Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	evil_a	great_a	sin_n	2,789	5	5.0653	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62599	A sermon preached at Lincolns-Inn-Chappel, on the 31th of January, 1688 being the day appointed for a publick thanksgiving to Almighty God for having made His Highness the Prince of Orange the glorious instrument of the great deliverance of this kingdom from popery & arbitrary power / by John Tillotson ...	Tillotson, John, 1630-1694.	1689 (1689)	Wing T1236; ESTC R6939	16,918	45

A THANKSGIVING-SERMON Imprimatur Z. Isham R. P. D. Henrico Episc. Lond. a Sacris March 4 th 1688 9 A SERMON Preached at LINCOLNS-INN-Chappel On the 31 th of January 1688. Being the DAY Appointed for A PUBLICK THANKSGIVING TO Almighty GOD For having made His HIGHNESS The Prince of Orange The GLORIOUS INSTRUMENT of the Great Deliverance of This KINGDOM from Popery Arbitrary Power By JOHN TILLOTSON D. D. Dean of Canterbury and Preacher to the Honourable Society of Lincolns-Inn LONDON Printed for Brabazon Aylmer at the Three Pigeons against the Royal Exchange in Cornhil And William Rogers at the Sun over against St. Dunstans Church in Fleet-street M DC LXXXIX To the Worshipful the MASTERS OF THE BENCH And the rest of the GENTLEMEN OF THE HONOURABLE SOCIETY OF Lincolns Inn. THough I was at first very unwilling to Expose to the Publick a Sermon made upon so little Warning and so great an Occasion yet upon second thoughts I could not think it fit to resist the Unanimous and Earnest Request of so many Worthy Persons as the Masters of the Bench of this Honourable Society to whom I stand so much indebted for your great and continued respects to me and kind acceptance of my Labours among you for now above the space of Five and Twenty Years In a most grateful acknowledgment whereof this Discourse such as it is in mere Obedience to your Commands is now humbly presented to you by Your most Obliged and Faithful Servant JOHN TILLOTSON Feb. 28 th 1688 9 A THANKSGIVING SERMON EZRA ix 13 14. And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great trespass seeing that thou our God hast punished us less than our Iniquities deserve and hast given us such a deliverance as this Should we again break thy Commandments and joyn in affinity with the people of these abominations Wouldst not thou be angry with us till thou hadst consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor escaping I Am sufficiently aware that the particular occasion of these Words is in several respects very different from the Occasion of this Day 's Solemnity For these Words were spoken by Ezra at a time appointed for Publick and Solemn Humiliation But I shall not now consider them in that relation but rather as they refer to that Great Deliverance which God had so lately wrought for them and as they are a Caution to take heed of abusing great Mercies received from God and so they are very proper and pertinent to the great Occasion of this Day Nay these Words even in their saddest aspect are not so unsuitable to it For we find in Scripture upon the most solemn Occasions of Humiliation that good Men have alwayes testifyed a thankful sense of the goodness of God to them And indeed the Mercy of God doth then appear above measure merciful when the Sinner is most deeply sensible of his own Vileness and Unworthiness And so Ezra here in the depth of their Sorrow and Humiliation hath so great a sense of the greatness of their Deliverance that he hardly knew how to express it And hast given us such a deliverance as this And on the other hand we find that good Men in their most solemn Praises and Thanksgivings have made very serious reflections upon their own unworthiness And surely the best way to make Men truly thankful is first to make them very humble When David makes his most solemn acknowledgments to God for his great Mercies to him how doth he abase himself before Him But who am I and what is my people And so likewise after he had summoned all the powers and faculties of his Soul to joyn in the praises of God he interposeth this seasonable meditation He hath not dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us according to our iniquities The greater and more lively sense we have of the goodness of God to us the more we shall abhor our selves in dust and ashes nothing being more apt to melt us into tears of Repentance than the consideration of great and undeserved Mercies vouchsafed to us The goodness of God doth naturally lead to Repentance Having thus reconciled the Text to the present Occasion I shall for the more distinct handling of the Words take notice of these two Parts in them First Here is a Case supposed should we after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds and since God hath punished us less than our iniquities deserve and hath given us such a deliverance as this should we again break his Commandments Secondly Here is a sentence and determination in the Case Wouldst thou not be angry with us till thou hadst consum'd us so that there should be no remnant nor escaping This is not spoken doubtfully though it be put by way of question but is the more vehemently positive the more peremptorily affirmative as if he had said it cannot otherwise be in reason expected but that after such repeated provocations God should be angry with us till be had consumed us First Here is a Case supposed should we after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great trespass and since God hath punish'd us less than our iniquities deserve and hath given us such a deliverance as this Should we again break his commandments and join in affinity with the People of these abominations In which Words these following Propositions seem to be involv'd which I shall but just mention and pass to the Second Part of the Text. 1. That Sin is the cause of all our sufferings after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great trespass Our evil deeds bring all other evils upon us 2. That great Sins have usually a proportionable punishment after all that is come upon us there is the greatness of our punishment for our evil deeds and for our great trespass there is the greatness of our Sin. But when I say that great Sins have a proportionable Punishment I do not mean that any temporal Punishments are proportionable to the great evil of Sin but that God doth usually observe a proportion in the temporal punishments of Sin so that although no temporal punishment be proportionable to Sin yet the temporal punishment of one Sin holds a proportion to the punishment of another and consequently lesser and greater Sins have proportionably a lesser and greater Punishment 3. That all the Punishments which God inflicts in this Life do fall short of the demerit of our Sins and seeing thou our God hast punish'd us less than our iniquities deserve In the Hebrew it is and hast kept down our iniquities that is that they should not rise up against us The LXX expresseth it very emphatically thou hast eased us of our fins that is thou hast not let the whole weight of them fall upon us Were it not for the restraints which God puts upon his anger and the merciful mitigations of it the Sinner