Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
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A62583
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A sermon preached at the cathedral church of Worcester upon the monthly fast-day, September 16. 1691 by William Talbot ...
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Talbot, William, 1658 or 9-1730.
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1691
(1691)
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Wing T122; ESTC R33893
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13,997
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28
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A SERMON Preached at the Cathedral Church OF WORCESTER UPON THE Monthly Fast-Day September 16. 1691. By WILLIAM TALBOT D.D. and DEAN of Worcester Published at the Request of the MAYOR and ALDERMEN of that City London Printed for Thomas Bennet at the Half-Moon in S. Paul's Church-Yard 1691. A SERMON ON AMOS iv 21. Therefore thus will I do unto thee O Israel and because I will do this unto thee prepare to meet thy God O Israel THE Occasion and Design of the appointment of this days Fast having been at large declared in the Royal Edict set forth for that purpose and after so many monthly returns of it are I suppose so well known that it will not be necessary for me to spend much time in opening them to you Only thus much give me leave to observe by way of Preface that we are at this time necessarily engaged in a very great Undertaking upon the success of which depends the safety and establishment of all that can be dear to us as Men Englishmen or Protestants the security of our Lives and Liberties of our Civil Rights and Properties and which I hope we hold dearer than all our Reformed Church and Religion The Enemies who from Abroad and O that they were all that we had none at Home joyning with them in carrying on the same Black Design the Enemies I say that are contriving and labouring the ruin of all these are furnished with all those Qualities and Provisions that can make an Adversary either Odious or Formidable to be abhorred or feared Baseness Treachery Cruelty Numbers Wealth Policy The Head of them is one who breaths nothing but Blood Fire and Devastation whose only glory is to make Orphans and Widows to lay Countries Waste and Cities in Ashes and tinge their Rivers with innocent Gore whose barbarity to those of the Reformed Religion who hold the Faith as it is in Jesus and was by him delivered to the Saints is so unpresidented that the Persecuting whether Heathen or Arrian Emperours were comparatively Nursing Fathers of the Christian and Orthodox Church whose regard to the Sacred Ties of Promise or Oath are so small that he seldom gives either with any other design than to make advantage by breaking them in a word whose Injustice Tyranny Cruelty and Perfidiousnes have justly rendered him the common Nusance as well as Pest of Mankind The whole Body of them are such as are obliged by all the ties that a pretended Infallible Church or cunning Priests can lay upon their credulous Proselites that are muffled up in an Implicit Faith and blind Obedience to their Spiritual Guides by all methods how Barbarous and Unchristian soever the end will Sanctifie the Means to Extirpate us Hereticks as they are pleased to call us a piece of whose Religion it is to ruin us and who think that by Murdering us they do God as well as their Church good Service A War with such Enemies has given occasion to this days Fast The design of which is not that we should only impose upon our selves the easie Pennance of a few hours Abstinence from the refreshments of our Tables spend two or three in our attendance upon the Publick Solemnities or a day in fruitless Lamentations and Complaints but that we should seriously and in good earnest set about a strict and impartial examination of our selves search out by what sins we have been affronting and provoking our God and consequently serving our Enemies and contributing to our own Ruin That we should Penitently acknowledg humble our selves for and resolve against them for the future that we should put on Holy Purposes enter into strict Obligations of new Obedience to our God of pursuing those Means whereby we may engage Heaven to come into an Alliance with us that we should endeavour to Know and Practice in this our Day the things that belong unto our Peace before they be hid from our Eyes in short that we should exercise an unfeigned and Universal Repentance and engage in a thorough and general Reformation For the furthering of which great and pious Design The words which I have now Read will give occasion to some Meditations that may prove I hope not altogether unserviceable Therefore thus will I do unto thee O Israel and because I will c. The first word the illative Particle Therefore shews us that the Verse is a Conclusion grounded upon something that went before and for our more clear and prositable Understanding of it sends us back to the Context From the 6th Verse we find God by the Prophet enumerating several Judgments that he had exercised them with and yet complaining that for all that they had not returned unto him such as Famine Verses 6 7 8 9. I have given you cleaness of teeth in all cities and want of bread in all your palaces c. Such as Pestilence and Sword Verse 10. I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt your young men have I slain with the sword and made the stink of your camp to come up into your nostrils c. Fire and devastation Verse 11. I have overthrown some of you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah c. but still the burden of all is Yet have ye not returned unto me and then follows in the words of the Text Therefore thus will I do unto thee c. Therefore i. e. Because ye have defeated the Designs and Ends of my Judgments have resisted the powerful Efforts of those Dispensations which were intended for your Admendment and to have brought you Home unto my Self because ye have not been Reformed by them but continue incorrigible under them Therefore Thus will I do unto thee There is some little difference among Commentators concerning the Meaning of this Phrase some think that God refers to those Judgments which he had before spoken of as if the meaning of I will do thus unto thee was I will again inflict the same Judgments upon you the Famine Pestilence Fire and Sword which you have already smarted under But I rather conceive with others that here is a Figure in the words commonly known to Rhetoricians by the name of Aposiopesis by which a person that is in anger or threatens speaks short and suppresses part of the Sentence as if his Passion would not give him leave to speak out all that he meant Thus Neptune in Virgil when he was wroth with and chid the Winds cryes only Quos Ego whom I meaning whom I will besure severely to chastise So in Sacred Writ we read often this Expression God do so unto me i. e. let him inflict the severest of his Curses upon me And it is no new thing for God in Scripture to speak after the manner of Men and for the Holy Spirit although they are most abhorrent from his Nature yet in condescention to our Capacities to attribute Passions as well as Parts to him and therefore I apprehend there is that Figure here I will do
overthrown some of us as well as them as he did Sodom and Gomorrah consumed not only the greatest part of the Metropolis of our Land with a devouring Fire and made it a heap of Rubbish and Ashes but many other of our lesser Towns as the frequent Briefs of late years especially inform us and some of them with Fire immediately from Heaven Has he not also sent the Pestilence among us after the manner of Aegypt visited this Land with a sweeping Plague that carried away many thousands to their long Home Have not our young Men too been slain with the Sword have we not been engaged in Wars at Home and Abroad and all those three of his sore Judgments befallen us within the memory of most of us And as for the fourth which the Prophet mentions that of cleanness Teeth though blessed be his name we have not lately laboured under a Famine of our dayly Bread for the support of our Natural Lives yet Has he not been lately threatning us with a far severer Famine a Famine of the Word of God and Man shall not live by Bread only but by every Word that proceedeth out of the Mouth of God Were we not apprehensive not long since and had we not too good Grounds for it that he was going to remove our Candlestick to deprive us of that pure Religion and excellent way of Worship we are blessed with and to give us up to Popish Superstition and Idolatry into the Hands of those Men that would have taken from us the sincere Milk of the Word that Food which God has afforded us for the nourishment of our Souls to Eternal Life and would have starved us with lying Legends instead thereof Were not the Emisaries of Rome the implacable Enemies of our Church and Religion labouring with all their might and industriously improving the favourable opportunities they injoyed under the last Reign to destroy ours and establish their own Religion and were they not too likely in all human appearance to have been too succesful Had they not made a very large Progress for so short a time Did not their Priests appear every where barefaced in despight of our Laws Did they not commit their Abominations celebrate their Idolatrous Services in the most publick and conspicuous places in the Kingdom Had they not built many Altars and High Places for that purpose Had they not seized some of our Seminaries part of our Universities to breed up a Succession of disciplined and instructed persons to carry on and finish the Work they had begun Did they not openly solicit all they had opportunity or hopes of Perverting using all Methods offering Rewards and Preferments to some threatning menacing others to make them comply with them in a word Did they not look upon themselves as secure of gaining their Point And had they not all the Reason to hope as we to fear that they should have triumphed in the ruins of this Church and Religion that either a furious Zeal for their Cause an irreconcileable Hatred to us a Serpentine Subtilty indefatigable Industry the favour of the Government the Laws as they were managed the Army almost all Offices Military and Civil in their Hands and the assured expectation of a Foreign Assistance could afford them And if we seem now in some measure to be delivered from these designs of theirs if God seem now to have removed this Judgment yet believe me if we answer not his ends and designs in Threatning us with it the present suspension of it will not prove a total removal but only a lightning before death a puting back of his Arm to strike with a greater force Nay Is not God at this time making bare his Arm against us Are we not unavoidably ingaged in a War with a neighbouring and very potent Prince and May we not expect all the Hostilities and Injuries that his equal Hatred to our Nation and Religion his Politick Counsellors the Wealth of his whole Kingdom or his numerous Forces can suggest to or enable him to put in Execution And which is yet a more sad consideration Has not God sent a Spirit of Faction and Division among us Are we not unreasonably disunited among our selves broken and crumbled into Sects and Parties regardless of the Common Enemy and only jealous of and watchful against one another And can a Kingdom so divided against it self long stand Thus my Brethren has God been Manuring and Cultivating this Land of ours with various Chastisements and Corrections to try if he could make it bring forth the Peaceable Fruits of Righteousness when he found that though favour were shewn to us we would not learn righteousness he sent his Judgments his last reserve to try if they could teach our Inhabitants that Lesson And what effects have his Judgments had upon us Have we hearkned unto the Voice of his Rod and answered the ends of his Corrections Has the Fire of Affliction refined and purged us from our Dross and Corruption Have his Severities mortified our Sins and Vices Has the Lance let out the imposthumated Putrefaction Has his visiting our Iniquities upon us made us out of love with them and his Terrors persuaded us to forsake them Have we been more fearful to offend him more careful to please him more awfully regardful of his Majesty more Zealous for his Honor more diligent and constant in our attendance upon his Service and our Duty 'T is certainly no time to dissemble with God and impose upon our selves the Day calls for sincerity and impartiality in our examinations and if we will speak the truth Have we not been proof against these Methods of Gods too and as we have abused his Mercy and despised his Goodness so defied his Judgments also For does there not every where appear barefaced the same daring Impiety against God the same Atheistical Scoffing at Religion the same Neglect and Contempt of his Worship the same Profanation of his Word by drolling upon it and lightly using it in common Conversation the same Profanation of his Name by horrid Oaths Curses and Imprecations the same Profanation of his Day by converting it to Secular uses spending it in worldly Business idle Pastimes and vicious Practices the same Profanation of his House by wilfully abstaining from it or coldly formally or irreverently behaving our selves at it Does there not appear the same injustice and uncharitableness to our Neighbours the same Circumvention and Defraudation in Bargaining the same false Weights and Measures in Buying and Selling the same Extortion Oppression and Deceit in all Dealings the same uncharitable Censuring Backbiting and Detraction Does there not appear the same Intemperance and Incontinence against our selves the same Revelling and Drunkeness the same Chambering and Wantonness In a word Is there not the same general Dissolution of Manners the same unrestrained Practice of Wickedness of all sorts and degrees as there was before God made use of those his Judgments which I have enumerated to Reclaim and