Selected quad for the lemma: justice_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
justice_n	grace_n	mercy_n	sin_n	4,120	5	4.6437	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A90689	Englands season for reformation of life. A sermon delivered in St. Paul's Church, London. On the Sunday next following His Sacred Majesties restauration. By Tho. Pierce, rector of Brington.	Pierce, Thomas, 1622-1691.	1660 (1660)	Wing P2183; Thomason E1027_17; ESTC R203182	21,118	38

passage in Herodotus that whilst Craesus was brewing vengeance against the murderer of his Son Adrastes being the man that had kill'd the Son presently threw himself down at the Fathers feet and in the bitterness of his soul past such a sentence upon himself as even melted the very bowels of an inraged King who straight brake forth into this expression {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Friend saith he I am reveng'd thy severity to thy self hath made me kind And I think it fit that thou shouldest live for thinking it fit that thou shouldest dye If we have failed heretofore in so great a duty let us learn from that Heathen to love our enemies for the future And since it is dangerous not to love them in as much as our God is a consuming fire let us love them at least in our own defence Have they persecuted us when it was in their power Let us the rather not hurt them when 't is in Ours For to Imitate their courses is to approve them But {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as Arrian speaks not to be like them in what is evill is the most generous kind of revenge and conquest Now then if you please Hear the sum of the whole matter We must demonstrate to our enemies by the most practicall way of arguing That the night of sin is farr spent and that the day of our Amendment begins to dawn that the Day-star in St. Peter is arisen in our hearts that we are Followers of Christ and resolved to do as he hath given us an example Which was not to call down Fire from heaven much less to conjure it up from Hell but to call Judas Friend whilst he was executing his treason as well as Divel whilst he design'd it nay to lay down his Life even for them that took it away Now since he is what he calls himself the light of the World and as well our armour as our apparel St. Paul did fitly explain his precept for putting on the armour of Light by that of putting on the Lord Jesus Christ This is the use we are to make of the Nights going away and the dayes approach if I may not rather say its presence with us This is our practicall and vitall not verbal Oratory which next to the pleading of the Spirit who helpeth our infirmities and maketh intercession for us with groans which cannot be uttered is the only Oratory with God that will be powerfull to perswade him to pass our Hopes into Fruitions to crown our Fruitions with an increase to blesse that increase with a long contiuuance and so to sanctify to us our temporal things as that we may not fall short of the things Aeternall This is the rationall importance of the word Therefore in my Text as 't is a particle of connexion betwixt our Duty and our deliverance Now that the Duty of keeping close to the Commandments of Christ by casting off all our works of Darknesse and by putting on the whole armour of light should be inforced upon our souls from the consideration of the Time a Time of Peace and Prosperity succeeding a time of Persecution a very bright Day after a very Dark Night I shall the rather proceed to prove by the several Reasons of the thing because the Reasons making for it will be also the motives inducing to it They will not only clear the Truth but advance the practise of my Assertion The first Reason is Because it is generous and noble to amend our lives with our condition and rather out of gratitude then sordid fear It was and will be the greatest glory of Titus Vespasian above the rest of the Roman Emperours that he was moulded by his Empire from the worse to the better from having been a very cruel and a very proud person to be as eminently mild and humble too as if he had listen'd to the precept in Ecclesiasticus and made his Practice an Answer to it My son the greater thou art humble thy self so much the more Happy is the Man that can say with David It is good for me that I have been in trouble But he is the Man of a rarer happiness who is inwardly the better for having prosper'd T is very much worthier of a Christian to be led by Gods favour then to be driven into duty by his severity A well natur'd people upon the receiving of a blessing will be apt to bethink themselves with David by what expressions of their gratitude they may signifie their sense of their Obligation Quid retribuemus what shall we render unto the Lord for all his benefits bestowed upon us Psal. 116. 12. which of his greatest enemies shall we make a sacrifice to his wrath what monstrous sin shall we mortifie what darling lust shall we subdue how shall we honour him with our lives and give him thanks by our Reformation shall we despise the Riches of his forbearance because he is willing that his forbearance should allure us to Repentance and not that his Judgments should fright us to it shall we presume to be evil because he is good And offend the more boldly because his grace doth so much abound No we will not for shame abuse his love and corrupt our selves with his indulgence Nor will we in pitty to our souls pollute our selves with his gifts or sin away his graces and mercies to us by making them serve to incense his Justice But by how much the greater his mercies are by so much the more will we tremble to provoke the eyes of his glory Because we find by so late experience He is a God ready to pardon swift to shew mercy and slow to wrath we will endeavour to let him see we are a people ready to serve him swift to ask him forgiveness but slow to sin Thus you have the first Reason of the word Therefore in my Text as t is a particle of connexion betwixt the duty and the deliverance The Second Reason is because he will otherwise repent of his favours to us will punish us the more for sining against such Obligations We ought to look upon our priviledge with Fear and Trembling for that which heightens our dignity whilst we attend to Gods service doth also aggravate our doome whilst we neglect it The very things which make us capable of greater happiness than others may accidentally fit us for greater ruine Remember those Words of our blessed Saviour Luke 10. 15. And thou Capernaum which art lifted up to heaven shall be cast down to hell Whereby it is intimated unto us that God will punish Malefactors as well in respect of the mercies they have received as in respect of the sins they have committed When we shall all appear before the judgment seat of God to answer for the things which are done in the body we then must render a strict accompt what use we have made of our

Englands Season FOR REFORMATION OF LIFE A SERMON DELIVERED IN St. PAUL'S Church LONDON ON THE SUNDAY Next Following His Sacred Majesties RESTAURATION By THO. PIERCE Rector of Brington LONDON Printed for Timothy Garthwait at the Little North-Door in St. Paul's Church-Yard M D C L X. DIEV ET MON DROIT ✚ HONI ✚ SOIT ✚ QVI ✚ MAL ✚ Y ✚ PENSE ✚ Christian Reader THat what I committed the other day to the ears of Many I now so suddainly expose to the eyes of All as I dare not pretend to deserve thy Thanks so I conceive I cannot justly incurr thy censure For it is not in complyance with my peculiar inclinations which of themselves are well known to be sufficiently averse from any farther publication of single Sermons but partly to testifie my Obedience to the commands of some Learned and pious Friends partly to frustrate the ill-meant whispers of some unlearned and peevish Enemies How farr I was from a design either to please or to provoke either this or that part of the Congregation And how probably desirous to profit both I leave them both to pass a Judgment not by any one part but by alltogether It would no doubt have been grievous to me to suffer the contumelies of Men for preaching Loyalty and Love and Reformation of Life a tender care of weak Brethren and a Christian Forbearance of one another if I had not thought it an happy lot to suffer ought for His sake who indur'd for mine such contradiction of sinners against himself some affirming he was a good Man and others saying Nay but he deceiveth the People If some are yet so devotedly the Servants of Sin as to hate me for bringing them unwares into the light because the Light hath reproved their evill deeds it cannot be from any hurtfulness either in Me or in the light but from their own sore eyes that their eyes are hurt When Men are exasperated with Lenitives and throw themselves into Paroxysmes after all our Pacifick and most Anodynous applications we ought not sure to think the worse but rather the better of our Praescriptions That Christ Himself could do no miracles amongst the Men of his own Country was only the Fault of their prejudice and unbeliefe That the heat harden's clay is from the untowardness of the clay For if it were wax the heat would melt it Nor is the fault in the Sun but in the Dunghill if the more he shine's on it the worse it smell 's I know that those Lovers of publick Discord whom my endeavours to reconcile have made outragious as they are but few in point of Number so in point of Quality they are of smallest Consideration And I know there are many most worthy persons whom the Virulence of mine enemies hath made my Friends So that if I were studious to promote mine own Interest and did not very much preferr the consideration of their amendment I should not indure as now I shall to sue for peace whilst I am injur'd But still remembring what it is to which as Christians we are appointed or as Souldiers markt out and that we are bound to follow our leader even the Captain of our salvation who was perfected through sufferings I shall cheerfully strive to approve my self as a minister of God by honour and dishonour by evill report and good report as a deceiver and yet true I will blesse being calumniated And being wrong'd above measure I will intreat The more it seems to be impossible to win the inventors of evill things to reconcileableness of Spirit the more will I labour for its Attainment For I will never quite cease to hope because I will never cease to pray that by that powerfull convincing controuling Spirit which stilleth the raging of the sea and the madness of the People we may be knit together in one mind and in one judgment That the present time of our prosperity may prove the Season for our Amendment and change of life that all bitternesse and wrath and anger and clamor and evill speaking may be put away from us with all malice and that as members of one Body whereof Christ Jesus is the Head we may each of us indeavour in our several stations to keep the Unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace That this was really the intent of the Following Sermon the later part of the Sermon will make apparent For what was spoken in reflection upon the darkness of the night was only premised as a Foyl to commend the Day And as a thing without which I could not make an impartial parallel between the Text and the Time Besides that in the method of healing wounds which a flatterer may palliate but cannot cure there is as charitable an use both of the Probe and the Abstersive as there can possibly be of the Oyl and Balsam The Decollation of Gods Anointed which was so farr a Deicide as he was one of those Gods who shall dye like men had been declared by the Parliament before I made my strictures on it to have been a most horrid and hideous Murder And if my censors did not think they had once offended they would not be candidates as they are for a Royal Pardon It being so naturall for a pardon to include and connotate an offence that unlesse we were conscious of having sinn'd we could not sincerely ask God forgivenesse I am not able to ask any for what I have said in the following Sermon tending to Loyalty and Union and the establishment of both upon the only sure Basis of impartiall Repentance and self-revenge untill I am able to be convinced of Unsincerity in my ayme at so good an End or of unlawfullnesse in the means which I have used for its attainment And therefore that which I begg from the Christian Reader is not the favour of a partiall but the Justice of an unpassionate and unbyassed perusall of All that follows Newly Published AN IMPARTIAL INQUIRY INTO THE Nature of Sin In Answer to Mr. Hickman WITH A Postscript touching some late dealings of Mr. Baxter By Mr. Tho. Pierce Rector of Brington Sold by Timothy Garthwait ERRATA PAg. 21. lin. 8. after as read our p. 22. l. 4. for {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} r. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} ibid. l. 16. r. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} p. 26. l. r. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} ENGLAND'S SEASON FOR REFORMATION of LIFE ROM. XIII xii The night is far spent the day is at hand let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armour of light TO make you see how the Text is exactly suitable to the Time as well to the Time when it was written as to the Time wherein it is read It will be needful to entertain you with two such Praeliminary Observables as without which it is impossible to