Selected quad for the lemma: master_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
master_n	babylon_n	lord_n	zion_n	16	3	9.0614	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A47646	Sermons preached by Dr. Robert Leighton, late archbishop of Glasgow published at the desire of his friends, after his death, from his papers written with his own hand.	Leighton, Robert, 1611-1684.	1692 (1692)	Wing L1031; ESTC R29941	164,938	342

Affliction but shall be for ever happy in the blessed Vision of his Face To him be glory Amen SERMON IV. PREFACE EXternal worship doth openly acknowledge a Deity but want of inward sense in Worship secretly denieth it The Fool hath said in his heart there is no God 'T is strange to hear so much noise of Religigon in the World and to find so little Piety To present the living God with a carcass of lifeless Worship is to pay him with shells of Services and so to mock him And it is a more admirable long-suffering in him to defer the punishment of such Devotion then all the other Sins in the World The Egyptian Temples were rich and stately Fabricks A Stranger who had lookt upon them without would have imagined some great Deity within But if they entered as Lucian says laughing at them nothing was to be seen but only some Ape or Cat or py'd Bull or some other fine God like those To behold our fair semblance of Religion that frequent this house it would appear that we were all the Temples of the Holy Ghost But who so could look within us would find in many of our hearts Lust Pride Avarice or some such like secret Vice adored as a God and these are they that while our Bodies sit here do alienate our Souls from the Service of the Eternal God So that we are either altogether senseless and dead before him or if any fit of Spiritual motion rise within us we find it here and here we leave it as if it were sacriledge to take it home with us But did once that Spirit of grace breath savingly upon our Souls we should straight renounce and abhor those base Idols and then all the current of our affection would run more in this Channel our Services would then be spiritual and it would be our Heaven upon Earth to view God in his Sanctuary and the obtaining of the change is and should be one main end of this our meeting and that it may be the happy effect of it our recourse must be to the Throne of Grace by humble Prayer In the Name of our Mediator Jesus Christ the Righteous Isaiah LX. 1. Arise shine for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee ADmirable is the worth and depth of Divine Providence this either we know not or at least seldom remember while we forget the wonders of Providence we direct our thoughts to baser objects and think not on it and while we forget the depth of Providence if at any time we look towards it we judge rashly and think amiss of it If this be true of that general Providence whereby God rules the World 't is more true of his special Providence towards his Church This is both the most excellent piece of it and therefore best worth the reading and also the hardest piece and therefore it requires sobriety in judging above all other things he that suddenly judges in this makes haste to err To have a right view of it it must be taken altogether and not by parcels Pieces of rarest Artifice while they are a making seem little worth especially to an unskilful eye which being compleated command admiration P. Martyr says well De operibus Dei. Antequam actum non est judicandum There is a time when the Daughters of Sion embrace the dunghil and sit desolate in the Streets as Jeremiah hath it in the 4th of his Lam. verse 5. And at that same time the voice of Babylon is I sit as a Queen and shall see no sorrow Isa. 47. All is out of order here But if we stay a while we shall see Sion and Babylon appointed to change seats by the great Master of the World Come down says he Daughter of Babylon and sit in the dust Isa. 47. 2. And here to Zion Arise shine for thy light is come and the Glory of the Lord is risen upon thee It is an entire Catastrophe both Parties find a notable alteration together That same hand that exalts the one ruins the other When the Sun rises upon the Church her Antipodes must needs be covered with darkness As we find it in the next verse to the Text. Darkness shall cover the Earth and gross Darkness the People but the Lord shall arise upon thee and his Glory shall be seen upon thee The Prophet elevated by the Spirit of God to a view of after Ages as clear as if present seems here to find his people sitting under the dark mantle of a sad and tedious night and having long expected the Suns return in vain before its time they give over expectation when it s near them and desperately sold themselves to lie perpetually in the dark Now the Prophet as it were standing awake upon some Mountain perceives the day approaching and the golden Chariots of the Morning of deliverance hasting forward and seems to come speedily with these glad news to a Captive People and sounds this Trumpet in their Ears Arise shine for thy light is come c. The very manner of expression is sudden and rouzing without a copulative Not arise and shine But arise shine c. The words have in them a clear stamp of relation to a low posture and obscure condition They suppose a people lying or sitting without light deep distress is that dark soil that best sets off the lustre of marvellous deliverances and among many other reasons of the Churches vicissitudes why may not this be one The Lord is more illustrious in the World by that deep Wisdom and great Power that shines when he raises and restores her from desperate Afflictions then if he had still preserved her in constant ease he seems sometimes careless of her condition and regardless of her groanes but even then is he waiting the most fit time to be gracious as our Prophet speaks And when it is time out of the basest Estate he brings her forth more fresh strong and beautiful than before Though you have lyen among the Pots ye shall be as the Wings of a Dove covered with Silver and her Feathers with yellow Gold Psal. 68. 13. Do with the Church what you will she shall come through and that with advantage Merg●s profundo pulchrior exilit as one says of Rome Keep the Church seventy years Captive yet after that she shall arise and shine more glorious then ever But surely the strain of this Evangelick Prophesie rises higher than any temporal deliverance Therefore we must rise to some more spiritual sense of it not excluding the former And that which some call divers senses of the same Scripture is indeed but divers parts of one full sense This prophecy is out of question a most rich description of the Kingdom of Christ under the Gospel And in this sense this invitation to Arise and Shine is mainly addrest to mystical Jerusalem yet not without some priviledge to literal Jerusalem beyond other people They are first invited to Arise and