murmuring PREACHED in the Cathedral Church Of St. PETER EXON On the XXIXth of May 1680. By THOMAS LONG D.D. One of the Prebendaries of that Church Exod. xvi 8. Your murmurings are not against us but against the Lord. LONDON Printed for Richard Royston Bookseller to His most Sacred Majesty MDCLXXX TO THE Right Reverend FATHER in GOD THOMAS LORD Bishop of EXETER THIS Sermon not reaching the ears of those for whom it was chiefly intended I have by your Lordships direction offered it to their hands that it may be as a Glass not only to shew them their distorted faces but infectious breaths which may fix some spots on the glass it self but such as I doubt not will be easily wiped off I have attempted a very difficult work The governing of an unruly evil for as St. James sayes every kind of beasts and serpents have been tamed by man Chap. 3.7 except the Serpent that is within him the Tongue which no man can tame It was made to be our Glory but we generally turn it to our shame especially while therewith we seem to bless God but curse and speak evil of those who bear most of his Image his Magistrates and Ministers v. 9. It is full of deadly poyson such as never hurts less than three at once the person slandered in his good name by Calumny the person that listeneth to him in his Charity by Prejudice and evil surmises and himself most of all by doing the Devils work in slandering his brethren v. 8. It is a Fire saith St. James v. 6. and the worst of fires for it is set on fire of hell i.e. the Devil the father of lyes He is that god of Contention who imploys these Boutefeaus as Mars did his Priests to scatter coals of fire in the Temple and inflame the whole course of Nature Other evils may be seen and avoided but this shoots out arrows that fly as invisibly in the day as in the dark it is of such a Versatile and Proteus-like nature that no knot can hold it but it defies the Laws of God and man Our tongues are our own we ought to speak who is Lord over us Psal 12. I should not have enlarged this discourse but that I perceive Calumny is become the malus genius of the Nation which seems to be possessed not with a dumb but a talkative spirit that hath turned Religion into lying and slandering And such mens Religion St. James assures us is vain ch 1.26 'T is like that wherewith the Votaries of Mercury did worship him by casting stones at his Image and murdering their brethren in Effigie Our Apostle discovers the root of this evil to be a bitter zeal or envying and strife in the heart Chap. 3.14 the blistering of the tongue is caused by an ulcerous heart and 't is from within out of the heart that all these impurities do proceed Wherefore according to our Saviours method I have endeavoured to cleanse first that which is within and to suppress the first motions of murmuring and discontent by applying the lenitives of Right reason and Christian Religion which teacheth us to be of a meek and calm a cool and quiet Spirit to do our own business and be content with such things as we have and not to quarrel at the providences of God and the Administration of publick affairs But now men are grown presumptuous self-willed they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities and things which they understand not 2 Pet. 2.10 They are not afraid to insinuate as if the King favoured the Plot which hath been declared to be against His Majesties person and the Established Religion They quarrel the Succession and would put by the true and undoubted Heir They insinuate that His Majesty is no friend to Parliaments and would Rule us by an Arbitrary power And as to the Church of England they accuse it for declining apace to Popery and approving Popish Socinian and Pelagian Doctrines as Lewes du Moulin and the Author of the Celeusma when it is confessed by foreign Divines that it is the greatest fence against those pernicious errors They talk as if the Church Governours were mere Thorns and the instruments of the Devil exercising Tyranny and Oppression whereas the termes of Conformity as to the people are confessed to be much more facile than ever they were since the first Reformation And in truth the Indulgence granted to such men hath destroyed more by 1000 to one than that which they call persecution i.e. the execution of good laws They tell the people of an utter impossibility of Conforming to the Church of England because of many heinous sins in that Conformity Baxter's Plea for peace and that the Conformists are generally guilty of Perjury And these baits are dispersed through the Nation and greedily swallowed by the Credulous people who consider not what deadly hooks are under them And how great a matter a little of such wild fire kindleth Against these false suggestions and dangerous murmurings the ensuing discourse is intended The Persians were wont to observe an Anniversary Festival which they called the death of Vices and as an Embleme thereof they destroyed as many Serpents as they found in the Land I could not devise how to celebrate this happy Festival better than by endeavouring the mortification of those murmuring and discontented vices which were the cause of our former troubles and reduced us to so low a condition that none but Gods own hand could deliver us as with all thankfulness we acknowledge But as Ezra says ch 9.13 If after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds for which God hath punished us less than we deserve and hath-given us such deliverance as this we should again break his Commandments and neither fear him for his Judgments nor obey him for his Clemency but continue to be as our Fathers were a murmuring and rebellious generation may not our God be justly angry with us till he have consumned us so that there be no remnant nor escaping May we not fear that he will deal with us as he did with the murmuring Israelites who for forty years together under the various and miraculous dispensations of mercies and judgments so grieved his Holy Spirit that he Swore in his wrath they should never enter into his rest Psal 95. Our sins have really brought us to that brink of destruction which our guilty fears make us to apprehend with horror and yet we strive with all our might to cast each other into that gulf which like an open Sepulchre is prepared to swallow us all Archimedes is said to have invented such an Engine as if he could have found where to six it he would have undertaken by it to remove the Globe of the Earth out of its place This Engine some Mathematicians suppose to have been a Screw which lost invention some of our Age have recovered And if male-contented spirits be permitted to insinuate to the