Selected quad for the lemma: land_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
land_n	israel_n	lord_n	north_n	1,397	5	9.7972	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29626	The famine of the word threat[e]ned to Israel, and Gods call to weeping and to mourning being two sermons preached on the fast day, Novemb. 13, 1678, and on the fast day, April 11, 1679 / by James Brome ...	Brome, James, d. 1719.; Brome, James, d. 1719. Gods call to weeping and to mourning.	1679 (1679)	Wing B4856; ESTC R18967	48,082	74

Imprimatur Guil. Sill R. P. D. Hen. Episc Lond. à sacris domesticis May. 26. 1679. THE Famine of the Word Threatned to ISRAEL AND GODS CALL To Weeping and to Mourning BEING TWO SERMONS PREACHED On the Fast Day Novemb. 13. 1678. AND On the Fast Day April 11. 1679. By JAMES BROME A.M. Rector of Cheriton in the County of Kent LONDON Printed by M. Clark for Richard Chiswel at the Rose and Crown in S. Pauls Church-yard 1679. To the Right Worshipful JAMES BROCKMAN Esq My most honoured Friend and Patron And his Vertuous Consort Madam LUCY BROCKMAN THese Sermons finding so favourable an acceptance at your hands and being so generally desired and called for by all the neighbourhood I thought it my duty to prostrate them both at your feet and usher them out into light under your most auspicious Patronage These perillous Times into which we are fallen as they call for a serious Humiliation on all sides so do they command our joint-endeavours to promote it and if I can be any way instrumental to this good work in the publication of these Papers as it is the utmost of my design so likewise of my desire unless it be further to give hereby a testimony of my real gratitude for the manifold favours so frequently conferred since I had the honour to be under your wings upon Your most obliged Servant James Brome The Famine of the Word Threatned to ISRAEL c. SERMON I. AMOS viij Vers 11 12. Behold the days come saith the Lord God that I will send a Famine in the Land not a Famine of Bread nor thirst for Water but Hearing the Words of the Lord. And they shall wander from Sea to Sea and from the North even to the East they shall ran to and fro to seek the Word of the Lord and shall not find it IT was ever an act of great mercy and kindness in the God of Heaven and Earth that he never issued out his Judgments in the World but he gave timely notice of them before their approaches to awaken mens Consciences either by timely Repentance to divert them or else by Vigilancy and Prayer to prepare against them I might give you sundry instances that this is the certain method of Gods proceeding with mankind Thus before he destroyed the Old World and washed away their pollutions by the general Innundation Noah the Preacher of Righteousness was the Harbinger of that news and he forewarned them what would follow their continual disobedience and perseverance in Iniquity After the same manner did he deal with Sodom with Gomorrah and with Niniveh But I need look so far back Israel a people of Gods own choosing had sufficient experience of his loving kindness and patience and forbearance in this particular Though that Generation of men were a sort of people so refractory and stubborn so stiff-necked and disobedient so unsufferably wicked and such notorious transgressours that God might in justice have swept them away with the Beesom of Destruction without giving them the least space of time to consider of their ways or amend their doings I say though he might have opened all the treasuries of his Vengeance and sent down his arrows in great numbers upon their heads by reason of their manifold provocations against him yet did he never do this but first by his Prophets and Messengers for warned them of what would happen he did not strike till he dealt with them as the Angel did with Balaam Numb 22.31 open their eyes that they might see the blow was coming he did not proceed to sentence till he had first convicted them and represented their guilt in a true Mirrour before them he did not make them examples of his Justice till he had first declared what it was had provoked him and what such wilful provocations did deserve at his hands thus did God still temper his Mercy with his Justice forewarn them that they might be fore-armed And for this very end and purpose was this precaution which God gave Israel in the words read unto you Behold the days come saith the Lord God that I will send a Famine in the Land not a Famine of Bread nor a Thirst of Water but Hearing the Words of the Lord c. From which words I shall discourse 1. Of the Nature of that Judgment which is here threatned to Israel and shew you the dreadfulness of it It is a Famine but not of Bread nor of Thirst for Water but Hearing the Words of the Lord. 2. I shall consider the reason of this denunciation what was the ground and original of it and what it was that caused God Almighty to threaten that people with so severe a Judgment 3. I shall endeavour to shew how they might and we may prevent the like Judgment which seems at this time to hang over our heads 1. I begin with the first of these the Nature of that Judgment which is here threatned to Israel 't is Famine A sore Judgment indeed the very name of which is sufficiently dreadful and terrible were it but onely a corporal punishment For if by Famine the Prophet had only meant scarcity of Bread or extream want of Victuals Gen. 43.1 such a Famine as hapned in Canaan in the Patriarch Jacobs days or such a Famine as fell upon Samaria in the days of Elisha 2 Kings 6.25 when an Asses head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver and the fourth part of a Kab of Doves dung for five pieces of silver that indeed would have been a sore evil by the fearful effects that would have followed and ensued upon it For to see men and women fainting for lack of Bread and ready to prey upon and devour each other to hear their Children and Sucklings Lament 2.11 12. rending the Skies with their bitter ejulations and crying to their Mothers Where is Corn and Wine whilest their souls were ready to be poured forth in their Mothers bosom nay to behold women eating the fruit of their own wombs 2 Kings 6.28 and children become a feast to their Mothers that newly bore them as it hath hapned many times through the extremity of hunger this must needs be a very doleful calamity which would grieve the heart and afflict the eyes of all such as did behold it And yet this corporal Famine though to us it appears to be the greatest of Evils is nothing to that Famine which is here threatned to Israel which was the Famine of Hearing the Words of the Lord or the scarcity and want of Heavenly Bread by depriving them of all holy Ordinances and Duties For certainly this is meant when God threatens to send a Famine amongst them that is utterly to subvert the whole Jewish Church and Religion to banish them from his Temple and all their legal sacrifices to deprive them of all their Rites and Ceremonies and Sacraments which were most dear and pretious to them take from them the Law with which before he

in that rebellious Nation Cap. 4. v. 6 7 8 9 10 11. He tells us that God did not only cleanness of teeth in all their Cities and want of Bread in all places and with-held the rain from them so that three Cities wandred to one City to drink water but likewise that he smote them with blasting and with mildew with the Pestilence after the manner of Egypt with the Sword and with Fire as dismal as that which reduced Sodom and Gomorrah to a heap of rubbish and ashes and yet for all this they would not return unto God by reformation and amendment And do we think it possible for Gods Spirit always to strive with such a froward Generation was it not high time for God to use the last and most rigorous means when all other proved useless and ineffectual Was in not high time for God quite to cashier them and cast them out of his sight when all other methods though the Quintessence of the greatest fury and severity could no way reclaim them No doubt it was and therefore to this last of Judgments he threatens to have recourse V. 12. Therefore this will I do unto thee O Israel and because I will do this unto thee prepare to meet thy God O Israel resolving hereby that because nothing else would avail to destroy their Nation to root up that Vine and Vineyard which his own right hand had planted to send a Famine in the Land not a Famixe of bread nor thirst for Water but of hearing the words of the Lord by which they should be reduced to so wretched and deplorable a condition as to turn common Vagrants or Vagabonds and to wander from Sea to Sea and from North to East and to run to and fro to seek the Word of the Lord and yet should not be able after all their wearisom journies after all their narrow searches and disquisitions to find that Word that Law those Ordinances which they sought and hunted after And thus I have acquainted you with the Nature of that Famine and the dreadfulness of it which is threatned to Israel from whose example it will become a duty incumbent upon us to look back upon our selves whose state and condition at this day seems not at all unlike to theirs then for our sins are of as deep a die and our abominations as loathsome and our transgressions as manifold and our provocations as daring and our impieties as provoking as theirs was before us and God seems therefore now to threaten us after the same manner as he did the Jews with as bad or worse a Famine by reason of such hainous and abominable provocations And that this is too great a truth will plainly appear to any one that considers the present posture and state of affairs in this Kingdom for are there not at this day a brood of sanguinary blood-thirsty and wicked Sons of Belial who have endeavoured to subvert both Church and State and reduce us all to a Famine indeed to a real destitution of all true spiritual comforts and refreshments Had they not almost brought their wicked designs to effect and doth not our Religion seem still to lie at the stake Doth not Destruction still hover over our heads And have we any certain security that we may not yet become a prey to these merclless Wolves and Tygers There is more than a probability that God Almighty may suffer these very persons to become snares and traps to us scourges in our sides and thorns in our eyes Josh 23.13 'T is more than probable that those who so industriously consult our ruine may yet attain to their end and so we may all perish through their malicious machinations that our Religion may be undermined our Churches violated our Temples made the Nests and Cages of Popish Superstition and Idolatry and we our selves fall a Sacrifice to the Pope and his devillish Emissaries And if this should come to pass which our sins and manifold transgressions do justly deserve and call for Alas into what unspeakable calamities should we be involved This would be a Famine of the highest degree a Judgment the most grievous of all Judgments as will appear again by these three following circumstances 1. For first this would be a most certain indication that as the measure of our iniquity was full so the cup of Gods anger was full likewise and that he was pouring out his utmost indignation against us If once God should suffer our Church to fall and our Religion to be taken from us if he should once remove our Candlestick and not permit us any longer enjoyment of his sacred Ordinances amongst us we may be assured that his fury was kindled to the utmost height that he suffered all this because he could no longer endure us in his sight because our present service was an abomination to him and our worship being so extreamly tinctured and mixed with hypocrisie did enforce him to draw away his face from us For as true zeal and piety endear men to God and render them his Favourites so hypocrisie and irreligion estrangeth Gods affection utterly from them nay causeth a separation and sets God at open enmity with them and when once God hath declared himself an Enemy then follow his Judgments then are all the Vials of his Anger opened and Sluces of his displeasure plucked up to overwhelm them and these fruitless Fig-trees these unprofitable Servants these wicked transgressors are cursed and made an example of vengeance to terrifie others from the like evil courses So that if God should deal thus with us and punish us after so rigorous and so severe a manner I know not for my part what would become of us there is no further hopes of favour of kindness of friendship from him we might have improved these better to our advantages whilest we enjoyed them Mat. 21.43 and if the Kingdom of God i.e. the Gospel of Christ be taken from us it will be given to some other Nation to bring forth better fruits under its enjoyment than we have done So that this is the first thing that speaks the dreadfulness of this Judgment because it will be a testimony that God is irreconcilably angry with us that he is resolved to destroy us and root out our memorial from off the face of the Earth 2. But secondly there is another thing which will speak the dreadfulness of this Judgment and that is that it will not onely be a means to cut us off from all hopes of Gods love and favour for the present but for the future too by depriving us of all those means which might be most instrumental to procure and regain it for should such a Famine come amongst us then farewell to Gods Word and Ministers and by consequence if these which are the means and conduit-pipes of Grace were stopped up the way to Heaven would be precluded and stopped up likewise Now that this would certainly be our case should Popery