Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	dwell_v	earth_n	lord_n	6,794	5	3.8265	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27595	A discourse of the judgments of God composed for the present times against atheism and prophaneness.	Beverley, Thomas.	1668 (1668)	Wing B2137; ESTC R14172	93,326	282

Imprimatur Hic Liber cui titulus A Discourse concerning the Judgments of God c. Sept. 18. 1667. Tho. Cook Rmo in Christo Patri D no D. Gilberto Archiepisc Cant. à Sacris Domest A DISCOURSE OF THE Judgments OF GOD. Composed for the Present Times Against Atheism and Prophaneness Thy Judgments O Lord are a great Deep LONDON Printed by J. M. for Henry Herringman at the Sign of the Blew Anchor in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange 1668. To the Right Honourable Sr William Peak Lord Mayor of the City of London To the Honourable Court of Aldermen there And in them to that whole City Right Honourable THis Discourse humbly dedicates it self to you having received Being from the Contemplation of those late Monuments of Divine Displeasure raised upon this Nation in General and more directly over you If you vouchsafe it Acceptance and Patronage you give it the advantage of that Hill upon which so Famous a City is set that it may not be hid in its own obscurity But as the great Tapers of Judgment upon which it gazes were thought fit to be exalted into so lofty a Candlestick which in lower places had been as under a Bed or Bushel So these Observations that would shine by their Beams will be most happily fixed there if it may be with your Favour and Allowance There is nothing herein to plead so great a dignation from you but First an humble zeal to Divine Glory the Counsel of which Atheism darkens by words without knowledge while it would set up petty Mechanicks of Evil at work in their dark shops instead of that Almighty Hand reaching down out of its own Heaven into this lower World it s own also and in the room of that Jehovah who knows no other besides himself in Heaven or Earth or any that as he creates good and evil without whom no weapon formed to destroy no Smith that blows in the coals for it no waster that uses it is erected Secondly an affection of Honour to you expressing it self in an endeavour to vindicate your Calamities out of all such rude black dark Lanthorn-hands and to surrender them into his by whom to be chastised without hatred how severely soever is honourable but by any other servile and abject From this Hand even when it smites if it be humbly and repentantly turned to drops a Balm that heals and an Oyl of excellent kindness distils that doth not break our heads but soften our hearts An Unguent that doth not only embalm us for suffering but anoint us for Holiness and Happiness This Rod after it hath stricken if it be accepted blossoms in a night and suddenly flourishes with the peaceable fruits of Righteousness He that touches an affliction immediately after God by saith and obedience to the ends of it shall find his fingers dropping with the sweet-smelling Mirrhe but taken out of any other Forge there is nothing to be felt but the cold Iron prepared to mischief and the impurity of it self and the offices through which it hath passed He that ascribes our Ruines to any but God sows them with salt and barrenness he that assures them from him gives us the upper and neither Springs of gracious motion to God and Blessing from him All Paraphrases upon our Sufferings out of the Atcheists Chair are as the Corn that withereth before it groweth up wherewith the Mower filleth not his hand nor he that bindeth sheaves his Bosom nor do any say We bless you in the Name of the Lord The true Interpretations of them lead us out to sow indeed in tears but that we may reap in joy that going forth and bearing precious seed we may come again rejoyceing and bring our sheaves with us Who would not then chuse to find himself fallen into the hands of God with whom tender mercies dwell and gracious purposes mollifie the greatest rigours as the harshness of medicaments is overcome with the sweetness of the health they design Who except the stupid Ignorant the Atheistick contemner of God and his Hand the prophane Sensualist the hardned Impenitent who hates to be reformed and therefore all evils upon them are the Brands of an Eternal Judgment and print Hell upon their flesh the private marks of which are first upon their Souls But you who have a wise and grave apprehension of all things much more of those wherein you are concerned with God especially in his solemn interviews with you though of Judgment will give Glory to him by acknowledgments It is the Lord and therefore will not walk contrary to him but searching wherein he hath been dishonoured whether in denying that Amplitude and Example to Religion or allowing freedoms to evil will turn to him by reducing things to an order beseeming Humiliation under his Hand both within your private Walls and in your more publick Administrations And this not only from Principles of self-preservation but out of Gratitude and love to those compassions which interposed that you should not be utterly consumed as Sodom and Gomorrah by a Judgment that so nearly resembled theirs From which compassions those vigorous designations and daily rising hopes of a new City are now receiving life which make this a fit season to present you these considerations seeing a holy Improvement of passed Judgments is the best kind of Telesma against future Evils Now that Ruler of all the World whose goings out are from everlasting who of old laid the Foundations of this City who prospered it into its late Grandeur who derived upon it the confluence of that wealth adorned with the Ingeny Arts and Learning of the whole World decorated it with a Civick Authority even to Majesty ennobled it with the Thrones of England who lately in righteous Judgment for sin humbled laid it low even with the ground that it yet sits but brooding upon its own ashes raise it again out of them increase the Glory of it seven-fold along succeeding Ages draw it out of the fire a vessel of Honour refined make his Church in it a brightest Candlestick of the Gospel of Peace after it hath been a mountain burning with fire that could not be touched create a new Heaven and Earth in it wherein Righteousness may dwell after this dissolution of Elements make it exemplary for Reformation to this Nation as it hath been for suffering make the name of it for ever Jehovah Shammah The Lord is there In these Prostrations Rests Your Humblest Servant T. B. The General Address THere is a Spirit in Man that within the Sphere wherein he moves is very curious and inquisitive to understand how things are carried and what is done or falls out in the world and when he observes any thing new or great his Inquiries stay not in the things themselves but rifle them for the causes and springs of them This men do agreeably to their Elevation and Compass even from those that reside in the higher and vaster Orbs of Government down to those that

him while the constant pravity of his Nature is counterparted by as setled a vanity and vexation of spirit and the more prodigious distortions of common Nature are the characters and descriptions of greater violations of these Laws of righteousness anew instamped upon man For God having a greater regard to this inward world the world spiritual whereof we especially speak he accounts the things we are amazed at little in comparison of those more monstrous our sins which are hideousest convulsions more portentous then Comets and Earthquakes If then one Iota or tittle of the Law be of a more awful establishment then Heaven and Earth what strange thing is it if in its revenge we see Nature loose it self if we hear of Nations and Kingdoms torn up and dispersed For all order of Nature and peace of Nations being but a case of these more material things it is no wonder they are made nothing of when what they are servants to is perished and lost But that God intends all visible and sensible composure of things should wait upon the condition of the spiritual and invisible is yet more evident in that the final resolution of all things produces the perfection of the less by the greater when righteousness advanced to the height shall dwell in new Heavens and a new Earth prepared for it and the spirits of just men made perfect inhabit incorruptible and immortal bodies made like his glorious body Then wickedness having finished it self shall be sealed up into a lake of unmixed misery which is so great a remove from God that as sin it was never created by him or of primitive intention but a secondary ordination against sin that intruded it self upon the works of God From all this that hath been said appears the uniformity of the ways of God with themselves whenever he most reverses those natural sanctions For if without any derogation from them he so early admitted upon the first constitution such an allay of the excellency of it and so many cross lines of motion to the truly native settlement and into such a fixedness that they are now grown natural from whence death and affliction are compartners with life and comfort ballancing and poising one another it is less of wonder that upon greater rebellions and persistencies in sin God concedes his Justice and wrath a larger scope upon this second state in which he hath at the least shared things between prosperity and adversity When men transgress the Laws change Ordinances break the Everlasting Covenant we may well expect this more fluctuating and precarious state of Nature should with greater freedom be rolled up and down and removed from it self And if at last that Covenant of day and night and those Ordinances of Heaven will resign themselves waiting till those greater then they be vindicated and restored to their full authority by an universal Judgment and if all the Creatures are willing to be passed through that fire that is to purge evil wholly down into its own draught they will now undoubtedly even surrender themselves to be made use of to the sooner purposes of vengeance upon wicked men as the Creator pleases whereby they have a prefatory redemption from that vanity and corruption wherein they are infolded not willingly for they earnestly expect the time of a full deliverance and proportionably now they even lift up their heads to that vindication they find in a partial Judgment CHAP. VI. A general Account That there are several Reasons of Judgments comporting with Gods holy and good Government of the World HAving thus far in general endeavoured to shew the reasonableness of Judgments upon consideration of their agreeableness with the first state of things as also with the second settlement in such a poise between prosperity and adversity as we find them let us yet further and more particularly search those great Principles upon which these dreadful ways of God move themselves when the scale in which unhappiness and misery lye is pressed down below the equality we now call Nature though it be not pure and perfect Nature For they will convey us most happily into those rules of practice by which we may either prevent remove or suffer them with greatest advantage A wise sense of them will inable a man to conspire with the infinite understanding that inflicts them and to accept the punishment by which he changes the nature of it to himself while he votes with God against himself by the higher part of his Soul and kisses the rod that afflicts him adoring the righteousness equity and faithfulness of God in it as David I know that thy Judgments are right and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me But he that sees not why he should be so used hath nothing but a patience created of necessity to relieve him if he be not brutishly senseless and stupidly bears the knocks that fall on him till he dyes under them without any regard to the mind of him that sends them we have therefore those accounts given us by God in his Word that we may suffer as men That highest wisdom and goodness though he treat in greatest severities with his rational Creatures yet allows them the honour of being rational as great persons though malefactors are notwithstanding arraigned and condemned with more honourable ceremonies and have a state in their death even meaner persons in Governments humane and remote from Tyranny are not smothered and stifled in the dark but by publick procedure reasoned into their condemnation It is very disagreeable to a Soveraign Righteousness whose strength loveth Judgment to that Creator that made man in his own image to devote him to destruction so much as in this world for his pleasure or to give him up to any arbitrary spirits that would crush him as men do vilest Creatures under them for meer sport or because they please to do so so little is that conceit to be assented to that makes such conjectures Yet is it not contrary to sound sense that man losing God and himself so far that he casts off all fear of him and even unsouls and dispirits himself through ignorance and sensuality should be given up as the prey and spoil of those invisible powers that being fallen from God and become ignoble and degenerate are used by him in such black ministeries and make use through that Divine permission sometimes of one instrument sometimes of another for their cruelty Such men are sunk as it were too low for the more honourable chastisements of God himself or those blessed Spirits who serve him in his Judgments only out of zeal to his glory never out of envy or in compassion to mankind Thus some sort of profligate Rebels who are not worthy of a serious Justice or noble pursuit are by just and wise States deserted to be hunted like beasts by any that will either for recreation or advantage who are commonly the worst that delight to be so imployed But indeed we find the