Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	earth_n	lord_n	speak_v	9,328	5	4.6405	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58817	A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and citizens of London at the church of St. Mary le Bow, September the second, 1686 : being the anniversary fast for the dreadful fire in the year 1666 / by John Scott ...	Scott, John, 1639-1695.	1686 (1686)	Wing S2071; ESTC R34059	13,048	34

grant it may not be too late first that this is not the way to prevent the incursions of the Divine Judgements If ever we mean to put a stop to God's Indignation against us we must every one lay our Hands upon our own Breasts and lament his own Sin and acknowledge his own share in the general Provocation and promise and ingage our selves that where-ever we have done amiss we will do so no more Which if we wilfully refuse to do though at present we are made whole yet we may certainly expect that a worse thing will come upon us And this brings me from the Caution to II. The Reasons of it which as I told you are two 1. Thou art made whole 2. Lest a worse thing come unto thee 1. I begin with the first Behold thou art made whole therefore have a care thou sinnest no more let the mercy I have shown thee in curing thee of thy Disease have this blessed effect upon thee to reclaim thee from thy Sins to a life of Vertue and Purity So that the sense of this Reason is this That God's mercy to us in recovering us from past Calamities lays a great Obligation upon us to reform and amend but particularly it lays upon us this threefold Obligation 1. The Obligation of Gratitude 2. of Justice 3. and lastly of Self-interest Of each of these briefly 1. God's mercy in restoring us from any past Calamity obliges us in gratitude to amend our lives 'T is doubtless one of the most palpable signs of a base profligate Nature not to be obliged by Favours 't would be an injury to a Brute to call him ingrateful that odious Epithete no Being can deserve but one that is degenerated into a Devil that has broke through all that is modest and ingenuous that is tender and apprehensive in Humane Nature But to sin on against the mercies of our Deliverer to take pleasure in provoking him who took pity on us in our low estate and snatched us from the brink of ruine is doubtless the highest Baseness and Ingratitude for whilst we persist in our sinful courses under the obligations of his Goodness we render him the greatest Evil for the greatest Good and retort his Favours with the basest Indignities Whilst he is shielding us with his careful Providence we smite him with the Fist of Wickedness and like wretched Vipers sting and wound him whilst he is cherishing us in his Bosome And is this a suitable answer do we think to the obligations he has laid upon us O ungrateful Wretches that we are do we thus requite the Lord our God With what confidence can we pretend to any thing that is Modest and Ingenuous while we thus persist to return the Favours of our God with such insufferable Affronts and Indignities But then 2. Secondly God's mercy in restoring us from any past Calamity obliges us in Justice to amend our lives for by restoring us he acquires a new right to us As he is the Author of our Beings he hath an unalienable right and property in all the powers and faculties of our natures but every time he restores us from an approaching Ruine he doth as it were create us a new he gives us our Lives and Beings afresh and thereby renews his Title to us and so many times as he preserves us so many Lives and Beings he giveth us and consequently so many additional rights and properties he acquires in us And when he hath so many ways entitled himself to us by creating preserving and restoring us what monstrous injustice is it in us still to alienate our selves from him and list those powers and faculties into the service of his Enemies that are his by so many Titles O unjust that we are thus to fight against God with his own Weapons and affront his Authority with the effects of his Bounty for by persisting in Sin under his Preservations we do not only rob him of our selves in whom he hath such an unalienable Propriety but also imploy our selves against him We do not only purloin his Goods but convert them into instruments of Rebellion against him than which there is nothing can be more outragiously injurious O wretched man that very Tongue with which thou blasphemest him had e're this been silent for ever had not he stretched out his hand and restored thee Those Eyes through which thou shootest the noisome Fire-balls of thy Lust had been e're this clos'd up in endless darkness had not he taken pity on thee and snatched thee from the brinks of Ruine Those Members of thine which thou imployest as Instruments of unrighteousness against him had now been rotting in a cold Grave had not his tender mercy preserved thee And canst thou be such a barbarous Wretch as not only to deny him the use of what he gives but even to injure him with his own Gifts Consider I beseech you how heinously he must needs resent such monstrous injustice and ingratitude Hear but how he complains in a parallel case Isa. 1. 2 3. Hear O heavens and give ear O earth for the Lord hath spoken I have brought up children and they have rebelled against me The oxe knows his owner and the ass his masters crib but Israel doth not know my people doth not consider Ah sinful nation a people laden with iniquity 3. Thirdly and lastly God's mercy in restoring us from past Calamities obliges us in Self-interest to reform and amend For if we do not answer the end of God's deliverances they will prove Curses instead of Benefits to us and what he intended for a favour will convert into an aggravation of our sin and punishment The great end why God delivered us was to win us by his Goodness to forsake our sins and give us space to repent of them for so the Apostle tells us That the goodness and long-suffering of God leads us to repentance in Rom. 2. 4. But if it doth not lead us thither it will leave us in a far worse condition than it found us i. e. 't will leave us loaded with much heavier guilt and bound over to much sorer punishment For he that sins on under his Preservations is only preserved to treasure up wrath against the day of wrath and to prepare more Fuel for his future Flames So that if he still persist in his wickedness it had been much better for him that God had let him alone to perish under his affliction For then he had past more innocent into the other World and suffered there a much cooler damnation Whereas now whenever his wretched Ghost departs into Eternity it will go attended with a louder cry of guilts with the cry of so many more wronged mercies and abused preservations which will most fearfully inhance her Accounts and inflame the Reckoning of her torments so that when she comes into the other World among those miserable Spirits that were snatched away in the common calamities from whence she was rescued and preserved she will