Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	bring_v	grace_n	sin_n	4,351	5	4.7240	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62325	A sermon preached at Blockley in Worcestershire upon the thanksgiving-day, Sept. 9, 1683 by Samuel Scattergood ...	Scattergood, Samuel, 1646-1696.	1683 (1683)	Wing S844; ESTC R8062	11,501	31

A SERMON Preached at BLOCKLEY IN Worcestershire UPON THE Thanksgiving-day Sept. 9th 1683. By Samuel Scattergood M. A. Vicar of Blockley and late Fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge LONDON Printed by J. Heptinstall for Thomas Yeate at the Bell in Duck-Lane 1683. A SERMON Preached on the Thanksgiving-day Sept. 9th 1683. PSALM 64.5 6 7 8 9 10. They encourage themselves in an evil matter they commune of laying snares privily they say Who shall see them They search out iniquities they accomplish a diligent search both the inward thought of every one of them and the heart is deep But God shall shoot at them with an arrow suddenly shall they be wounded So they shall make their own tongue to fall upon themselves all that see them shall flee away And all men shall fear and shall declare the work of God for they shall wisely consider of his doing The righteous shall be glad in the Lord and shall trust in him and all the upright in heart shall glory WE are this day assembled together to pay the tribute of our devoutest praise and thanks to Almighty God as for the latest so perhaps for the greatest Deliverance that ever he hath wrought for this Church and Nation 'T is the onely tribute this which a Creature can pay to his Creatour and 't is that which our Creatour daily expects from us and which he declares to be highly acceptable and well pleasing in his sight Whoso offereth me praise saith he glorifieth me Psal 50.23 But though this duty be continually to be performed by us and as the Apostle exhorts us Eph. 5.20 we ought to give thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ forasmuch as every day every hour we partake of his goodness and taste of his mercy and loving kindness yet then is it especially and most indispensably necessary when by shewing some signal and extraordinary favour toward us God himself calls for it as it were by a voice from Heaven And this is our present case every minute circumstance of which we have described to us and presented to the life in this portion of Scripture I. Here is our danger that threatned us Cursed Sons of Belial combine together and contrive an Hellish Plot to destroy us They encourage themselves in an evil matter c. II. Here is God's gratious deliverance from this danger But God shall shoot at them with an arrow c. III. Here is our duty thereupon All men shall fear c. These are the things which my Text offers to our consideration of which in order And first Here is a Plot contrived to destroy us They encourage themselves in an evil matter they commune of laying snares privily they say Who shall see them They search out iniquities they accomplish a diligent search both the inward thought of every one of them and the heart is deep Which words contain a most exact description of the methods and devices which cunning and malitious Traytors make use of in contriving and managing the most execrable and devilish Plots and Conspiracies for the Subversion of the Government under which they live The Psalmist here traces their footsteps all along pursues them from their infancy to their maturity from their first trembling initiation into Sedition through all their secret whisperings and murmurings their stollen Cabals and Conventicles untill they are become Masters of the Mysteries of Treason and are ripe fruit for the accursed Tree And so I shall endeavour to expose them to your view in the same method that the Royal Prophet hath prescribed to us And First They encourage themselves in an evil matter Though it be most true that all men are conceived and born in sin yet it is as true that no man can all of a sudden and as it were in a moment become a complete sinner and arrive at the height and perfection of Wickedness and Villany But though that secret infection which the sin of our first Parents hath conveyed to all their posterity if it be not subdued and restrained by the grace of God be strong enough and sure enough to bring any man to Hell by breaking out into common and ordinary sins which unrepented of will certainly lead him to the chambers of death yet to become one of Satan's principal Agents one of the chief Ministers of State in the Kingdom of Darkness this requires Pains and Sweat and he must serve a most insufferable Apprenticeship that will attain to it and whosoever will embarque his Soul on this manner for Hell especially if he hath been born and bred in a Christian Church must endure many sad conflicts and storms in his Conscience before he can thoroughly make shipwreck of his faith and fit himself for the desperate attempts of so fatal a voyage When the Prophet Elisha told Hazael what cruelty he should shew toward the Children of Israel 2 King 8. that he should set their strong holds on fire and should slay their young men with the sword and dash their children and rip up their women with child he answers him as if he were astonished at such actions What saith he is thy servant a dog that he should doe this great thing And yet he did doe it afterwards as the story shews us And so likewise it is not at all improbable but the most bloudy minded of all the Traytours that were concerned in this late Conspiracy should a man have surprized him on a sudden and asked him If he would undertake to stab the King or to fire a Blunderbus in his Face before he had been fitly prepared to hearken to such proposals would have rejected the thing with horrour and have lookt upon it to be compared with Nero's insatiable thirst after bloud when he wished that the people of Rome had but one neck that he might destroy them all at a blow For though a man must be beholding to a tender Conscience and to the assistence of the Divine Grace to preserve him from smaller sins and to enable him to abstain from all appearance of evil yet such horrid crimes as this of Treason Assassinating Kings and ruining Kingdoms and procuring the destruction of perhaps more than an hundred thousand innocent persons in a moment I say such villany as this looks so dreadfull and ghastly that even common humanity startles at the sight of it as if Hell it self were open to its view and it had a full prospect of the terrours of the Infernal pit and therefore it is not to be propounded to any persons but such as by a previous preparation are duly fitted and qualified for it And so David tells us here that the Conspiratours lay their designs accordingly and the beginning and rise of all Plots is this They encourage themselves in an evil matter Those that are already thoroughly disposed for Treason themselves that they may draw others into their confederacy labour to possess them with an ill opinion

draw up an exact Scheme and Platform of their whole work assign to every man his particular Office and Station and agree to every little punctilio in what order and method to proceed that their Conspiracy may be sure not to miscarry Thus they search out iniquities And if ever any Traytors did so certainly ours that were concerned in this late Plot did it to the height They accomplished a diligent search they compassed both Sea and Land to gain Proselytes and had their Agents in Holland as well as in England and Scotland and both the inward thought of every one of them and the heart was deep How cunningly they had laid their designs the King hath acquainted us in his Declaration by which we may see how far their malice extended that they aimed not their Blow at his Majesty onely but at all his Loyal Subjects at all that were friends to him and the Church and were resolved not to stay their hands from shedding bloud untill they had thoroughly purged the Nation both of Loyalty and Religion And now we are come to the last Scene of this bloudy Tragedy a Scene that must necessarily end in the death either of the Innocent or of the Guilty either of the Traytors or of the King They say and are resolved that the King shall die but God saith and hath decreed that it shall be themselves They design to shoot Bullets at their Sovereign but God determins to prevent them by shooting an Arrow at them themselves And so I come to the second part of my Text which is God's gratious deliverance from this danger that threatened us But God shall shoot at them with an arrow suddenly shall they be wounded So they shall make their own tongue to fall upon themselves all that see them shall flee away There are many devices in a man's heart saith Solomon nevertheless the counsel of the Lord that shall stand Prov. 19.21 Certainly the devices of these Traytors of ours were many and bloudy Their part was Malice and Cruelty but God's part is Mercy and Justice met together to us Mercy whom he hath delivered Justice to them whom he hath confounded and snared in the work of their own hands They had found out so convenient a place for the execution of their Treason that had the King come by that way according to their expectation it had been morally impossible for him to have made an escape but he must have run directly into the jaws of Death But nevertheless the counsel of the Lord that shall stand The Persons of Kings are sacred they have their Guard in Heaven as well as upon Earth and God himself stands in the congregation of Princes And though sometimes for the sins of a wicked people whom he hath a design to punish he permits even good Kings to fall by the hands of the Sons of Belial yet for one treasonable Plot that he suffers to take effect he disappoints many to shew how tender he is over the Persons of his Vicegerents and that Kings are the particular care and charge of his Providence And never did this Providence of his more clearly and gratiously manifest it self than in those many signal and wonderfull deliverances which he hath wrought for our present King whom he hath so often rescued from the very brink of Destruction and covered with his own hand from the weapons of his enemies and from the instruments of Death And surely he must be an Atheist or worse if possible one that believes there is a God but is resolved to fight against him and flie in his very face if after all this he can either plot or speak evil against him whom Heaven it self hath so plainly declared to be its Favourite But never did the hand of God more visibly appear in his preservation than it did in the discovery and disappointment of this late hellish Conspiracy When the Traytors had gotten all things in a readiness and waited onely for the fatal hour when they had laid their snares so privily and contrived their Plot so strong and sure as they thought that vain was the help of Man then God himself arises to protect his Anointed and to scatter his enemies he shoots at them with an arrow and suddenly are they wounded By a gentle and mercifull correction he prevents a most severe and dreadfull judgment and by a light affliction of one small and inconsiderable part of the Nation he preserves the whole from a most lamentable destruction By a sudden though a very auspicious and happy Fire he drives away the King from his Recreations to make an escape for his Life and so defeats and blasts all the designs of the Traytors This disappointment strook such a terrour into their hearts that although some of them were so hardened in Villany that they presumed to proceed in it still and held farther Meetings and Consults for the carrying it on yet others began to tremble and fear that God fought against them as most certainly he did and so their mischief would return upon their own head and their violent dealing would come down upon their own pate and they should be sure to perish themselves in the Attempt And thereupon they begin to think it high time for them to leave off plotting any farther against the King's Life and to provide if possible for the security of their own by surrendring themselves up to his Majestie 's mercy and making a full confession and discovery of the whole Conspiracy to the utter confusion and ruine of the rest of their Confederates some of them being thereupon immediately apprehended and the rest forced to save their lives by flying from the Sword of Justice exactly according to the words of the Psalmist in my Text So they shall make their own tongue to fall upon themselves all that see them shall flee away And now we have seen what these bloudy-minded men would have done against us and what God hath done for us it is highly reasonable in the next place to bethink our selves of our own duty and to consider what obligations this great Deliverance which God hath wrought for us hath laid upon us And for this David gives us instructions in the remaining part of my Text And all men shall fear and shall declare the work of God for they shall wisely consider of his doing The righteous shall be glad in the Lord and shall trust in him and all the upright in heart shall glory Which words without any nice division of them recommend to us in general these two Duties First A Duty of Thankfulness to God to consider wisely of his doing to declare his work and to praise and magnifie his Name for this great and undeserved mercy which he hath shewed toward us Secondly A Duty of Caution to take heed and beware of such manner of men as these that encourage themselves in an evil matter that commune of laying snares privily and labour to disturb the peace and tranquillity of