Selected quad for the lemma: love_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
love_n	good_a	hate_v	hatred_n	2,544	5	9.6222	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30434	A sermon preached before the Queen, at White-Hall, on the 16th day of July, 1690, being the monthly-fast by the Right Reverend Father in God, Gilbert Lord Bishop of Sarum.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1690 (1690)	Wing B5892; ESTC R21629	20,709	42

answer would be Peace which being the form of Salutation in those Ages among Friends imported an intire reconciliation So that by speaking Peace is to be understood an assurance of God's love and favour to his People and to his Saints that is to the People that was sanctified and dedicated to the service of God by so many federal Rites The words that follow are capable of different rendrings either thus to his Saints and to such as turn not again to folly or and they shall not turn again to folly or as it is in our Translation and let them not turn again unto folly The LXX Interpreters differ much more but the enlarging on any account of those various rendrings would require too long and too dry a Discourse for a day of this kind Folly in Scripture stands often for Atheism and Impiety The fool has said in his heart that there is not a God Sometimes for Idolatry there being no instance of folly that is more extravagant than the giving divine Honours to the works of Mens Hands or to the Fictions of their vain Imaginations but most commonly the irregularities of Vice are set forth in Scipture under this notion to shew how contrary they are to all the Principles of true Reason that are in our natures The words being thus opened lead me to speak to these Three Heads I. That the great security and happiness of a Nation depends on its being at peace with God and in his favour and that its greatest danger and misery arises out of God's anger and displeasure II. That therefore it is necessary to use most earnest and fervent Prayers for removing God's anger and for the procuring his favour And that our great encouragements to this are the remembrance of past Deliverances and the consideration of the Attributes of God who is naturally gracious and merciful III. That a Nation which would secure to it self the continuance of God's favour and of all the Blessings that accompany it must above all things take care of not relapsing into Vice and Idolatry Ungodliness and Atheism To return The greatest Security and Happiness of a Nation depends on its being at peace with God and in his favour And its greatest Danger and Misery arises out of God's anger and displeasure Either this is true let our Scoffers make it the subject of their profane Mirth as much as they will or there is nothing true in all Religion If God is infinitely Wise and Perfect and if he made the World which they pretend to own then certainly he still takes care of it For no body can deny a Providence that does not likewise in his heart deny a God and a Creation The Prejudices against Providence arise chiefly from the narrowness of our Minds that cannot conceive how one Being can have an extended and universal care of all things But is not the prejudice of a blind Man against the possibility of seeing as well grounded For how extravagant must this appear to him that through so small a passage as the Pupil of the Eye such a vast variety of Objects should enter at once and open themselves within the body of the Eye without confusion and there be represented to us in their just figures with their distance from us and from one another and in their Colours which he cannot understand neither and that thus at a great distance we can reason and judge of things To one that pe●ceives nothing but by touch this will appear very unconceivable If then the good disposition of an Organ raises one Man so far above another that he cannot apprehend how such an extent of perception is possible it is a most unreasonable thing to conclude against any Perfection in the Divine Mind because it is beyond our compass of thought The other prejudice against Providence seems a little better grounded which is That in the government of the World there is such an irregularity that it cannot be supposed to flow from a Good and a Wise Being But this is likewise an effect of the shortness of our Prospect we seeing only things that are before us but not being able to guide our Eye further to the end of the Scene nor to what Revolutions or Catastrophes are abiding those who at present seem covered with Success and Glory But if we believe God to be the infinitely Pure and Holy we must likewise believe that he loves those that are truly good and are conformable to his own nature and that he has an aversion to those who are contrary to it and that are defiled and impure For the Principle of self-Self-love that is natural to every Being makes it love such as resemble it and hate such as are in an opposition to it not by a hatred of anger and fury which is the effect of Passion and Disorder by a hatred which arises out of the contrariety of nature that is between them It is then as certain as that there is a God that he is perfectly Pure and Holy and that by consequence such Nations as are vertuous and innocent that are neither false nor cruel vicious nor dissolute must be more acceptable to him and more constantly protected by him than those that are corrupted by sensuality and luxury into all the degeneracies of humane Nature and into a scorn of Religion and Vertue But though it is certain that such debauched Nations are under the Divine Displeasure yet as to the properest time and the suitablest circumstances in which God will pour out his Indignation upon them and as to the ballancing of the sins of one Nation against another and the delivering one over to be plagued by another till the one is purged and the other has filled up the measure of its Iniquities those are Secrets lodged in that Infinite mind into which our sight can carry us but a very little way Upon the whole matter if there is a God that made the World he governs it and if he is wise and holy he must govern it so as to favour the Good and to hate the Wicked If any object to this the long-flourishing of the Turkish Empire and the strange Progress and Success of Mahometism the Answer is plain enough That the Eastern Christians were so far degenerated from all that is pure and noble in the Christian Religion that they were become a Reproach to it and therefore God has delivered them up into so long a Captivity and has rewarded the Temperance the Justice and the Aversion to Idolatry that are among the Mahometans with so long a course of Prosperity If the Reign of some Princes that have broken through the Faith of Oaths and Treaties and through all the sacred'st Rules of Justice and Mercy has hitherto had a course of Success and Glory to which we find nothing that can be compared in History since Augustus's days yet even to this it must be said That we can form no true Judgment of it till we see to the