Selected quad for the lemma: mercy_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
mercy_n	great_a	sin_n	transgression_n	3,082	5	10.1157	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85789	The nullity of the pretended-assembly at Saint Andrews & Dundee: wherein are contained, the representation for adjournment, the protestation & reasons therof. Together with a review and examination of the Vindication of the said p. assembly. Hereunto is subjoyned the solemn acknowledgment of sins, and engagement to duties, made and taken by the nobility, gentry, burroughs, ministry, and commonalty, in the year 1648. when the Covenant was renewed. With sundry other papers, related unto in the foresaid review.	Guthrie, James, 1612?-1661.; Wood, James, 1608-1664.	1652 (1652)	Wing G2263; Wing W3400; Thomason E688_13; ESTC R202246	280,404	351

him by breaking the Oath and Covenant which we have made with him and that we may be humbled before him by confessing our sin and forsaking the evil of our way Therefore being pressed with so great necessities and straits and warranted by the word of God and having the example of Gods people of old who in the time of their troubls and when they were to seek delivery and a right way for themselvs that the Lord might be with them to prosper them did humble themselves before him and make a free and particular confession of the sins of their Princes their Rulers their Captains their Priests and their People and did engage themselves to do no more so but to reform their wayes and be stedfast in his Covenant and remembring the practise of our Predecessors in the year 1596. wherein the Gen. Assembly and all the Kirk Judicatories with the concurrence of many of the Nobility Gentry Burgesses did with many tears acknowledge before God the breach of the National Covenant engaged themselves to a reformation even as our Predecessors and theirs had before done in the Gen. Assembly and convention of Estates in the year 1567. And perceiving that this Duty when gone about out of conscience and in sincerity hath alwaies been attended with a reviving out of troubles and with a blessing and success from Heaven We do humbly and sincerely as in his sight who is the searcher of hearts acknowledge the many sins and great transgressions of the Land We have done wickedly our Kings our Princes our Nobles our Judges our Officers our Teachers and our People Albeit the Lord hath long and clearly-spoken unto us we have not hearkened to his voice albeit he hath followed us with tender mercies we have not been allured to wait upon him and walk in his way and though he hath striken us yet we have not grieved nay though he hath consumed us we have refused to receive correction We have not remembered to render unto the Lord according to his goodness and according to our own vowes and promises but have gone away backward by a continued course of back-sliding and have broken all the Articles of that solemn League and Covenant which we swore before God Angels and Men. Albeit there be in the Land many of all ranks who be for a Testimony unto the truth for a name of joy praise unto the Lord by living godly studying to keep their garments pure and being stedfast in the Covenant and Cause of God yet we have reason to acknowledge that most of us have not endeavored with that reality sincerity and constancy that did become us to preserve the work of Reformation in the Kirk of Scotland many have satisfied themselves with the purity of the Ordinances neglecting the power therof yea some have turned aside to crooked wayes destructive to both The prophane loose and insolent carriage of many in our Armies who went to the Assistance of our Brethren in England and the tamperings and unstraight dealing of some of our Commissioners and others of our Nation in London the Isle of Wight and other places of that Kingdom have proved great lets to the work of Reformation and setling of Kirk government there wherby Error and Schism in that Land have been encreased and Sectaries hardened in their way We have been so far from endeavoring the extirpation of Prophaness and what is contrary to the power of godliness that prophanity hath been much winked at and prophane persons much countenanced and many times imployed untill iniquity and ungodliness hath gone over the face of the Land as a flood nay sufficient care hath not been had to separate betwixt the precious and the vile by debarring from the Sacrament all ignorant and scandalous persons according to the Ordinances of this Kirk Neither have the Priviledges of the Parliaments and Liberties of the Subject been d●ly tendered but some amongst our selves have labored to put into the hands of our King an arbitrary and unlimited power destructive to both and many of us have been accessory of late to those means and wayes whereby the freedom and priviledges of Parliaments have been encroached upon and the Subjects oppressed in their Consciences Persons and Estates Neither hath it been our care to avoid these things which might harden the King in his evil way but upon the contrary he hath not only been permitted but many of us have been instrumental to make him exercise his power in many things tending to the prejudice of Religion and of the Covenant and of the Peace and safety of these Kingdoms which is so far from the right way of preserving his Majesties Person and Authority that it cannot but provoke the Lord against him unto the hazard of both nay under a pretence of relieving and doing for the King whilst he refuses to do what was necessary for the House of God some have ranversed and violated most of all the Articles of the Covenant Our own consciences within and Gods judgments upon us without do convince us of the manifold wilful renewed breaches of that Article which concerneth the discovery and punishment of Malignants whose crimes have not only been connived at but dispensed with and pardoned and themselves received unto intimate fellowship with our selves and entrusted with our Counsels admitted unto our Parliaments and put in places of Power and Authority for managing the publick Affairs of the Kingdom whereby in Gods justice they got at last into their hands the whole power and strength of the Kingdom both in Judicatories and Armies and did imploy the same unto the enacting and prosecuting an unlawful Engagement in War against the Kingdom of England notwithstanding of the dissent of many considerable members of Parliament who had given constant proof of their integrity in the Cause from the beginning of many faithful testimonies and free warnings of the servants of God of the supplications of many Synods Presbyteries and Shy●es and of the Declarations of the Gen. Assembly and their Commissioners to the contrary Which engagement as it hath been the cause of much sin so also of much misery and calamity unto this Land and holds forth to us the grievousness of our sin of complying with Malignants in the greatness of our judgment that we may be taught never to split again upon the same Rock upon which the Lord hath set so remarkable a Beacon And after all that is come to pass unto us because of this our trespass and after that grace hath been shewed unto us from the Lord our God by breaking these mens yoke from off our necks and putting us again into a capacity to act for the good of Religion our own safety and the Peace and safety of this Kingdom should we again break his Commandment and Covenant by joyning once more with the people of these abominations and taking into out bosome those Serpents which had formerly stung us almost unto death This as it would argue great

it was that put them into their hands that these men might have been noted known I doubt not but if he could have done it he would have done it seeing he spares not to put Imputations upon men by Name and Sirname when he conceives himself to have any ground for it and that it will bring any advantage to his cause But whilest he would fain render some of the opposers of the Publick Resolutions odious and yet hath not ground upon which he can confidently do it He speaks so indefinitly some of the Testimonies were put c. neither telling us what Testimonies nor by whom they were put in their hands that if he be challenged for it he may have a shift to make his retreit But I doubt that this way of defaming his neighbors will be found straight before God If I may conjecture of what Testimonies he speaks it seems to be the Letter of the Presbytery of Sterling for that so far as I know was the only Testimony printed by the English and if he mean of that he speaks untruly when he saith that it was sooner put into their hands then sent unto the Commissioners I can confidently assure him and all others that it was sent unto the Commissioners before any copy of it was given or sent to any who were not Members of the Presbytery and I can as confidently say That none of these had any hand directly or indirectly in conveying that Letter to the English The man amongst them who was most slandered hath given me warrant to say and I trust that he will abide by it That his conscience doth bear him record that he was inocent of that as of all things of that kind and that to this day he knows not how that Letter was put into their hands unless it was by occasion of intercepting the Copie thereof by the English with Mr. Andrew Ker the Clerk of the Commission his Servant who was sent over the Water to some of his friends unto Edinburgh from Perth immediately after that Meeting of the Commission to which the Letter of the Presbytery of Sterling was sent That the English did print these Testimonies is no great wonder it is very like that they would print any thing that did hold forth our defection and owning of the Malignant Interest The Third Particular is in the Authors Judgment a poor mans Argument But poor men through mercy oft-times obtains more sollid discoveries of Divine Truths in a day of tentation then the Learned and the Rich do Neither is it yet a begging of the principal Question because what was offerred in this was offered to be instructed out of the Registers and they who made the offer were Members of the Assembly who in conscience and duty and by the Acts of the Assembly which relate to the Constitution thereof as we have already shown were bound to declare their conscience touching others who were called to be Constituent Members thereof in their Doctrine Life and execution of their Office and for the point of that Interest it is the same thing that was objected by the Remonstrants against the Anti-remonstrants at the Synod of Dort and by the Prelats in their Declinator 1638. To which we return no other Answer but that of the Brittane Divines at Dort Veritas communis Ecclesiae Thesaurus est nec potest ullo pacto fieri peculium singularum personarum Dei Ecclesiae Publica causa est non sua cujusque quae in Synodis agitur In the close of this discourse as all along he speaks of these who moved this Exception as of the Commissioners Accusers and cites that of Julian Si accusasse sufficiat quis inocens erit But that they weee not Accusers neither yet to be called so I have already shewed Why should they be esteemed or called Accusers more then others propounding Exceptions against Constituent Members of the Assembly neither was it ever desired that the propounding of the Exception should be taken for a verification of it or to speak in the Authors language That the accusing of them should be the holding of them for guilty but only that the Commissioners should be removed from sitting as Members in the Assembly till the Exception were tried and therfore that of Julian can have no place in this case VINDICATION IT is alleadged by the Writer That the same Assembly at St. Andrews upon the like exception and objection others were removed from sitting as Members as Blacketer and others because the scandal of their accession to the unlawful Engagement was not sufficiently purged c. and he would have any man in the world give a reason why these were excluded and not others against whom were as relevant yea more revelant exception Answer I think any man in the world that hath common sense informed of both Cases may give a reason and may perceive that the Writer hath been rash when he hath wrote these words upon the like Exception and as relevant yea more relevant Exception For Blacketer and others 1. Their scandal was cleer in the Law 2. They had been convicted of the fact yea 3. They had been actually censured and were yet lying under the Censure 4. A part of their censure was exclusion from being members of Kirk Judicatories 5. There was one expresse Act of a Gen. Assembly That they should not be liberat from that censure nor be capable to be members of any inferior Kirk-Judicature until their satisfaction should be first notified unto and approven by a Gen. Assembly Now let any man in the world tell me if the exception against the one and the other was alike or if there was more relevancy in the exception against the Commissioners then in the exception against these for their Exclusion from being Members the matter of Exception might haply considered in abstracto be of greater importance but we speak now of the exception in relation to Persons and Circumstances as it is to have effect or not to have effect upon the Judge for Censuring and Noting or not Censuring and Noting the Persons REVIEW THe Author in Answering the Instance concerning Blacketer seems to himself to have gotten a great advantage of the Writer his rashness but though his advantage were as great as he takes it to be in that particular it would not better his Cause because multitudes of Instances can be given from time to time in the Gen. Assembly of this Church of removing persons upon exceptions of scandal before any conviction of the Fact or censure for the same yea in the same Assembly 1651 several persons were laid aside upon exceptions before any legal conviction or sentence past upon the Fact as the Commissioners of some Presbyteries who were protested against because of opposing publick Resolutions And the Commissioners of the presbytery of Dunse whose Case was not cleer in Law neither yet legally found true as to the matter of Fact But let us see what it is that he hath