Selected quad for the lemma: master_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
master_n	lord_n	sir_n	william_n	24,212	5	9.5227	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27244	Two sermons preach'd at St. Maries in Bury St. Edmunds, at the assizes the first upon the seventh of April 1698, before the Honourable Sir Thomas Rokeby, Kt. ... : the second upon the 16th of August 1698, before the Right, Honourable Sir Edward Ward, Kt. ... / by William Bedford ...	Bedford, William, b. 1652 or 3.	1698 (1698)	Wing B1671; ESTC R5177	24,433	58

Mr. BEDFORD's SERMONS AT THE Two Assizes HELD AT Bury St. Edmund's 1698. TWO SERMONS Preach'd at St. Maries in Bury St. Edmund's AT THE ASSIZES The First Upon the Seventh of April 1698 before the Honourable Sir Thomas Rokeby Kt. one of the Justices of His Majesty's Court of Kings-Bench The Second Upon the 16th of August 1698 before the Right Honourable Sir Edward Ward Kt. Lord Chief Baron of His Majesty's Court of Exchequer By William Bedford Master of Arts Rector of Whitton and Vicar of Stradbrooke and Wing field LONDON Printed for S. Manship at the Ship in Cornhill 1698. To the Right Worshipful John Cornwallis Esquire High-Sheriff And one of the Deputy-Lieutenants OF THE County of SUFFOLK SIR WHEN the Grand-Juries of the County consisting of so many Gentlemen of Honourable and Eminent Qualities Reputation and Estates with the Approbation of my Lord Chief Baron were both pleased unanimously to declare That their Opinions were It would be useful to the Publick that these Discourses should be Printed I thought my self obliged to comply with their Desires And the rather seeing I am neither afraid nor ashamed to give the most publick Testimony of my Fidelity to His Majesty and Stedfastness to the true National Interests and hereby I obtain also this occasion of expressing my Gratitude for your many Years Favours and Civilities being SIR Your most obliged and humble Servant William Bedford Genesis 18.25 That be far from thee to do after this manner to slay the Righteous with the Wicked And that the Righteous should be as the Wicked that be far from thee Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right SO just and laudable as well as convenient and useful is this Practice of Justice traversing of our Counties and Provinces and coming as it were home to our Habitations that one would be apt at the first view to conjecture that this Method had some Divine Original from God's own Example There never was the Invention of any thing publickly beneficial to Mankind but the Ancients ascribed it to some of their Deities as Agriculture to Ceres Physick to Aesculapius and Musick to Apollo Well then may we think the like of this Perambulation of Justice the wholsom Physick of the Body Politick the tuning of the whole Kingdom into the Musical Harmony of Peace and Concord I might say as St. Bernard saith in the like case of the Hierarchy of the Church Nec nilem reputes hanc formam quia in terra est exemplum habet è coelo Neither can I think this Method of administring Justice throughout our Provinces a meer Humane Devise but I perswade my self that the Legislator that first ordained it had seen this Pattern of it in the Mount of God and lo if you desire for to see it I have found the Pattern it self in this Chapter Here is God the great Judge of the whole Earth going his Circuit from Heaven to the Plain of Mamre and from Mamre to Sodom This Judge comes to them to their own home and keep his Assizes and General Goal-delivery in their own City v. 21. Descendam videbo the Cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great I will go down my self to them and see how it stands with them This Judge condemns them not unheard but admits Counsel to plead for and Intercessors to deprecate as Abraham in the Text. So long as there lies a Certierari from an higher Court or an Appeal to an higher Court the Case is not desperate though the Judge should not do right for there is a future Remedy to be hoped for If the whole State were incensed against me yet I can find an escape to another Country If all the World persecute me yet if I be an honest Man I have a Supreme Court in my self and I am at Peace in being acquitted by my own Conscience But God is the unerring Judge of all the Earth of this which I tread upon and this Earth which I carry about me and when he judgeth me my Conscience turns upon his side and confesseth his Judgment to be right And therefore St. Paul's Argument Rom. 3. ratifies and seconds Abraham's Expostulation here Is God unrighteous God forbid How then shall God judge the World A particular Council may err but then a general Council may help to rectifie that particular The King may err but then God in whose Hand the King's Heart is can rectifie him But if God that judgeth all the Earth judge thee there is no Error to be assigned in his Judgment no Appeal from God not throughly informed to God better informed for he always knoweth all Evidence before it is given and therefore the larger the Jurisdiction and higher the Court is the more careful ought the Judge to be against wrong Judgment for Abraham's Expostulation reacheth in a measure to them Shall not the Judge of all or of a great part of the Earth do right This Judge lastly comes not solitary or alone but associated for in the first and third Verses of this Chapter there are three of them three Men stood by Abraham and in the nineteenth Chapter and the first Verse at Sodom it self where the Judgment was executed there are two of them which is the number usual at these times with us There came two Angels to Sodom A Divine Bench an honourable Trial whomsoever we follow of all the Christian Interpreters whether the Father generally as St. Athanasius St. Ambrose and Epiphanius which expound these three to have been the three Persons of the adored Trinity in three Humane Shapes assumed Or whither we follow some latter Expositors as Calvin and others who make them to be the second Person in Trinity and two created Angels attending him For as for Eben Ezra and the rest of the Jews which make all three of them Angels and meer Creatures they are sufficiently confuted by that incommunicable Appellation of the Name Jehovah which Abraham so often in this Chapter useth when he speaks to them Thus Abraham saw the day of Christ and rejoyced as our Lord himself testifieth John 8.56 for so to this very Apparition some good Expositors have referred it He saw his day indeed he saw this day of his he received him into his House he feasted him he brought him on his way he found gracious Audience with him as an Intercessor and Advocate for others and all this even then when Christ was going in his Indignation to judge Sodom And in this Judgment as in a Preludium to shew how he will judge the whole World at the great Sessions of the last day and visit it with the Flames of an universal Combustion We see then the Tribunal and the Judge and the Form of the Proceeding in the course of the whole Chapter Let us come now precisely to observe the Text and hear the Advocate Abraham pleading here for the Righteous that they may not be destroyed with the Wicked his Plea is intended principally for Lot who was his Nephew