A92145:65
A sermon preached before the Right Honourable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church…A sermon preached before the Right Honorable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church…
A sermon preached before the Right Honourable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church at Westminster, Wednesday the 25. day of June, 1645. Being the day appointed for a solemn and public humiliation. / By Samuel Rutherfurd Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews.A sermon preached before the Right Honorable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church at Westminster, Wednesday the 25. day of Iune, 1645. Being the day appointed for a solemne and publique humiliation. / By Samuel Rutherfurd Professor of Divinitie at St. Andrews.
London: printed by R.C. for Andrew Crook, 1645
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.
Ans. Beside that this was a proof of his humane nature ⟨p. 24⟩united personally with his Godhead, that a sleeping man was God who could command the Sea, and the winds, it was expedient that this storm should rise when Christ was sleeping, for it might seem to arise against his will, if he had been waking: or rather God of purpose will have extreme dangers to come on his Church, and he will seem to sleep and to be far off, to waken up our sleeping faith. Hence the doctrine is,1 God will have his Church and cause to be brought within a hair breadth of losing, except the Lord arise and be only be a present help in trouble. Consider that Christ-man (if we lay aside the decree of God) was capable of drowning, stoning or any death as well as crucifying, and in this ship was carried Christ the hope of heaven, and all the ends of the earth, and the eleven Disciples were in the same danger, they had a word of promise that they should be his witnesses to carry the Chariot of the Gospel to all the world, and to subdue the nations to Christ by the preaching of the word, and were to be brought before Kings and rulers for a testimony to all nations, and to be scourged, killed, persecuted of all men for Christs sake; here be both a promise, and prophecies, and all seems to be loosed as fallen in the bottom of the Sea; Christ and Apostles and the ship are within less then two or three fingers breadth of death. The Church was at a low ebb in Egypt, the male children must be drowned in the River, the life of the aged is toiled and worn out of them. Omnipotency with nine heavy plagues cannot get the people of God freed out of the hands of a Tyrant. God must step in with immediate omnipotence in the tenth plague to pull out his people with a stretched out arm. Moses his word of deliverance and Gods decree of bringing out the people is upon the extreme bank and margin of perishing: Israel hath an host of cruel enemies behind them, and the raging Sea before them, and mountains on every side, here be many deaths in a circle round about the Church, this is like to God sleeping and the wheels of providence at a stand, there is no place for help from a creature except immediate omnipotency break a gap in the circle, and divide the red Sea; the Church of God is a field of dry and dead bones, so as it is said, Ezek. 37. 2.