Selected quad for the lemma: grace_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
grace_n	despise_v	falsehood_n	vilify_v	40	3	16.8848	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85887	A treatise of prayer and of divine providence as relating to it. With an application of the general doctrine thereof unto the present time, and state of things in the land, so far as prayer is concerned in them. Written for the instruction, admonition, and comfort of those that give themselves unto prayer, and stand in need of it in the said respects. By Edvvard Gee, minister of the gospel at Eccleston in Lancashire.	Gee, Edward, 1613-1660.	1653 (1653)	Wing G451; Thomason E1430_1; ESTC R209520	284,427	526

2.12 Heb. 10.38 2 Pet. 2.1 3 10 12 13 c. Jude 5.8 c. Revel 2.5 16 22 3.3 16. Jer. 16.18 with vers 14 15. God we may justly fear hath other things in store for us then the accomplishment of our prayers or the bestowing of those blessings which we have sought and waited for even the fulfilling of the several threats of his Word against the highest contemners thereof and that although he would not utterly reject our prayers but sometime perform them yet that he should first make good his own Word upon us and vindicate it against us Once he said of Judah when he promised them an exceeding great and renowned deliverance out of Babylon First I will recompence their iniquity and their sin double So may we apprehend the Lord determining concerning us I do no where read that either God did ever so long afford his Word written and preached in such freedom and plenty to any people as he hath afforded it to us or that having begun in judgment with any for their abuse of it he was so quickly and so easily pacified and entreated as we now expect he should be The dignity and worth of the Word of God the singularity of the mercy of enjoying it b Psa 147.20 Rom. 3.2 the holy and jealous nature of God c Josh 24 19 the platform of his ways described to us in Scripture denunciations and examples to this purpose d As Shiloh was a pattern to Jerusalem Israel to Judah Jer. 7.12 13 14. 26 6. so were they both to the Christians of the primitive age 1 Cor. 10 6 11. and so are they all three unto us the contempt of God himself which the contempt of his Word both in its own tendency and in his interpretation amounteth to e Luk. 10.16 1 Thes 4.8 and lastly that how shall we escape which the Apostle fixeth upon the neglect of that great Salvation which the Gospel preacheth to us f Heb. 2.3 These considerations alone besides many other which come in both from the nature of the fact and from the aggravating circumstances of it as it is ours g Those passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews wherein the Apostle argueth the sins of Christians now under the Gospel out-go those of Gods people under the Law and that the Judgments coming upon these do exceed them that came upon those as Heb. 2.2 3. 10.28 29 30 do cast a very terrible aspect upon us do induce me to apprehend that as God may have I hope hath thoughts of peace towards his people and their prayers in England so his thoughts are not all of peace but some of evil towards this Nation Only this Repent O England Repent or thou mayst give thy prayers thy self and the Gospel which thou hast contemned as lost But my scope was to make good the charge of this sin upon us and not to presage from it To return therefore We have ever since the restoring and republishing of the Word of God by the Preaching and Translation of it in our Tongue in the beginning of the Reformation been declining in our respect to it Although the light of it even in our acknowledgment hath been still ascending and waxing clearer and brighter and extending it self more generally and although the end of its protracted continuance extent and growth hath been as that of the housholders sending more servants then the first and at last his own Son in the Parable of the Vineyard to wit to conciliate and procure at length our reverence and obedience to it yet we have all along unto this day still the less esteemed it the more grosly despised it so that now it is become the most despicable and loathed thing in all the Land and we are casting the very dregs of our contempt upon it Christ and his Apostles and Ministers were not more contemptible in the eyes of the infidel world 1 C●r 1 13 4.13 when they were accounted a stumbling block and foolishness the filth of the world and the off-scouring of all things then the Word of God and its Ministry are now in the esteem of professed Christians Popery and Prelacy or what ever was most nauseated were not more stomacked in the beginning of the late Stirs then are now Orthodox Preaching and Presbytery with many And although we have for about these hundred years been declining in our respect to the Word yet I dare say we have fallen and degenerated more therein within these ten last years then we did in all the other fourscore and ten And what think we doth this hastening in our defection and our arrival now at the very lowest step of it portend Certainly not the speeding of our prayers but of our punishment What contempt or indignity is there which the Word of God is capable to suffer and we capable to act which we have not done unto it In two words What ever there is in the Gospel worthy of honour and acceptation we despise and vilifie What way soever respect and esteem is to be shewed unto it therein we manifest our contempt of it 1. What ever there is in the Gospel deserving and commanding our honour and acceptance we despise and vilifie We despise and vilifie the light of the Gospel by affecting ignorance and love of darkness We despise its Truth by changing it into a lye entertaining or enduring the Errors opposite to it and wresting it to patronize falshood and iniquity We despise and vilifie its grace by practical infidelity or irreconciliation to God pleasure in sin and earthly-mindedness We despise and vilifie its holiness by Atheism impiety and hypocrisie Its righteousness by injustice violence sedition fraud falshood and perjury Its purity by Epicurism luxury and pride Its union peace and love by malice envy strife cruelty and schism Its order lastly by Libertinism confusion and profanation 2. What way soever there is respect and esteem to be shewed to the Gospel therein we manifest our contempt of it There is honour to be done to it in hearing and reading it in beleeving it in obeying it in professing and adorning it before others and in maintaining it But we have all these ways cast contempt upon it 1. We contemn it in point of hearing and reading Look into our Assemblies see how they are accounted followed frequented What absenting turning away the ear from hearing what emptiness is there in the Congregations Time was in the primitive age in the begining of Reformation yea in our memories no pains travel or frequency in repairing to Sermons was too much now we are overcloyed with much preaching Erewhile we complained of the B●shops for putting down Sermons but now many of the people do put off more Sermons I dare say then ever the Bishops put down It is now counted by some a poor and low business for a man to be diligent in following the publick Ordinances he that cannot with Elies sons kick at Gods Sacrifice

for signs This was it with which the Prophet Habakkuk was sore agrieved The wicked doth compass about the righteous Wherefore lookest thou on them that deal treacherously and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous then he Hab. 1.4 13. and with this the Lord himself amplyfieth the punishment of Iudah when he saith Ezek. 7.24.21.31 he wil bring the worst of the heathen upon them and he wil deliver them into the hands of brutish men and skilful to destroy 2. Sometimes the subordinate agents are persons of neerest relation and obligation to the sufferers and this cuts to the heart and exulcerates their sorrow when those that are intimately tyed to them by Domestical Political or Ecclesiasticall relation by the bond of Civill amity or Religion prove false and hostle to them that place in Zechariah Behold I wil make Ierusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about Zech. 12 2. Some conceive may be meant not actively as if Ierusalem should infer or inflict such plagues upon the neighbouring people as should fill them with horror but passively Ierusalem shal suffer such things as shal move objectively trembling in others at the beholding thereof and the words following When they shal be in the siege both against Iudah and against Ierusalem they read thus because Iudah shal be in the siege against Ierusalem and according to this interpretation this is the reason why Ierusalem under Gods Judgments shal be a matter of trembling to others because Iudah so neerly allyed and bound by so many relations to be a friend and helper to Jerusalem should be against her and so indeed it came to pass when many of the Jews called Pusaim or Apostates stood up against and persecuted the Hasmonean and Hasidean party in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and after This wrought upon Job more then all his other sufferings from other creatures that his beloved friends and brethren not only failed him of their help but turned against him and added their Reproaches and Contestations to the rest of his miseries All my inward friends saith he abhorred me Job 19.19 and they whom I loved are turned against me He had suffered heavy things by the Sabeans and Chaldeans in his goods and servants and by Satan in his body but all these discomposed not his spirit so much as did the contendings against him of his three friends How holy David was galled with the very same thing is well known Psal 41.9 and he more then once expresseth it Yea mine own familiar friend or the man of my peace in whom I trusted which did eat of my bread hath lift up his heel against me q. d. This is beyond all that he that before kept intimatest correspondency with me was my Confident and my Beneficiary should kick against me and having got me down should basely trample me under his feet This was a thing that did so press him that he knew not well how to bear it as in another place he speaketh For it was not an enemy that reproached me then I could have born it neither was it he that hated me that did magnifie himself against me then I would have hid my self from him Psa 55.12 13 14 20 21. but it was thou a man mine equal my guide and my acquaintance We took sweet counsel together and walked to the house of God in company And once again in the same Psalm it moves his choler He hath put forth his hands against such as be at peace with him he hath broken his Covenant the words of his mouth were smoother then butter but war was in his heart his words were softer then oyl yet were they drawn swords This lay hard upon his spirit and vexed him to indignation that one endeared to him by so many obliging names and relations should be the man against him and should prove such a circumventing bloody reproachful and successful foe as in that Psalm he is described to be That embracement of him as another self Secundum aestimationem mei Jun. Dux●mens Jun. Familiaris mens Jun. a man mine equal or equalled to my self advancement of him to highest Command my Guide or General familiarity of company mine acquaintance conjunction and trust in honest designs we took sweet counsel together association in the same God Religion and seeking of God we walked unto the house of God in company union in the same League and Covenant he hath broken his Covenant the specious insinuating and egging pretences and professions held forth by him the words of his mouth were smoother then butter softer then oyl that all these Engagements interveening not any nor all of them should make him true nor so much as keep him from hostility this was the thing which staggered this upright man to bear And I dare be bold to say there is many a suffering Soul at this day with whom next to their own and the Lands sin and the anger of the Almighty this is the thing that strikes deepest lies heaviest upon the heart that the evils that are come upon them are the projects and productions of Brethren not only as Englishmen but as Protestants Reformers Covenanters Solemn-callers upon God Associates in the same counsels actions dangers mercies and fair Avowers for the Gospel Conscience Godliness Purity for Law Justice Liberty Peace for King Parliament Kingdom Sister Nations and all Protestant Churches O the sorrow shame vexation astonishment that is upon them for this 5. Another Reason is the difficulty of patience in times of great troubles The office of Patience is in the state of adversity to keep down and quiet the tumultuous passions and to curb and suppress the head-strong corruptions which that condition is apt to awaken and let loose it is then to compose the spirit and to contain the whole man within his duty Now this is no small business Patience proves a hard task when it comes in hand It is but an easie matter when men are in a quiet state to frame contemplative notions of afflictions in the mind or to discourse of them to others or to behold them upon others or to foresee them coming on themselves But the matter is to endure them when they are come then comes in the part of Patience Patience is not an intellectual comprehension of Good Rules or a speculative discerning of the equity necessity and profit of afflictions but a practical use of such Rules in bearing or a real and regular suffering and this is somewhat to do He is in the Apostle James his account a perfect and entire Christian Jam. ● 4 lacking nothing that can fully exercise this grace And the Apostle Paul when he would produce the Arguments and Evidences of the truth of his Apostolical calling among the Corinthians who it seems vilified his person and questioned that his Calling he mentions patience for one proof Truly the signs of an Apostle were wrought among