Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	let_v	lord_n	pharaoh_n	2,368	5	10.5791	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44687	The reconcileableness of God's prescience of the sins of men with the wisdom and sincerity of his counsels, exhortations, and whatsoever other means he uses to prevent them / in a letter to the Honorable Robert Boyle Esq.	Howe, John, 1630-1705.	1677 (1677)	Wing H3036; ESTC R18027	41,939	174

conversant The affirmation is express and positive I am God and there is none like me declaring the end from the beginning and from antient times the things that are not yet done Nor is the affirmation naked and unfortify'd For in the same sacred records we have the same thing both affirmed and proved Inasmuch as we find in a great part thereof are contained things foretold by most express Prophecy unto which the Events recorded in other parts and many of them in other unqestioned Writings besides have so punctually corresponded as to leave no place for doubt or cavil Instances are so plain and well known that they need not be mentioned And surely what was so expressly foretold could not but have been foreknown It seems then an attempt also eqally hopeles and unrelieving as it were adventurous and bold to offer at the protection of his Wisdom and Sinceritie by assaulting his Prescience or certain foreknowledg of whatsoever shall come to pass And that their defence is not to be attempted this way will further most evidently appear from hence That it is not impossible to assign particular instances of some or other most confessedly wicked actions against which God had directed those ordinary means of counselling and dehorting men and which yet it is most certain he did foreknow they would do As tho it was so punctually determined even to a day and was tho not so punctually foretold unto Abraham how long from that time his seed should be strangers in a Land that was not theirs Yet how freqent are the counsels and warnings sent to Pharaoh to dismiss them sooner Yea how often are Moses and Aaron directed to claim their liberty and exhort Pharaoh to let them go and at the same time told he should not hearken to them Nor indeed is it most seldome said that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart lest he should Tho it may be a doubt whether those passages be truly translated For the gentler meaning of the Hebrew idiom being well known it would seem more agreeable to the Text to have expressed only the intended sense than to have strained a word to the very utmost of its literal import and manifestly beyond what was intended After the like manner is the Prophet Ezekiel sent to the revolted Israelites And directed to speak to them with Gods own words The summe and purport whereof was to warn and dehort them from their wicked waies lest they should die when as yet it is plainly told him But the house of Israel will not hearken to thee for they will not hearken to me Unto which same purpose it is more pertinent than necessary to be added That our Saviours own plain assertions that he was the Son of God the many Miracles by which he confirmed it and his freqent exhortations to the Jews to believe in him thereupon had a manifest tendency to make him be known and believed to be so and conseqently to prevent that most horrid act of his crucifixion for it is said and the matter speaks it self that if they had known they would not have crucify'd the Lord of Glory Notwithstanding that it was a thing which Gods hand and counsel had determined before to be done That is foreseeing wicked hands would be prompt and ready for this tragic enterprise his Sovereign Power and Wise Counsel concurred with his foreknowledg so only and not with less latitude to define or determine the bounds and limits of that malignity than to let it proceed unto this Execution And to deliver him up not by any formal resignation or surrender as we well know but permitting him thereunto Tho the same phrase of delivering him hath elsewhere another notion of assigning or appointing him to be a propitiation for the sins of men by dying which was done by mutual agreement between both the parties him that was to propitiate and him who was to be propitiated In which respect our Saviour is also said to have given himself for the same purpose Which purpose it was determined not to hinder prepared hands to execute in this way Now if it did appear but in one single instance only that the Blessed God did foreknow and dehort from the same act It will be plainly consequent that his warnings and dehortations from wicked actions in the general can with no pretence be alledged as a proof against his universal Prescience For if the argument he dehorted from the doing such an action therefore he did not foreknow it would be able to conclude any thing it must be of sufficient force to conclude universally which it cannot do if but a single instance can be given wherein it is apparent he did both dehort and foreknow It can only pretend to raise the doubt which we have in hand to discuss how fitly and with what wisdom and sinceritie he can be understood to interpose his counsels and monitions in such a case §. VI. Wherefore nothing remains but to consider how these may be reconciled and made appear to be no way inconsistent with one another Nor are we to apprehend herein so great a difficulty as it were to reconcile his irresistible predeterminative concurrence to all actions of the creature even those that are in themselves most malignantly wicked with the wisdom and righteousness of his Laws against them and severest Punishments of them according to those Laws Which sentiments must I conceive to any impartial understanding leave it no way sufficiently explicable how the influence and concurrence the holy God hath to the worst of actions is to be distinguisht from that which he affords to the best Wherein such inherently evil actions are less to be imputed to him who forbids them than to the malicious tempter who prompts to them or the actor that does them or wherein not a great deal more And leave it undeniable that the matter of all his Lawes in reference to all such actions that ever have been done in the world was a simple and most strictly natural impossibilitie Nothing being more apparently so than either not to do an action whereto the agent is determined by an infinite Power or to separate the malignity thereof from an intrinsecally evil action And that this natural impossibility of not sinning was the ineluctable fate of his at first innocent Creatures Who also as the case is to be conceived of with the Angels that kept not their first station must be understood irreversibly condemned to the suffering of eternal punishment for the not doing of what it was upon these terms so absolutely impossible to them to avoid §. VII This too hard Province the present design pretends not to intermeddle in As being neither apprehended manageable for those briefly mentioned considerations and many more that are wont to be insisted on in this argument Nor indeed at all necessary For tho many considerations have been with great subtilty alledg'd and urged to this purpose by former and some

well-being Whence all complaint of insincere dealing is left without pretence §. XXIII Nor as we also undertook to shew could any course within our prospect have been taken that was fit in it self and more agreeable to sincerity There are only these two waies to be thought on besides Either that God should wholly have forborn to make overtures to men in common Or that he should efficaciously have overpow'red all into a compliance with them And there is little doubt but upon sober consideration both of these will be judg'd altogether unfit The former Inasmuch as it had been most disagreeable to the exact measures of his Government to let a race of sinful Creatures persist thorough many successive Ages in apostacy and rebellion when the characters of that Law first written in Man's heart were in so great measure outworn and become illegible without renewing the impression in another way and reasserting his right and authority as their Ruler and Lord To the Holines of his Nature not to send into the VVorld such a declaration of his Will as might be a standing testimony against the impurity whereinto it was lapsed To the goodnes of it not to make known upon what termes and for whose sake he was reconcileable And to the truth of the thing since he really had such kind propensions towards men in common not to make them known That it had it self been more liable to the charge of insinceritie to have concealed from men what was real truth and of so much concernment to them And he did in revealing them but act his own Nature the goodnes whereof is no more lessened by mens refusal of its offers than his Truth can be made of none effect by their disbelief of its assertions Besides the great use such an extant revelation of the way of recovery was to be of to those that should obediently comply with it even after they should be so to do §. XXIV And the latter we may also apprehend very unfit too tho because that is less obvious it requires to be more largely insisted on For it would seem that if we do not effect any thing which we have a real will unto it must proceed from impotencie and that we cannot do it which who would say of the great God Herein therefore we shall proceed by steps And gradually offer the things that follow to consideration As that it were indeed most repugnant to the notion of a Deity to suppose any thing which includes in it no contradiction impossible to God considered according to that Single Attribute of Power only But yet we must add That this were a very uneqal way of estimating what God can do that is to consider him as a meer Being of Power For the notion of God so conceiv'd were very inadeqate to him which taken entirely imports the comprehension of all Perfections So that they are two very distant qestions What the Power of God alone could do And What God can do And whereas to the former the answer would be Whatsoever is not in it self repugnant to be done To the latter it must only be Whatsoever it becomes or is agreeable to a Being every way perfect to do And so it is to be attributed to the excellencie of his Nature if amongst all things not simply impossible there be any which it may be truly said be cannot do Or it proceeds not from the imperfection of his Power but from the concurrence of all other Perfections in him Hence his own Word plainly affirms of him that he cannot lye And by common consent it will be acknowledged that he cannot do any unjust act whatsoever To this I doubt not we may with as common suffrage when the matter is considered subjoyn that his Wisdom doth as much limit the exercise of his Power as his Righteousnes or his Truth doth And that it may with as much confidence and clearnes be said and understood that he cannot do an unwise or imprudent act as an unjust Further That as his Righteousnes corresponds to the Justice of things to be done or not done so doth his Wisdom to the congruity or fitnes So that he cannot do what it is unfit for him to do because he is Wise and because he is most Perfectly Infinitely Wise therefore nothing that is less-fit But whasoever is fittest when a comparison is made between doing this or that or between doing and not doing that the Perfection of his Nature renders necessary to him and the opposite part impossible Again that this measure must be understood to have a very large and most general extent unto all the affairs of his Government the object it concerns being so very large We in our observation may take notice that fewer qestions can occur concerning what is right or wrong than what is fit or unfit And whereas any man may in a moment be honest if he have a mind to it very few and that by long experience can ever attain to be wise The things about which Justice is conversant being reducible to certain rules but Wisdome supposes very general knowledg of things scarce capable of such reduction And is besides the primary reqisite in any one that bears rule over others And must therefore most eminently influence all the managements of the Supream Ruler §. XXV It is moreover to be considered that innumerable congruities lie open to the Infinite Wisdom which are never obvious to our view or thought As to a well-studied Scholar thousands of coherent notions which an illiterate person never thought of To a practic 't Courtier or well-educated Gentleman many decencies and indecencies in the matter of civil behaviour and conversation which an unbred rustic knowes nothing of And to an experienced States-man those importancies which never occur to the thoughts of him who daily follows the plough What Government is there that hath not its arcana profound mysteries and reasons of State that a vulgar wit cannot dive into And from whence the account to be given why this or that is done or not done is not alwaies that it would have been unjust it should be otherwise but it had been imprudent And many things are hereupon judged necessary not from the exigencie of Justice but reason of State Whereupon men of modest and sober minds that have had experience of the wisdom of their Governours and their happy conduct thorough a considerable tract of time when they see things done by them the leading reasons whereof they do not understand and the effect and success comes not yet in view suspend their censure while as yet all seems to them obscure and wrapt up in clouds and darknes Yea tho the course that is taken have to their apprehension an ill aspect Accounting it becomes them not to make a Judgment of things so far above their reach and confiding in the tried wisdom of their Rulers who they believe see reasons for what they do into which they find themselves unable to penetrate