Selected quad for the lemma: mercy_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
mercy_n	lord_n	offence_n	sin_n	4,617	5	4.8864	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A89544	The reformed gentleman, or, The old English morals rescued from the immoralities of the present age shewing how inconsistent those pretended genteel accomplishments of [brace] swearing, drinking, [brace] whoring and Sabbath-breaking are with the true generosity of an English man : being vices not only contrary to the law of God and the constitutions of our government both ecclesiastical and civil, but such as cry loud for vengeance without a speedy reformation : to which is added a modest advice to ministers and civil magistrates, with an abridgement of the laws relating thereto, the King's proclamation and Queens letter to the justices of Middlesex, with their several orders thereupon / by A.M. of the Church of England.	A. M., of the Church of England.; Bouche, Peter Paul, b. ca. 1646.	1693 (1693)	Wing M6; ESTC R20084	100,071	189

of the Adversary let us run into God's House embrace his Mercy embrace his Ordinances honour his Holy Name and his Word obey his Commands fulfill all Righteousness and sanctifie his most Holy Day Let us break off our Sins by Repentance and stop those Judgements which threaten us who knows but the Lord will have Mercy and will repent him of the Evil that he hath designed against us that he will dispel the Clouds and make the Sun of Peace and Righteousness to break out upon us making us rejoyce for the time wherein we have suffered Adversity To this End it would not be amiss to cry out From Hardness of Heart from Contempt of thy Holy Word and Commandments from Fornication and all other Deadly Sin from Intemperance and Prophaning of thy most holy Day from all the Judgments which we have most righteously deserved from Lightning and Tempest from Plague Pestilence and Famine from Battle and Murder and from sudden Death Good Lord Deliver us And O Blessed Adorable and Glorious Trinity Remember not our Offences nor the Offences of our Fathers neither take thou Vengance of our sins but Spare us Good Lord Spare thy People whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious Blood and be not angry with us for ever Have mercy upon us Have mercy upon us Have Mercy upon us most Merciful Father Save and Deliver us from all our Sins Confirm and Strengthen us in all Goodness and bring us at length to Life Eternal Amen Amen! A Modest Advice to the Ministers and Civil Magistrates TO make the preceding Discourse the more Effectual it might perhaps be expected that I should add something to the Ministers and Civil Magistrates of this Church and Kingdom and that I should shew how far both of them are obliged in their several Stations the one by the Sword of the spirit the other by that of Justice to do what in them lies to suppress the Reigning Immoralities of the present Age Of which the Vices spoken against in the foregoing Treatise are not the least in Reality tho they may be so in all outward appearance by reason of that little notice the unthinking World takes of them To the Ministers of our Church there is a very little need to say any thing For besides those Worthy and Reverend Prelates whom God's Providence and the Care and Piety of our Princes has placed at the Helm there is a Clergy under them that for Learning Virtue and Sincere not meerly formal Devotion we may dare all the Churches in Christendom to shew its equal Our whole Nation and especially the Metropolis thereof has many of those pious Souls whose Lives and Doctrines go hand in hand to stem that torrent of Atheism and Prophaness which has of late years been so Impetuously breaking in upon us Their Practical Preaching and Moral but withall most Excellent Discourse● now in Print concerning the Reasonableness of the Christian Religion the Loveliness of all that is Good and Virtuous and the Deformity of all that is Bad and Vicious with the like is sufficient proof of their Zeal for the Honour of God and the Good of His Church so that we should wrong them if we thought they stood in need of Instructions to Direct them or of Motives to Incite them to do a Duty which is so Incumbent upon them as to press home for a Reformation of this Degenerate Kingdom when the Glory of their Great Master is so nearly Concerned therein But amidst these Excellent Persons there are it must be Confessed some others that give too open a Scandal to our Holy Religion by their Vile Principles and their Viler Practices Some of these are notoriously Bad and live in Direct Opposition to what they are bound to Preach to others Whilst Others spend their time in dry Notions and insipid Controversies which profit their Congregations but very little if any thing at all As for the first if the Common Obligations they lie under as Men endued with Reasonable Souls if the ordinary Ties of Christianity they are bound with in their Baptism or if the extraordinary Ones they are obliged with in their Ordination are not of force to put them upon mending these their Irregularities yet 't is hoped the Example of the more Strict and Conscientious will shame them to some degree of fervour and cause them to put on the Form at least if they will hot the Power of Godliness But if that will do no good upon them yet 't is presumed the Worthy Fathers of the Church will by their Care and Inspection either remove those that are a Publick Shame unto it or else prevent the Like Mischief for the future by admitting none into Holy Orders but such as they have sufficient Testimony of that they will not by their unsanctified Lives give cause for the contempt of the Clergy I say 't is presumed the Bishops will in their several Diocesses take care of those things which Confidence I ground upon those many excellent Charges which have of late been given in many Visitations After all this I cannot but wonder how any one can so far offer violence to his Reason and Conscience as to live in the Wilfull Breach of any known Duty when he has so many upbraidings from all hands to check him and stare his sins out of Countenance What a dreadful Account they must give of their Cure and that Charge of Souls which is committed to them Sacred Writ will sufficiently inform them and what a weight lies upon their shoulders tho at present so little regarded by them Bishop Burnets Pastoral Care lately published will put them in mind of if they can give themselves but time to read it over and calmly to consider thereon As for those who busie themselves about unprofitable Speculations and matters meerly Controvertal 't were to be wished they would leave off their Heats and Animosities throw aside all Prejudice and Faction for this Sect or that Party and give over Quarreling and Disputing about Modes and Figures about 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Religion the Knowledge or Ignorance of which would neither promote nor hinder our Great Concern 'T were to be wished I say that they would lay aside all such Curious Niceties and Disputable Points fit for none but Schoolmen and wrangling Sophisters to employ their parts upon and that they would reason of Righteousness Temperance and Judgment to come Preach up with the Primitive Christians the necessity and usefulness of a Holy Life lashing Vice and protecting Virtue where e're they find it tho their very Patrons were guilty of the one and their greatest Enemies Masters of the other Such profitable Rules of Morality would better become the Gravity of the Preacher as well as suit with the Capacity and Regulate the Lives and Practices of the Audience than an unintilligible Discourse of an Hour or two long about the Particular Tenets of Calvin Arminius or some other Learned Sophister of the Church which can neither

THE Reformed Gentleman OR THE Old English Morals Rescued From the Immoralities of the Present Age. SHEWING How Inconsistent those Pretended Genteel Accomplishments Of Swearing Drinking Whoring and Sabbath-Breaking Are with the True Generosity of an English Man Being Vices not only contrary to the Law of God and the Constitutions of our Government both Ecclesiastical and Civil but such as cry loud for Vengeance without a speedy Reformation To which is added a Modest Advice to Ministers and Civil Magistrates with an Abridgement of the Laws relating thereto the King's Proclamation and Queens Letter to the Justices of Middlesex with their several Orders thereupon By A. M. of the Church of England Nobilitas sola est atque Vnica Virtus Juvenal Imprimatur Rob. Midgley July 28. 1692. London Printed for T. Salusbury at the King's Arms in Fleetstreet near St. Dunstan's Church 1693. TO THE READER Impartial Reader IF ever any Age needed a Boanerges this Lethargick one of ours certainly does nothing but Thunderclaps and Miraculous Judgments being able to raise Mankind from their dead sleep of Sin and to rouse than from their Carnal Security and Impious Stupidity 'T was this lamentable Prospect of the unconcernedness of the Nation we live in that set me upon the following undertaking Never did any People commit such Enormities and seemed so insensible whether they had been guilty of them or no as our English Vitiosoes at present For if you tell the Prophane Wretch of his Swearing tho the Oath i● scarce out of his Mouth yet you shall hear him avouch by an Oath or two more that he did not Swear If you tax another of being Drunk Pshaw Pshaw crys the Brute that 's a small Fault pray who is free from the Piccadilloes of the Bottle If you charge a Third with Whoring Who replys the Lascivious Spark can forbear indulging the inviting Motions of Flesh and Blood And what man but an Anchorite or Hermit can resist the Impetuous Inclinations of his Youth If in the last place you advise any to be more Religiously Observant of the Lords-Day Why who says the Licentious Libertine has required this at our hands Is it not enough to go twice a day to Church on the Sunday but we must be Puritans and Pharisees at home too This being the true Account of the desperate Case of our debauched Times What remains but that some one should tho I perhaps have not with Rigour and Menaces with Thundrings and Lightnings enough made them sensible of their Condition lest soothing themselves up with the conceit of Gods Mercies and Christ's meritorious Death and Satisfaction for their Sins they remain still in the Suburbs of Hell and dance so long about the Pit of Destruction till they irrecoverably fall into their Eternal Ruin Do the Physitians use gentle Applications and only stroke their Apoplectic Patients No certainly they find Rubbing and Chafing Pinching and Wounding Scarrifying and Cupping little enough to make them recover of their Dead Fit And shall the Soul in as deep an Apoplexy as ever the Body felt have soft things said to her Shall the Obdurate Conscience and the Heart as hard as the nether Milstone be softly anointed as it were with Oyl and bound up as if nothing ailed them Certainly those Balsamicks would do better when the Wound is laid open and searched throughly when the Soul is touched to the quick the Conscience pricked with the Sense of its own Guilt and the Heart brought down to a Melting Bleeding Temper I am confident the Binding up the Sore before it be half Dressed and drawing a Skin over the unhealed Part is a ready way to cause a Grangreen And I am as confident that speaking Peace to a People when there is no Peace belongs to them and the gentle treatment of Vice is the great Cause of its spreading the Contagion and of making the Infected insensible of the Plague till such time as it has got such sure footing that a Cure without a Miracle is despaired of And since things are in such a desperate Case what sober man can forbear wishing that Impiety were reduced into some decree of Modesty and that Wickedness were but scared into Corners that it may at least from henceforth not dare to out-face the Light and boast of its numbers in the Eye of the World And any rational man would be forward to think this might easily be done in a Country where Christianity is professed in its Original Purity and where the Fundamental Laws and Institutions favour the Attempt But alas we find tho we have Statutes to that purpose made to our hands tho the Great Wheels have moved and we might have expected the lesser Orbs would have followed the Motion yet most men stand still and those which do move make but a very tardy motion by reason of the Opposition of a Major Party whose Clamours are so great as to make the suppressing of Prophaness and Debauchery the Great Grievance of the Nation So that tho there should be a Scheme proposed by the Best and Wisest of the Nation for accomplishing the Design tho there were more Laws made to back those already in force yet when that is done it would be to little Effect unless there could be found Persons of that Courage Generosity Conduct and Prudence as might accordingly put the same in Execution But where to meet such as are Endowed with those Qualifications will be the harder Task if we consider that we live at present in a World which never yet was so happy as the Good made the Larger and the Rising Party As Reformed as this Age pretends to be he knows very little of the World that sees not the great need this Corrupted Island has of a Speedy Reformation A Work of so great a Consequence which not only Good Men ought to endeavour but the Bad ought to desire and all ought one way or other to promote But what Rubs and Remora's what Disappointments and unexpected Discouragements has so Necessary a Work met with of late from some who should have been by the Obligation they lie under its forwardest Promoters and Encouragers It would seem too reflecting to insist hereon and therefore I leave the persons concerned to consider with themselves whether they have acted like Christians or so much as like Englishmen in doing what in them lies to hinder so Glorious a Design That we are a People that do need a Reformation That we are not such white and undefiled Creatures as we take our selves to be That as long as we continue in those Open and Crying Sins under which our Land at present groans we cannot expect the Consummation of such Mercies as are already begun for us but a certain fearful looking for of Judgment and Fiery Indignation devouring us from the face of the Earth That all our Pretences to Religion and of our being of this or that Church signifie nothing without a Holy Life and the keeping our selves Pure from the

Souls do who venture their Lives and Fortunes for their King and Country 'T is well known nothing Encourages and Enspirits them more than a dram or two of the Bottle The Life of a Soldier is in his Mornings draught Who is able to endure the hard Marches wet Trenches and the continual Fatigues of a Campaign that is not well warmed within What Man of a thousand would stand out a Field Battle who had not drank largely before For none fight stouter and stand longer the brunt of the Battle then the half-drunk Cavalier 18. To all which I Answer The third Objection Answered that if any Excess was warrantable it would be doubtless in this but Man that boundless headstrong Creature having passed the limits of Reason and Moderation knows not as I hinted before where nor when to stop Hence we perceive the mad Disorders and Mismanagements even of most disciplin'd Armies in an Engagement commonly to arise which perhaps at a general Rendezvous were as well ranged as the best but Drunkenness being the Preparative to the Battle put all out of Frame makes the Soldier giddy and hot spurs him to rash and mad Attempts and engages his Intoxicated Headpiece in such dangers which none but his Hair-brain'd self would run into In this Confusion Right and Left are both alike to your Leader and all such useful words of Command are of no Effect and helter skelter every Man is his own Officer From this disorder in the Camp was it that Benhadad and his Army of Syrians were defeated by a band of Young Israelites * Plutarch from this it was that the Gauls who Besieged the Roman Capitol were by Camillus put to the Sword And believe me 't is a sad Circumstance to die in such a Condition for let them harbour never such good hopes of being saved if they can but cry the Lord have mercy upon my Soul 't is too common the last breath they draw is with a G damme in their Mouths But admit the Wretches be Victors in the Field and become Masters of Bag and Baggage too yet in this hot Blood what Barbarities will they not commit What Outrages will they not offer They 'll put all to the Sword deflour Virgins abuse Widows depopulate Cities and burn down Palaces and the Officers Charge is no more regarded after than it was before the Victory That this is true which I here assert is Evident from those who have already been abroad and are here and there Quartered and Garison'd amongst us When the Liquor is in what Regard have they to Civil or Military to Canon or Common Law They abuse all they meet and if they can fasten upon none else like Savages in their drunken fits they fall foul upon each other But how degenerate is this Valour from the true Conduct and Valour ●hich a sober Consideration of the justness of their ●ause did formerly beget The ancient Fulminant ●egions which gained the Roman Generals so many ●onquests were of another Make and vanquished ●●eir Barbarian Enemies not by being Pot-Valiant ●ut by their Prayers which the being in a drunken ●audlin Humour is a very ill Circumstance to per●●rm 19. Thus have I done considering the Ends which ●re falsly assigned for Drinking to wind up all and ●raw towards a Conclusion Let ●●e Exhort all to the Necessary ●uty of Temperance A Dehortation to fly the Odious sin of Drunkenness drawn from the ill Effects thereof and Dis●ade them from the odious Sin ●f Drunkenness which can be ●one no better then by consi●ering the dismal Effects it produces The Princi●al of which will appear by considering First How ●ar it makes a Breach of that Duty we owe to God ●ur Neighbours and our selves Secondly How much ●e advance Satans Kingdom thereby Thirdly How ●navoidably we incur the falling into divers other Sins And Lastly the Woes against Intemperance mentioned and denounced in the plain and revealed Word of God 20. As to the first of these it has that dismal Effect to make us Guilty of breaking the whole Law The first ill Effect is the Breach of the whole Law Hence has one ingeniously observed that there was no reason for God to forbid it in any Particular precept of the Decalogue since in Effect it was the violation of both Tables For hereby first we offend G● the Father in the Extravagant 〈◊〉 and abuse of those Creatures 〈◊〉 has ordained to be received wi●● Moderation and Thanksgiving Drunkenness is the Violation of our Duty toward God We affront God t● Son by perverting the end for which he came in●● the World which was that the Grace of God reveal● by him in his Gospel might through him bring Salvatio● and appear unto all Men that denying all Vngodlines● and Wordly Lusts they might live Soberly as well a● Righteously and Godly in this World Tit. 2.11 1● We provoke God the Holy Ghost to forsake these o● Intemperate Bodies as filthy Habitations and t● seek out for more wholesome and cleanly Mansions 〈◊〉 we defile his Temple and Eject him by our Imp●●rities and quench his Motions by our Sensualities In a Word we injure the whole Trinity by walking contrary to those Rules of Temperance and Sobriety which are implanted in our Natures by the mere light of Reason or taught us by the written and revealed Word of God By defacing th●● Image of the Deity and putting out that Light o● a Reasonable Soul which the Divine Rays ha● kindled within us by transforming our Godlike Nature and Vpright Forms into the Shape and Deformities of Downright Brutes Drunkenness the breach of our Duty to our Neighbours Nor are we less Guilty of the Breach of our Duty to our Neighbours whether it relate to the Publick Good of Communities or the Private Welfare of Families Drunken Magistrates no Friends to the Publick to the Acts of Justice or those of Charity He cannot be look'd upon as a Friend to the Publick whether we consider him as a Magistrate or as a Subject thereof If a Magistrate what more common than to have the Laws perverted our Courts of Judicature turned Revengers of private Animosities and the like Hence is it that so many partial Hearings and praeter-judicious Proceedings have been not long since in our Courts of Justice whilst the intoxicated Gentleman of the Long Robe has taken upon him to give his Verdict from what he has heard of the Beginning and end of the Cause without any regard to the substance of the Pleading which he has fairly slept away Hence it is from Epicurean Ministers of Justice I mean that the Orphan the Poor and the Widow are put by their Right Hence it is that a Land mourns and the Publick Grievances of any Nation do arise This makes the Wise Man so pathetically to urge It is not for Kings O Lemuel it is not for Kings to drink Wine nor for Princes strong drink lest they drink and forget the Law and pervert

feels in common with the Fornicator or else endures as peculiarly appropriated to his Species of Vncleanness are all sent and come down from above But these are easie Penalties to what are laid up for the Incontinent Impenitent Wretch in that vast Storehouse of Eternity There Pains and Aches Poverty and Want Prisons and Dungeons the Stake and Gibbet and the King of Terrors himself tho' dress'd up in the most for-formidable Colours Rome or the Inquisition can invent would be eligible and vastly to be preferred before what the Adulterer and Adulteress shall then feel The Almighty threatned and he would be a swift witness against the Adulterers Mal. 3.5 and so he is even in this life overtaking them with a Judgment at their heels But in the other World he follows them close and vexes them with all his Storms torments them in good earnest and adds Fuel of Flames to their lustful Souls Be not deceived says the Apostle 1 Cor. 6.9 Neither Fornicators nor Idolaters nor Adulterers nor effeminate persons shall inherit the Kingdom of God And we are assured that Whoremongers and Adulterers God will in a more especial manner Judge Heb. 13.3 What mean the exclusion from that Kingdom and the falling under the Censures of so severe a Judge is too plain to need any Exposition I could wish the Soul who is guilty of the Sin were but halfe so Considerative upon as it is in it's sober fits at least sensible of the Punishment and I question not but it would go a great way towards palling the Desire and retarding the eager Pursuit after such lascivious Amours which are opposite to all these Engagements we lye under both to God and Man 22. But before I proceed it will not be amiss to answer an Objection which too many are apt to make use of in this case An Objection made by the Adulterer And is Adultery such a damning sin may some say How came it to pass then that Abraham the Patriarch and other Holy Men of old indulged themselves therein The Scriptures testifie of them that they walked with God How then could they allow themselves in that which is as you affirm so displeasing to that B●ing whom they so strictly served Had not Jacob his Bilhah and Zilpah as well as his Rachel and Leah Did not David a man after God's own heart keep his Wives and increase the number of his Concubines and Murder Vriab as well abuse Bathshebah And had not his Son Solomon in his youthful days his 700 Wives and 300 Concubines Do you think those went quick into Hell Or if you admit they did repent may not the Greatest do the same And will it not be time enough to write Vanity on all Worldly Pleasures when we have gone through every Scene of them and tasted every Flower in Paradise 23. To all which I Answer What Dispensation had the Fathers of old before Moses I know not but this am I very well assured of by a Mouth that cannot Lye The Objection Answered that from the beginning it was not so He that Created Male and Female at first instituted that Holy Rite of Matrimony and ordained that they twain should be one flesh Whatever the Followers of Lamech did think of the Sacred Tie yet 't is well known by the Mosaic Law that Adultery was by the express words of the Injunction to be punished with death thereby reducing Marriage into its old Channel again wherein it ran at first in Eden And as to David who lived many years after the Jewish Law was published and so cannot be thought to be ignorant thereof I shall not go about to extenuate his Crime by pleading what many unreasonably have the Priviledge he had by being a King as it the Royal Prerogative were a sufficient Protection for the Commission of any extravagancy which his own wild Will and Pleasure could prompt him to No certainly tho' he was accountable to no Humane Judge yet there was one Higher then the Highest to whom he must Answer for all He was but Man the most that can be said for him and was accordingly obnoxious to all the Infirmities of unguarded Flesh and Blood But yet his Adultery was followed with Judgments enough and appropriate to his Crime to leave no room for doubt upon what account they were sent The poor Man sell from one sin to another and to hide his Adultery runs into the Guilt of shedding Innocent ●ood The Death of his Adul●rous 〈◊〉 The Incesto●s Rape of his Daughter The Murde● of his Son Amnon and his Rebellious Absalom's driving him out of House and City and seizing upon his Wives and Concubines were all such marks of Divine Wrath so perpendicularly dropt down upon his Guilt of Adultery that a burblind Spectator must needs know the Cause from its so Natural Effects And hence it was that we find him so often in his Penitentials so frequent in his Miserere Mei's Hence was it that his Bed did Swim and his Couch was watered with Tears and hence it was that ever and anon he did cry out in the Bitterness of his Soul for Mercy Mercy and beg God to Purge and Cleanse him to heal and renew a right Spirit within him complaining of his Bones and Loins of his wounded Conscience troubled Spirit and broken Heart And the Successor of his Throne succeeded him in his Sin and Misery too For he did to use his own Words prove his Heart with Mirth and enjoyed Abundance of Pleasure He had his Moabites and Ammonites Edomites Sidonians and Hittites and all the Train of Pomp and Luxury and drank his Water out of many Cisterns Yet after all he concludes that there was nothing under the Sun but Vanity and Vexation of Spirit and what he accounted his Wisdom was reckoned at last to be but Madness and Folly 24. As to the Hopes and Probability of repenting like Solomon or his Father in their old Age they who object this would do well to consider whether they are sure of imitating them in their Repentance as they are resolute of following them in their Sins Is Regeneration Deluded Souls in your own Power And Repentance at your Beck to come when called for Are you sure of passing through all the Scenes of Pleasure and of knowing when you have so done and of having Hearts after all that so loosned from the Vanities to the which you were so closely United as to be converted in a Moment to God Can a Habit of so long wearing be shook off so easily and the Soul be invested in white Robes on a sudden D' ye think a Sob or two at your last Gasp for then do some imagine it time enough to repent will serve the Turn Or that a Groan in the Last Agony or a Dying Accent or two of your departing Souls will be good Contrition and win upon your so long affronted Creator so as to obtain his Pardon and Atonement for what is past and to make up