Selected quad for the lemma: mercy_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
mercy_n	bless_v	lord_n	name_n	4,919	5	5.6658	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39678	The reasonableness of personal reformation, and the necessity of conversion; the true methods of making all men happy in this world, and in the world to come Seasonably discoursed, and earnestly pressed upon this licentious age. By J.F. a sincere lover of his native countrey, and the souls of men.	Flavel, John, 1630?-1691.	1691 (1691)	Wing F1180B; Wing F1466_CANCELLED; ESTC R214634	80,393	172

The only Thing that makes Men truly happy and perfectly blessed in the World to come By the same Author Isa. 55. 7 8. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon For my thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways my ways saith the Lord. Isa. 1. 18. Come now and let us reason together saith the Lord though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow tho they be red like crimson they shall be as wool 1 Cor. 6. 11 And such were some of you but ye are washed but ye are sanctified but ye are justified c. LONDON Printed for Thomas Cockeril at the Three Legs in the Poultrey over against the Stocks-Market 1691. THE Possibility Nature and Necessity OF CONVERSION Opened and Evinced SECT I. Conviction supposed and Grace admired REason and Conscience have been shaming men out of their Prophaneness in the former Part of this Discourse Free-grace invites them to the Life of Holiness and thereby to the Life of Blessedness in this Second Part. There you see what it is to live like Beasts Here you may see what it is to live like Christians My Charity commands me to suppose that some Readers stand by this time convicted in their own Consciences both of the extream wickedness and the immediate danger of that prophane Course they have heitherto pursued and persisted in And that by this time they begin to interrogate them in the Apostle's close and cutting Language Rom. 6. 21. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed For the end of those things is death 'T is hard to imagine that so many close Debates and Reasonings as you have heard in the former Part should not leave many of you under conviction and trouble of Spirit You see your own Reasons and Consciences have condemned you And if our heart condemn us saith the Apostle God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things 1 John 3. 20. 'T is folly to imagine you shall be acquitted at God's immediate Bar who are already cast and condemned at your own Privy Sessions If this be the happy effect as I hope it is of all the former close and solemn Debates with your Consciences it will naturally and immediately cast thy Soul Reader into great admiration of an astonishment at the patience and long-suffering of God that hath born with thee under a life of prodigious and reiterated provocations until this day And his Goodness will be as admirable to thee as his Patience in that he hath not only suffered thee to live till this day but made it the day of thy Conviction the first necessary step towards thy Conversion and the very first things he entertains thy convinced and troubled Soul with to be the possibility and probability of thy Conversion to God The greatness of his Patience shews his Almighty Power Rom. 9. 22. Nahum 1. 3. But his willingness to pass by all the wrongs you have done him and to be at peace with you discovers the immense riches of his grace Tit. 3. 3 4. That God should be so quick in the executions of his wrath upon your Companions in sin and so patient and long-suffering towards you that have out-sinned them all is such a comparative consideration of his bounty as should even overwhelm the man that beholds it Rom. 11. 22. Behold the goodness and severity of God! on them that fell severity but towards thee goodness If thou be that very man who in the past course of thy Life hast been a prophane Swearer a beastly Drunkard a lascivious person an hater and persecutor of good men and after all this the Lord hath brought an offer of mercy to thy Soul and shall convince thee it is not come too late but that the Door of Hope stands yet open to thee my advice to thee is That thou cast thy self down at the feet of mercy and after this manner pour forth thy laments and desires before the Lord. And is there yet a possibility of mercy O Lord God for such a vile wretch as I have been Can the arms of Free-grace yet open themselves to embrace such a Monster of wickedness as I am Who then is a God like unto thee and what patience mercy and goodness is like thine I have far exceeded others in sin I have lived the Life of a Beast yea of a Devil I have darted thy dreadful and glorious Name with thousands of horrid Blasphemies trampled all thy glorious Attributes under my feet challenged thee to thy very face to do thy worst even to damn me to the pit of Hell I have yielded up this Soul with all its noble Faculties and Powers as instruments of sin unto the Devil and made this Body which should have been the hallowed Temple of thy Spirit to be the noysom Sink or Common-Shore for all unclean and abominable Lusts to run and settle in I have hated reviled and persecuted those that were more strictly sober and godly than my self because their convincing-examples disquieted checked and convicted my Conscience in the eager pursuit of my Lusts and Pleasures I have lived in the prophane neglect of Prayer Meditation Self-reflection and all other spiritual Christian Duties thinking to make an atonement for all by a few hypocritical external Formalities To accommodate my carnal interest in the world I have come ●eeking hot out of an Ale-House or Whore-House to the Table of the Lord where with unhallowed hands and a more unhallowed heart I have crucified again the Lord of Glory and given the vilest affront and despight to that most sacred and precious blood which now must save me or I am lost for ever Thus have I done and because thou kepst silent I thought thee to be altogether such an one as my self But this day hast thou reproved me and set mine abominations in order before me I have tempted and induced many others into the same Impieties with me of whom some are already gone down to the dead and others so fixed and fully engaged in the pursuit of their Lusts that there appear no signs of repentance or recovery in them Thy wrath Lord soon brake forth against the Angels that sinned in Heaven yet hitherto hast thou forborn and spared me who have been highly provoking thee ever since I was born by life of unparallell'd wickedness upon Earth Vile wretch that I am I have despised the riches of thy goodness forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth me to repentance And after all here I am told that there is yet a possibility of pardon mercy and salvation for me The news is so great and so good that I am zealously concerned to exa●●●● the grounds and e●idences of it And if it shall appear to be as true as it is astonishingly 〈◊〉 and ravishingly sweet

guilty because the more wicked Darest thou to warrant it that God will take the less notice of the wrongs men do him because they are used and accustomed so to wrong and abuse him every hour in the day If your Reason can allow and warrant this I must say it is different yea and opposite to the common Reason of Mankind Say not I make my own Reason the Rule and Standard of yours or other mens For I argue here as I have done all along before upon the common Topicks and Maxims of Reason generally allowed all the World over by Mankind If a Practice be evil the oftner it is repeated the more still it is aggravated To be plain and faithful with you Gentlemen if it be your custom to blaspheme 't is God's custom to damn Blasphemers If you use to be drunk and unclean God uses to punish Drunk●rds and Adulterers if impenitent and unreformed with his everlasting wrath And when you are cited as shortly you must be before the awful Tribunal of the great the just and the terrible God ask but your selves whether such a Plea as this be like to excuse you in whole or in part and take off the heinousness of these horrid Impieties Will your prophane Oaths and direful Execrations and Imprecations be excused in the least degree by telling him Lord I was so accustomed to blaspheme thy Name Cursing Swearing and Damning were so familiar Language in my Lips from day to day that I had quite lost the sense of the Action as well as of the evil thereof and therefore Lord pity spare and have mercy on me O damn not my soul to thine everlasting wrath For though I have imprecated it upon my self yet frequent custom at length extinguished all my sense and conscience of the evil thereof till at length I could play with a direful imprecation as an harmless thing nay thought it an ornament and grace to my Speech a gallant Expression alamode the Times and Places I lived in Is not this as good a Plea and not a jot better than that of a Malefactor upon his Tryal for Life and Death when Theft or Robbery have been evidently and substantially proved upon him and the Judge demandeth what he hath to say for himself why Sentence of Death should not pass upon him Mercy my Lord Mercy cries he for I have been so used and accustomed to filching and thieving from my Youth up that for some years before I was apprehended every ones Goods and Cattel seemed to me to look like my own so that I scarce knew when I stole and when I did not And thus Gentlemen you have heard a fair Tryal of the Sin of prophane Swearing and Imprecations of Damnation and you have heard the verdict of your own Reason and Conscience upon the Case The Lord help you to break off and reform that sin for which there is not one word of Apology or excuse now left in your Mouths Let me close all I have to say upon this head with one plain Question Do you think you must die or live here for ever as you now do If you are convinced as all the Living are supposed to be that you must die do you desire an easie and comfortable or a painful and terrible Death I presume there is no man living that is convinced he must die but desires naturally and rationally an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as easy and comfortable a dissolution as may be If so I appeal to your Reason whether prophane swearing and blaspheming the Name of God be a proper rational way to obtain peace and comfort at death With what hope or encouragement can those tongues of yours cry at death Lord have mercy upon me which have prophaned that Name and imprecated Damnation from him till you came into your last extremities which convinced you you could live no longer 'T is a serious Question and well worth a cool and solemn debate in your own Reasons and Consciences Some of you are more immediately exposed to the dangers of death than others ready to be disbanded by a Bullet If you fall you must either fall considerately or inconsiderately If inconsiderately and without any sense or conscience of this horrid guilt you die impenitently and consequently desperately and miserably If considerately and with awakened Consciences I demand Whether such guilt as this will not roar louder than the Peals and Vollies of those great and small Guns do which breathe Destruction upon you and round about you I have done my Message plainly and faithfully to the very face of your Reason and Conscience and if for my faithfulness and zeal both for God's honour and yours I am rewarded with your C●rses yet if you would forbear to blaspheme and ●end in pieces the Name of God I shall not much regard the obloquy and reproach my Name shall undergo and suffer upon that account But I expect from you better fruit than this CHAP. IV. Wherein Reason and Conscience are again consulted about the Practice of Drunkenness and their righteous and impartial Censure given upon that Case SECT I. THough our Souls and Bodies be of vastly different Natures and Originals yet they do clasp and embrace each other with most dear and tender affection 'T is marvellous to behold such a Spiritual and Heavenly Creature as the Soul in all men fervently loving and in most men fondly doting upon a lump of Clay a clod of Earth It sympathizeth tenderly with it If the meanest Member of the Body be in pain the Soul is presently concerned for it and evidences it self to be so by commanding the eyes both to watch and weep the Tongue to complain and moan the Hands to bind up its Wounds with all imaginable tenderness and carefully defend it from the least injurious touch● But if the whole be in danger how do its nobler Faculties of Understanding Memory and Invention awaken and bestir themselves to the uttermost for its deliverance and safety Whilst the Soul lives in union with the Body 't is filled with assiduous and too often with exorbitant and distracting cares for its necessary support and comfort And when it must be separated from it by death what strong aversations to death doth it ordinarily discover The strong tyes and bonds betwixt it and the Body cannot be loosed without much conflict and strugling evidenced by these Emphatical groans it sends forth groans which other men understand not nor can be supposed to understand till they themselves come to feel the parting Pull The reason of all which lies in the intimate relation which is betwixt these different Natures which God hath married together in the Womb from which time they have been companions and partners in all the comforts and troubles of life The Body is the Soul's house in which i● dwells and still shall dwell till death dissolve it 'T is the Soul's Garment that clothes and covers it It hath worn this Garment of Flesh from the beginning and is