Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	earth_n	good_a	great_a	7,371	5	2.6096	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58819	A sermon preached before the queen the 22d of May, 1692 upon occasion of the late victory obtained by Their Majesties fleet over the French / by John Scott ...	Scott, John, 1639-1695.	1692 (1692)	Wing S2076; ESTC R34060	18,980	39

excites in us sharp and dolorous Reflections upon our Guilts and Miscarriages but Thanksgiving has nothing in it but a warm and vigorous sense of the mightiest Love and most indearing Goodness For it is only the overflow of a heart full of Love the free sally and emission of a Soul that is captivated and indeared by Kindness and there is no Passion in Humane Nature so sweet and ravishing as Love especially while being heated with the warm sense of the Kindness of its beloved it boils over upon it in Praise and Gratitude And seeing our Thanksgiving lives upon Love and Beneficence and is al1 along nourished and maintained by it the greater the Love is upon which it feeds and the more the Beneficence the richer its Fare is and the nobler its Entertainment But where can our Gratitude find out a Love comparably so great or productive of such ample Beneficence as that of Gods Upon this inexhaustible Subject it may live for ever without any other Supplies and fare deliciously every moment to eternal Ages For what more delicious or comfortable thought can ever present itself to the mind of Man than this that the great Lord of the World the good the wise and mighty King of Heaven and Earth is our faithful kind and munificent Friend that his Heart is always pregnant with Designs of Love to us and that the great subject of all his Contrivances is to do us good here and to render us Glorious hereafter O were such thoughts as these but set home upon our hearts with their full and due Emphasis how would they even ravish and transport our Souls How would they convert all our Faculties into Concent and Harmony and even evaporate our Spirits in a Songs of Praise and Thanksgiving to him And whilst from a lively Sense of all these Wonders of his Love we are offering up to him our Sacrifice of Thanksgiving O with what Triumph and Exultation of Soul should we ascend in the flames of it But alas we are even the best of us in a great measure unacquainted with the Pleasure and Sweetness of this heavenly Performance and the reason is because we have not a quick Sense and lively Relish of the Divine Goodness upon which it terminates Had we this always present with us we should feel so much Joy and Pleasure in Thanksgiving that it would be our Heaven upon Earth our Meat and Drink our Business and Recreation to breath up our Souls to God in Hymns of Praise But this we do all know who know any thing of Religion that to laud and magnifie the Lord is the End for which we were born and the Heaven for which we are designed and that when we are arrived to that vigorous sense of the Divine Love that the blessed People of Heaven have attained we shall need no other either Employment or Pleasure to render us for ever happy but only to sing eternal Praises and Hallelujahs to our God and to the Lamb that sitteth upon the Throne the vigorous Relish of whose unspeakable Goodness to us will so inflame our Love and animate our Gratitude that to eternal Ages we shall be never able to contain our selves from breaking forth into new Songs of Praise and then every new Song will still create a new Pleasure and every new Pleasure dictate a new Song and so round again for ever But these are things too sublime for our short reach and cognisance only at present let us but consult the Experience of devout and grateful Souls about them and this will assure us that there is nothing under Heaven so pleasant and delightsom as from a warm and vigorous sense of the Love of God to breath up our Souls to him in Praise and Thanksgiving that this gives such a Jubilee to the Mind such a sprightful Recreation to the Heart as far exceeds the most studyed and artificial Pleasures of Epicurism But for satisfaction in this point we need go no further than to our praiseful Psalmist who tho he were a King and had all the Pleasures of a fruitful Kingdom at his beck and command yet doth upon his own Experience advise Praise the Lord for the Lord is Good sing praises to his name for it is pleasant And elsewhere Praise the Lord for it is good to sing Praises to our God it is pleasant and praise is comely Seeing therefore that Gratitude to God is so high a Pleasure and such a grateful Entertainment to the rational Soul when it is duly disposed this is such a Motive to the Practice of it as carries with it an eternal Force and Obligation III. Gratitude to God mightily obliges him to continue and repeat his Favors to us For though God doth not covet our Thanksgivings for himself or out of any prospect of Advantage they can bring him he being so intirely happy in his own Perfections that neither the Praises of Angels can add any thing to him nor the Blasphemies of Devils subtract any thing from him yet when he so freely bestows his Benefits upon us he expects the return of our Gratitude both as it is highly just and reasonable in itself and vastly beneficial and advantageous to us For he being infinitely reasonable himself and loving himself infinitely for being so he cannot for his own sake but love what is fit and reasonable in others and what he so justly loves in us he justly expects of us It is highly displeasing to him to see us ungrateful to others as well as to himself not that he sustains any Damage thereby for how can he be the worse for our Ingratitude to others But the Ground of his Displeasure is to see reasonable Beings so grosly swerve from the Canon of right Reason and Justice and act so contrarily to the Laws of his Nature and their own So again he is as well pleased and delighted when he finds us thankful to our other Benefactors as when we are so to him not that he can reap the least Benefit or Advantage from the Thanks which we render to others for how can he be the better for that which he doth not receive But because the thing is just and reasonable in itself and because whatsoever is so is amiable and delightsom in his Eyes And as God expects our Gratitude for its own sake as it is in itself a most just and comely and reasonable thing so doth he also expect it for our sake as it is one of the most advantageous things we can do for our selves For by accustoming our selves to frequent Returns of Thanksgiving to God we shall by degrees a thankful Frame and Disposition of Soul which as I shall shew by and by will both influence us in all other parts of our Duty with a mighty Chearfulness and Alacrity of Spirit and carry us on through the most wearisom Stages of it with an indefatigable Vigour and also inhanse the value of the Divine Benefits and render them more precious in our esteem

ever the Sea beheld which considering our Circumstances who have no other Trench but the Ocean no other Wall but our Navy round about us is certainly one of the most remarkable Instances of God's watchful Providence over us for good that even our own Hearts could have wished for for how much the good Providence of God hath concerned it self in this whole Affair is so remarkably evident that we cannot but discern it unless we wilfully shut our own Eyes For what a strange Concurrence was there of Events that are only in the Disposal of God the Stars in their Courses fought against Cicera the Winds and Storms for several Weeks were armed against one part of their Navy by which some were lost others disabled and all detained from joyning with the other part of it which by contrary Winds was also detained from Ingaging us till such time as our whole Force was united and then God gave a Gale that blew them on to their own Destruction To all which is to be added another most considerable Instances of Gods good Providence towards us viz. that a wary Enemy who always acts with the greatest Caution and most sagacious Foresight and who never yet fought without some considerable Advantage should be so stupendiously infatuated as to give us close Battle with a Strength so much inferiour to ours These are all the Lords doings and they ought to be marvellous in our Eyes to excite our Gratitude and unite our Hearts and Lips in Songs of Praise and Thanksgiving to him that hereby we may ingage our Merciful God still to rejoice over us to do us good and continue to bless their Majesties Arms with Glory and Success And in pursuance of this excellent Duty let us all be perswaded frequently to retire from our worldly Occasions into our own Thoughts and there to recollect the manifold Favors of God to us to spread them before our Eyes in their full breadth and length and depth to turn them up and down upon our Thoughts and survey them in all their Parts and Proportions till by a thorough view and consideration of their indearing Features and Lineaments our Hearts grow warm with a grateful Sense of 'em and then to pour out our Souls to God in Praises and Thanksgivings by the constant Practice of which we shall by degrees acquire a thankful frame and disposition of Soul And as we grow on and improve in this heavenly Virtue we shall feel so much Life and Spirit and Sweetness in it that we shall need no other Motive than that to oblige us to the Practice of it and our own Experience will convince us of a Truth which now perhaps seems a wild Paradox to us viz. That to be sensible of Gods Benefits and to Meditate on his Goodness to admire his Excellencies and to celebrate his Praises is Heaven itself the Life of Angels the Quintessence of all Joy and in a word the supreme Felicity of reasonable Beings Wherefore to assist your Endeavours and carry on your Minds to this great and blessed Work I shall briefly propose to your Meditations a few grateful Considerations concerning the Divine Benefits and so conclude First Consider the vast extent of God's Benefits as to the Number of ' em Secondly Their stupendious Greatness as to the Degree and Value of ' em Thirdly The generous Freeness of 'em on God's Part. Fourthly The great Immerit and Undeservedness of 'em on ours Fifthly The condescending Manner of his bestowing 'em upon us First Consider the vast extent of God's Benefits towards us as to the Number of 'em which is so vastly great that we can no more count 'em than we can the Motes in the Air or the Sands on the Sea-shoar all that we can do is to reduce 'em under such Kinds and Orders as the Astronomers do the Stars under such Constellations but to count 'em singly one by one is a Task exceeds all Arithmetick In general for every thing we are for every thing we have or ever have had or shall have we are indebted to his Bounty That we are Men and not Worms that we are not Stones or clods of Earth utterly insensible of all Good and incapable of all Felicity that we are inspired with immortal Minds endowed with vast capacities of Happiness that we have so many sensible Organs capable of relishing such a vast variety of Pleasures and that we have so many sutable Pleasures round about us to treat and entertain 'em that we have Life and Motion Health and Vigour Sense and Perception Reason and Understanding to guide and govern 'em is wholly to be ascribed to his Goodness which penetrates to the very Root and Center of our Beings We move upon his Earth and do breath upon his Air we drink of his Springs and are fed from his Granaries and clothed from his Wardrobe and in a word every good Thing we possess that is either necessary for our Subsistence or convenient for our Use or pleasant for our Enjoyment we derive from his inexhaustible Bounty which daily encompasses us round about like many Fortunate Islands with an Ocean of Blessings the single drops whereof tho we are every moment of our Lives sensibly refreshed with one or other of 'em we can no more recount than the endless Moments of Eternity But if to these numberless Benefits of God which we every day taste and do sensibly relish and enjoy we add that numberless more of which we are not sensible because they run under Ground in invisible Channels so that we neither see nor taste 'em tho they do us a world of good we know not how and insensibly preserve us from a world of Evils We may well cry out with the Prophet David Psalm 139.17 18. God! i. e. thy kind and merciful Thoughts How great is the sum of ' em If I should count 'em they are more in number than the sand Tho when I awake I am still with thee i. e. recounting thy Favour from Morning to Night but after all can see no end of ' em Secondly Consider the stupendious Greatness of the Benefits of God as to the Degree and Value of ' em There are indeed various Degrees of Worth in the Benefits of God but the cheapest of 'em are those which the Divine Goodness hath prepared to serve our present Necessities Conveniencies and Pleasures and yet a great part of these are of such an intrinsick Worth that if the plenty and commonness of 'em did not depress their value we should esteem 'em inestimable Treasures How comfortable is the appearance of Day after the long Nights under the Northern Pole What precious Things are a Cup of fair Water or a Morsel of brown Bread to such as are pinched with Hunger or parched with Drought And did we but value the smallest Benefits of God while we enjoy 'em but according to the prices we our selves set upon 'em when we want 'em it is to be fear'd we should esteem