Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	word_n	worse_a	year_n	38	3	4.1937	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A90298	Immoderate mourning for the dead, prov'd unreasonable and unchristian. Or, Some considerations of general use to allay our sorrow for deceased friends and relations but more especially intended for comfort to parents upon the death of their children. By John Owen, chaplain to the right honourable Henry Lord Grey of Ruthen.	Owen, John, chaplain to Lord Grey of Ruthin.	1680 (1680)	Wing O825aA; ESTC R231417	48,707	156

has perform'd greater Cures and greater Recoveries and done greater wonders than all the Elixirs or Proprietates or Nostrums of the most skilful and renown'd Physicians It was Prayer that restored Hezekiah from a dangerous sickness and prolong'd his Days it was Prayer which supported David under all his troubles and gave him ease in his greatest extremities it was Prayer that opened the eyes of the blind and ejected the Devils and did the most glorious things to all Admiration and therefore we must apply our selves to God and depend upon our Prayers as the most proper and specifick remedy in afflictions We must be fervent and frequent and importunate in Prayers to God on the behalf of our Friends and Relations and who can tell whether God will be gracious to us that our Friends may live But then may some reply and say it was in vain for David to use Prayer or any other means it was to no purpose for him to expect the recovery of his Child or that God should answer him though he pray'd never so much For he knew that God had decreed the Death of his Child and told him in as plain words as could be by his Prophet that the Child should surely die and why then should David flatter himself so as to imagine that he could do the Child any good by his Prayers or prevail with God for his Recovery Why should he use that dubious Language as who can tell 't is possible or it may be that the Lord will be gracious to me that the Child may live Why should he stand doubting or supposing a possibility of a thing when God had positively declared the contrary To which I Answer That God declared by his Prophet Jonah the destruction of the Ninevites and prefixt the time to just forty days and this was declared with as great positiveness as the Death of Davids Child by the Prophet Nathan and the Prophet Jonah try'd and said Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown in the 3. of Jonah and 4. v. and yet after the delivery and promulgation of this sentence the Ninevites did not despond or utterly despair of Gods mercy but fell to repentance and humbling themselves and put the success to the same venture that David did and much in the same Language saying in the 9. v. Who can tell if God will return and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not And what was the Issue of their Repentance and Humiliation and using the best means they could to divert Gods Judgments Why the Issue was that by their Repentance they stav'd off the judgment and put it back as we may see in the 10. and last ver And God saw their works that they turned from their evil ways and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them and did it not And so in the 20. Ch. of the 2. of Kings God ordered the Prophet Isaiah to go and carry to Hezekiah the same message of Death and to acquaint him that he must expect no other than Death Thus saith the Lord Set thine House in order for thou shalt die and not live Could any thing be more absolute and positive than these words and yet Hezekiah instead of melancholizing himself with the thoughts of Death or expecting it every hour turned his face to the Wall and prayed unto the Lord saying I beseech thee O Lord remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart and have done that which is good in thy sight and Hezekiah wept sore in the 3. ver And what good will you say could Hezekiah's praying and weeping and appealing to the Righteousness of his life do him Could that or any thing else save him and prevent his dying when God had so solemnly Decreed yes truly his Prayer and Repentance did him so much good as to prevail with God to grant him a longer Lease of his life and ordered the same Prophet that had just now told him of his Death to return forthwith and acquaint him also that he had reverst the fatal sentence Turn again and tell Hezekiah the Captain of my people Thus saith the Lord the God of David thy Father I have heard thy Prayer I have seen thy tears behold I will heal thee on the third day thou shalt go up unto the House of the Lord. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years What then shall we say that there is any change in the Divine Decrees or any inconstancy in God or that he is worse than his word when he thus positively denounces judgment and yet suspends it God forbid says the Apostle yea let God be true but every man a lyar as it is written that thou mightest be justified in thy sayings And therefore for the clearing of God from all imputation of falshood or mutability in these instances of his judgments denounced against sinners without any actual execution we are to understand that those threatnings of God in Scripture which run in an absolute form have a condition imply'd that is Nineveh shall be destroyed and Hezekiah shall die except they repent So that God does still reserve a power of revocation and puts in a conditional clause of repentance which though it be not exprest yet is always to be understood and therefore where Gods threatnings of death and destruction seem most peremptory and final we are yet to attempt the diverting and preventing them by our Prayers and repentance we are to use the means and as we say leave the success to God For who knows but the Lord may be gracious But if God will not hear our Prayers nor accept our Repentance as he did neither in the present Case of Davids Child yet we are to use the most proper means and to try all the ways imaginable to pacify Gods anger and to appease his wrath and still to go on praying and repenting as David did We are not to despond of mercy or to despair of success but at the very last push and the utmost extremity of affliction to say who can tell but the Lord will be gracious And thus I have delivered to you the just reasons why David mourn'd so exceedingly for his Child when it lay upon a Bed of sickness and languishing As first considering that his own sin was the chief and declared cause of his Child 's grievous and desperate sickness and secondly upon the account of that natural affection which is in all Parents toward their Children which moves their bowels to pity and bewail them when they are in misery and distress But then the great wonder is that the Father which was so much concern'd and deeply immerst in sorrow for the sickness of his Child should give over mourning upon the death and loss of it that his sorrow should expire and be at an end as soon as the Child was departed and had given up the Ghost But now he is dead why

friendship advis'd him to and when all those little arts and ignoble devices of entertaining him in his Palace and at his Table and making him drunk would not bring Vriah to his purpose then how basely and unworthily does he plot and contrive his Murder by giving Orders to his General to set him in the most dangerous place in the Front of the Battel which poor Innocent Vriah might possibly take for an Honour and interpret it an Argument and esteem of his greater Courage when in truth he was onely plac'd there as a mark to be shot at and to fall a Sacrifice to his Sovereigns Lust Which accordingly hapned Vriah being slain upon the spot and dying in that station where it was not likely he should live And when David had thus secretly in his heart designed Vriahs Death yet when news was brought to him that Vriah was dead he cunningly and slily pretends to look upon it as no other than a Casualty the misfortune of War saying with himself that such chances will come and bid the Messenger tell Joab that there was no reason why he should be troubled or concern'd at the Death of Vriah for there was no saving any mans life in Battel none could be priviledg'd from Death in Warlike Encounters and that the Arrows or Bullets made no distinction and that all are alike liable to destruction and that Vriah might as well fall and be slain as any other in the Army which is the sence of those very words which David caus'd to be return'd to Joab in the 25. ver of the foregoing Chapter Then David said unto the Messenger Thus shalt thou say unto Joab Let not this thing displease thee For the Sword devoureth one as well as another And lastly When David had thus dispatcht and caus'd the Innocent Husband to be made away he then takes the guilty Wife into his possession and marries her and expects to live many happy and pleasant days in mutual endearments But though David thought that the marrying her would legitimate their love and take off the old scandal of their former Embraces yet it was an act highly offensive to God and is so exprest in the last v. of the Chapter And when the mourning was past David sent and fet her to his House and she became his Wife and bare him a Son but the thing which David had done displeased the Lord. But then notwithstanding that David had committed those two horid sins of Adultery and Murder yet he had not any true sense and feeling of his guilt nor that remorse of Conscience which he should have had for sins of that Crimson die but he rubs on a considerable time without any regret or sign of repentance which insensibility and hardness of heart we may justly ascribe to his living in ease and enjoying the Charms of Bathsheba's Beauty which at first inticed him to sin and afterwards made him forget it whilst his Soul was steep'd in pleasure and triumphing in the injoyment of his new Spouse But whilst David was in his Nuptial jollity and swallowed up in fond Caresses and doting upon that Beauty which had formerly bewitcht him God stirs up his Prophet Nathan to give him some check and interruption in his solaces by propounding something that might bring his late horrid sins to his remembrance And accordingly the Prophet does his office and propounds to him the Parable of the poor man with his little Ewe-Lamb How that this was his only Companion his only Darling his Bosom Friend that he had nothing else to love and delight in nor that he could call his own but this one poor Innocent Creature and yet there was a rich man which had a numerous Flock and enough to make a Feast for any Friend or Stranger whatsoever and yet was guilty of so much incivility and injustice as to take away this single Lamb from a poor man with a pretence that he needed it to make an Entertainment which he might have done without the least wrong or detriment to himself as having such a number of his own and so many which he might well have spar'd Which Parable was no sooner propounded to David but he resents the Act with a great deal of indignation and delivers his opinion against him that should do such a fact as an unpardonable offender and that he was guilty of such a high piece of injustice that he was not fit to live For him that had enough of his own and yet to invade the right and property of a poor man and to rob him of his little All was in Davids Judgment an unsufferable wrong and injury and that he that did it deserv'd nothing less than Death for so are the words in the fifth ver of this Chapter And Davids anger was greatly kindled against the man And he said to Nathan As the Lord liveth the man that hath done this thing shall surely die And he shall restore the Lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity So just and severe was David in condemning the robbing of a poor man and taking away the small substance he had But then when the Prophet took upon him to make a nearer Representation of the case and to bring it home to himself and point-blank to charge him with the like injustice which he had so severely condemned in another saying Thou art the man We must needs think that David was much startled when the guilt recoil'd upon himself and that his own Conscience made the rebound But then when it was brought so close to him that there was no avoiding his own self-Condemnation David presently makes an ingenuous Confession saying I have sinned against the Lord. And such we may observe are the mercies of God that his pardon follows immediately upon his Confession And Nathan said unto David The Lord hath also put away thy sin thou shalt not die in the 13. v. Howbeit in the next v. says the Prophet Because thou hast by this deed given great occasion to the Enemies of the Lord to blaspheme the Child also that is born unto thee shall surely dy Where we may observe that although God was pleased to grant him the greatest pardon of his life yet he does not give him a general pardon from other Punishments but assures him at the same time that he granted him his life that he should have such a punishment wherein he might read the nature and deserts of his sins The Child that is born unto thee shall surely die From whence it may not be unuseful to observe that God is pleased sometimes to lay the Punishment due to the Parents sin upon their Children and so here David had sinned and the Child must die for it which may be of great use and moment to make people more wary and deliberate how they enter into the Holy State of Matrimony For though it be a Divine Institution and ordained of God in Paradise and the State of Mans Innocency