Selected quad for the lemma: conscience_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
conscience_n	good_a	great_a	sin_n	6,529	5	4.7813	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42940	Gods mercy and justice displayed, in the wicked life and penitential death of Dorothy Lillingstone executed the 7. of April, 1679. at Kennington, for murthering her bastard-childe. Published at her earnest request. With Allowance.		1679 (1679)	Wing G960B; ESTC R223686	10,967	23

own benefit so besotted and foolish a creature is man in that state that though he knows his own good yet he either neglects or disowns it as a trifle nay many times esteems it as an injury to be put in minde thereof From Roderith I removed into Frogmorton-street where likewise in a very honest Family I was well placed wherein I observe the goodness of God in affording me those means of return to himself which my own evil heart at all times eschewed and how well might it now have been with me had God given me grace to have followed the counsell and advice of the Mistresse in whose service I then lived how many harsh reflections of a guilty conscience how many besmeared cheeks and swollen eyes and above all how many sins besides this for which I must go hence and be seen no more might have been spared thereby In this service though often warned against it I became acquainted with a person whose Name though I might have cause yet having forgiven all the world I shall not mention who did prevail upon me to the committing of that crime the issue whereof hath justly contracted my days by him I found my self with childe and upon some difference thereabouts with my aforesaid Mistresse I parted thence and went to live in a very reputable Family within the County of Surrey where I saw the Service of God duely and faithfully administred and every minute met with those examples of good and religious living that had I not been hardned to the highest degree I should certainly have taken notice of it But so strong was the infatuation of the devil upon me at that time that I grew hardened under the means of mercy and the more God extended his kindeness to me the lesse good was wrought on me thereby the sun-beams of his mercy shone upon my clay'y heart only to its hardening whilst the hearts of others were melted like wax into a through-obedience of those commands I trampled upon and spurned at In this condition the devil had brought me and kept me the issue of my body still growing more mature and I senceless of my own folly more regarding the shame of the matter towards me and amongst my acquaintance then the crime I had committed against the great God of heaven and earth whose holy commands I had so repeatedly violated The time of my delivery growing nearer each day then other I had several thoughts of providing for the infant and accordingly had taken a room but the temptations of the devil overpower'd all good resolutions in me and when the hour of bringing forth approached leaving the principles of Christianity and laying aside the bowels and tendernesse of a Mother forgetting the laws of God and nature and disregarding the checks of my own conscience I basely and inhumanly strangled the issue of my womb and strove to conceal as well the sin as shame of this horrid Murther from the eyes of the world by hiding the infant in my Trunk so great so crying a sin that were the blood of Christ or the mercy of God of less value then it is I should utterly dispair of ever obtaining a pardon therefore Lord what a wretched creature is man divested of thy grace how are all those noble faculties wherewith thou didst at first endow him disfigured his highest wisdome perfect madness his greatest mercy extreamest cruelty all his actions foolish and besottedly ignorant the Devills engine to ruine and destroy as well his own as others souls even such a creature Lord am I and can I ever hope to see thy face can thy holiness admit so vile and impure a wretch as my self to be in thy presence I that have so often affronted thy Majesty trampled upon thy honour abused thy mercy I that am a Whore a Murtherer a Lyer the very worst of thy creation can I ever expect thy mercy The Laws of men have left no Asylum for me to fly to and wilt thou oh Lord tender thy bosom to receive and preserve me infinit is thy mercy and thy sons intercession therefore will I not despair This crime thus commited Justice hath overtaken me for and before an earthly Tribunal I have received a most just sentence therefore and am now under the dayly expectation of taking my last farewell of the world and shaking hands with all the follies and troubles thereof which leads me to the second thing premised viz. an account of my present thoughts in relation to the condition my sins have reduced me to the which to methodize for the benefit of others though it is my earnest desire yet am I sensible the task is difficult considering the confusions and disturbances thereof the many mixtures of fears and hopes arising from the different considerations of my former miscariages and present but imperfect assurances wherefore I shall first of all in general lay before you a draft though but an imperfect one of my said thoughts upon my first conviction and then proceed to shew you how God hath pleased to work upon me in order to the settlement of those confusions I was then disturbed with wherefore in the first place no sooner had I received sentence of Death from an Earthly throne but it put me in minde of that sentence I was shortly to receive in the highest Heavens from that God and for those crimes whereby during all my life I had so highly provoked his anger and vengeance against me which consideration filled me with terrors of the Almighty and made me cry out under the weight of my burthen that it was greater then I could bear Hell-fire flasht in my face and the devil who formerly hurried me presumtuously to persist in my impieties now turned the drift of his temtations to force me to despair making use of the memory of my former crimes in all the black aggravations thereof to inhance my infidelities terrifying me with the justice of God who before he had represented as a merciful father ready and easie to forgive his failing children he now shapes as an angry Judge bound to condemn offenders In this condition never was misery greater then the thoughts of that chance I was and am shortly to make neither ever had any creature a more perfect portraiture of the ugliness of sin then at this time I met with Imagine but then how little pleasure or rather how great was my torture in the revolutions of the idle expence of my former hours and days of my former pleasant and as I then thought innocent pastimes These were my torment but how much more how exceedingly and inconceiveably greater was the thoughts of my disobedience to my parents my neglect of God in all the duties of his worship my excessive pride my repeated and continued whoredomes and above all my unnatural destruction of the off-spring of my own body These were as mountains of Lead under which helpless and hopeless I lay overwhelmed my comfort came slowly upon me and though