Selected quad for the lemma: glory_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
glory_n	prepare_v	vessel_n	wrath_n	3,073	5	9.2196	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61251	A vindication of the divine perfections illustrating the glory of God in them, by reason and revelation: methodically digested into several meditations. By a person of honour.	Stair, James Dalrymple, Viscount of, 1619-1695.	1695 (1695)	Wing S5181; ESTC R221836	207,616	368

Whereas it is demonstrably clear by the Context that by the Vessels of Dishonour are meant the hardened obstinate Sinners and by the Vessels of Honour the Elect whose Heart God softneth which appeareth clearly First From the words preceding Why doth he yet find fault For who hath resisted his Will that is no Man can resist his Will if he please to soften him And therefore why doth God complain that so many are hardened The meaning cannot be Why doth God find fault that so many are reprobated For God cannot complain of his own Act of Reprobation which is an Act of his Justice Yea tho it were an Act of his Soveraignty only it is still his own Act but he complaineth of their hardening and therefore it cannot be by his Act but by his Permission which is yet more clear by the words following God willing to shew his Wrath and to make his Power known endured with much Long-suffering the Vessels of Wrath fitted to Destruction and that he might make known the Riches of his Glory on the Vessels of Mercy which he had before prepared unto Glory Where I do remark That God ascribeth unto himself the preparing the Vessels of Mercy unto Glory but that he did not prepare the Vessels of Wrath for Destruction but with much long-suffering Patience endured them which is a clear Evidence that he did only permit them to harden their Hearts and was no way active in it So then the Vessels of Honour are far better said to be the regenerate and softned and the Vessels of Dishonour to be those who have hardened their own Hearts So it is as free for God to have Mercy and soften whom he will and to endure and permit others to harden themselves as it is to the Potter of one Lump to make one Vessel to Honour and another to Dishonour The 6th Reason brought for universal Predetermination is That seeing Freedom is by both Parties acknowledged to be a Power to do or not to do all things requisite for doing being in readiness therefore if God did not determine that Freedom in all Cases it were impossible for him to know how the Creature would determine it self All the Strength of this Reason is That we must deny God's universal Knowledg unless we can show how he knoweth wherein there is no shadow of Consequence for many things certainly we know that they are and yet it is as certain that we know not how they are Shall we therefore because God hath said Who can search the Almighty to Perfection that is none can so search him conclude that he cannot so search himself Yet tho I be far from the Presumption to give a full account how God doth foreknow the Actings of all his Creatures I shall endeavour to clear my self therein so far as my Reach goeth by applying what general Thoughts I have formerly shown more particularly First then I do perceive that of the Actings of Creatures some only may be others must be and a third sort shall be which is more than may be and less than must be These three kinds are evidently distinct and different and seeing God is Omniscient he must not only know what may be and what must be but what shall be tho not necessarily and all the three with equal Clearness and Certainty For there is a great difference between Necessity and Certainty it is true where-ever there is Certainty there is a necessity of Consequence that is that that Knowledg is infallible but not a necessity of Causality that the Cause of that thing certainly known must act necessarily and not freely God knows all his own future free Acts certainly and yet he knows many of them to be by the Freedom of Indifference and not to flow from Necessity that he must have so acted The Acts of Creatures that only may be are known to God by the Faculties and Capacities he hath given to his several Creatures many Acts whereof might be and yet never come to exist As to this Point of God's Knowledg there can be no doubt Secondly The Acts of Creatures which must be are first the Acts of inscient Matter which cannot alter its own Actings because it cannot perceive or know when and where to alter and therefore all these Alterations are from extrinsick Force either from other inscient Matter or from the Force of free Actors So all the Actings and Alterations of inanimate Bodies in the Universe tho they seem to us contingent and accidental yet are all necessary and so may be known by God not only as certain but as necessary except in so far as they are altered by free Actors which come to be considered among free Acts. Thirdly The Acts of Brutes tho they determine themselves by the Perception of Objects yet they do it not freely nor can they act variously all the Circumstances being the same and therefore their Acts are also necessary supposing the Objects which they perceive So that seeing God knows the Objects perceived he must know what Acts will thereupon follow Fourthly There are Acts of free Creatures which are not free but do proceed as the Instincts of Brutes that upon Perception of their proper Objects they will certainly follow Such is the Desire of Well-being or Happiness which Rational Creatures thinking upon it can neither counteract nor suspend These may be known in their Causes no less than the Actings of Brutes and as God hath freely given these useful Propensions he can give the like either as to a singular Act or as to a whole kind of Acts. Fifthly The only Difficulty remains as to God's Knowledg or Fore-knowledg of the free Acts of the free Creatures As to which I perceive that I and it 's like many others have been much mistaken in apprehending the way of the acting of free Creatures supposing that their Appetites and Aversions were altogether free as to most Objects and were directly in their own Power and that Pleasure was a kind of Appetite and Grief of Aversion which were in our Power as other Appetites But upon more accurate Consideration I find that Pleasure and Pain or Grief are neither Acts of our Understanding nor of our Will or Appetite but of a different Faculty given us by God not by necessary Connection with or Consequence from Human Nature but freely at his Option There may be a general Pain or Grief from the tearing of the tender Parts of the Organs of Sense and a common Pleasure from the easy Access of Objects to these Senses But tho all Animals have five Senses these could not make the Diversity of the Pleasures and Pains they find arising from the Perception of Objects One kind of Animals have Pleasure from the Perception of one Object and another kind of Animals have Grief from the Perception of the same tho both have the same Senses and Complexion that such Objects give such variety of Tastes and Smells to the same Senses of different Animals that Men have

repent of Sin and trust in God for Mercy through the Merits of Christ. And when they were told that Adam was once free and was the common Root of Mankind covenanting with God in their Name and therefore as they would have obtained Happiness if he had stood so they must be content with Misery seeing he fell He that takes the benefit of a Bargain must take it with the hazard of the Loss The Sins of an habitual Sinner are more atrocious than his first Sins of that kind and yet less free It was hard to convince them thus that they were in the case of Freedom as to Repentance for while Adam did represent Mankind he could not repent which behoved to presuppose Sin and after Adam had sinned that Covenant was lost and no other Sin of Adam reached all his Posterity but if they had considered that Christ the second Adam had supplied and exceeded the first Adam whereby no Man should be lost but he that refused the Covenant of Grace in the first Motions of it whereby his natural Conscience at least did witness to him that he was a Sinner and thereby deserved to be excluded from God's Favour and yet that God was merciful and gracious to a repenting Sinner but that it could not consist with his Holiness and Purity to reconcile with a Sinner cleaving to his Sin and that God would never suffer him to perish who upon such Motions did not cleave to his Sin It did not thence follow that this Man by the Power of Nature could repent but it was sufficient to convince the Peldgian that God would give him a new supernatural Power to repent and believe All that the Pelagian could reply was that there was no need of a supernatural Power and therefore the Wisdom of God would not choose a superfluous way but would make use of the Powers of Nature Yet the Scripture saith expresly and inculcateth That the Natural Man cannot understand Spiritual Things that are by the Covenant of Grace for which God gave no Capacity to the first Man by his Creation and so none of his Posterity can pretend it by those Powers communicated to Mankind by Creation and Propagation Pelagians did as highly speak of Grace as others but they meant by it only the Powers of Nature 2. There is a new Mistake like to that of the Pelagians taken up by some of the Protestant Church in France and taketh with others which if it be followed will end in Pelagianism but they should not be yet so treated They do not suppose Repentance and Faith to be in the Power of Man but that they are given by God at the time of Conversion yet not by any inward Habit or Power created by God and infused into the Will or Soul of Man but by the Word and other Means of God's Prowidence as when God by Correction lays low a Man's Passions and Lusts which hindered him to give due Attention to the Word of God and then by managing the Word of God and bringing such parts of it to his Thought as is fitted for his Capacity and Circumstances so that he cannot resist it for the Word of God is called the Sword of the Spirit and that it converts the Soul and that the various Expressions in Scripture Line upon Line and Precept upon Precept is contrived to take with several Capacities and Inclinations and that Man being a Rational Creature is always acted by God rationally but infused Habits would be a brute way The Wisdom of God would take the most adapted way the holiest Acts are done by Acts of Reason and Will infused Grace would lead to Enthusiasm and make the Word unnecessary but when the Word prevails it is said to be the ingrafted Word This they think not to be the moral Swasion of the Arminians wherewith Man could prevail but no Angel could so manage the Word it must be the Hand of God alone and seeing Conversion can be that way it were superfluous to add to it other inward Operations of the Spirit In all this there is nothing but the Powers of Nature more subtily managed The whole couse of Scripture is always inculcating the Difference of Grace from Nature If the Pelagians said not the same thing certainly they might have said it but the Scripture saith expresly That the Natural Man cannot know the Things of God because they are spiritually discerned Therefore Man by Nature wants that Sense to discern with Grace is the new Creature and Regeneration the new Birth therefore in Regeneration God must give a new Sense By Nature he hath given five Senses and fitted the Objects with sensible Qualities suted to them all These were not essential to Man God might have given fewer or added more and fitted Qualities for them May he not then give a new Sense for spiritual Things his Word sheweth he doth so which derogates nothing from the Word wherein are the Qualities fitted for that Sense it does not derogate from the Excellency of the natural Light that it cannot work upon a blind Man or that it does require the Sense of Sight The Word of God doth not only excite and promote Grace after Conversion but is a chief Mean to prepare the way for Conversion containing not only supernatural Light by Revelation but reviving and perfecting natural Light manifesting the Divine Perfections the Celestial Glory the way to attain to it the Beauty of Holiness the Deformity of Sin and the dreadful Consequences thereof and so looseth the Mind from that cleaving to Sin that makes the Offer of Grace and Mercy to be despised and rejected But it is not sufficient to turn the Soul to God by Conversion A vertuous Heathen by the Light of Nature may see the Deformity of and may hate gross Vice and may turn from it to that which is comely and convenient for Mankind but can never turn to God to make him the last End The Scripture may much more easily convince but not convert by it self but as it hath the Qualities sutable to make Impressions upon that supernatural Sense and Relish of spiritual Things It discovers not only the Pollutions of the World but those more subtile Sins that Heathens never perceive such as fetting the common Interest of Mankind above the Interest of God the want of the Love and Delight in God and of the Dependance upon him and attributing all good things to him So the ingrafted Word must be in its proper Stock in its own spiritual Sense No Man can refuse that God hath frequently insused Habits in the Soul of Man without the use of any Sense or any Principle in Reason Did not God give the knowledg of Words to Adam and Eve whereby he spoke to them and they to one another yet there was no natural Connection between the Sounds of the first Language and the Thoughts and Things they signified He gave also the Knowledg of many several Languages after Christ's Resurrection not only to the