Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A35149
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Two sermons preach'd before the condemn'd criminals at Newgate, 1695 by B. Crooke.
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Crooke, B. (Banks), b. 1658.
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1695
(1695)
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Wing C7229; ESTC R24803
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18,708
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62
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spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you and when you make many Prayers I will not hear and the reason of this carriage of our Merciful God is most plainly and emphatically given in the Text and is there set down as an act of just Retaliation towards us Then shall they cry unto the Lord and he will not hear them he will even hide his face from them at that time as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings That is though God may for some time seem to be slack as some Men count slackness though for a while he may seem to wink at the repeated Wickedness of ungrateful Mankind and appear by his slowness to Punish as if he never designed it yet this at last will be found a sad mistake and a time will come in which he will surely repay the deeds of the obstinate wicked Person on his own head and will then take example by him and as he in the time of Sin shut his Eyes and clos'd his Ears to God and would have none of his Counsel so in the time of Punishment God will do the same to him And 't will not be an Objection of any weight to tell us that these forecited places do not immediately relate to us Christians but concern the Temporal Calamity of the Jews and do denote that they had a time of Repentance and turning to their God allow'd them which if laps'd by their continuance in Sin they would thereby foreclose themselves and make the Sentence of their Calamity irreversible I say this will be no solution of the case in hand but rather a downright denying of the truth for we know that all things that relate to the Practice of Holiness or the Punishment of Sin all things of this kind that were written aforetime were written for our Example Israel after the Flesh was a Type of Israel after the Spirit that is a Type of Christianity and the Professors thereof and their Canaan did prefigure those Mansions of Rest and Happiness prepar'd for us above And therefore whatsoever did keep them out of that good Land or cut them off from it the same proportionably will cut us off from Heaven and cast us into Hell and this very thing throughout the 3d. and 4th Chapters to the Hebrews is all along urg'd the parallel is exactly and to a tittle carried on by the Apostle and Inferences are continually drawn from thence thus Unbelief or Disobedience says St. Paul kept them in the Wilderness barr'd them out of Canaan and made God swear in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest And then it follows Let us us Christians likewise fear lest a promise being left us of entring into his rest any of you should seem to come short of it And what is point-blank to the purpose in hand chap. 4. v. 7. Again he limiteth a certain day saying To day if you will hear his voice harden not your hearts and then it follows v. 11. let us labour therefore to enter into that rest he means Heaven the resting-Place of Christians lest any man fall after the same example of disobedience or unbelief and 2 Cor. 6. 1 2. he quotes the very words of Isaiah and directly applies them to the state of Christianity We then as workers together with him beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain for he saith speaking of God I have heard thee in a time accepted and in the day of salvation I have succoured thee behold now is the accepted time behold now is the day of salvation So then to Christians there is a time of Salvation a certain prescrib'd time in which their Repentance and sincere Endeavours of Obedience shall be accepted and crown'd with Success and the opposite to this must be some other portion of time in which these blessed advantages being wilfully overslip'd will not be again obtained Some period of this nature there must be even to Christians else the Apostle's comparison of the limited time would not hold good and his last cited words would quite lose their Emphasis and Design Behold now is the accepted time behold now is the day of salvation But what the particular admeasurement of these limits are how far this day of salvation reaches and when 't will be clos'd and shut up by the approach of the unaccepted period is hard distinctly to determine and I am very willing now not to inquire into it but will pass on to the practical Application designed And 1st For you that by the Compassion of God and your Superiors are Mercifully withdrawn from the Condemnation you were under Remember and always bear it in your Mind That you have cryed unto the Lord and he has heard you he has not hid his face from you at this time though you have behaved your selves so very ill in your doings towards him Consider your selves as brands pluck'd out of the fire and regard not so much your Bodies deliver'd from the Grave as your Souls preserv'd from the nethermost Hell Look stedfastly back on the Danger you have escaped and with Tears of Gratitude in your Eyes stand amazed at the Patience Long-suffering and Forbearance of your God not tir'd out by so many Iniquities and repay it not with Falshood and Perjury but let such Gracious usage forcibly lead you to repentance You have as the Psalmist says been foolish people plagu'd for your offence and because of your wickedness you have been fast bound in misery and Iron You have for many days sate in darkness and the shadow of death and been even hard at death's door And you have cryed unto the Lord in your trouble and he has deliver'd you out of your distress he has brought you out of darkness and the shadow of death and broke your bonds asunder O that you would therefore praise the Lord for this his goodness and declare the wonders that he has done for you that you would offer unto him the sacrifice of thanksgiving and tell out his works with gladness And to this purpose make a careful distinction at this juncture between Nature and Grace between Passion and the just sense of your Duty towards God A joyful Surprize a glad Astonishment at your Deliverance may look agreeably well and much like Gratitude may throw you with extasie on your Knees and make you run over all your former Resolutions repeat and vow them all again to indulgent Heaven and yet this may be nothing but the effect of that warmth of Admiration which such a sudden turn in your Affairs will naturally produce and which without more solid fuel will soon again expire All the Motions of Wonder and Joy which seiz'd you at the first notice of your Reprieve were Animal and not Christian for Nature will exult at the unexpected Preservation of her self But I would have you turn them all into the right Channel Rejoice in the Lord fear his Justice and love and
adore his Infinite Mercy towards you and improve them directly to the End intended And you will do so if you make this Act of Grace a new life to your Souls as well as Bodies if with a just abhorrence of your selves and a design for the future to retract them you deliberately consider what were the beginnings of Wickedness and by what progress you arriv'd to that heighth of Iniquity that the Earth was scarce able any longer to bear you And if any of you are accounted unworthy to stay in the Land of your Nativity carry not your old Crimes to New Climates for God can find you out there and punish you for your repeated abuse of Mercy Have always then in your minds the bitter Fruits of Sin the servile Fear Shame and meanness of Spirit it betrays its Votaries to and the Temporal and Eternal Ruin that without Repentance will at length accompany it and hear and forbear and do no more so wickedly And since you have receiv'd such miserable Usage from Vice with a just disdain forsake its Service and for the future zealously ingage for Vertue against which there is no law Call to mind the lost Profession of your Christianity the Grace of God that heaps not Wrath and Misery on our heads but brings salvation teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live righteously soberly and godly in this present world Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works The neglect of this Lesson has cost you dear and the practising of it for the time to come is the only true Return you can make to that Merciful God who has deliver'd your Souls from death your Eyes from tears and now offers his Grace for the future to keep your feet from falling Let the time past of your life therefore suffice to have wrought the lusts of your flesh when you walkt according to the course of this world according to the Prince of the power of the air the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience for your Prayers are heard and more days added to your Life that you should no longer live the rest of your time to the lusts of men but to the will of God There is mercy with God says the Psalmist that he may be feared to be drawn by the cords of a man to be won to our Duty and melted down by loving-kindness is what an ingenuous Temper can hardly withstand but to continue in sin because grace has abounded is the mark of a base abject Nature fit for nothing but ruin and therefore should you forgetful of the Goodness extended towards you abandon your present Safety return to your old Sins and by them be brought into the same condemnation again your Behaviour though never so dejected and full of submission will not be believ'd will move no pity will procure no commiseration because of your renew'd false and perfidious dealings with God and your own Souls And now I shall come to the last and most deplorable Portion of my Discourse to speak particularly to you that are doom'd to dye and to persuade you to endeavour to behave your selves so that though your Temporal Calamity be unavoidable yet your God may not still cover the Eye of his Mercy from you or be deaf to your Requests for pity on your poor Souls And truly I confess I scarce know where to begin or how to find out words mournful enough for your Condition I am sure if you look into your own Consciences every one of you can say I well remember the time when thou O God wast near unto me by thy Grace and the good Motions of thy Spirit that Blessed Spirit which would have been a lamp unto my feet and a lanthorn unto my path if I had not ungratefully turned my back upon it But not to aggravate that which is too heavy of it self or fruitlesly lament but compassionately to help you to regain the Assistance of that Blessed Spirit so needful for you in your present Circumstances I will if the former part of my Discourse has fully bent your minds to good Counsel before it be evidently too late endeavour to shew you a Glimpse of Mercy tho after all my Wishes and Endeavours I must acknowledge that there is but one whole Virtue you are now capable to practice or so to practice as you your selves may judge of the Truth of it but yet 't is a Virtue that will supply the place of a great many others and perhaps by the Mercy of God atone for the Breach of all the rest but if you willingly fail in this and next to the Grace of God it depends wholly on your Will I think you are undone for ever And this Virtue is Sincerity which abhors any evasive Arts or Shifts which excludes all Hypocrisy all Double dealing all feign'd Pretences or deceiving of God or your own Souls it admits no Mixture of Dissimulation or sinister Aim no relying on your own private deprav'd Judgments but a ready unbiass'd Freedom of Mind to impart and lay open every thing plain and naked to be judg'd of by those who sincerely desire to direct you to Heaven And let me beseech you to yield to their advice and trust those whose desire is the Salvation of your Souls rather than those who have done all they can to destroy them And the Ground of this Virtue is Honesty of Heart Uprightness of Intention and God who searches the Heart and sees into the closest Recesses there knows when you act from this Inward Principle and when not and will certainly deal with you accordingly And he that is scarce able to do any thing and yet refuses to do the little he can sullenly lies down in misery and willingly accepts of his destruction But if this be not enough to say as I know not what is enough to rescue you from the blindness and hardness of heart a long train of iniquity has involv'd you in I will yet speak my mind more plainly to you for your Circumstances will not admit Palliation or Delay I know no way to Heaven for you but by abundance of Remorse and Contrition and that manifested to God the World and your own Consciences by Restitution to the utmost of your power and a candid Consession to prevent the like Evils to others which have befallen you And Repentance is scarce any thing else but Restitution join'd with a due Sorrow and Confession a Restoring to God the lost Service of his Creature a Restoring to our Wrong'd Countrey or Neighbours what we have injuriously depriv'd them of and a Restoring our Selves by the Grace of God to the first Dignity of our Nature to the Purity and Holiness which was that Image of God in which we were created And if you will not