Selected quad for the lemma: mercy_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
mercy_n	ghost_n	holy_a	sinner_n	7,089	5	9.1918	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45226	The devovt soul, or, Rules of heavenly devotion : also, The free prisoner, or, The comfort of restraint by Jos. H. B.N.	Hall, Joseph, 1574-1656.	1650 (1650)	Wing H380; ESTC R9783	42,043	192

so infinite obligations of thy favours And thus having look't inward into ourselves and taken an impartiall view of our own vilenesse it will be requisite to cast our eyes upward unto heaven and there to see against whom we have offended even against an infinite Majesty power an infinite mercy an infinite justice That power and Majesty which hath spread out the heavens as a Curtain and hath laid the foundations of the earth so sure that it cannot be moved who hath shut up the sea with bars and doors and said Hitherto shalt thou come and no further and here shalt thou stay thy proud waves who doth whatsoever he will in heaven and in earth who commandeth the Devils to their chains able therfore to take infinite vengeance on sinners That mercy of God the Father who gave his own Son out of his bosome for our redemption That mercy of God the Son who thinking it no robbery to be equall unto God for our sakes made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and being found in fashion as a man humbled himself and became obedient to the death even the accursed death of the Crosse That mercy of God the holy Ghost who hath made that Christ mine and hath sealed to my soule the benefit of that blessed Redemption Lastly that justice of God which as it is infinitely displeased with every sin so will be sure to take infinite vengeance on every impenitent sinner And from hence it will be fit and seasonable for the devout soul to look downward into that horrible pit of eternall confusion and there to see the dreadful unspeakable unimaginable torments of the damned to represent unto it selfe the terrors of those everlasting burnings the fire and brimstone of that infernall Tophet the mercilesse and unwearible tyranny of those hellish executioners the shrieks and howlings and gnashings of the tormented the unpitiable interminable unmitigable tortures of those ever-dying and yet never-dying souls By all which we shall justly affright our selves into a deep sense of the dangerous and wofull condition wherein we lie in the state of nature and impenitence and shal be driven with an holy eagernesse to seek for Christ the Son of the ever-living God our blessed Mediator in and by whom only we can look for the remission of all these our sins a reconcilement with this most powerfull mercifull just God and a deliverance of our soules from the hand of the nethermost hell SECT XIII IT shall not now need or boot to bid the soul which is truely apprehensive of all these to sue importunately to the Lord of life for a freedome and rescue from these infinite paines of eternall death to which our sinnes have forfeited it and for a present happy recovery of that favour which is better than life Have we heard or can wee imagine some hainous Malefactor that hath received the sentence of death and is now bound hand and foot ready to be cast into a Den of Lions or a burning furnace with what strong cries and passionate obsecrations he plies the Judge for mercy wee may then conceive some little image of the vehement sute and strong cries of a soul truly sensible of the danger of Gods wrath deserved by his sin and the dreadful consequents of deserved imminent damnation Although what proportion is there betwixt a weak creature and the Almighty betwixt a moment and eternity Hereupon therefore followes a vehement longing uncapable of a denial after Christ and fervent aspirations to that Saviour by whom only we receive a ful and gracious deliverance from death and hell and a full pardon and remission of all our sins and if this come not the sooner strong knocking 's at the gates of heaven even so loud that the Father of mercies cannot but hear open Never did any contrite soul beg of God that was not prevented by his mercy much more doth he condescend when he is strongly intreated our very intreaties are from him hee puts into us those desires which he graciously answers Now therfore doth the devout soul see the God of all comfort to bow the heavens and come down with healing in his wings and heare him speak peace unto the heart thus throughly humbled Fear not thou shalt not die but live Be of good cheare thy sins are forgiven thee Here therefore comes in that divine grace of Faith effectually apprehending Christ the Saviour and his infinite satisfaction and merits comfortably applying all the sweet promises of the Gospel clinging close to that all-sufficient Redeemer and in his most perfect obedience emboldning it selfe to challenge a freedome of accesse to God and confidence of appearance before the Tribunal of heaven and now the soule clad with Christs righteousnesse dares look God in the face and can both challenge and triumph over all the powers of darknesse For being justified by faith we have peach with God through Jesu Christ our Lord. SECT XIV BY how much deeper the sense of our misery and danger is so much more welcome and joyfull is the apprehension of our deliverance and so much more thankfull is our acknowledgement of that unspeakable mercy The soule therefore that is truly sensible of this wonderfull goodnesse of it's God as it feels a marvellous joy in it self so it cannot but break sorth into cheerfull and holy though secret gratulations The Lord is full of compassion and mercy long suffering and of great goodnes he keepeth not his anger for ever he hath not dealt with me after my sins nor rewarded me after mine iniquities What shal I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. I will thank thee for thou hast heard me hast not given me over to death but art become my salvation O speak good of the Lord all ye works of his Praise thou the Lord O my soul SECT XV. THe more feelingly the soul apprehends and the more thankfully it digests the favours of God in its pardon and deliverance the more freely doth the God of mercy impart himself to it and the more God imparts himself to it the more it loves him and the more heavenly acquaintance and entirenesse grows betwixt God it and now that love which was but a spark at first grows into a flame and wholly takes up the soul This fire of heavenly love in the devout soul is and must be heightned more and more by the addition of the holy incentives of divine thoughts concerning the means of our freedome and deliverance And here offers it self to us that bottomlesse abysse of mercy in our Redemption wrought by the eternall Son of God Jesus Christ the just by whose stripes we are healed by whose bloud we are ransomed where none will befit us but admiring and adoring notions We shall not disparage you O ye blessed Angels and Arch-angels of Heaven if we

shall say ye are not able to look into the bottome of this divine love wherwith God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever beleeveth in him should not perish but have everlasting life None oh none can comprehend this mercy but he that wrought it Lord what a transcendent what an infinite love is this what an object was this for thee to love A world of sinners Impotent wretched creatures that had dispighted thee that had no motive for thy favour but deformity misery professed enmity It had been mercy enough in thee that thou didst no● damn the world but that thou shouldst love it 〈◊〉 more than mercy It was thy great goodnesse to forbeare the acts of just vengeance to the sinful world of man but to give unto it tokens of thy love is a favour beyond all expression The least gift from thee had been more than the world could hope for but that thou shouldst not stick to give thine only begotten Son the Son of thy love the Son of thine essence thy coequal coeternal Son who was more than ten thousand worlds to redeem this one forlorne world of sinners is love above all comprehension of men and Angels What diminution had it been to thee and thine essentiall glory O thou great God of heaven that the souls that sinned should have dyed and perished everlastingly yet so infinite was thy loving mercy that thou wouldest rather give thy onely Sonne out of thy bosome than that there should not be a redemption for beleevers Yet O God hadst thou sent down thy Son to this lower region of earth upon such termes as that hee might have brought down heaven with him that hee might have come in the port and Majesty of a God cloathed with celestiall glory to have dazeled our eyes and to have drawn all hearts unto him this might have seemed in some measure to have sorted with his divine magnificence But thou wouldst have him to appear in the wretched condition of our humanity Yet even thus hadst thou sent him into the world in the highest estate and pomp of royalty that earth could afford that all the Kings and Monarchs of the world should have been commanded to follow his train and to glitter in his Court and that the knees of all the Potentates of the earth should have bowed to his Soveraign Majesty and their lips have kissed his dust this might have carried some kind of appearance of a state next to divine greatnesse but thou wouldst have him come in the despised form of a servant And thou O blessed Jesu wast accordingly willing for our sakes to submit thy self to nakednesse hunger thirst wearinesse temptation contempt betraying agonies scorn buffeting scourgings distention crucifixion death Oh love above measure without example beyond admiration Greater love thou saiest hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends But oh what is it then that thou who wert God and man shouldst lay down thy life more precious than many worlds for thine enemies Yet had it been but the laying down of a life in a fair and gentle way there might have been some mitigation of the sorrow of a dissolution there is not more difference betwixt life and death than there may be betwixt some one kind of death and another Thine O dear Saviour was the painfull shamefull cursed death of the crosse wherein yet all that man could do unto thee was nothing to that inward torment which in our stead thou enduredst from thy fathers wrath when in the bitternesse of thine anguished soul thou cryedst out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Even thus thus wast thou content to be forsaken that wee wretched sinners might bee received to mercy O love stronger than death which thou vanquishedst more high than that hell is deep from which thou hast rescued us SECT XVI THe sense of this infinite love of God cannot chuse but ravish the soul and cause it to goe out of it self into that Saviour who hath wrought so mercifully for it so as it may be nothing in it self but what it hath or is may be Christ By the sweet powers therefore of Faith and Love the soul finds it self united unto Christ feelingly effectually indivisibly so as that it is not to be distinguished betwixt the acts of both To me to live is Christ saith the blessed Apostle and elsewhere I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me and the life which now I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me My beloved is mine and I am his saith the Spouse of Christ in her Bridall Song O blessed union next to the hypostaticall whereby the humane nature of the Son of God is taken into the participation of the eternall Godhead SECT XVII OUt of the sense of this happy union ariseth an unspeakable complacency and delight of the soul in that God and Saviour who is thus inseparably ours and by whose union we are blessed and an high appreciation of him above all the world and a contemptuous under-valuation of all earthly things in comparison of him And this is no other than an heavenly reflection of that sweet contentment which the God of mercies takes in the faithful soul Thou hast ravisht my heart my sister my Spouse thou hast ravisht my heart with one of thine eyes Thou art beautifull O my Love as Tirzah comely as Jerusalem Turn away thine eyes from me for they have overcome me How fair is thy love my sister my Spouse How much better is thy love than wine and the smell of thine ointments better than all spices And the soul answers him again in the same language of spirituall dearnesse My beloved is white and ruddy the chief est among ten thousand Set me as a seal upon thine heart as a seal upon thine arm for love is as strong as death And as in an ecstaticall qualm of passionate affection Stay mee with fiaggons and comfort me with apples for I am sick of love SECT XVIII UPon this gracious complacency will follow an absolute self-resignation or giving up our selves to the hands of that good God whose we are and who is ours and an humble contentednesse with his good pleasure in all things looking upon God with the same face whether he smile upon us in his favours or chastise us with his loving corrections If he speak good unto us Behold the servant of the Lord be it unto me according to thy word If evill It is the Lord let him doe whatsoever he will Here is therefore a cheerfull acquiescence in God and an hearty reliance and casting our selves upon the mercy of so bountifull a God who having given us his Son can in and with him deny us nothing SECT XIX UPon this subacted disposition of heart will follow a familiar yet awfull compellation of God and an emptying of