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A35184
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Two sermons preached in the cathedral-church of Bristol, January the 30th 1679/80 and January the 31th 1680/81 being the days of publick humiliation for the execrable murder of King Charles the first / by Samuel Crossman ...
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Crossman, Samuel, 1624?-1684.
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1681
(1681)
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Wing C7271; ESTC R17923
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25,553
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48
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the same sad story tells us all Israel is smitten in another We may humourously attempt to divide but in all History they live or die together While the Prophet thus weeps over the Calamities of Gods Zion and Jerusalem Graviter gemitus imo de pectore ducens he breaks forth into this of the Text as a memorial of sorrow never to be forgotten by him The breath of our nostrils the anointed of the Lord c. In the verse we have to consider 1. The person spoken of who it is the Prophet here means 2. The Calamity into which he fell he was taken in their pits 3. The honorary Character here given him the Anointed of the Lord. 4. The Jews concern in his weal or woe he was the breath of their nostrils under whose shadow they might have liv'd among the heathen I. The person spoken of who that should be I answer Not Josiah as some have conceiv'd he was already gathered to his fathers in peace honourably interr'd amongst the royal Sepulchres of his Ancestors his eyes clos'd with all due Funeral-rites some time before these tragick evils so fatally broke forth Our several seasons of life and death when we enter the Stage and when we go off they are all in Gods hands Three Kings had now successively reigned after Josiah Zedekiah the third in whose time all these amazing miseries so pathetically here described befel Jerusalem Whatever personal failures might be in Zedekiah Rex tamen typus Christi says one no great favourer otherwise of Monarchy Zedekiah was nevertheless a crowned Head and Type of Christ Soveraign of the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the City of the great King the Imperial Princess among the Provinces Such was the Person no Plebeian but one of Royal Extraction of the true House and Linage of David and now raised though in a tempestuous conjuncture of Affairs to sit on the Throne of his pious Father Josiah And has our Prophet such tears of Loyalty wherewith to condole this Princes Fall Certainly my Brethren our eyes must not be dry 1. If Israels Zedekiah fell 't was not without great personal blemishes in himself He did says the Text that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. But our late Soveraign a person of that stupendious exemplariness so amiable in whatever might become him as a Christian in whatever might adorn him as a Prince that his Piety became at last his Crime his Love to Gods Church the ground of his Hatred with the Rabble He is ston'd for his good works He is invidiously aspers'd as affected to Popery yet dies in the professed Communion of this Reformed Church The Defender of it a Martyr for it He is odiously upbraided as designing Arbitrary ways of Empire and Tyranny yet dies because he could not in conscience give up those great things of Church and State Religion and Law our true Magna Charta the Body of our ancient English Government to the tumultuous wills of violent and unreasonable men 2. If Zedekiah fell 't was at Babylon above six hundred miles from his own Kingdom The very place was no less than Exile and the distance a most certain exposure to all inevitable dangers But lo here though under different circumstances a far sadder story Our Soveraign after an Iliad of other preceding indignities is murdered at his own Royal Gates in the very face of his Court and Palace He is first barbarously driven away by rude Tumults after that forcibly brought back again by bloody Souldiers full often as himself so lively expresseth it did he change his Keepers and Prison but not his Captive condition And at last the woful upshot proves as David said concerning Ishbosheth Wicked men came upon this righteous person and slew him even in his own house the walls and windows being the sad Spectators both of his Fall and our Treason 3. If Zedekiah fell 't was by the hands of prophane Pagans Nebuchadnezzar's unruly Janizaries not by his own Subjects Zedekiah's Murderers their very temper was Cruelty their nature Rage verifying the sowre character Gods Prophet gives of them A bitter and hasty nation They breath'd out no better than Blood and Slaughter In this case the utmost Inhumanities could be no Surprize all manner of Misery and Death it self the fairest Quarter that could be expected where the Turtle was amongst such ravening Vultures and the Lamb in the midst of such savage Lions But lo here horresco referens our Soveraign falls under far other hands With civiliz'd Nations the mildness of their Education is accounted security enough against the irruptions of Violence where Government is receiv'd the Laws yield Protection where the sacred profession of Christian Religion takes place we are still bound to a far better behaviour of the quietest peacefulness in our places But alas all these divine Bands were here contemptuously broken asunder and then of course upon the violation of them this execrable and horrible thing became committed in our Land 'T was not an Enemy that did it 't would then have been more easily born 'T was the servant who had eat of his Masters bread that here lift up his heel 't was the Subject who had solemnly sworn to bear true Homage and Fealty that now Zimri-like conspir'd and slew his Soveraign Oh what Declarations and Protestations as the language of those times then went that they would make him a most glorious Prince What solemn Appeals to God and the world touching the Loyalty and Integrity of their hearts Now what danger can possibly be suspected where so much kindness is pretended In ipso sceleris molimine Tereus creditur esse pius No such Friends in words yet no such Foes in deeds Oh how wretchedly did we then dissemble both with God and man staining as well our holy Profession as our own Names to all Posterity But no words can express these Villanies so lively as his who suffered them I die says his sacred Majesty a King by the hands of my own Subjects a violent sudden and barbarous death in the strength of my years in the midst of my Kingdom my Friends and loving Subjects being helpless Spectators my Enemies insolent Revilers and Triumphers over me His comfort was as himself so composedly relates it If he thus died a violent death with his Saviour the sequele would be happily this Mortality would be thereby crown'd with Martyrdom 4. If Zedekiah fell yet we read not of any indecent measures used toward him in matters of Religion When the King of Assyria had carried away Israel not long before captive and had transplanted another people into the Holy Land we finde he gave express order that a Priest from among the Captives should go and dwell at Bethel to teach and observe the stated Rites of Religion formerly used amongst them But with us the case strangely alters Many can impetuously demand liberty of Conscience for themselves as the immediate Redress to all our
our Saviour's death Then embracing his Children such as might come to him with the tenderest affections of a most loving Father and yet that Princely spirit of strength which so highly became a Royal Martyr leaving his last Blessing and Counsel with them Fear God love one another forgive my Enemies I my self have done it but trust them not for I have found them most false to me Methinks we may see the butcherly Irons and Ropes fasten'd to the Block and Scaffold to have forc'd and bound down Majesty with the utmost barbarousness in case which they feared he should have resisted who came alas as a Lamb to all this slaughter in the glories of his Saviour's patience no way discompos'd at the Vizar and disguise of the Executioner who sought in the depth of his consciousness to conceal himself and his infamous person if it could be from the knowledge of God and man But lo our Soveraign's serenity and condition every place 't is to him a Theatre for the exercise of his Piety and Vertue In the very Agonies of Death he closes as one already in Heaven He endured the Cross he despised the Shame and through the joy that was set before him leaves these holy dying words behinde him as the Garments that fell from Elijah in his very departing from us I have a good Cause and a gracious God on my side I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown where no disturbances can come Methinks we may without a Prosopopeia hear the deep Groanings of the whole Land without any Hypotyposis we may behold a numerous train of Mourners from all parts attending that Funeral which might then have no solemnity allowed to it Methinks we may see the Royal Family though scatter'd through violence yet upon this sad occasion present as close Mourners with that amazing Scripture dropping from their pale lips As a man falleth before the wicked so fell our Father this day Methinks we may see the Church as Jerusalem with Tears upon her cheeks bitterly crying out that our David who had set his affection so piously upon the House of God another Constantine a truly nursing Father who was never sensible of any loss to himself if thereby gain might redound to God as our Historians so justly acknowledge of him Methinks we cannot but see the Church lamenting that this Royal Patron of Religion and Learning was thus barbarously taken from us Methinks we may see the whole People trembling as at that great Mourning of Hadadrimmon in the Valley of Megiddon when Josiah the desire of their eyes the joy of their hearts was now no longer with them This was that distressed day wherein the beauty of Israel was slain amongst us Ye Daughters of England weep over your murdered Soveraign who clothed you in Scarlet and put upon you Ornaments of Gold who crowned the Land with such Riches and Plenty Oh tell it not in Gath oh publish it not in the streets of Ascalon that other Countries if possible might neither hear nor know what Christians what Protestants this day so prodigiously did before all Israel and before the Sun And that the measures of Inhumanity might be full and running over when it came to our Soveraign's Interment though divers noble Lords entreated the rights of Christian burial for their Royal Master and the then Lord Bishop of London stood ready with tears to have officiated that last service to the remains of Mortality now to be deposited in the joyful hopes of a blessed Resurrection yet neither were able to prevail so that silence and sorrow were the onely circumstance of remark the sad ceremonies of State to so great a Funeral But we must draw the Curtain as in Agamemnon's case Tanto par nulla figura dolori We must greatly blush as persons who stand ashamed yea even confounded that ever so odious an evil was wrought amongst us Were the several sad circumstances of it gathered together laid in order before our eyes we might say as once the Tribes of Israel in another case There hath no such deed been done nor seen from the day that England became a Christian people to this day Consider of it become truly humble under it and lastly watch with all unfeigned sollicitude against whatever might endanger our relapsing into it Which leads to the second particular mentioned at first There are divers things of unhappy tendency this way Give me leave to enter some needful Caveats against them and then I close 1. The first shall be against erratick disloyal opinions The Head usually betrays the Heart and debauches the Life On the one hand when Papists shall grow leven'd with Jesuitical insinuations that 't is a meritorious work to dispatch an excommunicated Prince and that the Assassinate shall forthwith become a Saint when Popes shall proudly tread upon the necks of Kings and take upon them to absolve Subjects from their due Allegiance when they shall exalt themselves above all that is called God setting the Crozier above the Scepter then ' ware Kings and Kingdoms danger is not far off And on the other hand when a Fanatical Vertigo shall creep into the heads of others that the Saints must by all means govern the world which Saints are they the next work is commonly this Let us kill the Heir that the inheritance may be ours The late Rebellions in Scotland scarce yet quietly allayed are too ready an instance of this nature What influence the extravagant Opinions of some of their former great Kirk-men might give to such bad practices I shall not here determine Their Positions have been such as these Kings and Governours have their Authority from the People and upon occasion the People may take it away again So one of them He that by Excommunication is cast into Hell is not worthy to enjoy any life upon Earth So another And when a Party of this humour had taken a very odde way to make the King their own by a forcible detaining his person at Ruthuen 1582. that they might thereby bring him to their own wills though the action were Treason by the Law of Nature and Nations adjudged by the Estates of Scotland as Crimen laesae Majestatis and the insolence so deeply resented by the King himself that he cried out he was a Captive and desired all his good Subjects to procure his liberty yet the Kirk-Assembly stands up to justifie it and ordains all to be excommunicated and subject to further civil punishment that agreed not with them herein There is a full though joyless truth in the common Observation Superstition whether Popish or Fanatick where-ever it takes place introduceth a new Primum Mobile which commits a Rape upon the Spheres of the civil World and puts all into utter Confusion Thus delirous did we also grow in England so far transported with these religious Frenzies that after many lesser Skirmishes against the innocent Rites of the Church men drew up