Selected quad for the lemma: mercy_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
mercy_n	faith_n	grace_n	repentance_n	2,335	5	7.5639	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35029	A second call to a farther humiliation being a sermon preached the 24th of Novemb. last past / by the Right Reverend Father in God, Herbert, Lord Bishop of Hereford, in his Cathedral Church of Hereford.	Croft, Herbert, 1603-1691.	1678 (1678)	Wing C6973; ESTC R4769	18,017	45

foregoing the terrible day of the Lord when mens hearts shall fail and melt away for very anguish and Death it self the terrour of men in prosperity shall be wish'd for in that excessive misery as a comfortable deliverance from the horrible Plagues then poured forth And yet all this put together is as nothing compared to those everlasting flames wherein both Bodies and Souls shall be tormented for ever and ever Reason and Experience both teach us that the anguish of the Soul must needs exceed the sufferings of the body by many degrees for you know 't is the Soul that gives sense unto the body the body without the Soul feels neither lancing nor burning If then the Soul be the fountain of sense and isso powerful as to infuse into a stupid dead lump of earth such smart and nimble feeling you cannot but conclude that the original sense of the Soul is capable of feeling far greater torment than the body We see daily Men in Duels tormented with anger and revenge in their Soul throw their bodies upon the point of their hated Enemies sword and receive deadly wounds one after another without any smaying as if they felt them not the greater torment of the mind making that of the body not sensible nor Death considerable but continue their fury to the last gasp All which plainly shews the anguish of the Soul far exceeds any pain of the body Beloved no man can express no nor fully conceive that horrour and raging madness of a Soul in Hell considering how that instead of that excessive and everlasting pain she might have enjoyed the everlasting glory of Heaven and the incomprehensible felicity the Saints possess in contemplation of God's infinite goodness and love to Man and then to remember how this endless felicity was cast away and endless torment incurred for the enjoyment of most silly momentary joys and base bestial delights This is that torment of torments that never dying Worm of Conscience which eternally gnaws and feeds upon the soul. What man with sensible ears eyes and heart hearing or reading and considering these things with a lively apprehension of that Supream Judge of quick and dead coming in the Clouds with all the Host of Heaven and carrying in one hand that glittering two-edged Sword which wounds to eternal death and in the other that just poising Ballance wherein shall be exactly weighed not only the grievous sins of Murther Adultery Perjury c. but every idle word and every idle thought which alone will make up a Mountain of Sands to weigh us down to the pit of darkness besides a vast number of foul and heavy Crimes to precipitate our guilty souls below the very center of Hell into some unknown gulf as bottomless as our sins are numberless What man I say not wholly petrified and become a very Statue but having a sensible heart in some measure to comprehend the terrour of this severe Judgment-day but will humble himself in Sackcloath and Ashes Yea Beloved had we but a lively full apprehension of it our very heart would be shivered into dust and ashes But yet our Humiliation must not end here in this servile slavish fear we must proceed on farther For though the fear of the Lord be the beginning of Wisdom yet love is the consummation of wisdom The Devils believe and tremble but Christians must believe and love Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart with all thy soul. Love is the fulfilling of the Law And certainly there cannot be any man so extream Ill-natur'd but if he firmly believe what Christ hath done for him must needs love him 't is impossible it should be otherwise What man guilty of Treason Condemned to be hang'd drawn and quarter'd and going to Execution should see the Kings only Son run after him with a Pardon from his Father the Son having undertaken to suffer that cruel death for the condemned person that so satisfaction might be made to Justice for the Treason committed Is it possible this condemned person should not love this wonderful loving Prince No 't is not possible yea so love him as to refuse the Pardon and rather chuse to die himself than suffer so noble so innocent and so loving a hearted Prince to die for his Crime And yet beloved this is much short of our case for this is but one mans dying for another both by nature of equal condition But we have the All-glorious Son of the Almighty God dying for us sinful Worms of the Earth yea and he knew full well when he suffered that shameful cruel Death for us how shamefully and cruelly we would requite this his infinite Love by doing many sinful things as hateful to him as death and so as much as in us lies Crucifie the Lord of glory afresh and put him to an open shame And do we now believe all this to be a real truth and yet go on day by day to do these sinful deeds so hateful to him that hath shewed such infinite love to us Beloved let us not delude our selves 't is impossible any man should be so barbarously ungrateful as to believe this and do thus Wherefore most assuredly we do not believe it And why do we not believe it Was there ever any truth so miraculously attested so convincingly proved by thousands of Witnesses both Christians and Jews Christians with love dying for the truth of it and Jews with hatred to this very day relating the fact Why then do we not believe it No other imaginable reason can be given but that the infinite greatness of such love as God to dye for sinful worms exceeds our belief had God done less for us we should have believed him sooner and served him better O the baseness of our corrupt hard-hearted Nature the more God doth for us the less we do for him who can sufficiently bewail this our miserable condition Such we are all by nature though blessed be God many by his grace are corrected and converted into a better state their hearts being purified by Faith and sanctified by Love humble themselves at our blessed Saviours Feet and there bitterly bewail their manifold transgressions and with all fervency of spirit praise glorifie his infinite love mercy This is true Christian Humiliation and Repentance when out of a due sense of Christs infinite love to us we heartily lament our sinful ingratitude towards such a gracious Saviour who laid down his life a Ransom for us The fear of Gods Judgments is good at first to strike us down to the Earth and make us enter into a serious consideration of our sinful ways and what we have justly deserved the everlasting flames of Hell But then to consider notwithstanding all our undutiful behaviour the infinite love mercy of God to lay on his beloved Son the Iniquities of us all that by his sufferings he might spare us and by his death restore us to everlasting life What heart can then chuse

Parliament will take such a course with them as they shall never be able more to hurt us Is there any man so simple as to think this Hath God no other avenging Arrows in his Quiver than this which now seems to be broken Or hath he no other Workmen to make him Arrows and Darts than Papists When ever God pleases to wound a Nation he never wants instruments the world is too full of such evil workers But truly there needs no more than the Popish Priests whom though you Banish the whole Land you may be sure they will not sit idle abroad but night and day labour to make assisting Parties in Italy Spain and France We find they all have contributed Mony to carry on that devillish work and doubtless they will go on to contribute both Money and Men also as occasion shall serve they will not easily sit down and suffer themselves to be baffled in this design they thought themselves so sure off The Pope and his Emissaries will never rest but strive with all imaginable endeavour to regain England once the prime flower of his triple Crown But put the case we were encompassed with walls of brass as high as Heaven and secured from all the Papists in the world what then Have we not divisions and factions too many amongst our selves to execute Gods a venging wrath one on another God setting Aegyptian against Aegyptian Brother against Brother Father against Son Son against Father till we are utterly consumed And were there but one man left in the world God can cause Worms and Lice to come out of his own Bowels to devour him Humble then your selves under the mighty hand of God 'T is his hand only that can deliver us Except the Lord keep the City the Watchman waketh but in vain and therefore cursed be the man that maketh flesh his arm If this present discovery work so happily upon us as to move us out of love and gratitude to God to humble our hearts in sincere repentance and amendment of life it will be a wonderful Blessing indeed But if as little amendment follow this very great Blessing as the several past judgments I fear this may prove as in dying persons a seeming recovery of Gods favour before our final destruction by his fury Really Beloved I look on this seeming great blessing with a very doubtful heart divided betwixt hope and fear The great sins of this Land make me fear we are no way fit for blessings but according to St. Austins rule mentioned before rather fit for scourges as this may prove and increase the Judgment if no amendment follow Wherefore again and again I beseech you in Christs stead Humble your selves under the mighty hand of God as Nineveh did We cannot have a better pattern for our Humiliation seeing they sped so happily by it See Jonah iii. 6. c. You see Beloved here was entire Humiliation both outward and inward Outward they laid aside their Robes of state and splendor they fasted and mourned and cried mightily to God And so it ought to be when God visits a Nation as I shewed you out of Isa. xxii 12. When God calls to fasting and mourning Sackcloath and Ashes then mirth and jollity feasting and sporting rich and gay cloathing which at other times were tolerable are then very sinful a sin never to be forgiven saith Isay there Beloved I pray you mark it well 't is no such slight matter as many make of it for mirth at such a time is to make a mock at Gods call to Mourning and as it were to out-face him a sin not to be forgiven And now I pray you tell me have we imitated Nineveh in such outward Humiliation or have we done any thing like it Who have laid aside their splendid Garments and gay Cloathing Nay have they not bought new ones new Laces new Ribbands which might very well have been spared in times of mirth and now much fitter employed in buying something to cloath the Naked Whose body is macerated and abated one hairs breadth Nay who hath spared one joynt of meat from his Table and sent it to feed the Hungry Whose Countenance is dejected Whose Mirth abated Whose Laughter stopped What one outward sign of Humiliation doth appear I grant in our own particular Humiliations We are not to put on a sad Countenance as the Hypocrites do but not to do it on publick Humiliations when God calls to Sackcloath and Mourning is as the dissolute Mad-brain'd do who fear not God nor regard Man Were your Father and Mother very sick and in great danger would you flant it and frolick it about sing and dance And when the Father of our Country the Kings sacred Majesty the holy Church our Mother our Laws and Liberty are all in apparent danger will you then do such wild foolish sinful things Consider better what God by his Holy word requires at this time and be not stiff-necked but humble your selves under Gods mighty hand Who doubts but the inward humiliation of the heart repentance of sin and amendment of life is the principal part and that which I chiefly aim at for without this all the rest is mere Hypocrifie But as our Saviour saith This ought you to have done and not to leave the other undone For those outward parts of Humiliation are very much conducing to Repentance as it is Eccles. vii 3. By the sadness of the Countenance the heart is made better Contrariwise A merry heart maketh a chearful Countenance Prov. xv 13. The great sympathy between our Soul and Body makes the one part still partake with the other I pray you observe how the Ninevites humbled their very Cattel by fasting as well as themselves and why St. Gregory answers That the bleatings of the sheep and lowings of the Cattel with such other doleful notes might move the hearts of Men to sadness which is a great preparative to Repentance for then 't is but converting that Passion to the right Object and the work is done Wherefore I earnestly recommend unto you the use of all outward Motives and all little enough to bring us to that true compunction of Heart which our sins deserve And 't is a great evidence our hearts are not truly sorrowful that we are so averse to this outward Humiliation for that Man or Woman that is deeply affected with grief for the loss of their Beloved cannot easily be brought to cloath or eat necessaries and Mirth and Laughter are madness to such Were then our hearts truly sorrowful both for our own sins and the sins of the Land our countenance would not be so jolly nor our clothing so gay nor our diet so luxurious We are all to blame God forgive us Let us then every one humbly and fervently undertake this blessed Work of Reformation the best of us all need it But perchance there may be many well disposed to Reformation yet much discouraged by those more exorbitant Sinners of whom there is little or no hope and you fear lest their crying sins may outcry your penitent tears and bring down some heavy judgment on the Land wherein you shall be sharers however you demean your selves I desire these despairing Creatures first to remember God's most merciful condescension to Abraham supplicating for wicked Sodom who moved the infinite clemency of God to promise to spare that sinful City if he found but ten Righteous persons in it Let your Repentance add ten more and make them twenty and then you will have a better foundation of hope Secondly There is hope that your Repentance may draw on theirs As evil communication corrupt good manners so good will correct evil manners Your Vertue will set off their iniquity so foul as will make the less brazen faced ashamed of their ways and turn to the Lord. Besides Your humble fervent Prayers may move the mercy of God to give some of those greater Sinners Repentance who pray not for themselves And thus the number of wicked ones daily decreasing may come to be so small as God may be moved to root out those few wicked and spare the Land The Husbandman finding but a few Thistles and Briars in his Meadow stocks them up but if they much overspread the ground he plows it up all Thirdly Put the case the worst that may be That God hath decreed the destruction of this Land yet by your humiliation you may escape the Calamity as in Ezek. ix 4 5 6. And the Lord said unto him Go through the midst of the City through the midst of Jerusalem and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof And to the other he said in mine hearing Go ye after him through the City and smite let not your eye spare neither have ye pity Slay utterly old and young both Maids and little Children and Women but come not near any man upon whom is the mark What Heavenly comfort is here for all you that now humble your selves and cry both for your own sins and all the abominations that are done in the Land the Angel of God shall set a mark on your foreheads to preserve you from the evil O beloved we have a most gracious God who never fails to reward those that seek him diligently as I formerly shewed you your tears shall be put into his sacred bottle not one shall fall in vain to the ground but shall be converted into Pearls to be set in a Crown of immortal Glory which our blessed Saviour Christ hath purchased for us by his precious bloud To whom with the Father c. FINIS