Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	name_n	praise_n	praise_v	15,746	5	8.8557	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43457	A sermon preached before the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London at Guild-Hall Chappel, upon the second of September, 1679 being the day of their humiliation in memory of the late dreadful fire / by Henry Hesketh ...	Hesketh, Henry, 1637?-1710.	1679 (1679)	Wing H1616; ESTC R18213	13,713	44

cannot without Trouble mind many things at once therefor God cannot To us clear testimony of this is given by him that cannot err nor deceive and if a Sparrow fall not to the ground without our heavenly Father certainly such grand Occurrences do not happen without his Government And he that understands the Reasons of his own Religion will not need to be contended with about this matter Religion teacheth all Men to look upon God as the prime Origin of all Things and Prayer and Praise are the two principal Services of it and we therefore pray to God for Mercies that we want and praise him for those we enjoy because we believe they issue from him and are disposed by him These things are equally argumentative in all Cases but there are some that carry their own Convictions with them had Men no great sense of Religion to induce them to a consonant belief Sometimes Rescues from Evils carry such clear Signatures of Divine Efficiency upon them that no Man can well be unobservant thereof but be strongly prompted to confess with the Egyptian Sorcerers in another case This is indeed the Finger and Power of God And truly I know not why I may not entitle this so to him upon these two accounts I. In respect of the then present Deliverance from this Consumption For my part I have often thought I could see as clear Signatures of God's merciful Interposition in stopping the Fire as Traces of his Anger in the progress of it I know not but the one had evil Instruments to promote it but I am sure the other in some places had none to obstruct it And as if God purposely intended to remark his Mercy in it you may yet see it stopped in places where one would not only judge it unlikely but next to impossible it should do so among rotten dry weak Buildings which should rather invite a Flame than give check to it But so Mercy recovered its Empire over Justice and it pitied the Almighty to triumph in farther Executions His Compassions said it was enough and fixed Bounds to the proud Flames and signalized themselves as much in the Rescue as Justice had before in the Execution II. In respect of the sudden Recovery and Rebuilding of the City again He that in the midst of such Desolations and Ruins should have predicted the Restoration of this City to that Glory it is now in in seven years time would hardly have escaped the Censure of a false Prophet but been thought to tell things as far exceeding Belief and Hope as Ezekiel did when he prophesied Life to dry Bones And for this I dare appeal to the sober sense of all that hear me among whom I am very confident few ever hoped to live to see half of that perfection which we now for a great while have been joyful Spectators of But so God inspired Men with Zeal and Industry and blessed their Labour to almost incredible measures and henceforth the Men of this City must appear Men of great Spirits to whom nothing is impossible nothing difficult especially when God saith Amen to their Resolutions But I must not forget to let you know in the midst of these Blessings what moved God to effect them the Text tells us clearly his Mercy nay Mercies in the plural nay his bowel tender Mercies as the Original imports And I would fain know what can be set up in competition with it Alass how vain how groundless how much their own confutation and shame are all those Thoughts that shall make God a Debtor to Man and enable Man upon any Merit in himself to challeng Blessings from him I have been always apt to believe and yet am That those that stand upon Terms with God have least reason to do so and those furthest from meriting any thing at his hands that pretend a possibility of doing so I never yet saw or heard any that when it came to the Test durst stand to it Tutissimum est saith the great Advocate for it It is safest to renounce our own and relie on Christ's Merits And All Men when they come to dye do so too And I think that an ill Doctrine to maintain in Life that all Men renounce and flie from at Death God knows and he that best knows hath told us That Man at his best state is altogether Vanity and at his worst is a Lye and much worse His Righteousness is so very little that it can claim no Blessing and his Wickedness so very great that it deserves nothing but Cursing And how improper and unbecoming it is for such a thing to strut it out and Stand upon Terms with God judge ye But my Brethren let other Men talk at what vain Rates they will I am sure we have enough to reduce us to humility and shame and that is by reflecting upon the Sins and Debaucheries of this Generation I pointed at this before and therefore shall not now cloy you with ungrateful Reputations I only beg as the Prophet doth verse 40. of this Chapter Let us search and try our ways and if we do we shall not need any other Method to preserve us from Vanity We shall soon find enough to humble rather than exalt us The only difficulty upon this Search will be to resolve whether our Sins have not surmounted God's Mercies and whether we have not confronted the Miracles of Divine Kindness with almost as great Miracles of our own Unworthiness Do you thus requite the Lord O foolish People and unwise And dost thou O Lord work Deliverances for such Both these are equally strange equally surprising Let the one be matter of our Humility and the other the magnifying of thy Mercy Not unto as O Lord not unto us but unto thy Name be the praise for thy Truth and for thy Mercies sake Let the People praise thee O God Let all the People praise thee O let the whole Nation extoll and magnifie thee Let them say alway Blessed be the Lord who hath pleasure in the prosperity of his Servants who hath not punished us as we deserved but in his Judgment remembred his Mercy and saved us for his Mercy and Compassion's sake But I have one thing more yet for which to entitle God and his Mercy to our preservation and that is the implacable Rage and Malice of our Enemies against us Of this we have fresh and daily Evidences and by the way I do not know but we may be obliged to them for it They pull of their Vizard and by this tell us what they are and what we are to expect and to whom also to fly for protection from them When Disappointments do but the more inrage them when to be defeated in one hellish Project makes them more earnest in another when nothing will reconcile them nothing discourage them we have just cause to say It is of God that we are not consumed to report in earnest that of the Psalmist Unless God keep the City the