Selected quad for the lemma: city_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
city_n	call_v	king_n	people_n	5,295	4	4.4420	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A40093	A sermon preached at Bow-Church, April the Xvith. 1690 before the Lord Maior, and Court of Aldermen, and citizens of London, being the fast-day by Edward Fowler.	Fowler, Edward, 1632-1714.	1690 (1690)	Wing F1720; ESTC R10666	20,196	42

3● c. The Lord will not cast off forever but though he cause grief yet will he have Compassion according to the multitude of his Mercies For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the Children of Men. And the Pathetical Words which I have chosen for my present Subject may give us as great an assurance hereof as any Text in the Bible and before I will repeat them I 'le give you an Account of the Occasion of them In the Four First Verses of this Chapter we find God Almighty by his Prophet making a sad Complaint of the Israelites inexpressibly Vile Returns to him for wonderful Engagements he had laid upon them When Israel was a Child then I loved him and called my Son out of Egypt As they called them so they went from them or as Moses and the Prophets called them to Piety and the Reformation of their Lives so they despised their Calls they sacrificed unto Baalim and burn'd Incense to Graven Images I taught Ephraim also to go taking them by their Arms but they knew not that I healed them Or I took the same Care of these People from their very beginning to be a Nation that tender Mothers take of their weak Children but they never would be perswaded to lay it to heart I drew them with the Cords of a man with Bands of Love or with the greatest Expressions of Love and Kindness which is the best and most proper Method to be taken with Free Agents and I was to them as they that take off the Yoke on their Iaws and I laid meat unto them Or I delivered them out of the most miserable Bondage and gave them a Land flowing with Milk and Honey and fed them in a Miraculous Manner in their Iourney thither through the Barren Wilderness And Verse 5 6. we find their gracious Father so highly provoked by their long intolerable Behaviour towards him as to pronounce very terrible Threats against them viz. They shall not return into the Land of Egypt or they shan't be suffered to flee to the Egyptians who were now their great Friends and on whom they relyed more than on the Divine Safeguard but the Assyrian shall be their King he shall subdue them and carry them away Captive because they refused to return or to return to me after so many earnest Calls And the Sword shall abide in his Cities and shall consume his Branches or choice Men because of their own Counsels Because to save themselves they take forbidden Courses making wicked Alliances and are perpetually revolting and backsliding from me as it follows verse 7. And my People are bent to back sliding from me though they called them to the most High none at all would exalt him Though I sent my Prophets from time to time to admonish them to repent and amend their lives yet they have generally still refused to give Glory to me by harkening to these Admonitions but still persist obstinately in their Rebellions against me But we see after all this as highly as they had incensed the great God against them and as dreadfully Threatned as they now were by Him He yet farther makes good when one would least expect He should that Saying of the Son of Syrach As is His Majesty so is his Mercy This He doth in the Words of my Text How shall I give thee up Ephraim How shall I deliver thee or deliver thee up Israel How can I find in mine heart to be as bad as my Word in Executing such fearful Threatnings How shall I make thee as Admah How shall I set thee as Zeboim How shall I be able to make an utter end of thee as I did of those two and their neighbouring Cities Mine heart is turned within me my Repentings are kindled together My Bowels do yearn towards you still as little as you deserve the least Compassion I feel my Nature strongly inclined to spare you yet a while longer and to give you a longer space for Repentance and I will comply with this inclination As it follows in the next verse I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger I will not return to destroy Ephraim or I will not do it yet for I am God and not man my Compassion is inconceivably beyond what a Mortal man is capable of the Holy one in the midst of thee and I will not Enter into the City or into the Head City Samaria I will not Enter into it in an Hostile manner to make a ruinous Heap of it I say the words of my Text with the verse following contain a most gracious Declaration of Almighty God that he would hold his Hand yet for some longer time from destroying these People after His Patience seemed to be perfectly spent by the Threatnings just before uttered if happily they might at last come to themselves and return to their right minds But we find that these Desperate Wretches would not to the very last be in the least wrought upon either by the most scaring Menaces or astonishing Patience or the most melting and indearing Expressions of Divine Pity and therefore in Conclusion the wrath of God came upon them to the uttermost they were carried away Captive by the King of Assyria and he made a clean riddance of them For to this day they never returned but are quite lost among the Gentiles Where as Iudah returned after seventy Tears from her Captivity under the King of Babylon But we see that God here Expresseth the greatest averseness imaginable to the bringing of utter Ruin upon this Nation if consistently wich the Honour of His Laws and the Wisdom and Righteousness of His Government it could have been avoided From whence we learn That nothing less than apparent Necessity can prevail with the infinitely good God to make his Creatures miserable and much more those whom He hath taken into Covenant with Himself His visible Church and Professors of the true Religion And this will farther appear by these following Considerations First God's Earnest and most Pathetical exciting of sinners to Turn and Repent that Iniquity may not be their ruin is of it self sufficient to assure us hereof His sending His Prophets and Messengers to cry aloud in their Ears Turn ye turn ye from your evil ways Why will ye dye doth assure us of this The Bible is full of Calls to sinners of this Nature inforced with Gracious Promises to those who shall obey these Calls and as scaring Threatnings against those who will not obey them Secondly 'T is God's ordinary Method to give Warnings to sinners before He strikes and what can His meaning therein be but that He may not strike that Repentance and Reformation may stay his Hand and prevent the Blow How many inspired men did He heretofore send upon this Sole Errand Thus did He give warning to the Old World by the Preaching of Noah and his Preparing an Ark for the saving of Himself and His Houshold before He overwhelmed it with an Universal

and be ye horribly afraid be ye very desolate As the Prophet crys out in this same case Ierem. 2. 12. Secondly Will sinners still persevere in this their Madness Will they never return to their wits more Remember this and shew your selves men bring it again to mind O you Transgressors Do I say shew your selves Men as the Prophet did I say farther shew that you are not more Brutish than the very Brutes That you are not inferiour to the Beasts which perish in Prudence or Sagacity in Ingenuity or good Nature Can we take our selves for men and not flee those infinite dangers to which sin exposeth us by sincerely applying our selves to the use of those means which God hath appointed for the avoiding and subduing of it Nay can we believe our selves a better sort of Creatures than the very Devils and not be lead to Repentance by God's unspeakable Goodness and his strange Patience and Long-suffering towards us and his mighty unwillingness to destroy us while there is any hope O let not us of this City and this Kingdom be acting the Israelites still over and over those fearfully hardened People who had even made a Covenant with death and were at an Agreement with Hell and were resolved upon it what ever they suffered in this life nay though they were damn'd for it too in the life to come they would not repent of their wicked doings and return to God let him invite them never to graciously or address himself to them never so pathetically Shall we I say still tread in the steps of those Sons of Belial and be immoveably bent upon holding on in our Rebellion against Heaven as they were Did they fare so well as that we need not be scared from following their Example Shall we mock the Messengers of God as they did Shall we despise his Word and all his Warnings as they did till at length the wrath of the Lord brake forth against us as it did against them until there be no Remedy Truly if so we are more desperate than they were because we are fore-warned of the dismal consequence of such doings by their fearful Example what things happened to them were for Ensamples to us saith S. Paul and they are written for our Admonition upon whom the ends of the World are come 1 Cor. 10. 11. But especially shall we then be more mad than they because our Christianity hath furnish't us with far more powerful Motives to obedience and greater Helps and Advantages as great as theirs were than they had And in no Church in Christendom is the Gospel more truly Preached or better means of Grace afforded than in the Church of England Which is no small Aggravation of our sins How often hath God repented him of the Evil that in all appearance he was just doing unto us and which we had all the Reason in the world to look for from him Look we to it that he be not constrained by us as he was by the perverse Iews to say I am weary of repenting for when once he is so those who have tyred out his Patience shall assuredly find it a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God And though he should still dissipate black Clouds hanging over our heads and shew infinite Compassion still to our Un-reformed Nation as a Nation yet Impenitents in their own Persons shall instead of faring the better fare much the worse for it But let not our Nation or our Church either fancy it self deeper in the Divine Favour than were the Israelites Though we would gladly hope that those Words of Manoah's Wife may be applyed to our present Case viz. If the Lord had pleased to kill us he would not have received a Burnt-Offering and Meat-Offering at our hands neither would he have shewed us all these things nor would as at this time have told us such things as these If the Lord had designed at last to Un-Church us or to make us a Prey to our Enemies he would not we may hope have done such Great Things for us in Answer to the Prayers of good People among us He would not from time to time have so wonderfully discovered the deep-laid Plots of Rome against us nor so strangely have basfled all the Attempts of our Popish Adversaries for the reducing of us to our Old Bondage nor so infatuated the Crafty Iesuites as he did in the last short Reign and turned the Counsels of those Achitophels into folly nor by so many Amazing Providences have sent us Deliverance when we were on the very Brink of Ruine And because we had so few Revolters to Popery and many who were Bad enough in other Respects shewed a great Zeal against the Superstitions and gross Corruptions of that Religion for these Reasons we have I say Incouragement to hope that God will deal nothing so severely with us as he did with the Ten Tribes nor as he did with the Two neither Yet considering the many things he hath for all this against us it will be very strange if we should see those happy days which we lately were apt to promise our selves without first more severely smarting for these things than we have yet done And especially when we reflect upon the Requital God hath had for our late most wonderful Deliverance we may tremble to think how he must needs resent it and how he may punish it Our Church and Nation have had Two such Deliverances within the space of Thirty Years as perhaps never any People in the World except the Iews were blest with in one whole Age But as to the Former of these Deliverances I mean that in 1660 I need not say how lamentably it was abused nor need you sure be minded what dreadful Iudgments did ensue upon the Abuse of it and which came very thick upon one another And in which this City had the far deepest share as it had also in that Guilt which brought them down upon us Nor need I tell you what Reason we had to expect Two far heavier Iudgments than any we have met with or than altogether viz. Popery and Slavery Towards the Introducing of which there was made so great a Progress in the Former of the Two last Reigns and which was apace perfecting in this last But in the Mount was the Lord seen As loudly as our high Provocations called for these Iudgments and such Concomitants of them as have made the French Protestants the most deplorably miserable of all People our infinitely Gracious God seemed to Address Himself to Us as he did to the Israelites in our Text and to say How shall I give you up How shall I deliver you into your Enemies hands How shall I make you as your poor Brethren of France How shall I set you as your Fellow-Protestants of Piedmont Mine heart is turned within me my Repentings are kindled together Nay he did not onely not execute the fierceness of his Anger when we looked for nothing