Selected quad for the lemma: earth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
earth_n	corn_n	hear_v	oil_n	3,037	5	9.7075	5	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85887	A treatise of prayer and of divine providence as relating to it. With an application of the general doctrine thereof unto the present time, and state of things in the land, so far as prayer is concerned in them. Written for the instruction, admonition, and comfort of those that give themselves unto prayer, and stand in need of it in the said respects. By Edvvard Gee, minister of the gospel at Eccleston in Lancashire.	Gee, Edward, 1613-1660.	1653 (1653)	Wing G451; Thomason E1430_1; ESTC R209520	284,427	526

Margin answered him 1 Sam. 7.9 10 and as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering the Philistins drew neer to battel against Israel but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistins and discomfitted them and they were smitten before Israel 2. Somtimes it is successive or effected by degrees when the servants of the Lord in their straits and needs call upon him he often helps them gradatim or by successive steps Two steps more frequently he makes in this work 1. He sends strength and support under and during the affliction or want of the benefit desired 2. And then after he gives them deliverance from it he loosens the bands of their distress and they escape out of it both these we have distinctly noted in divers Scriptures as in that of the Psalm He shall call upon me and I will answer him and mark the degree of the answer which follows I will be with him in trouble there 's the one I will deliver him and honor him there 's the other And again In the day when I cryed thou answeredst me and strengthened me with strength in my Soul there 's the first present support in his exigence which is further amplified after Though I walk in the midst of trouble Psa 138.3 7 thou wilt revive me and then follows in the next words recovery out Thou shalt stretch out thine hands against the wrath of mine Enemies and thy right hand shall save me This double step of relief from God to his people upon their prayer is notably set forth in the Prophet Malachi When the state of things was grown so forlorn Mal. 3.14 c. as that the ordinary sort of Fasters and Prayers concluded it a vain thing to s●●ve God and a profitless course to keep his Ordinances and to walk mournfully before him yet there were some left that truly feared the Lord that spake often one to another in mutual corroborations unto piety and that thought upon the Name of God in diligent and constant calling upon it and observe the issue these have a twofold day set for them and in them have those 2 degrees of help from God successively 1. There is a day when God makes up his Jewels or as Drusius interprets a day when he makes Judgment or proceeds in Judgment and in that day they saith the Lord of Hoasts shall be my Jewels and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him that 's the first day and first step of succor The Lord will own them for his in the evil day he will take care of them as of his choycest and preciousest goods and he will moderate their share of troubles and support them therein so that as it is in the next words there shall be a palpable difference put and discerned betwixt them and the wicked in their sufferings 2. There is another day cometh after a day that shall burn as an oven and in this latter day is that other step of the help of those fearers and seekers of God that is their deliverance and full satisfaction For in that day the proud yea and all that do wickedly shall be stubble and the day that cometh shall burn them up saith the Lord of Hoasts that it shall leave them neither root nor branch But unto you that fear my Name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings and ye shall tread down the wicked for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this saith the Lord of Hoasts I will further note that the latter of these two degrees of Gods return to prayer viz. Deliverance out of trouble or fruition of the thing asked may have its several degrees also As 1. When God raiseth up the means and secondary causes which he will use and sets himself to work by them 2. When he doth carry on and consummate deliverance with them This order he pursued in bringing Israel out of Egypt upon the hearing of their cries and groans he first appears to Moses in Midian and gives him a Call Commission and Instructions to go into Egypt and fetch them out I have heard saith he to them out of the burning Bush their groaning Acts 7.34 and am come down to deliver them and now come I will send thee into Egypt And then Moses and Aaron being joyned together in Egypt and after many goings in there unto Pharaoh for dismission of them and many additions of oppressions upon the Israelites and many miraculous plagues upon Pharaoh his People and Land they are led or posted out of Egypt in one night And in the recovery of the same people long after from their captivity and ruines under the Babylonian the Lord proposeth in his promise several degrees as in the Prophet Hosea And it shall come to pass in that day I will hear saith the Lord Hos 2.21 22 21 I will hear the Heavens and they shall hear the Earth And the Earth shall hear the Corn and the Wine and the Oyl and they shall hear Jezreel and I will sow her unto me in the Earth and I will have mercy on her c. Such a series of causes and operations the Providence of God doth often go through in delivering his people This is spoken figuratively in the Prophet not as if the Heavens and the rest of the inferior Creatures here had a voyce or did pray and we must not understand it as spoken of the order of Gods receiving but of his performing prayers In order of receiving prayer God immediately and only hears Jezreel his people but in order of answer and execution he first hears or answers the Heavens that is puts efficacy and influence into them and then by them into the Earth and by the Earth into its fruits and so comes home to Jezreel and then also Jezreel must be sown in the Earth that is must be cast into the ground and lie under the clods of affliction and be in appearance as dead for a time and then spring up and be restored The smoke of incense which came with the prayers of the Saints Rev. 8.4 and ascended up before God out of the Angels hand by it and them were procured the seven following Trumpets Now these Trumpets the issue and execution of those prayers sounded successively one after another and did accomplish those prayers by so many degrees and the term of their succession and continuance ere all be finished is supposed to be for many years yea divers ages Thus of the second way of prayers receiving its answer and the several steps of it The third and last is that of Commutation The Lord doth sometimes hear and answer the prayer when he doth not give the very thing prayed for There is an answer by way of exchange to wit when God gives in lieu of that which is asked another thing which is as good or better for

of the Sea-bestormed Psa 107. yea out of this universal commiserativeness God is said to hear the cry of brute beasts as of the young Lions of the young Ravens nay to hear inanimate Creatures as the Heavens the Earth the Corn Wine and Oyl Thus it comes to pass that many times very wicked men have their desires and prayers in temporals granted them The Lord took notice of Ahabs humbling himself upon Elijahs reproof and denunciations and because of it he said 1 King 21 29 He would not bring the evil upon his house in his days Wicked Jehoahaz delivered of God into the hands of the Syrian Kings 2 King 13 4 5 He besought the Lord and the Lord harkened unto him and the Lord gave Israel a Saviour so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians Israel in the Psalmist when they under his Judgments sought God and returned and enquired early after God though it was but in flattery and hypocrisie Psa 78.34 Yet he being full of compassion forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not 2. God appeareth to prayer out of that favor which is special and more peculiar he heareth the faithful seekers of him his own children from a neerer impulsive out of a dearer respect and consideration which he beareth towards their persons out of a federal and fatherly love and he embraceth their prayers not only out of a general but out of a special benevolence nor meerly with benevolence but with complacency and acceptation their prayers are as sweet as incense to him To the dwellers in Zion the Prophet saith Isai 30.19 He will be very gracious unto thee at the voyce of thy cry These are the different grounds of Gods hearing prayer Secondly For Gods hiding from prayer he doth it also upon the like different grounds 1. It is some yea most times out of wrath and that is either 1. Judicial or a wrath of loathing and hatred a full pure unallayed anger such he bears to carnal wicked men and to their prayers Zech. 7.12 13 as it is in the Prophet Therefore came a great wrath from the Lord of Hoasts therefore it came to pass that as he cryed and they would not hear so they cryed and I would not hear saith the Lord of Hoasts 2. Or Paternal and Conjugal the wrath of a Father or Husband a wrath tempered with and in time overcome and swallowed up of love intimate and peculiar love a wrath joyned to bowels of mercy such is that in the Prophet Isai 57.17 18 For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth and smote him I hid me and was wroth c. I have seen his ways and will heal him I will lead him also and restore comforts to him and to his mourners Such a wrath as is again exprest by the Lord in the same Prophet In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment Isai 59.8 but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee saith the Lord thy Redeemer Mark well the great difference of this wrath from that which is against others it is the present wrath of a provoked Husband against an offending Wife by which she is widowed cast off and so barren and desolate in her prayers for a time for so are the words before The Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit and a wife of youth when thou wast refused saith thy God Again it is a little wrath and but for a moment and a small moment The sum is it is a moderated anger mixed with a dear relation and band of affection to them and it is a short and quickly cooled and forgotten wrath 2. This hiding from prayer is sometimes out of mercy yea it may be in special favor and the favor in withholding may be greater then it would have been to have granted the thing prayed for It may seem otherwise but the very truth is God doth sometimes deny his peoples prayers in indulgence and mercy to them they not seldom are set upon that which would be hurtful for them and ask the things which would be very bad for them to have in this case the want of their desires is better then the grant and God consulteth their good sheweth them favor in withholding their wishes from them Rachel was excessively bent to have children Give me children saith she or else I dye Well at length she had her longing but what came of it she dyed of child-bearing her second child was her Benoni the son of her sorrow so named by her self he was her bane and death As God giveth sometimes in anger so he withdraweth and denyeth sometimes in good-will and love As the natural father will give none but good gifts to his children he will not give his son a stone a Serpent a Scorpion for Bread for a Fish for an Egg So neither will our heavenly Father If the natural father will not exchange good petitions into bad gifts much more will our heavenly Father suspend bad Petitions or exchange them into good gifts * Deus quaedam negat propitius quae concedit iratus August Fideliter supplicans Deo pro necessitatibus hujus vitae misericorditer auditur misericorditer non auditur Quid enim infirmo sit utile magis novit medicus quam aegrotus August apud Aquin 22. qu. 83. art 15. Quid enim ratione timemus aut cupimus Quid tam dextro pede concipis ut te conatus non paeniteat vo●●que peracti evertere domos totas optantibus ipsis dii faciles nocitura toga nocitura petuntur militia Juvenal Saty. 10. Mr Goodwin Return of Prayer Chap. 9. Sect. 3. A worthy Author saith Oftentimes some great cross is prevented by the denyal of a thing which we were urgent for if we had had many of our desires we had been undone So it was a mercy to David that his child was taken away for whose life he was yet so earnest who would have been but a living monument of his shame SECT IV. The Answer to the Query summarily recollected and formed I Have finished the main tractation of the Query propounded in the Explication of the several terms or clauses and have shewed the difference to be noted among them that are stiled the people of God how Prayers are to be grounded both upon Precepts and Promises and the divers ways in which and grounds upon which God doth appear to or hide himself from Prayers I shall now only gather up all into a few Corollaries or summary Propositions fitted by way of Answer to the Query The Question was How or in what sense God may be said to hide himself from his peoples Prayers grounded upon his Promises and seem by his Providences to answer the Prayers which are contrary thereunto I answer 1. They that are the people of God by name outward call profession communion and form of godliness God may hide himself from their