Selected quad for the lemma: conscience_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
conscience_n	heart_n	sin_n	smite_v	1,347	5	9.5535	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70158	Gods eye on His Israel, or, A passage of Balaam, out of Numb. 23, 21 containing matter very seasonable and suitable to the times : expounded and cleared from antinomian abuse, with application to the present estate of things with us / by Tho. Gataker ...	Gataker, Thomas, 1574-1654.	1645 (1645)	Wing G321; ESTC R7798	128,608	144

of these against the sense that these men would fasten upon it to wit that God saw no sinne at all in Iacob nor transgression in Israel I shall use a fourfold prescription or plea. First that this can not be the meaning of the place because it evidently crosseth the main tenor of the story and the truth of Gods Word For how could God but see those sinnes in that people which so oft he grievously complaineth of professeth to take notice of and to be highly displeased with threatneth to avenge yea not threatned alone so to do but severely and that frequently also punished by plagues and judgements of sundry sorts yea for which he destroyed in the wildernesse the main body of that people which he brought out of Egypt reserving onely their issue to enter upon and enjoy the Land promised them in their stead Or what reasonable creature can be induced to beleive that all this should by God be done when he had so hoodwinked and blindfolded himself that he neither did nor could see that for which he did all this Secondly that Balaam who uttered these words unto Balak did not so understand them nor was of any such mind That which appeares by the advise that he gave unto Balak For as the Nobles of Babylon being well assured that they should never be able to get any advantage against Daniel whereby to ensnare him and bring him into danger save in something that might concern him in his duty to his God solicited Darius to enact and publish such an edict as might straiten him that way so Balaam well wotting that no advantage could be gotten against that people whereby the enemy might be enabled to have the better of them but by making a breach between them and their God advised Balak therefore by the enticements of the daughters of his people to endeavour to enduce them to fornication and superstition to adultery and idolatry two sinnes that are wont to goe hand in hand together that so the wrath of God being incensed against them and his protection withdrawn from them they might either ly open to the enemy or be delivered up by God unto them to be scourged and punished for their sinne But in vain had it been for Balaam to give such counsell to Balak or for Balak to have practised what Balaam suggested had God been so affected towards this people that he could not or would not see or take notice of what was done amisse either in that or in any other kind by them nor would be displeased at all with them for it Thirdly that this sense of the words will not stand with other their own principles but directly crosseth that which themselves otherwhiles averre For when we object unto them against this their position the examples of holy men recorded in Scripture as of Moses of whom it is said that God was angry yea very angry with him for his flinching and hanging back when he was to go on Gods errand to Pharaoh had like to have slain him in his Inne by the way for the neglect of his childs circumcision was displeased with him and Aaron for their incredulity and failings in some unadvised carriages with Aaron also for having an hand in the calf and punished them both with exclusion from possession and enjoyment of the promised Land of David concerning whom it is affirmed that the thing he did in his folly with Bathsheba and in the murther of Vriah was evill in Gods eys himself also confessing that those his sinnes were committed in Gods sight as also that his other sinnes such as he had for some he was falsly charged with were not hidden from him and that God by Nathan sharply reproved him for the same threatning withall to repay his sinne in either kind by the like which accordingly also he did and again that upon the numbring of his people which Satan and his own corrupt heart had put him upon his conscience smote him as having done that which he knew God would take notice of and take to heart as the event sheweth that he did for God not onely signified so much to him by Gad but made him smart for it in his people of Iehoshaphat whom for his assistance of Ahab God by Iehu●s ●s messenger summoned to answer it and gave him notice of his wrath incensed against him for it Of Ezekiah with whom for a vain ostentation of his wealth and state to the Babylonian Ambassadors he was not a little displeased and in displeasure to his no small grief no doubt made known unto him what in after times should become not of all his treasures onely but of his posterity When I say we object unto them these and the like examples of Gods people recorded in Gods Book whose excesses and oversights God beheld and that also with an angry and wrathfull eye they use to tell us that these persons were under the cloud they lived in the times of the Old Testament that it is not now as it was then God saw that in them then which he seeth not in us now It is true that in those times God saw sinne and took notice of it and punished it even in his own justified ones but he doth not so now adaies For not to insist on that which in way of reply might be returned hereunto to wit that the Apostle Paul acknowledgeth no other kind or manner of justification then that whereby Abraham and David were justified from whose examples he draweth an argument to prove men to be in these times justified freely by faith as they also in their times were as also that the Apostle Peter affirmeth that those that lived in those times were saved by the grace yea the free grace for unlesse free it is no Grace of God in Christ Iesus as well as we that live in these dayes Not to insist I say and stay hereupon but to turn them over to their own tenents these men herein deale with us in this argument as the Papists doe in some others For as they to make good that Preists under the Gospel have a power to heare confessions and remit sinnes produce some places out of the Old Testament to prove it whereas yet they themselves confesse that the Preists in those times had no such power and to confirme invocation and intercession of Saints deceased they produce likewise some passages out of those Scriptures when as yet being pressed with the practise of the holy men that then lived who used no such invokements of any deceased they are wont to answer that the Saints in those times deceased could not heare prayers or be prayed to because they remained shut up in limbo and were not gotten yet into heaven In like manner doe these men To prove that God seeth no sinne now in his justified ones they alledge these words of Balaam spoken of the Israel that then was as affirming that God saw no sinne in them and other places likewise where he