Therefore God bestowed on them that great honour, that they, first
of all the Gentiles, should see the glory and the love of God in the
face of Jesus Christ, his Son.
And so it was with our forefathers, my friends. And I think that on
this Epiphany, we ought to thank God, among all his other blessings,
for having given us such forefathers, and letting us be born of that
noble stock, to whom he gave the kingdom of God, after he took it
away from the faithless and rebellious Jews, and afterwards from the
false and profligate Greeks and Romans, to whom the epistles of the
apostles were written. I will tell you what I mean.
When the Lord Jesus came on earth; our forefathers did not live here
in England, but in countries across the sea, in Germany, Denmark,
and Sweden, which did not belong to the Roman Empire; for the
Romans, who had conquered all the world beside, could never conquer
our forefathers. It was God's will, that whenever they tried they
were beaten back with shame and slaughter; and our forefathers,
almost alone of all, remained free men, even as we are at this day.
But for that very reason, the apostles could never come among us to
preach the Gospel to us; for they could not pass the bounds of the
Roman empire; and that was so large, that they had enough to do to
preach the Gospel in it; so that it was not till at least 400 years
after the apostles' death, that their successors, zealous
missionaries, priests and bishops, came and preached to our
forefathers; and when they came, they found us a people prepared for
the Lord, who heard the word gladly, and turned, thousands sometimes
in one day, from vain idols to serve the living God, and were
baptised into that holy church in which we now stand.
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