Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
judgement_n	wrath_n	year_n	youth_n	14	3	8.3977	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A79832	Seventeen sermons preach'd upon several occasions By William Clagett, D.D. late preacher to the Honourable Society of Grays Inn, and one of His Majesty's chaplains in ordinary. With the summ of a conference, on February 21, 1686. between Dr. Clagett and Father Gooden, about the point of transubstantiation. The third edition. Vol. I.	Clagett, William, 1646-1688.; Gooden, Peter, d. 1695. aut; Sharp, John, 1645-1714.	1699 (1699)	Wing C4398; ESTC R230511	209,157	515

worse but still crushed all Impostures and discountenanced all Villany and Hypocrisie at its first setting out in the World where would be the Patience and Faith of the Saints of those that believe in God and take his Word for their Rule and their Comfort and live in the Expectation of his Promises But when Iniquity grows and thrives and can plead Prescription and Authority when it hath stood long enough to have some colour for Antiquity and hath obtained interest enough to pretend to a kind of Vniversality then it will be seen who they are that love God and Truth and Goodness that are not willing to be deceived that will take pains not to be deceived that will take pains to be rightly informed that prefer Truth before glorious Names and a good Conscience before Applause and Flattery and eternal Life before the Ease and Pleasures of this World God bears long with all the Provocations of Mankind for the same reason that he permits Heresies which is that they who are approved may be made manifest For these and such like reasons as these God in his Wisdom and Goodness bears with infinite Patience those Provocations for a long time together which he could be avenged of in a moment and which he utterly abominates which was the first Observation upon the Text. 2. The second was That God is so much the more just in the final destruction of incurable and obstinate Sinners when their Iniquity is full and ripe for Vengeance For as there was the Patience of God seen for four hundred Years together while the Iniquity of the Amorites was growing from bad to worse so at the end of that Period the Justice of God was seen when their iniquity was full To grow worse for the forbearance of God is the most criminal Presumption in the World and when Men are come to that pass as quite to forget that there is a God or believing him to be to perswade themselves That he either approves or at least connives at their Impieties then the same Wisdom and Goodness which hitherto had kept off their Punishments will bring them on swiftly and suddenly for as on the one side if the degeneracy and the impudence of Sinners should not be suffered to flourish long there will be no Tryal of the Faith of honest Men so if it should be suffer'd to last always the Temptation would at length grow too hard for them God exercises his own Patience that good Men might exercise theirs at length he shews his Justice to reward their Patience The Patience of God is a forbearance guided by Wisdom and Goodness and the Justice of God is a Severity that is also guided by Wisdom and Goodness And neither the one nor the other hath any mixture of that Selfishness and Passion which is for the most part the reason why we sometimes are and sometimes are not severe with those that have offended us This is the true Justice of Punishment to respect the evil that is committed and to punish for that reason and this appears in no instances more than when God punishes after long sparing for if he had been a selfish or a passionate Being he had never suffered Men to go on so long together in the most provoking ways of wickedness because he had it in his Power to Punish them long before as he punishes them at last and therefore that he punishes them at last is an effect of his Wisdom and Goodness and a Demonstration that the common good required it And as there are several good ends to which God's Patience tends in bearing with general Impieties so long as he often doth so there are as many to which his Justice tends in taking Vengeance of them at last For 1. This is a Demonstration that his Providence was not asleep before 2. It is a clear Instruction that Men ought not to presume upon God's Favour merely because they prosper in their ways but that they should measure his Love or his Anger by what they do and not by what happens to them since they who do the same wicked things may go unpunished from one Generation to another and in this World but one Generation may suffer for them 3. That we should not forget to call our past Sins to remembrance and to humble our selves before God for them since if God punishes the sins of the Fathers upon the Children in this Life the like cause have we to fear that he will punish the Sins of our Youth and our riper Years at the latter end of our Life 4. That we should make use of the Patience and long suffering of God to our selves to prevent his Anger from flaming out against us because otherwise we treasure up Wrath against the day of Wrath and revelation of the righteous Judgment of God The truth is these are the uses we ought to make of both those Considerations that I laid before you from the Text which I shall therefore inculcate again And 1. We have no reason to question either the watchfulness of God's Providence or to be cast into perplexities and doubts whether the way of Truth and the way of Error the way of Vertue and Piety and the way of Hypocrisie and Wickedness are so different from one another as is pretended in Religion we have I say no reason to perplex our selves about these things because for many Generations God hath suffer'd deceit and violence to prevail to spread and to flourish in the world for God is not as a Man his ways are above our ways and his thoughts above our thoughts when we look abroad into the World and look back upon so many past Ages wherein Religion hath been made a formal pretence for the establishing of a worldly greatness and Dominion upon gross and palpable Errors supported by Fraud and Force it is foolishly done of us to disquiet our selves with doubts whether we are in the way of the Truth or not since it pleased God for so long a time to suffer the contrary to prevail mightily in the World and for some Ages to baffle all opposition For this is to suppose God to be such a one as our selves impatient of high Indignities and great Provocations ready to kindle upon any notable affront or however unable to bear repeated and long-continued injuries No doubt if our opinion had been asked the Luxury of the old World should have been mortified by some amazing Judgments and the Flood should have been spared the Idolatry of the new Race of Mankind had been prevented or at least by some irresistable Evidence of God's Displeasure banished long before the coming of Christ and Mahomet should either have never appeared or he should have glared only like a Comet and so gone out instead of founding so vast and so long an Empire as it seems he has done But let us leave God to rule the World and be content that he should rule us we are too angry and too passionate to say