Selected quad for the lemma: mercy_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
mercy_n	heart_n	lord_n	way_n	4,954	5	4.7237	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60717	A sober letter, touching predestination and obduration Sent to a minister in the city of Bristol.		1679 (1679)	Wing S4411; ESTC R219110	8,859	14

Influences of his Spirit from them for a moment to try and humble them under the Sense of their Corruption yet with everlasting kindness he will embrace them Isa 54.8 God is said to harden in withdrawing his Grace and ordering and disposing even Men's evil Actions to that end which he hath propounded to himself and in using the means which the Corruption and Malignity of Man's heart and nature perverteth to his own destruction Thus God in his wise Providence ordereth and over-ruleth the Action of Hardning but Man himself is the Cause of the Obliquity and sinfulness of the Action In Scripture we find that God hardeneth Satan hardeneth and Man hardeneth his own heart Man as the instrument Satan as the Worker and Efficient God as the Supreme Judge over-ruling every Action and disposing of it to his own Glory either in a way of Mercy or Justice As in a Ship Man is as the Mariner that worketh Satan the evil Spirit as the Wind and Weather that tempteth and moveth and God as the Steers-man that directeth and governeth all Like as then the Sun hardneth the Clay and the Rain brings forth Weeds not of it self but by reason of the Nature of the Soil which it influenceth So by the Providence and Operation of God after a most secret yet just and holy manner the hearts of wicked men come to be hardened more and more but the only culpable Cause thereof is in themselves and in the Corruption of their Nature and not in God. Sect. 10. Hardness of heart is either natural and inbred which we bring with us into the World or else it is acquired and voluntary and this is an extinguishing of that common Light and Knowledge and Ingenuity which is in Men whereby they make their hearts as hard as an Adamant Stone and wilfully estrange themselves from God or else it is an Additional Hardness inflicted by the just hand of God upon them as a punishment of their Sin Thus God hardned the hearts of Pharaoh and others giving them up to a reprobate sense and the vile lusts of their own hearts Rom. 1.24 28. Again Hardness of heart is either felt or not felt The Reprobate who is given up to hardness of heart and searedness of Conscience is not sensible of that dreadful spiritual Judgment which he lies under nor doth he bewail it but hardness felt when a Man sees and feels with grief and sorrow the deadness and hardness and benummedness of his own heart which doth not relent as it should do at the threatnings and promises of God nor is it thawed and melted with the Mercies and Loving kindnesses of God such a sensible hardness is incident to God's own Children who often complain of it and groan under it as a great and heavy burthen O Lord say they why hast thou made us to err from thy ways and hardned our hearts from thy fear Isa 63.17 Sect. 11. Are we sensible of the hardness and stonyness of our hearts and would we be cured of this great Evil Then 1. Let us diligently search and examine whether we do not indulge our selves in some secret Sin or other which being unrepented of will harden the heart 2. Let us consider the greatness and goodness of that Divine Majesty against whom our hearts are hardned this will be a means to soften them Deut. 10.16 17 18. Job 23.15 16. Psal 95.3 8 9.2 Chron. 30.8 9.3 Above all other things let us meditate on Christ crucified and lay our hard and frozen hearts before the hot Beams of the Sun of Righteousness Mal. 4.2 that they may sensibly feel the force of his gratious influence and so looking up to him by Faith whom we have pierced with our Sins we may thereupon melt and mourn for our sins as one that mourns for his only child Zach. 12.10 'T is observed of the Diamond whose extreme hardness cannot be mollified either by the force of Iron or the violence of the Fire that if it be steeped in the hot blood of a Goat it presently dissolves The Iron Hammer of the Law will not melt and soften our hard and stubborn hearts but if by true Faith and Meditation we bath and plunge then in the pretious Blood of the true Scape-goat the Lord Jesus Christ this will break and melt the heart though it be as hard as an Adamant The sacred Blood of the Physician cures the Disease of the Patient O rare Physician thou that shedst thy Blood And gav'st thy Life to do poor Sinners Good. FINIS