Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	good_a	suffer_v	suffering_n	2,047	5	9.4271	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49542	Gods wonderful mercy in the mount of woful extremity. Or, the recovered captive Being a plain relation of Gods unspeakable goodness in rescuing one of the meanest of his flock from the paw of the roaring lyon, and pangs of unconceivable horror through long and strong temptations and spiritual desertions. Published 1. For the encouragement of poor distressed consciences, worried with temptations, and almost quite wearied with waiting. 2. For a caution to secure sinners, lest they also come into such or sorer torment. 3. For a call of all (in whose hearts are the ways of God) to bear a part in the high praises of him whose wonders are in the deep. By Charles Langford.	Langford, Charles.	1672 (1672)	Wing L384; ESTC R213608	68,281	168

in the world The razor that he shaves his people with i● an hired one Is 7.20 Acts of punishment ar● called strange acts Is 28.21 God hath none that he thinks fit to own Sin and Satan t is that he must blame if any thing the one for procuring the other for promoting wrathfull dealings against the Soul All this while God and his ways are free 8. Though the just God should lengthen the chains of the devouring Lyon so far as that grace and peace seem to be lost for ever yet the purposes of God to preserve his Elect shall stand fast for ever Such is the wisdom power and love of God to his own that though Satan hath an allowance to disturb them yet shall he never be able to destroy them All his labour shall become fruitless and his thoughts but vain The over-ruling power is still where it was God that I may alude to that of the Apostle never sends forth any single-warrant against his people If the Devil Gods servant be at any time employed upon a message to tempt to trouble to buffet God hath ever some messenger or other at hand commissioned to support to comfort to succour and save his endangered ones 1 Cor. 10.13 this double warrant beareth an equal date and holds an equal pace This may very well pass for one of the wonders which are wrought in the deep In a word God frustrates the councels of Satan turns his furious attempts into tokens of favour overshoots him in his own bow makes that serve for a means of conversion which was intended for nothing but subversion and perdition I hope the Reader will not account me impertinent in all that is here said My design is oh that I were able to do all the mischief that may be to the Kingdom of darkness I mean the wiles of the Devil whereby he endeavours to represent the ways of open sin or formal Religion as the onely pleasant way and desirable to walk in because not observed to trouble its Passengers with fears doubts and distresses about spiritual and eternal things To all which give leave to sum up my answer briefly which is this 1. The ways of God are the only ways that give a true right to solid peace and comfort 2. Sometimes the ways of God may not aford that joy which is desired but then 't is both needful and gainful to have it so 3. 'T is senceless to imagine any Mans person or way to be the better because not troubled in it 4. And yet no age wherein God doth not visit some one or other of the stoutest of his enemies with confounding terrors 5 But the best time to judge whether strict piety or dissoluteness and formality be the most undisturbed way will not be till time is at an end 6. There are but very few of Gods people that are under long and strong disertions 7. All that are so find cause enough to charge their present sufferings upon their former sinful security and the Devil-their enemy but to acquit God and his ways 8. Whom God suffers Satan to rage violently upon he sends help unto and turns all into good This last particular is clearly exemplified in Gods dealings with my self at the first It pleased the Lord who drew me out of my Mothers Womb to lay upon me a violent sickness and that in the days of my ignorance and while under a meer natural and unregenerate state as I said before in which sickness being a Feavor God who is rich in mercy began first to fri●hten my secure Soul into serious apprehensions of its eternal concerns I had under that distemper clearly to my apprehension heaven in its glory hell in its misery and confounding torments set before me and which was that that filled me with anguish I lay under strong apprehensions of Christs forsakings and that my portion lay in that lake of fire this made so deep an impression upon me that to this day I still retain the memory of it nor could any thing but wonderful grace in God have freed me from the terror of its remembrance To what a fearful stand such impressions must needs bring poor Souls possessed thereby cannot be expressed by me nor understood by any one who is a stranger to such passages within his own breast only this I must declare that such was the dread and horrour that then I lay under so strong the delusion of the Devil at that time that Satan made no small advantage thereof in the whole course of his temptations This way which God was pleased to use for my first awakening out of my natural estate wherein I never dreamed of any danger at all gives me occasion to speak a word to these three things 1. The nature and usefulness of such means 2. The desperate design that Satan the common Enemy hath in them 3. The merciful over-ruling hand of God that appeareth therein for the frustration of Satans malitious design and the furtherance of his gratious purposes for his elect As to the first of these I would have none to understand me as if I took such occasions and accidents to be a necessary or proper institution for revealing a mans condition to himself Such things may not be called properly converting Ordinances they have no sufficiency of ●heir own to beget any saving apprehension of the misery of sin and excellency of Christ Nevertheless God can and doth many times make use of such ways as preparatory to the Ministry of Christ by the Gospel Acts 9. As in the case of Paul such providences may astonish confound and fetter ●he sinner and by fear bring him into a willingness to entertain the message of the Gospel The preaching of Faith is the setled fixed ●nstituted means to convert and free the Soul from its fears God speaks not by visions and Revelations Heb. 1.1 but by his Son His Ordinances not ●rovidences are the means of grace yet so as ●hat the one may make way for the other when ●nd in whomsoever he will 2. Touching the design that Satan hath in ●hose tumultuous disquietments raised upon such occasion I have learnt that among the rest these are some of the principal ones that he mainly in ends 1. Present overthrow utter shipwrack and destruction of all hope he would dash and split the soul against the rock of damning desperation 2. And as a consequent thereof help on the bodily distemper dry up the humours of the body by the hurries of the Soul and so if it be possible drag the Soul laden with fears and not yet relieved by faith before the seat of judgement where he that believeth not is sure to be condemned Jon 3.18 3. Or if this fails by recovery out of sickness then his design is to make such wearied ones willing to cast off all thoughts of that which so much troubleth them in the remembrance of and glad to flee to the pleasures of sin to seek for a Remedy He hopes by