Selected quad for the lemma: land_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
land_n	egypt_n	lord_n	pharaoh_n	3,360	5	10.2672	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45315	Select thoughts, or, Choice helps for a pious spirit a century of divine breathings for a ravished soule, beholding the excellencies of her Lord Jesus / by J. Hall ...	Hall, Joseph, 1574-1656.; Hall, Joseph, 1574-1656. Breathings of a devout soul.	1654 (1654)	Wing H413; ESTC R19204	93,604	402

freely enjoy his presence but of those straglers who care not to live without God so they may be befriended by Mammon How ill a match these poor men make for themselves I send them to their Saviour to learn What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul God forbid I should give their souls for lost but I must say they are hazarded for herein doubtless they tempt God who hath not promised to keep them in any other then their just wayes and they do in a sort tempt and challenge Satan to draw them on either to a love of error and impiety or at least to a cooling of their care and love of truth How unlike are these men to that wise merchant in the Gospel He sold all that he had to buy the pearl of great price they sell the pearl to buy a little worthless merchandize As the greatest part of their trafick stands upon exchange so I heartily wish they would make this one exchange more of less care of their wealth for more care of their souls LXXXVIII Even when Joseph was a great lord in Egypt second to none but Pharaoh and had the command of that richest countrey of the world yet then his old Father Jacob thought his poor parcel of Shechem worthy to be bequeathed to him and embraced of him as a noble patrimony because it was in the promised land and the legacy of a dying Father How justly do I admire the faith both of the father and son in this donation Jacob was now in Goshen Shechem was in Canaan neither was the father now in the present possession nor were the sons in some ages to enjoy it It was four hundred and thirty years that Israel must be a sojourner in a strange countrey ere they shall enter into the promised Land yet now as foreseeing the future possession which his posterity should take of this spot of earth so long after Jacob gives Shechem to Joseph and Joseph apprehends it as a rich blessing as the double portion of the divided primogeniture Infidelity is purblinde and can see nothing but that which is hard at hand Faith is quick-sighted and discerns the events of many centuries of years yea of ages to come Abraham saw his Saviours day and rejoyced to see it a thousand nine hundred and fourty years off and Adam before him almost four thousand years As to God all things are present even future so to those that by a lively faith partake of him Why do I not by that faith see my Saviour returning in his Heavenly magnificence as truly as now I see the Heaven whence he shall come and my body as verily raised from the dust and become glorious as now I see it weak and decrepit and falling into the dust LXXXIX True knowledg causeth appetite and desire For the will follows the understanding whatsoever that apprehends to be good for us the affective part inclines to it No man can have any regard to an unknown good If an hungry man did not know that food would refresh and nourish him or the thirsty that drink would satisfie him or the naked that fire would warm him or the sick that Physick would recover him none of these would affect these succors And according to our apprehension of the goodness and use of these helps so is our appetite towards them For the object of the will is a known good either true or appearing so And if our experience can tell us of some that can say with her in the Poet I see and approve better things but follow the worse It is not for that evil as evil much less as worse can fall into the will but that their appetite over-carries them to a misconceit of a particular good so as howsoever in a generality they do confusedly assent to the goodness of some holy act or object yet upon the present occasion here and now as the School speaketh their sensitive appetite hath prevailed to draw them to a perswasion that this pleasure or that profit is worthy to be imbraced Like as our first parents had a general apprehension that it was good to obey all the commands of their Creator but when it came to the forbidden fruit now their eye and their ear and their heart tell them it is good for them both for pleasure and for the gain of knowledg to taste of that forbidden tree So then the miscarriage is not in that they affect that which they think not to be good but in that they think that to be good which is not for alass for one true good there are many seeming which delude the soul with a fair semblance As a man in a generality esteems silver above brass but when he meets with a rusty piece of silver and a cleer piece of brass he chooses rather the clear brass then the silver defaced with rust Surely it is our ignorance that is guilty of our cool neglect of our spiritual good if we did know how sweet the Lord is in his sure promises in his unfailing mercies we could not but long after him and remain unsatisfied till we finde him ours would God be pleased to shine in our hearts by the light of the true knowledg of himself we could not have cause to complain of want of heat in our affections towards his infinite goodness Did we but know how sweet and delectable Christ the Heavenly Manna is we could not but hunger after him and we could not hunger and not be satisfied and in being satisfied blessed XC Those which we mis-cal goods are but in their nature indifferent and are either good or evil as they are affected as they are used Indeed all their malignity or vertue is in the minde in the hand of the possessor Riches ill got ill kept ill spent are but the Mammon of iniquity but if well The Crown of the wise is their riches How can it be amiss to have much when he that was the richest man of the East was the holiest Yea when God himself is justly stiled the possessor of Heaven and Earth How can it be amiss to have little when our Saviour sayes Blessed are ye poor And if from that divine mouth we hear a wo to the rich himself interprets it of them that trust in riches If our riches possess us in stead of our possessing them we have changed our God and lost our selves but if we have learnt to use our wealth and not enjoy it we may be no less gracious then rich If a rich man have a large and humble heart and a just hand he inherits the blessing of the poor If a poor man have a proud heart and a theevish hand he carryes away the wo from the rich Riches saith wise Solomon make themselves wings they fly away as an Eagle towards Heaven So as we may use

Lord What should I wait on the Lord any longer If my respects to my Saviour be for the loaves and fishes my heart is carried away with those baskets of fragments but if I can love God for his goodness sake this love shall out-last time and over-match death LVI What a wretched narrowness of heart is this which I finde in my self that when I may have all things I take up with nothing and when I may be possessed of an infinite good I please my self in grasping a little thick clay It was a large word that the Apostle said to his Corinthians Whether Paul or Apollo or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come all are yours What shall we think they were richer then their neighbors or is not this the condition of all those of whom he can say in the next words ye are Christs There there comes in all our right to this infinite wealth of our selves we are beggars in him who is Lord of all we are feoffed in all things for whiles he saith All are yours and ye are Christs and Christ is Gods he doth in effect say Christ is yours and in him God is yours for this right is mutual How else should all things be ours if God were not ours without whom all is nothing and how should God the Father be ours without that Son of his love who hath said All things that the Father hath are mine Thou O Father art in me and I in thee No man cometh to the Father but by me If then Christ be mine all is mine and if I have so oft received him and so often renued my union with him how is he but mine O Saviour let me feel my self throughly possest of thee whether the world slide or sink I am happy LVII God will not vouchsafe to allow so much honor to wicked instruments as to make them the means of removing publike evils The Magicians of Egypt could have power to bring some plagues upon the Land but had not the power to take them away Certainly there needed a greater power to give a being to the frogs then to call them off yet this latter they cannot do who prevailed in the first Moses and Aaron must be called to fetch off that judgment which the Sorcerers have brought upon themselves neither is it otherwise still Wicked men can draw down those plagues upon a nation which onely the faithful must remove The sins of the one make work for the others intercession Do we therefore smart and groan under heavy calamities we know to whom we are beholden Thus saith the Lord to this people thus have they loved to wander they have not refrained their feet therefore he will now remember their iniquity and visit their sins When they fast I will not hear their cry and when they offer burnt offrings and an oblation I will not accept them but I will consume them by the sword and by the famine and by the pestilence Do we desire to be freed from the present evils and to escape an utter desolation They are Moses and Aaron that must do it He said that he would destroy them had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach to turn away his wrath lest he should destroy them When our quarrel is with Heaven it is not our force or our policy that can save us Every faithful man is a favorite of the King of glory and can do more then command Legions Then is a people in some good way towards safety when they have learned to know their friends Whiles we have good mens prayers to grapple with wicked mens sins there may be hopes of recovery LVIII The ayming at a good end can be no just excuse for an unlawful act or disposition but if contentment did consist in having much it were a sore temptation to a man to be covetous since that contentation is the thing wherein the heart of man is wont to place it 's chief felicity neither indeed can there be any possible happiness without it but the truth is abundance is no whit guilty so much as of ease much less of a full joy how many have we known that have spent more pleased and happy hours under an house of sticks and walls of mud and roof of straw then great Potentates have done under marbles and cedar And how many both wise Heathen and mortified Christians have rid their hands of their cumbersome store that they might be capable of being happy Other creatures do naturally neglect that which abused reason bids us dote upon If we had no better powers then beast or fowls we should not at all care for this either white or red earth and if our graces were as great as the least of Saints we should look carelesly upon the preciousest and largest treasures that the earth can afford now our debauched reason in stead of stiring us up to emulate the best creatures draws us down below the basest of them moving us to place our happiness in those things which have neither life nor true worth much less can give that which they have not It is not for the generous souls of Christians to look so low as to place their contentment in any thing whether within the bowels or upon the face of this earth but to raise their thoughts up to the glorious region of their original and rest looking not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen for the things that are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal LIX The holy Psalmist knew well what he said when he called the thunder in the clouds The voyce of the Lord a voyce powerful and full of Majesty The very Heathens made this the most awful act of their Jupiter which the Spirit of God expresses in a more divine language The God of glory thundreth upon this dreadful sound it is that the Psalmist calls to the mighty ones to give unto the Lord glory and strength to give unto the Lord the glory due to his name as it were advising the great Commanders of the world when they hear it thunder to fall down on their knees and to lift up their hands and eyes to that great God that speaks to them from Heaven No man needs to bid the stoutest heart to fear when this terrible sound strikes through his ear which is able to drive even Neroes and Caligulaes into bench-holes But this mighty voyce calls for an improvement of our fear to the glory of that Almighty power whence it proceeds Perhaps the presumption of man will be finding out the natural causes of this fearful uproar in the clouds but the working by means derogates nothing from the God of nature neither yet are all thunders natural That whirlwind and thunder wherein God spake to Job that thunder and lightning wherein God spake to Moses and Israel