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
A39665	Husbandry spiritualized, or, The heavenly use of earthly things consisting of many pleasant observations, pertinent applications, and serious reflections and each chapter concluded with a divine and suitable poem : directing husband-men to the most excellent improvements of their common imployments : whereunto is added ... several choice occasional meditations / by John Flavell.	Flavel, John, 1630?-1691.	1674 (1674)	Wing F1166; ESTC R26136	198,385	305

seared and past feeling Eph. 4. 19. When a member is so mortified that if you lan●e and cut it never so much no fresh blood or quick flesh appears nor doth the man feel any pain in all this then it 's time to cut it off When men give themselves over to the satisfaction of their lusts to commit sin with greediness then are they grown to a maturity of sin when men have slipt the reins of conscience and rush headlong into all impiety then the last sands of Gods patience are running down Thus Sodom and Gomorrah and the Cities about them in like manner gave themselves over to wickedness and strange sins and then justice quickly truss'd them up for an example suffering the vengeance of eternal fire That man is even ripe for hell that is become a contriver of ●in a designer a studentin wickedness one would think it strange that any man should set his invention on work upon such a subject as sin is that any should study to become a dexterous artist this way and yet the Scripture frequently speaks of such whose bellies prepare deceit Iob 15. 35. who travel in pain to bring forth this deformed birth ver 20. who wink with their eyes whilst plodding wickedness as men use to do when they are most intent upon the study of any knotty problem Prov. 6. 13. These have so much of hell already in them that they are more than half in hell already He that of a forward Professor is turn'd a bitter persecutor is also within a few rounds of the top of the ladder the contempt of their light the Lord hath already punished upon them in their obduracy and madness against the light Reader if thou be gone thus far thou art almost gone beyond all hope of recovery Towards other sinners God usually exercises more patience but with such he makes short work When Iudas turns Traitor to his Lord he is quickly sent to his own place Such as are again intangled and overcome of those lusts they once seemed to have clean escaped these bring upon themselves swift damnation and their Iudgment lingers not 2 Pet. 2. 3 20. He that can endure no reproof or controul in the way of his sin but derides all counsel and like a strong current rages at and sweeps away all obstacles in his way will quickly fall into the dead lake Prov. 29. 1. He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy This is a death spot a hell spot where ever it appears From this very sypmtom the Prophet plainly predicted the approaching ruine of Amaziah 2 Chron. 25. 16. I know that God hath determined to destroy thee because thou hast done this and hast not hearkened to my voice He that will not be timely counselled shall be quickly destroyed Lastly when a man comes to glory in his sin and boast of his wickedness then its time to cut him down whose end is destruction whose glory is in their shame Phil. 3. 16. This is a braving a daring of God to his face and with whomsoever he bears long to be sure these are none of them You see now what are the signs of a full ripe sinner and when it comes to this either with a Nation or with a single person then ruine is near Ioel. 3. 13. Gen. 15. 16. It is in the filling up of the measure of sin as in the filling of a vessel cast into the Sea which rowls from side to side taking in the water by litle and litle till it be full and then down it sinks to the bottom Mean while admirable is divine patience which bears with these vessels of wrath whilst fitting for destruction REFLECTIONS CHear thy self O my soul with the heart strengthening bread of this divine meditation Let faith turn every drop of this truth into a soul-reviving cordial God hath sown the precious seed of grace upon my soul and though my heart hath been an unkind soyl which hath kept it back and much hindered its growth yet blessed be the Lord it still grows on though by slow degrees and from the springing of the seed and shootings forth of those gracious habits I may conclude an approaching harvest Now is my salvation nearer than when I believed every day I come nearer to my salvation Rom. 13. 11. O that every day I were more active for the God of my salvation grow on my soul and add to thy faith vertue to thy vertue knowledge c. Grow on from faith to faith keep thy self under the ripening influences of heavenly Ordinances the faster thou growest in grace the sooner thou shalt be reaped down in mercy and bound up in the bundle of life 1 Sam. 25. 29. I have not yet attained the measure and proportion of grace assigned to me neither am I already perfect but am reaching forth to the things before me and pressing towards the mark for the prize of my heavenly calling Phil. 3. 12 13. O mercy to be admired that I who lately had one foot in hell stand now with one foot in heaven But the case is far different with me whilst others are ripening apace for heaven I am withering many a soul plowed up by conviction and sown by sanctification long after me hath quite over-topt and out-grown me my sweet and early blossoms were nipt and blown off my bright morning overcast and clouded had I kept on according to the rate of my first growth I had either now been in heaven or at least in the suburbs of it on earth but my graces wither and languish my heart contracts and cools to heavenly things the Sun and rain of ordinances and providences improve not my graces how sad therefore is the state of my soul Thy case O declining Saint is sad but not like mine thine is but a temporary remission of the acts of grace which is recoverable but I am judicially hardening and treasuring up to my self wrath against the day of wrath Rom. 2. 5. Time was when I had some tender sense of sin when I could mourn and grieve for it now I have none at all My heart is grown stupid and sottish Time was when I had some consciencious care of duty and my heart would smite me for the neglect of it but now none at all Wretched soul what wilt thou do thou art gone far indeed a few steps farther will put thee beyond hope hitherto I stand in the field the long-suffering God doth yet spare me yea spare me whiles he hath cut down many of my companions in sin round about me What doth this admirable patience this long-suffering drawn out to a wonder speak concerning me Doth it not tell me that the Lord is not willing I should perish but rather come to repentance 2 Pet. 3. 9. And what argument is like his pity and patience to lead a soul to repentance Rom. 2. 4. O that I may not frustrate at last the end

of a long suffering God! lest he proportion the degrees of his wrath according to the length of his patience The Poem WHen fields are white to harvest forth you go With Sith's and Sickles to reap down and mow Down go the laden ears flat to the ground Which those that follow having stitcht and bound It 's carted home unto the Barn and so The fields are rid where lately corn did grow This world 's the field and they that dwell therein The Corn and tares which long have ripening been Angels the reapers and the judgment day The time of harvest when like Corn and hay The sading flower of earthly glory must Be mowed down and level'd with the dust The Barns are heaven and hell the time draws nigh When through the darkned clouds and troubled skie The Lord shall break a dreadful trumpet shall Sound to the dead the stars from heaven fall The rowling sphears with horrid flames shall burn And then the Tribes on earth shall wail and mourn The judgment set before Christs awful throne All flesh shall be conven'd and every one Receive his doom which done the just shall be Bound in lifes bundle even as you see The full ripe ears of wheat bound up and born In sheaves with joy unto the owners barn This done the Angels next in bundles binde The tares together as they did combinde In acting sin so now their lot must be To burn together in one misery Drunkards with drunkards pinion'd shall be sent To hell together in one Regiment Adulterers and swearers there shall lye In flames among their old society O dreadful howlings O the hideous moans Of ●etter'd sinners O the tears the groans The doleful lamentations as they go Chain'd fast together to their place o● we The world thus clear'd as fields when harvest 's in Shall be no more a stage for acting sin With purifying flames it shall be burn'd It s stately fabricks into ashes turn'd Cease then my soul to dote on or admire This splendid world which is reserv'd for fire Decline the company of sinners here As thou wouldst not be shackel'd with them there CHAP. XVI Your winter store in Summer you provide To Christian prudence this must be apply'd OBSERVATION GOod husbands are careful in Summer to provide for Winter then they gather in their Winter store food and fewel for themselves and fodder for their cattel He that gathers in Summer is a wise son but be that sleeps in harvest is a son that causes shame Prov. 10. 5. A well chosen season is the greatest advantage to any action which as it is seldom found in haste so it is often lost by delay 'T is a good proverb which the frugal Dutch have among them Bonus Servatius facit bonum Bonifacium a good Saver will make a good Benefactor And 't is a good Proverb of our own He that neglects the occasion the occasion will neglect him Husbandmen know that Summer will not hold all the year neither will they trust to the hopes of a mild and favourable Winter but in season provide for the worst APPLICATION VVHat excellent Christians should we be were we but as provident and thoughtful for our souls 't is doubtless a singular point of Christan wisdom to foresee a day of spiritual straits and necessities and during the day of grace to make provision for it This great Gospel truth is excellently shadowed forth in this natural Observation which I shall branch out into these seven particulars Husbandmen know there is a change and vicissitude of seasons and weather though it be pleasant Summer weather now yet Winter will tread upon the heel of Summer frosts Snows and great falls of rain must be expected This alternate course of seasons in nature is setled by a firm Law of the God of nature to the end of the world Gen. 8. 22. Whilst the earth remaineth seed time and harvest cold and heat winter and summer day and night shall not cease And Christians know that there are changes in the right hand of the most High in referrence to their spiritual seasons If there be a Spring time of the Gospel there will also be an Autmn if a day of prosperity it will set in a night of adversity for God hath set the one over aginst the other Eccles. 7. 14. In heaven there is a day of everlasting serenity in hell a night of perfect and endless horror and darkness on earth light and darkness take their turns prosperity and adversity even to souls as well as bodies succeed each other If there be a Gospel day a day of grace now current it will have its period and determination Gen. 3. 6. Common prudence and experience enables the Husbandman in the midst of Summer to foresee a Winter and provide for it before he feel it yea natural instinct teaches this to the very birds of the air and beasts of the field And spiritual wisdome should teach Christians to exercise their foreseeing faculties and not suffer them to feel evil before they fear it But O the stupifying nature of sin Though the Stork in the heavens knows her appointed time and the Turtle Crane and Swallow the time of their coming yet man whom God hath made wiser than the fowls of the air in this acts quite below them Ier. 8. 7. The end of Gods ordaining a summer season and sending warm and pleasant weather is to ripen the fruits of the earth and give the Husbandman fit opportunity to gather them in And God's design in giving men a day of grace is to furnish them with an opportunity for the everlasting happiness and salvation of their souls Rev. 2. 21. I gave her a space to repent It is not a meer reprieval of the soul or only a delay of the execution of threatned wrath though there be much mercy in that but the peculiar aim of this patience and bounty of God is to open for them a way to escape the wrath to come by leading them to repentance Rom. 2. 4. The Husbandman doth not find all harvest seasons alike favourable sometimes they have much fair weather and meet with no hindrance in their business other times 't is a catching harvest but now and then a fair day and then they must be nimble or all is lost There is also great difference in Soul-seasons some have had a long and a fair season of grace an hundred and twenty years did God wait upon the old world in the Ministry of Noah Long did God wait on the gainsaying Israelites Isa. 42. 14. I have a long time held my peace I have been still and refrained myself Others have a short and catching season all lies upon a day upon a nick of time Act. 17. 30. A proper season neglectd and lost is irrecoverable Many things in Husbandry must be done in their season or cannot be done at all for that

Iewish Proverb When the bricks are doubled then comes Moses And it is a Christian experience When the spirit is ready to fail then comes Iesus according to that promise Isa. 57. 16. REFLECTIONS HOw unlike am I to God in the afflicting of his people The Lord is pitiful when he smites them but I have been cruel He is kind to them when most severe but the best of my kindnesses to them may fitly enough be called severity God smites them in love I have smitten them in hatred Ah what have I done God hath used me as his hand Psal. 17. 14. or as his rod to afflict them Ier. 10. 7. but his end and mine have widely differed in that action Isa. 10. 7. I am but the Scullion or rather the wisp so S●our and cleanse these vessels of glory and when I have done that dirty work those bright souls shall be set up in heaven and I cast into the fire If he shall have judgment without Mercy that shewed no mercy how can I expect mercy from the Lord whose people I have persecuted mercilesly for his sake Is the Lord's Wheat thus threshed in the floor of affliction What then shall I think of my condition who prosper and am let alone in the way of sin surely the Lord looks on me as on a weed and not as his corn and 't is too probable that I am rather reserved for burning than threshing Some there are whom God loves not so well as to spend a rod upon them but faith Let them alone Hos. 4. 17. but miserable is their condition notwithstanding their impunity for what is the interpretation but this I will come to a reckoning with them for altogether in hell Lord how much better is thy afflicting mercy than thy spa●ing severity Better is the condition of an afflicted child than of a rejected bastard Heb. 12. 7. O let me rather feel thy rod now as the rod of a loving father than feel thy wrath hereafter as the wrath of an omnipotent avenger Well then despond not O my soul thou hearest the Husbandman loves his corn though he thresheth it and surely the Lord loves thee not the less because he afflicts thee so much If affliction then be the way to heaven blessed be God for affliction The threshing strokes of God have come thick upon me by which I may see what a tough and stubborn heart I have if one stroke would have done the work he would not have lifted up his hand the second time I have not had a stroke more than I had need of 1 Pet. 1. 6. and by this means he will purge my sin blessed be God for that The damned have infinitely more and harder strokes than I and ●et their sin shall never be separated by their sufferings Ah sin cursed sin I am so much out of love with thee that I am willing to endure more than all this to be well rid of thee all this I suffer for thy sake but the time is coming when I shall be rid of sin and suffering together Mean while I am under my own fathers hand smite me he may but hate me he cannot The Poem THe sacred records tell us heretofore God had an Alter in a threshing floor Where threshing instruments devoted were To sacred service so you find them here I now would teach the thresher to beat forth A notion from his threshold much more worth Than all his corn and make him understand That soul-instructing engine in his hand With fewer strokes and lighter you will beat The Oats and Barley than the stubborn wheat Which will require and endure more blows Than freer grain Thus deals the Lord by those Whom he afflicts He doth not use to strike Offending children with his rod alike But on the ablest shoulders doth impose The heaviest burdens and the less on those Of weaker grace He shews himself a God Of judgment in his handling of the rod. God hath a rate book by him wherein he Keeps just accounts how rich his peop●e be What ●aith experience patience more or less Each one possesseth and doth them assess According to their stock Such as have not A Martyrs faith shall have no Martyrs lot The kinds degrees and the continuance Of all their sufferings to a circumstance Prescribed are by him who wisely swayes The world more than 's right on no man layes Be man or devil the apothecary God's the Physician who can then miscarry In such a hand he never did or will Suffer the least addition to his bill Nor measure nor yet mercy he observes In threshing Babilon for the deserves His heaviest strokes and in his floor she must Be beaten shortly with his flail to dust But Sion's God in measure will debate his children he may smite but cannot hate He beats them true to make their chaff to flye That they like purged golden graines may lye In one fair heap with those bless'd souls that here Once in like manner thrash'd and winnowed were CHAP. XX. The fan doth cause light chaff to fly away So shall th'ungodly in Gods winnowing day OBSERVATION WHen the Corn is threshed out in the floor where it lyes mingled with empty ears and worthless chaff the husbandman carries it out altogether into some open place where having spread his sheet for the preservation of the grain he exposes it all to the wind the good grain by reason of its solidity remains upon the sheet but the chaff being light and empty is partly carried quite away by the wind and all the rest separated from the good grain into a distinct heap which is carried away either to the fire of the dunghil as a worthless thing APPLICATION MEn have their winnowing dayes and God hath his a day to separate the chaff from the wheat the godly from the ungodly who shall both be held up to the wind but only the wicked shall be driven away by it Such a day God hath in this world wherein he winnows his wheat and separates the chaff There is a double fanning or winnowing of men here in this world one is doctrinally in which sense I understand that Scripture Mat. 3. 12. spoken of Christ when he was entring into his Ministerial work His fan is in his hand and he shall throughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the garner but he will brun up the chaff with unquenchable fire The preaching of the Gospel is as a fan in Christs hand and it is as much as if Iohn had thus told the Iews that though there were the many hypocrytical ones among them that had now a place and name among the people of God and gloried in their Church-priviledges yet there is a purging blast of truth coming which shall make them fly out of the Church as fast as chaff out of the floor Thus Christ winnows or fans the world doctrinally The other is judicially by bringing sore and