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A52426 Practical discourses upon several divine subjects written by John Norris. Norris, John, 1657-1711. 1691 (1691) Wing N1257; ESTC R26881 131,759 372

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Interest any otherwise than as by loving I acknowledge and bear witness to the excellency and amiableness of the Object beloved That therefore which is excellent in Love is not my Coveting the Divine Good which I do purely for my own Pleasure and Profit but my bearing witness to it And yet even here Praise will have the Preeminence because this acknowledges the Divine Perfections Directly and Expressly which the other does only Implicitly and by Consequence So that in every respect Praise and Thanksgiving will be found to be the greatest honour and glorification of God which sufficiently establishes the Proposition laid down That the most principal and most acceptable part of Religion consists in Praise and Thanksgiving And here before I go any further give me leave by the way First to deplore the general defect of our common ●o●●t-Devotions Secondly To commend the excellent Constitution of our Publick Liturgy As to the First 't is a sad thing to consider that so Divine and so Angelical a Service as that of Praise and Thanksgiving which is so highly preferred in the Sacred Writings and which the Man after God's own Heart was so very eminent and remarkable for the Burthen of whose Devotion lay in Anthems and Alleluiahs should be so neglected and so little regarded as it is That that which is so much the imployment and business of Heaven should be so little valued upon Earth and what the Angels esteem so Divine a Service should have so little share in the Devotions of Men. There are but few even of the Devouter sort that are duly sensible of the excellency of Praise and those that have a considerable sense of it are generally very backward to the Duty and very cold in the Performance Our Necessities often call us to our Prayers and supply us with Devotion in them but as for praise it seems a dead and heartless Service and we care not how seldom or how indifferently it be performed Which common Backwardness of ours the Scripture also supposes by its earnest and frequent Exhortations to this Duty But the Church of England to her great Commendation be it spoken proceeds by another Measure in her Devotions enjoyning Praise as largely and as frequently as Prayer she has taken her Copy from the Man after God's own Heart and as Hosannah and Alleluiah Prayer unto God and Praises of God divide the whole Book of Psalms so do they her Liturgy which is a Service of Praise as well as of Prayer This the Church admonishes us of in the very Preface and Entrance of her Excellent Service telling us that we Assemble and Meet together to render Thanks for the great Benefits that we have received at God's hands and to set forth his most worthy Praise Then the Priest Praise ye the Lord to which the People The Lord's Name be Praised And this is done in all our Hymns as the Venite O come let us Sing unto the Lord c. And in that noble Hymn called the Te Deum We Praise thee O God we acknowledge thee to be the Lord. Thus again in the Benedictus Blessed be the Lord God of Israel c. where we bless God for the. Redemption of the World by Christ which also we do in the Jubilate and in the Blessed Virgins Magnificat My Soul does magnify the Lord c. So again in the Cantate Domino and the Nunc Dimittis and Deus Misereatur Let the People praise thee O God let all the People praise thee Besides the Gloria Patri and many particular Offices of Thanksgiving and the whole Psalter of David which is a considerable part of the Church Service So truly sensible was the wisdom of our excellent Mother both of the great worth and importance of this Duty of Praise and of the general Back wardness and Coldness of Men in applying themselves to it But I proceed now in the Second place to consider what are the things we are chiefly concerned to Praise and Thank God for These in general are those things which relate to our Spiritual Concern and our grand Interest in another World for the same general Order is to be observed both in our Prayers and in our Praises and as we are chiefly to Pray for Spiritual Blessings so 't is for them that we are chiefly to return Thanks More particularly we are concerned to thank God as the Wisdom of our excellent Church directs us for his inestimable Love in the Redemption of the World by our Lord Jesus Christ for the means of Grace and for the hopes of Glory And among these means of Grace I think we are not in the last place concerned to thank him for disposing us in such outward circumstances of Life as are advantagious to our Salvation it being hardly imaginable how much the diversity of these contributes to our Living well or ill How many Persons of excellent Dispositions of great Attainments and of greater Hopes have we known to be utterly spoiled and ruined meerly by falling into ill hands as we have it recorded of the young Disciple of St. John in Ecclesiastick Story And so again on the other hand how many Persons of Vicious Inclinations and more vicious Lives have been diverted out of the Road of Destruction meerly by some accidental Occurrence some little Providential hit that happened to cross their way There is an Ingenious Gentleman of considerable Character and Figure in the Learned World who makes that Grace of God whereby he conducts Men to Holiness and Happiness to be nothing else but only a happy train or disposition of external Circumstances and Occurrences As suppose a Man falls into some very sharp Affliction which works him into a softness and tenderness of Mind while he is under this sensible and pliant disposition he happens to meet with a good Book which strikes upon the same String of his Soul after this he lights into good Company where the former Disposition receives a new and further improvement and so on in a train of Accidents the latter still renewing the Impression of the former till at length the Man is perfectly brought over to a new Order and Habit both of Mind and Life Now though for several weighty Reasons too many to be here alledged I cannot be of this Gentleman's Mind so far as to make the Divine Grace which in Scripture is frequently ascribed to the Holy Spirit of God working within us to be nothing else but a course of well-laid Circumstances yet I may and must needs say that I think the outward Circumstances of Life have a very great stroke upon the moral conduct of it and that the success of inward Grace does very much depend upon outward Occurrences For not to argue from the different manner of Education upon which the quality of our future life does generally as much depend as the fortune of the Boul does upon its delivery out of the Hand 't is common and easy to observe that some Men are