Selected quad for the lemma: mercy_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
mercy_n	hear_v	lord_n	sin_n	15,720	5	5.7661	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A97070	Cordifragium, or, The sacrifice of a broken heart, open'd, offer'd, own'd, and honour'd. Presented in a sermon at St Pauls London, November 25. 1660. By Francis Walsall D.D. chaplain to his Majesty, and prebendary of St. Peters Westminster.	Walsall, Francis, d. 1661.	1661 (1661)	Wing W625; Thomason E1081_4; ESTC R203982	34,513	56

unworthinesse of any of Gods dealings with him his unworthinesse 1. Of any mercy from God 2. Of any relation to God 3. Of any Correction by God 1 He sees his unworthinesse of any Gods mercies to him Jacob breathes out the language of a broken heart Gen. 32. 10. I am less than the least of thy mercies q. d. I have done my best that is my worst to sin away thy mercies by sinning with and against thy mercies I have deserved that thou shouldest curse thy mercies and blast thy blessings to me or take them from me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have lessened my self from thy mercies and made my self unworthy of them I am less than the least of all thy mercies And yet thou art pleased to continue thy greatest to me thy mercy is my miracle that thou canst find in thy heart to doe any good to a thing that is so bad so base so wretched as I am Lord what is man that thou art mindfull of him Ps 8. 4. It is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wretched weake miserable man so the word signifies and I the most miserable of all men Lord what am I miserable sinfull I that thou shouldest yet looke upon me 2. He sees himself unworthy of any relation to God Lord sayes the broken heart I pretend indeed to be thy child and that thou art my father I say our father with them that understand it but Deut. 32. 5. Ge● 37 32 little but none deserves it less O I prophane that holy prayer of my Saviour I blaspheme that gratious name and blast that glorious Relation I thy son no no my sin is not the spot of thy children is this thy sons coate that is besmeared and spotted with uncleannesse rolled in bloud parti-colored with schimes sects errors heresie divisions anger malice slander c. The Spaniards that called themselves the sons of God when they baptized whole sholes of Indians in their own bloud had as just a title to thy sonship as I if I be thy son I am such a son as Absolom a rebellious child that run that sword atilt at his fathers brest in a horrid rebellion that came newlyreeking out of the bloud and bowells of his brother that tongue those hands I sin against man with I fight against God with If I be a son I am a Simeon and Levi of whom their father said after they had murdered the King and the people of Sichem ye Gen. 34. 30. have made me to stink among the inhabitants of the Land the name of God has been blasphemed through me therefore according to thine own Divinity John 8. 44. my father is the Devil for his workes only I have done no no I am not thy son I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son Luk. 15. 18. 3. Nay Lord I am not only unworthy any mercy from thee or any relation to thee but even of any correction by thee as holy Job in the midst of his heart-breaking expostulates it with God Job 7. 17 18. What is man that thou shouldest magnify him and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him And that thou shouldest visit him every morning and try him every moment I am worthy indeed of of punishment to destruction but not to correction Indignus sum quem vel percutias as he said what God sais to proud sinners Es 1. 6. Why should ye be stricken any more ye will revolt more and more That a broken heart sayes to himself why should the Lord take the paines to chasten me why should he loose a correction upon me I am neither worthy to be stroked nor to be struck neither Gods Jacobs hands his softer hands of mercy nor his Esaus hands his rougher hands of justice could doe any good upon me 5. He sighs over his own inability as well as unworthiness to draw near to God in any duty O saies the broken heart the time was I thought my self some body nay like St Paul an Almighty man that I could doe all things I thought Phil. 4. 13. I could have heard read prayed lived up to means and mercies lain at the foot of God in submission when I lay under his hand in affliction and in some measure have performed all the duties the Lord requires of me but now I feele my self fit for nothing but to sin against him I doe not live the life of faith and therefore I cannot breath the breath of prayer thus the Publican stood afarr off and would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven as being unworthy Luk. 18. 13. to looke up to the throne of that great King whose Lawes he had so often broken even in his very addresses to God when his broken heart labouring and panting for the life of grace gasps after nothing more than to enjoy him in a close choise communion Luk. 5. 8. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so Job 7. 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of the sense of Gods Majesty and his misery he is ready to cry out with Peter depart from me for I am a sinfull man O Lord. When he thirst's after nothing more than that God would draw near to him in his drawing near to God yet the sense of his own vileness puts such a check upon his spirit that he is ready to say depart from me when he is most ardently desirous of his presence Lord I shall poison thee wound thee murder thee in thy most saving meanes and mercies I have such a venomed contagious soule therefore I must say though I hope thou wilt not doe so depart from me O Lord for I am a sinfull man 6. When he compares himself with others he bewails himself as worse than any nay worse Me tanquam signiferum peccatorum profiteor Clarius than the worst of sinners so said St Paul 1 Tim. 1. 15. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whome I am chief I know that learned Grotius and some others of great name whose judgment I must beg pardon if I cannot close with in this will have this humble confession of the great Apostle to be nothing but an excess of modesty he knew say they there were ten thousand worse than he but in pure modesty makes himself worse than all but we must becare●ull we doe not make the Apostle to deliver lies he did not use to complement with God or the world and therefore doubtless the sense of his own vileness made him speake so of himself It is a true rule that a broken heart will be vile in its own eyes and as true it is that he that is highest in Gods eye is alwayes lowest in his own eye Ob. But how can this be made good that one of the greatest Saints should think himself one of the greatest sinners is Paul turnd Saul again Sol. It may be made good upon a fourfold acount 1. From the kind of his

5. but I hope I may fasten a spirituall sense upon it it may have one meaning in the letter and another in the spirit Not that I mean it in that gross yet thin sleight way some of our late Allegorists have fancied it notionall Divines that have spun Religion into so fine a thread it will not hold the wearing in practice sleight and light Cob-web-Laun-Divinity which as it hath much of the art of the Spider so it hath not a little of the Venome For the former part of it that Enoch walked with God is wholly spirituall that is as the Apostle elsewhere interprets himself He walked not after the flesh but after the Spirit and why may not the Rom. 8. 1. Cum Jove vivere ●ers Assumptum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ait Basil Sel. sic alti de Elijah other part be so too He was not for God took him that is he was not in himself but God took him to himself in a sense of grace as well as glory He was not or he was nothing but what he was he was in Christ in the Hebrew it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and he was not he very patt to the phrase of the Apostle Gal. 2. 20. I live yet not I but Christ lives in me I and not I Ego non sum ego I am not I I am nothing in or of my self 2. A broken heart is broken not only all to pieces but even those pieces annihilated and made nothing at least to his own eye in respect of his own pains and parts abilityes and endeavours He sees himself such a barren soil that all the manuring and husbandry of art and nature will make no tilth of him bring nothing out of him without Christ as Christ saies John 15. 5. Without me ye can do nothing Such a man hath an excellent wit a stupendious memory a most comprehensive judgement but O if he have nothing of Christ all these excellencies are but flowers and ribbands upon a dead Corpse ut majore cum pompâ descendat ad inferos that he may go to hell in more state Christ is the standard of every mans value A man is worth just as much and no more Jo● 15. 5. as he hath of Jesus Christ Without me ye can do nothing without me ye are nothing A broken heart is sensible that he wants Christ not only for the great work of salvation but for every particular lesser act of a Christian He cannot hear a Sermon without Christ he cannot read a Chapter without Christ he cannot lift up a prayer without Christ The very expression of lifting up a prayer speakes weight and it is such a weight as the lifting up our hands cannot lift up alone And therefore the Apostle sayes Rom. 8. 26. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I appeal to the learned whether this may not be the sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jam. 5. 16. the Spirit helpeth our infirmities but in the Original propriety the Spirit joyns as it were a shoulder to ours to help to lift up this Heave-offering of prayer O the deadness of duties when men throw themselves only upon the wings of their own abilities How are their mouths stopped many times in the middle of a duty How narrow how short do they fall in prayer What dead Sacrifices do they offer to the living God as Mary said to Christ Lord if thou hadst been here my Brother had not died Joh. 11. 21. So certainly the reason why we offer such carkasses of duties is because the Lord is not there This is that which makes our wheeles move so heavily in any services because the Spirit is not in Ezek. 1. 20. the wheels that good Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead doth not raise us from dead works to serving the living God in a living way 3. A broken heart thinks himself nothing in respect of his own aims and ends He is clearly rasa Tabula white Paper not scribled and blurred and blotted with the business and projects of the world he is wholly resolved into his Masters dictates he bids do and he doth it He hath no plots but how he may best serve Christ and makes all other ends truckle under that of serving God in his generation All other people but those whose hearts God hath sweetly and savingly broken have ends of their own and serve themselves upon God even in their pretenses of serving him Jehu will have all the world believe he doth Gods work in destroying the house of Ahab and that it may be taken notice of 2 King 10. 16 he blowes a Trumpet before it Come and see my zeal for the Lord but all was but to serve his own ambitious ends and therefore when God comes to reckon with him and pay him his wages he calls it murther and revenges bloud with bloud Hos 1. 4. I will avenge the bloud of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu The Pharisees did Gods work indeed and it was good work to pray and to give almes c. but they did one Chair for their Master and two for themselves they served their own base pride and covetousness to be seen of men and to devour widows houses And it is worth our observation how God proportions their wages to their works they serve him with works that are outwardly duties and inwardly sins and he payes them with wages that are outwardly rewards but judgements within They have Matth. 6. 2. their reward saith Christ but what is that They pretended my praise but intended their own praise and they have it they have the honour of man but shall never have any of the glory of God I do not go about to catechize you in this point I am much taken off from enquiring into the ends why you came hither with the joy to see you here But yet let me tell you it were very good if you did ask your selves that Question which God did Eliah What dost thou here Eliah Sure I am upon such an enquiry a 2 Kings 9 9. Psal 39. 8. broken heart would return an Answer to this Question by another Question Lord what are my ends And give that Question Davids Answer And now what is my hope truly my hope is even in thee So are my ends only in thee thou art my Alpha and Omega my terminus à quo and my terminus ad quem my beginning my end and my all Lord what are the ends of my faith and prayers and hearing and works of mercy are they not to honour thee my dear Redeemer Curse them curse them blast them Lord if they savour of any interest but that of Jesus Christ My own heart is a witness to me and thou art a witness to my heart that I come not with Herod for curiosity or with the people for loaves but for a dear affection which draws me to thee with a magnetick energy Thy love is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 better then wine Cant.