Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	beseech_v	lord_n	sin_n	2,379	5	4.6561	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56703	A sermon preached before the Lords spiritual & temporal, in the Abby-Church at Westminster, on the 26th of Novemb. 1691 being the Thanksgiving-day for the preservation of Their Majesties, the success of their forces in the reducing of Ireland, and for the King's safe return / by ... Symon Lord Bishop of Ely.	Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.	1691 (1691)	Wing P850; ESTC R20816	17,588	38

by rescuing them from their Oppressor entred upon all the legal Rights belonging to him This hath been the constant Sence of all Nations And every good Man among us who is of a contrary Judgment I would willingly believe seriously laments his infelicity that he cannot acknowledge his present Majesty with such Gratitude as is due to so great a Benefactor Which will not suffer those who feel the least touch of it to do or to speak or so much as think any thing to the prejudice of him who hath ventured his Life many a time to preserve our Religion and Liberty Yea we ought in Gratitude to him as well as out of love to our selves to give him the utmost assistance we are able for the support and security of his Government that is in truth for the defence of our Country and Religion Which is the only thing that he can be thought to design unless it be the preservation of the Reformed Religion every where and of the Liberties of these Parts of the World which are in danger by the Ambition of a Powerful Oppressor And this is matter of Joy to us and Thanksgiving to God this day that however some particular Persons may be ill affected the Body of the People it appears by their Representatives are unanimously disposed to grant His Majesty a Supply as large as his Desires for the carrying on what he hath so happily begun III. And if we look upon our Preservation as a most special Providence of God a kind of New-Birth of this Nation a Resurrection from the Dead or at least a Recovery from a desperate Disease a Marvellous Deliverance wherein the Wisdom Power and Goodness of God most seasonably appeared for our Rescue from the most Dreadful Dangers we cannot think He hath done all this for us meerly that we may live to eat and drink and sleep in safety much less to satisfie our sinful Lusts and Appetites But that we may live to the Praise of the Glory of his Grace and Mercy towards us For what else should God concern himself in our Preservation And therefore let us make that use of it to live as becomes a People that are saved by the Lord to serve him faithfully in the steady and constant Performance of our Duty according to the Directions of our Holy Religion which he hath continued to us in its Purity by this Deliverance Such an extraordinary Obligation manifestly Challenges some extraordinary Return of Duty But what Return I beseech you have we as yet made which may be thought in any measure suitable to the Benefits we have received Nay what have we not done to provoke God to forsake us after he hath been so wonderfully Kind to us Is there any one Sin that we have amended Doth not all manner of Prophaneness doth not Hatred and Uncharitableness abound as much as ever among us When there hath been such a great Change an amazing Turn of Affairs by the late Revolution are any of our Hearts changed and turned sincerely to the Lord Do not all Men go on in the old Tract as if we had done Nothing amiss I am very loth to put any melancholy Thoughts into your Minds upon a Day of Rejoycing But assure your selves as it was God's Intention in this Deliverance to move and engage us to be a better People so if we defeat his Intentions by continuing as bad as we were before we ought in Reason to expect that He will alter the course of his Providence towards us And as Moses elsewhere speaks in this Book Deut. XXVIII 63. as he rejoyced over us to do us good so he will rejoyce over us to destroy us and bring us to nought Let us not run this Hazzard I beseech you but endeavour seriously to answer his Expectation by learning from this Deliverance to fear the Lord our God as Moses speaks Deut. X. 11. to walk in all his ways and to love him and serve him with all our heart and with all our soul to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes which he hath commanded us for our good And then will the Lord love us and bless us he will multiply his Mercy upon us and make us a truly Great and Happy People For he is our praise he is our God who hath done for us these great and terrible things which our Eyes have seen IV. And hath taught us thereby that did we that Remember his Mercies in our late Deliverance we might then hope in the same Mercy for the future Yea be confident God will continue to prosper Their Majesties Arms and bless them with greater Successes in the present War wherein they are engaged Which we cannot but wish unless we be in love with Calamities or our Forgetfulness of former Dangers makes us fearless of any future 〈◊〉 our Discontents throw such a Mist before our Eyes that we cannot discern our Friends from our Enemies Let me intreat you to consider what Desolations threaten us here in a Protestant Country if the French should prevail when they have made such havock in Germany among those who are as Catholick as themselves Where they have laid the most Beautiful Cities in Ashes only because they could not keep them any longer in their Possession As if the World were made for them alone and none else were Worthy to inhabit it but every Place must be made desolate if they cannot continue in it Unto what pitch of Proud Wrath or rather Diabolical Fury are they arrived Which may justly make us look upon them not only as the Enemies of all Protestants but of all Christians nay of all Mankind Whose Interest it is to Unite all their Power to pull them down and chain them up that they may not be able to make any further Ravage in the World with their Infernal Troops It is manifest at what they aim and how they intend to treat all those who become their Slaves And therefore as we have the highest reason to bless the Goodness of God this Day for driving them out of the Kingdom of Ireland where they designed no doubt to settle themselves as a fair step to master us also so it is the utmost degree of Infatuation to favour their Pretensions or not vigorously to oppose the progress of their Arms For it is to oppose Robberies and Rapes hellish Cruelties and utter Devastations It is to assert the Common Right of Mankind against a Boundless Oppressor who forges a Title at his Pleasure to any Country which he hath a mind to invade And he hath invaded so many that there are innumerable Souls in several places of the World who cry out continually in the Anguish of their Spirits as the Psalmist doth O God to whom vengeance belongoth O God to whom vengeance belongeth shew thy self Lift up thy self thou Judge of the earth and render a reward to the proud Lord how long shall the wicked how long shall the wicked triumph How long shall they

obligations that are upon us Which is the last thing I propounded to be considered in pursuance of this caution given by Moses of old which concerns us as much now that we take heed to our selves lest we forget the things which our Eyes have seen and least they depart out of our Hearts all the days of our Life I. And first let us reflect upon our Dangers and seriously consider what the Remembrance of them requires of us To which if we apply our selves these three things will immediately offer themselves to our thoughts First That we ought to repent of those Sins which brought us into them Secondly Make good those pious Resolutions which it is to be hoped we made in the time of our distress Thirdly Abhor the Spirit of Popery which turns the World up side-down and to settle it self puts all things into confusion For the first of these it is very proper on such a Day as this to call our selves to an account and examine wherein we have any way offended God that we may be humbled for it and repent of it because as our Sins brought us into all the forementioned Dangers and if they be not amended will throw us into new ones which may prove our utter undoing so the due Consideration of them will serve to magnisie the goodness of God and raise our thankfulness unto him who notwithstanding our high Provocations was pleased of his infinite Mercy to deliver us There is no Sin of which we have been guilty but contributed more or less to our late dangers but some Sins led us directly into them I will mention a few First our remissness in Religion in which some among us were so far gone as to say they could discern no such great difference between us and Rome that we need make a Contest about it This was very comfortable News no doubt to those of the Romish Faction and gave them no small incouragement to attempt what our Eyes have seen 2. And so did the coldness and carelessness which was too notorious in many places in the Duties of Religion Scarce an handful of People appearing in many Churches at Divine Service when the Play-houses were crowded every Day with numerous Spectators This I make no question emboldned their hopes of prevailing for why should not any Religion serve those who made little or no use of Religion As we love our Souls or tender our wordly interest let these things be amended Let us grow more in love with our Religion and let us express it in greater Devotion and more frequent attendance upon all the Duties of God's Worship and Service For it is impossible to be eminent in any other vertue if we be negligent in this Necesse est virum bonum summae ergà Deum pietatis esse as Cicero himself truly resolves It is absolutely necessary that a good Man have the highest piety towards God without which he cannot be good 3. And this no doubt hath been the great Source of all the Wickedness which hath abounded among us that Men so seldom think of God and so little regard the solem Performance of the Duties belonging to his Worship and Service I will not mention the infamous Debaucheries that have been committed in many places whereby our Religion was dishonoured and endangered 4. There is another thing of which soberer Persons have been too guilty in their extream severity towards those who differed from them in some things though in most they perfectly agreed Which hath proceeded to such a a degree of Rage that generally we were more kind to Papists than we were to one another This was the very thing that made them so bold and confident in their attempts upon our Religion and Liberties Which they saw we our selves were destroying by our mutual hatreds These hatreds were the very Foundation upon which they built their Hopes These were the Engines which they managed with all their arts to accomplish our Ruine For the bitter strife and contention which ensued hereupon our zealous Endeavours to undue one another even when we differed only about Civil not Religious Matters were strong Invitations and manifest Opportunities to the common Enemy to make their Assaults upon us Seeing such a wide Breach opened by our selves at which they might easily enter 5. What shall I say of that base Selfishness which hath reigned among us That inordinate Affection to Mens own Private Interest separate from the Publick Good and the Love of their Country This moved too many to go along with the Popish Faction and lend them their helping hand in divers things which they could not but see manifestly tended to our undoing A Sin which the very Heathens abhorrd Who could not be tempted to betray their Country Lastly That bad disposition of Mind mentioned by our Saviour in the conclusion of all those evil things that proceed out of the Heart of Man viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Foolishness we translate it or Inconsiderateness hath had no small hand in our Dangers Mark VII 21. From within out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts adulteries fornications murders thefts covetousness wickedness deceit lasciviousness an evil eye blasphemy pride FOOLISHNESS these defile a Man There is no Nation I know of wherein this Vice of Inconsideration hath had greater Power than in ours Where we have been so foolish to omit other Instances which I am loth to name as to suffer our sworn Enemies to make us their Tools and would not see how they managed us to work our Destruction by our own Hands For having taken great care long ago that our Divisions should not be healed sometimes they courted one Party to fall upon the other And then turned about and courted the contrary Party to take their Revenge for it Sometimes the Laws must be put in execution with all imaginable strictness and then this strictness must be condemned as Anti-christian Rigour against our Brethren Sometimes we were the Favourites and after a short Courtship bestowed upon us we were turned off and our Brethren that dissent from us were complemented as if they had been the only Darlings Thus they play'd us one against another a long time and we were so blind as not to see what they were a-doing We could not or would not understand that they loved none of us but designed the utter Ruin of us all And this in the vilest and most infamous manner by making us the Instruments of our own Destruction unto which we contributed with all our Might by our fierce Oppositions and violent Clashings one against another Of which Folly we ought most heartily to Repent together with all those other Sins I have mentioned as endangering the loss of two of the most precious things in the whole World Religion and Liberty But we do not truly Repent of these Sins unless we become more Zealous both for our Religion and in it more kindly affectioned one towards another in Brotherly Love more publick spirited also