Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	city_n	london_n	mayor_n	10,714	5	9.7889	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67826	A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the lord mayor and aldermen of the city of London at Guild-Hall Chapell, February the 17th, 1677/8 / by Edw. Young.	Young, Edward, 1641 or 2-1705.	1678 (1678)	Wing Y65; ESTC R39193	12,745	34

Chaplin Mayor Die Martis Decimo Nono die Februarii 1677 8 Annoque Regni Regis Caroli Secundi Angliae c. Tricesimo THis Court doth desire Mr. Young to print his Sermon preached on Sunday morning last at the Guild-hall Chapell before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of this City Wagstaff IMPRIMATUR Guil. Iane R.P.D. Henr. Episc. Lond. à Sacris Dom. Mar. 4. 1677 8. A SERMON PREACHED Before the Right Honourable The Lord Mayor AND ALDERMEN Of the City of LONDON AT GVILD-HALL Chapell February the 17 th 1677 8. By EDW. YOVNG B L.L. Fellow of New Colledge in Oxford LONDON Printed for William Birch at the Peacock in Cheapside and William Leach at the Crown in Cornhill 1678. A Sermon preached before the LORD MAYOR c. February the 17 th 1677 8. Psal. 52. 7. Lo this is the man that took not God for his strength but trusted unto the multitude of his riches and strengthened himself in his wickedness IT is an Observation as true as common that no man was ever extremely wicked upon a sudden a hardy sinner must be a work of time a Creature of industry and toil of conflicts and repulses And that because Nature however depraved has yet left such strong guards upon Vertue that no man can break through them without doing violence not onely to his Reason but his very Complexion too It is no easie thing to overcome the shame that naturally attends all dishonest actions and makes those that commit them to love darkness It is no easie thing to overcome the fear that naturally haunts the guilty conscience and makes darkness it self to be no security much less is it easie to dare to live at enmity with God after conviction that he is all-knowing and just and his wrath a consuming fire And yet notwithstanding all this since wofull experience puts it out of question that men do daily arrive at this desperate pitch that how dangerous soever the precipice be thither they venture and being there bear their danger with less concern then others can behold it It may be worth our while to enquire how and by what degrees sin thus advances and as it advances infatuates The scheme is laid down in my Text where in the person of Doeg we have the description of a sinner Consummate one that had fill'd up his measure and was now ripe and overtaken with judgment For the first words of the verse Lo this is the man point out his miserable end which the Context will tell us was destruction and casting out of the Land of the living And the rest of the words on which I design chiefly to insist are his character exhibiting the wicked course of life which brought him to that miserable end viz. He took not God c. The Character consists of three Members which are as it were the three Stations of the Broad way The first being Alienation from God the second Application to the World the third Impiety profest and these three are Consequential to each other as well in the order of Nature as of the Text. I beg in with the first member of the Character He took not God for his strength The order and importance of this default will best appear if we inquire into the true measures of humane nature and see what strength she has in her self and what she wants and thence deduce the necessity of our dependance upon God From those that have searched into the state of humane nature we have sometimes received very different and incompatible accounts as though the Inquirers had not been so much learning as fashioning the subject they had in hand and that as arbitrarily as a Heathen Carver that could make either a God or a Tressel out of the same piece of wood For some have cry'd down Nature into such a desperate impotency as would render the Grace of God ineffectual and others on the contrary have invested her with such power and self-sufficiency as would render the Grace of God superfluous The first of these Opinions wrongs Nature in defect by allowing her no strength which in consequence most make men desperate The second wrongs Nature in excess by imputing too much strength which in effect must make men confident And both of them do equally destroy the Reason of our application to God for strength For neither will the man that is well in conceit nor yet the desperate apply himself to a Physician because the one cries there is no need the other there is no help I presume therefore that a more distinct view of these two extreme opinions may properly serve to guide us into the notice of the true state of Nature which lies between them both As for the first Opinion which wrongs Nature in Defect it was hatcht in the Heathen Schools upon this occasion The Philosophers having considered the reproachfull nature of sin how that in it self it was nothing but injury turpitude and folly and in its effects mischief inquietude and ill-boding fears concluded justly that the commission of it was base and infamous and that the deliberate choice of a sinfull action was a greater reproach to reason then reason was an ornament to man But nevertheless finding themselves dipt in the common guilt and too soft to resist the pleasing evil but likewise too proud to own the reproach of it They set their wits on work to contrive an expedient how a man might sin and yet not be in the fault and so be able to keep his Crimes and Credit too The expedient they contrived was this to maintain That sin was no voluntary Act but a meer forced one and this they proved by two Mediums Fate and Matter as each of them introducing a necessity upon humane actions From the first they argued that all humane actions were pre-determined by the irresistible Power of an Eternal Decree so that Man did not purely act any thing of himself but was a meer passive Tool in the hand of Destiny From the second they argued That though man were allowed liberty of Acting yet he could have no liberty of Choice because his Choice was always determined to the worser side by a certain insuperable malignity in matter that is by the pravity of his constitution Upon either of these accounts it follow'd that man was a meer impotent slave always overruled by force either from without or within and therefore since he could not possibly help what he did why should he be blamed for it rather let the causes be blamed to which he owed his necessity Thus did the Philosophers endeavour to bring mankind off from the scandal of their faults by impeaching Nature as an indulgent Jury will bring off a murtherer by a Non Compos mentis As to their Hypothesis of the Irresistible Decree I shall speak no more of it but this that they who first broacht it and therefore were most fond of it found it clogg'd with so many ill consequences so reflecting upon the