A14239:56
A sermon preached before the Commons-House [sic] of Parliament, in Saint Margarets Church at…A sermon preached before the Commos-House [sic] of Parliament, in Saint Margarets Church at…
A sermon preached before the Commons-House [sic] of Parliament, in Saint Margarets Church at Westminster, the 18. of February. 1620. By James Usher. Professor of Divinity in the University of Dublin, in IrelandA sermon preached before the Commos-House [sic] of Parliament, in Saint Margarets Church at Westminster, the 18. of February. 1620. By Iames Vssher. Professor of Diuinitie in the Vniuersitie of Dublin, in Ireland
London: printed by I.Dawson for John Bartlett, 1624London: printed by I.Dawson for Iohn Bartlett, 1624
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
In the second of Judges God telleth the children of Israel, what mischief should come unto them by tolerating the Canaanitish Idolaters in their Land.1 They shall be thorns in your sides, (saith he) and their gods shall be a snare unto you. Which words contain in them the intimation of a double danger: the one respecting the soul, the other the body. That which concerneth the soul, is: that their Idols should be a snare unto them. For God well knew that mans nature is as prone to spiritual fornication, as it is to corporal. As therefore for the preventing of the one, he would not have a common harlot tolerated in Israel, Lest the Land should fall to whoredom and become full of wickedness: 2so for the keeping out of the ⟨p. 43⟩other, he would have provocations taken away, and all occasions whereby a man might be tempted to commit so vile a sin. The bodily danger that followeth upon the toleration of Idolaters, is: that they should be in their sides, that is,3 (as in another place it is more fully expressed) they should be pricks in their eyes, and thorns in their sides, and should vex them in the Land wherein they dwelled. Now in both these respects it is certain, that the toleration of the Idolaters with whom we have to do, is far more perilous than of any other. In regard of the spiritual danger, wherewith simple souls are more like to be ensnared: because this kind of Idolatry is not brought in with an open show of impiety, (as that of the Pagans) but is a mystery of iniquity, a wickedness covered with the veil of piety; and the harlot, which maketh the inhabitants of the earth drunk with the wine of this fornication, is both gilded her self, and presenteth also her abominations unto her followers in a cup of gold. 4If we look to outward peril, we are like to find these men, not thorns in our sides to vex us, but daggers in our hearts to destroy us. Not that I take all of them to be of this furious disposition, (mistake me not: I know a number my self of a far different temper:) but because there are never wanting among them some turbulent humours, so inflamed with the spirit of fornication, that they run mad with it; and are transported so far, that no tolerable terms can content them, until they have attained to the utmost