Selected quad for the lemma: earth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
earth_n	globe_n	magnitude_n	star_n	2,860	5	11.3541	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45245	A sermon preached at the publick commencement at Cambridge, Sunday in the afternoon, July iij, 1698 by Francis Hutchinson ...	Hutchinson, Francis, 1661-1739.	1698 (1698)	Wing H3831; ESTC R7531	11,786	25

humility as becomes us but the thing would put a strong Expostulation and Plea into the Creatures Mouth I need not speak the Plea at large for such destruction of Virtuous Men is not the Mind of God and they who know God rightly would hardly ask for a Sign or Miracle to convince them that it is not But if the Eternal Duration be granted there is Secondly The greatness of the Glory and Rewards seems hard to be thought true For our Religion does speak glorious and happy things both of the place of Heaven and the Inhabitants that dwell in it And it lets us know moreover that even those great descriptions are but borrowed expressions from such things as we understand but that the Happiness it self is something that is greater than we can yet conceive And for the furthering of us in our Belief of this I will only oppose this present World and work of God which we are sure God hath made and given us for a dwelling-place Let us cast then our Thoughts and Minds through the vast stretch of space in which it stands Consider how it is fill'd with Sun and Moon and Thousand Stars Think of their Mystick Dance so just so strange Their Motions swifter than Bullets fly yet punctual to their time and place Their magnitudes above what Thought can reach yet steady and even in their violent carreer All things vast every thing rapid yet beautiful and unconfused and regular as an Army marches Our Globe of Earth makes one amongst them and bears its part this pondrous Mass half Land half Water with so many Lakes Deserts Forests burning Hills Isles and habitable Lands with our strange Race that dwells upon it We either swim or hang together with our Earth amongst those Stars like an enchanted thing And tho' we see and feel our Earth to be a dead lumpish heap of matter yet it keeps its time and place as steadily as if it was all Thought and Eye And of those who cannot believe there shall be a Heaven I would ask Would they have believed there should have been such a World as this is if it had been told them If these unbelieving Men had been Created before it and it had been lay'd before them by some Messenger from God That God was about to Build such a glorious piece of work for their Habitation Would they not have believed it less and thought it more unlikely than the new Heavens and Earth which we expect now And yet this Fabrick of the World is really a Thousand times greater and more wonderful in it self than it is in our Thoughts For we only behold the Creation as a Travaller should admire some Illustrious Palace through a Prospective from some distant Hill And tho we are indeed dwellers in a little Angle of it We do no more understand the Beauty and Uses and Greatness and Wisdom of God's World than such a distant Observer could Judge of the Contrivance and Convenience of such a House that he views so far off And if instead of being such remote Spectators we could see it at a nearer view If instead of being chained to our little spot we could leave our Earth and raise our selves till we were amongst those Celestial Bodies And with enlarged Minds could comprehend that deep Contrivance by which our Earth and they have made their mysterious course by a perpetual motion And as God hath not made an Herb upon our Earth but for some good end could we see the true and proper end for which God Created those for he did not make such mighty works only to afford that little Light that guides our nights And could we see those great bodies and their true uses as a Stranger views some Noble House from room to room and side to side there would be no more Spirit left in us We should Believe any thing that the Maker of such a World hath Promised And as for Seats of Bliss for Virtuous Souls and Glorious Mansions for those whom this great Creator should delight to Honour instead of objecting the strangeness and difficulty of the thing we should be taken up with humble wonder how great and glorious those Mansions should be This shall suffice for the Second Point Thirdly The Third is the Punishments of the other World And under this Head I shall not offer at any determination how much of the Descriptions we have of them is Literal and how much Methaphorical and Popular let there be as much Metaphor as there will yet since they will be what is suitable and fit for false and impious Men And since they be Eternal for so no doubt the Souls of all Men are both good and bad And since in the case of pain and misery the feeling does alwaies greatly exceed the imagination I doubt not but the concern and apprehension we should really have of them ought in reason to be ten times greater than what the generality of Men have when they hear the most Tragical Representations But to the fears of this sort unbelieving Men oppose the great goodness of God They think the Text I am speaking of is on their side and that they know not God who represent him so Terrible And I Confess the Superlative Descriptions of infinite indulgence and longing for our Happiness and a severity in tormenting us as infinitly inexorable do seem to stand at a wide distance from one another And I believe many expressions of this sort have something ad hominem But whatever allowance may be made to such waies of speaking in other places in this Auditory even upon this Point we must endeavour to speak with just expressions I make not this Preface as if I had any thing to follow it that should lessen the Divine Goodness that would be Blasphemy in the highest God's Goodness is Perfect and so tempered with Wisdom and Justice as makes a fairer and more perfect Character of the Judge of all the Earth than an infinite indulgence would do And as his Goodness in general is perfect his Philanthropy and Love of our Race is sincere and designs our Happiness if we hinder it not our selves He hath given us instances of that in abundance and especially in his sending to us our Saviour and his Gospel for our Salvation But then he hath let us know as effectually that his Love of our Race is not so great as his Love of True Excellency and Virtue and hatred of base qualities He hath given us abundant proof that his indulgence of our Persons is not so infinite but he can very easily make us miserable and shamefull if we make ourselves deserving to be so And tho' great pains and sufferings be included in such a state He hath given us very satisfactory proof that it is not contrary to his goodness but very well agreable with his Nature to suffer base and wicked Creatures to endure them And that we might not flatter and deceive our selves in a matter where all we