Selected quad for the lemma: mercy_n
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A35074
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A sermon preached at Holy-Rood House, January 30. 1681/2. before Her Highness the Lady Anne. Tho. Cartwright ...
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Cartwright, Thomas, 1634-1689.
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1682
(1682)
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Wing C704; Wing C704A; ESTC R170908
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23,302
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36
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who Sinned in betraying this Innocent Blood I wish they had learned so much ingenuity from him as to confess it and so much wisdom from God's long suffering as to see it betimes not dreaming that a general guiltiness will amount to Innocence in Heaven as it does sometimes on Earth I shall deserve your pardon if I value your Souls which cost the Blood of Christ at more than a words speaking There being no flattery so fatal as that of the Physician and the Divine I shall esteem your amendment so much above your favour as to have more respect to your happiness than to suffer you to live any longer in a mistaken opinion of your own innocence even as to this Crime And what I speak in this place will I hope be the better taken because 't is out of a desire to convince all and not to shame any of you unless I shame some few by accident in refusing the glory of true Repentance for I am fully perswaded that the major part of you are already satisfied that you can never be sensible enough nor repent too much of this sin Let us therefore not any longer inveigh against those notorious Villains whose faults are written in their fore heads but come by a particular serutiny to enquire into our selves whether we can plead not guilty to that Crime for which we have heard them indited and shall not rather be forced to say with Aeneas Et quorum pars magna fui That we have a great share in his Iniquity There is no beguiling of the pangs of our own Consciences Haret lateri lethalis arundo Our guilt will stick as close to us as Deianiras poysoned shirt did to Hercules Let us therefore have mercy on our Souls and not be so desperately foolish as to flatter them unto destruction 'T was the wickedness of our Sodom which provoked God to send his Angel to fetch that righteous Lot from among us and had we kept God's Commandments better we might have kept his Vicegerent longer who like an abused mercy was in great Justice taken from us upon which we may use the Prophet's language Dan. 9. 12. And he hath confirm'd his words which he spake against us and against our Judges that Judged us by bringing upon us a great plague for under the whole Heaven hath not been the like that hath been brought upon our Hierusalem Dan. 9. 7. O lord righteousness belongeth unto thee and to us open shame as appears this day Had we not lull'd our selves asleep in the bosome of those vices to which our souls were so affectionately wedded but writ them a bill of divorce and not suffer'd them to come any more under our roofs God would never have visited us with so severe a chastisement But let the burn'd Children dread the fire for if ye do wickedly you shall be destroyed both you and your King 1. Sam. â—… 25. and if we say that we did not and do not so still we deceive our selves But I doubt this Sin may be lay'd to some of your charges much nearer then so who might be partakers of it some of these following ways 1. By Consent and approbation or taking pleasure in them who did it Thus if many people by joynt consent set upon a man and Kill him though one only give him the deadly wound yet they all are guilty of the murder because they all intended it did something towards it for their number was the cause of his terror and of the abatement of his courage and an occasion to make him despair of defending himself and by consequence that terrour was the cause of his receiving his wounds and the wounds the cause of his death and so their malice is to be judged equal by their conjunct attempt Thus Saul was guilty of St. Stephen's death Thus thousands were of Our Soveraign's even as many as ever drew their Swords nay as ever opened their mouths or purses against him 2. By Council and Advice for Qui monet quasi adjuvat John 11. 49. so Caiaphas had a hand in the blood of our Crucifyed Saviour so as many as instigated encouraged or abetted the rebellion had in the blood of our Martyr'd Soveraign 3. By appointment and command so Pharoah and Herod slew the infants so David Uriah so these infernal Judges did the King 4. By Commending Applauding Defending or Excusing the murder for woe be to them who call evil good who put light for darkness and sweet for bitter 5. By partaking with his murderers in the fruits of their Villanies Isa 5. 20. and so all sequestrators commitee men and purchasers of the Crown or Church lands were guilty 6. By concealing the treason when it was hatching for as good lay thy hand on the Lords anointed as lay thy hand on thy mouth and conceal the treason so foul a thing is it to hear the voice of conspiracy and not to utter it and yet 't is hard in our days to avoid the hearing of it almost in all places 7. By unseasonable silence and neglect of the Christian duty of reprehension Qui non vetat peccare cum potest jubet He who is unactive for the King does passively rebel against him and he bids who does not forbid such outrages and violences to be committed against the Father of his Country The mischief intended by a Souldier against Craesus gave his Son a tongue who never spoke before to cry anthrope me kteine Creson man kill not Craesus Now according to the degrees of your will and choice and the tendency of your affections to this disasterous event will your own Consciences be best able to measure out your fearful expectations which I the rather council you to do because men may dye an Eternal death for that upon which our most indulgent Soveraign hath not thought fit to inflict a temporal Men may be damn'd for those very sins which are pardon'd by an Act of Oblivion the authority of the King of Heaven being above any Act of Parliament Some thousands I believe there were both in your Kingdom and Ours in the diminution of whose guilt we may truly say that through ignorance they did it and that their crime lay more in their heads than in their hearts and what they did was rather by the instigation of others then any inclination of their own being drawn into it by those jugling Impostors who upon the receipt of other mens livings sealed and delivered up their own consciences to the Rebels service and pay'd them with the interest of as many more as they could seduce Examine your consciences therefore whether you did not perceive some reluctancy then for those grand impieties into which you were inveagled some remorse for them since And do you not by so much the more abominate and detest the seducers by how much the more they had deluded both your reason and conscience Dare you not remember your Rebellious engagements without displeasure If not though you at first entred into a complyance even at the gate of Zeal yet you have some reason to hope that God will not lay this sin to your charge But hearken to the King 's own prayer for you which was That God would bury this and all other their sins in his Grave that they might never rise up again to work their desperation in this World or their damnation in the next That when God makes inquisition for blood he would sprinkle your polluted yet penitent Souls with the blood of his Son that his destroying Angel might pass you over for says the Royal Martyr As I doubt not but my blood will cry for vengeance to Heaven so I beseech God not to pour out his wrath upon the generality of the People who have either deserted me or ingaged against me through the artifice and hypocrisie of their Leaders That my temporal death unjustly inflicted by them may not be revenged by God's just inflicting of Eternal death upon them for I look upon the temporal destruction of the greatest King as far less deplorable than the Eternal damnation of the meanest Subject Though my destroyers forget their duty to thee or me yet do not thou O Lord forget to be merciful to them though they deserve yet let them not receive to themselves damnation but let the voyce of thy Son's blood be heard for my murderers louder than the cry of mine against them Repentance is above half way to innocence it changes the person with whom God is angry Let us not therefore flatter our selves in any impenitent security but bewail our ingagements in that fatall quarrel and that the sooner and the more by how much the longer we have continued in it without any sence or feeling Let us lay the Sin to our consciences for our amendment that God may not lay it to our charges for condemnation nor the King's blood be upon us and our Children And let us repay with interest that Obedience to the Son which was due and in arrear to the Father Submitting our selves as becomes Good Christians and Subjects to our now gracious Soveraign Lord King Charles the Second Who is Heir apparent to that Love and Loyalty which His Royal Father payed so dear for as to entail it upon him this day by a deed of Martyrdom Let us pray to God that he may be Trajano melior Augusto faelicior more vertuous then Trajan and more fortunate then Augustus and that the most righteous Judge of Heaven and Earth may not make us drink so deep again of such a cup of trembling nor leave us to our selves and our Sins nor impute His blood any farther to us than to convince us what need we have of Christ's blood to wash our Souls from the guilt of shedding His. O Lord we beseech thee let not his Blood out-cry his Prayers but let those that spilt the one obtain the benefit of the other That by their Convictions and Repentance his Innocence may receive the happiest attest Our Religion be Vindicated from the Scandal of so horrid a fact Our Nation be secured from the vengeance of that Blood and the shedding more of the same Kind and thy mercy glorified in the Conversion of so great Sinners and all for Jesus Christ his sake to whom with thee O Father and the Holy Ghost be all Honour Power and Glory now and for ever Amen FINIS