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A53899 A sermon preached November V, MDCLXXIII, at the Abbey-Church in Westminster by John, Lord Bishop of Chester. Pearson, John, 1613-1686. 1673 (1673) Wing P1009; ESTC R23235 9,602 27

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Blessed Saviour and can we believe that thousands of men should in that manner be preserved from destruction without his gracious and fatherly concurrence How low soever their opinion of Hereticks be as they are pleas'd to call them can we think so many persons designed to slaughter were not of more value than many sparrows Touch not mine anointed is the voice of God shall the King and the Royal Family shall the Nobles and Judges of the land shall the Church and People of God shall all whose lives are pretious in his sight be saved at once from utter destruction by any other hand than his Certainly either the design or the deliverance was from God except we place him as Epicurus did without the world and wholly unconcerned in it But that was too black too horrid too impious to be ascribed to any but to the grand enemy of God and man the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience The deliverance therefore was from him from whom he fell and by whom though he continue the prince of the power of the air he is still reserved in everlasting chains As the machination of so much mischief to mankind bewrays the inveterate enmity of him who incessantly seeketh whom he may devour so the prevention of so much cruelty is a sufficient demonstration of God's Philanthropy Though many other Arguments might be used to demonstrate that this was the work the wonderful work of God yet I shall make use onely of one more drawn from the words of God and those very remarkable Isaiah xxix 14 15 and 16. verses Behold I will proceed to do a marvelous work amongst this people even a marvelous work and a wonder for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish and the understanding of their prudent men shall be lost Wo unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord and their works are in the dark and they say Who seeth it who knoweth it Surely their turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as potters clay Now if this be God's proceeding to his marvelous works as he himself assu●eth us it was never more evident than in the detection and defeat of this conspiracy For never any sought so deep to hide their counsel never any work was so in the dark I speak not of the secret connivance of the mischief in a cellar but of their horrid secrecy and combination under the Seal of Sacramental Confession which they profess to be so sacred with them that not for the saving of a whole nation from the greatest mischief imaginable it may be violated For as they say all men are commanded by the Law of God to confess all their sins to a Priest and therefore the Priest by the same Law is obliged in no case to reveal them For certainly God never intended to impose so hard a necessity on a sinner as necessarily to lose one of the two either his temporal or his eternal life his temporal if he confess his eternal if he do not Now if it were lawful for the Priest in any case to reveal the confession and not lawful for the sinner not to confess he could not obtain eternal without manifest danger of his temporal life O the subtilty of the doctrin the nicety of the practice O the great Roman Asylum the happy security in the pretence of penance to impenitent wretches Here they may freely open their tender Consciences and by a safe consultation receive advice in the worst of their designs for the advancement of the Gospel and the propagation of the Faith For they have of late so fortified this Castle that it is become impregnable though the Foundation of it be laid on a Tradition of their own wholly unknown as they have acknowledged to the vast number of the Eastern Churches But if we grant the sacredness of Confession and the duty of Secrecy in the Confessor which I shall not deny yet reason which can judge what designs are fit to be kept secret and what not will teach all men and some of their Divines have formerly taught that a private secret ought to be revealed for a great and publick good for the prevention of a general evil the Confessor keeping the person confessing as close and safe as he may And if this doctrin had been observed our danger could not have long continued which consisted in the mischief of the design not in the number or power of the persons engaged and consequently had vanished as soon as it was disclosed But they were sufficiently fortified against this truth For that a private secret must yield to a great and publick good holds only they say in those Countries where the Prince is a Catholick who believes the great Religion of private and Sacramental Confession and bears a great reverence unto it And that too when that Catholick Prince is so pious and religious that it may be rationally presumed that he will by no means urge the Confessor with dangerous or troublesom interrogations or in the least desire the persons of the Traitors Thus upon an unjust supposal that our King was not a Catholick and consequently not a Christian both he and his kingdom were wholly excluded from the benefit of universal reason and the doctrin of their most sober Divines and so their most pernicious counsel lay still in the deep wrapt up in the conscience of the Priest who had been taught that he knew it not as m●● but as God and that it was not a natural or civil but a supernatural secret Again it was very unreasonable to pretend the sacred power of the Seal to keep the secrecy of this horrid Conspiracy because there was not any Confession made of a sin committed and repented of which only hath a proper tendency to Absolution but only of a crime intended and of a present resolution afterwards to commit it which is not to be esteemed under Penance at all except there can be penitence where there is no penitent or pretender to be such neither is it capable of Absolution or any benefit of Confession being it is not in it self Confession but rather Consultation and that the worst imaginable including a resolute intention to commit the greatest crime In this many of their Doctors agree and a Bishop of Rome hath given a full and clear resolution in the point But in the greatest danger we could receive no benefit here a new Distinction making up the breach For we must understand that though it were not a formal yet it was a virtual Confession though it were but a Consultation yet it had some reference to a Sacramental Confession either already made or in probability to be made hereafter by virtue of which reference it was to be under the same secrecy and to have the benefit of the same Seal being under it either directly or indirectly Thus that grand Conspiracy was consigned to take its best opportunity as needing no Repentance but
in case of a failure or non-performance And so this work was still in the dark Moreover we might conceive our selves safe from such a machination of any Christians by that Divine determination We must not do evil that good may come of it For if their damnation were just who slanderously reported of S. Paul that he said Let us do evil that good may come who could imagin that in any case of conscience this should be admitted And indeed a great scruple arose even in the minds of the most confident Assassinates whether the nocent and the innocent might be destroyed and perish together That be far from them to do after this manner to slay the righteous with the wicked and that the righteous should be as the wicked that be far from them though all ought to have been accounted innocent in respect of them who had no authority to make such a discrimination or to condemn and execute justice upon either Yet the sacred Oracle could determin that if the good to be expected were greater than the evil which was to be executed if the destruction of the innocent might be compensated by the advantage which followed then it was not only evidently lawful but so far as the good exceeded the evil meritorious And now let the evil be never so great they were sure in the opinion of those whom they consulted the propagation of the Roman Faith the advancement of the Catholick Cause the restitution of the Papal Jurisdiction was the greatest good imaginable to which the ruin of the nocent or the innocent could bear no proportion All this was sought in the deep to hide their counsel all this was wrought in the dark and they said often among themselves Who seeth it who knoweth it Wherefore if notwithstanding all this contrivance of secrecy to hide their counsel the horrid Conspiracy was revealed the snare discovered and their turning of things upside down esteemed as the potters clay God did then proceed to do a marvelous work for this people and nation even a marvelous work and a wonder This is that which the Lord hath done and it were the greatest wonder if it were not marvelous in our eyes Which is the first part of our Case Secondly The wonderful work of this day is never to be forgotten God hath saved our lives by a great deliverance as Joseph said and can we ever be ungrateful to him who hath given us such a deliverance as this as Ezra speaks What can we ever expect to make us mindful if upon such a deliverance as this we prove forgetful The Text teacheth us that it is the design of him who wrought it that we should remember it and shall we fulfil the design of our enemies whom he defeated Let them deny it who may be ashamed of the intended cruelty let not us forget it who ought to rejoice in the mercy lest we be unmindful of him whose the mercy was and for which he expecteth to be honoured by us God made the memory of his wonderful works to be part of the Religion of his antient people such were the Passeover and the Sabbath let us think it a part of our Religion to remember this wonderful work Let this day never fail from among us nor the memorial of it perish from our seed May we never live to see those times in which the memory of this day shall be blotted out or rather cast out with indignation may we never hear of such an Act of Oblivion Nor is it our Duty only to desire but also to endeavour the perpetuity of this Recognition and consequently to use the just and proper means to perpetuate it It was our Religion the setled Religion of the Church of England which was then aimed at and nothing will preserve the due memory of this day but the preservation of that Nothing but that procured the enmity nothing but that obteined the mercy We know no other reason why men of the same nation but of a different persuasion in matters of Religion should so combine against us we are conscious of no other motive on our part to incline the infinite goodness of God to be so propitious to us nor can any other consideration without this set a sufficient value upon the mercy received Let us therefore earnestly contend for the Faith which was once delivered unto the Saints Let us keep that which was then preserved if we expect the generations to come should praise the Lord for this deliverance The persons are now dead whose lives were then preserved if we suffer the same Religion to perish which was then so signally owned there will be little left for which the memory should be continued Thus let us endeavour to perpetuate the memorial of this day as the most just and innocent revenge But these things are in the hand of God that God who saved our late Sovereign alive upon this day and suffered him to be cruelly murthered upon another When I consider the present condition of our Church and Nation and fear that our sins begin to be full I cannot but think the enemies of our Religion the Papal Emissaries have now much an easier way to destroy it They shall not need to seek so far into the deep or to lay so vast a work in the dark but then I cannot chuse but remember those words which I read so frequently in the Scriptures God save the King God save the King God save him from the open rebellion of the Schismatical party the ruine of his Father God save him from the secret machinations of the Papal Faction the danger of his Grandfather God save the King and let all the people say Amen FINIS Rev. xiv 1. Isa. l. 2. Psal. xxix 2. Isa. ii 11. ver 1. ver 1. Neh. ix 5. Psal. xvi 2. Exo. xii 14. Deut. v. 15. Exo. xvi 32. John vi 41. Jos. iv 3. 7. Esth. ix 27 28. Psal. lii 9. Psal. lxxv 1. Psal. lxiii 3. Rom. xiii 7. Psal. xxix 2. cl 2. Psal. cxlvii 1. cvii. 8. Psal. lxxi 8. Psal. xliv 1. Matth. x. 29. Matth. x. 31. Eph. ii 2. Jude 6. Rom. iii. 8. Gen. xviii 25. Jude 3. 2 Sam. xvi 16 c.