Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	aaron_n	bring_v	rod_n	155	3	10.3803	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27606	Evangelical repentance unto salvation not to be repented of upon 2 Cor. 7, 10 ; and as most seasonable, Short considerations on that great context Hebr. 12, 26, \"Yet once more I shake not only Earth, &c.\" : upon the solemn occasion of the late dreadful earthquake in Jamaica and the later monitory motion of the earth in London, and other parts of the nation and beyond the sea ; whereunto is adjoined a discourse on death-bed repentance, on Luc. 22, 39 / by T. Beverly.	Beverley, Thomas.	1693 (1693)	Wing B2148_PARTIAL_CANCELLED; Wing B2140_CANCELLED; ESTC R17858	162,555	326

from Pardon when the Humiliation is sincere and the Soul exchanges impure Delights for those of Holiness without Counterfeit or Dissimulation It may seem in all those Discourses that he had forgot to enter a Caution against Presumption but it is to be considered while he thus frankly pours out himself he was one while inviting * In Libr. ad Demetrianum Credite vivite qui nos ad tempus persequimini in aeternum gaudete nobiscum Persecutors of Christianity into the Confessions of it whom he would not have debarred with the sense of so great past Offences against it Another while designing against the Novatian Heresie which took upon it to tie up the freeness of Grace as he says † Velit nolit Novatus Haereticus omni tempore Dei gratia recipit penitentes In spight of the Heretick Novatus the Throne of Grace is early and late accessible to true Repentance This therefore is not to be pressed beyond the design of the excellent and holy Writer but will very well agree with all that I am presently to add as a Ballance to this favourable Judgment for such a Repentance Daille For as that most prudent Discourse of the right use of the Fathers teaches us we must always attend their scope in the pursuit of which they were often transported towards the other extreme But that a dying Repentance in the nature of the thing is no Incompossibility we have fullest Assurance in the Example of the Text wherein we see one in a moment conceived brought forth and even a grown Man in Repentance one passing through some short Instants of holy Action and entring into Paradise like Aaron's Rod budding blossoming and bringing forth ripe Almonds in a Night and laid up in the Sanctuary for ever That it was most probably the first Call he had to Repentance agrees fully with the Intention of my Discourse which granting so much as a Possibility would yet take all advantage against the easie Confidence of those that living daily under the offers of Grace and yet despising them commit themselves first to the Intentions and at last to the faint motions of a late Repentance To whom that Admonition of Austin is most seasonable concerning the Instance we have in hand * Ad consequendam fidem non fuit illi extrema hora sed prima Nec Religionem ante nec Christum scivit non remedia status sui in momenta ultima infoelici fraude posuit Serm. 120. de Temp. If we respect his Opportunities for attaining Faith his Repentance was not late but early and soon he took the very first Season as soon as ever he descried Christ and Religion he embraced them He did not wretchedly cheat himself of the Remedies of his miserable Condition by adjourning the Vse of them to a late and incertain Futurity which seldom or never succeeds well This Consideration leads me therefore from the most favourable the light side of this milder Sentence to the black and dark part of it That is to say There is an Extreme peradventure whether God will give Repentance at the last or not for this Grace being acknowledged extraordinary if it were common it would cease to be extraordinary It is most undoubted in Scripture God is often provoked against Men to swear they shall never enter into his rest Heb 3.8 9. c. when they have long tempted him and Erred from his ways The Heart is daily hardened by the deceitfulness of Sin till it grow to that the Apostle calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Heart that is Irrepentable Rom. 4.2 or that cannot be repented of Customs in Sin long setled become like the Ethiopians Skin Jerem. 13.23 and the Leopards Spots that cannot be changed And though it is true the Spirit of God is not hindered in its Inspirations but that it bloweth where it listeth yet the course of it is so attemper'd to the state and motion of the Soul it self that it most usually takes the opportunity so generally requisite to the setling a Constitution and Temper in us that is the freest and most unprejudiced and larger spaces of a Man's Life So that whenever it works upon Dying Men I mean those that have had the free use of the means of Grace of old It works by such a Prerogative that a Man may as well expect a Prerogative of Providence to bear him walking upon the Sea because it did once so to Peter as this Most even of the fairest Appearances of this kind of Repentance miscarry having no true Virtue in them and though in regard of their vehemency they are called early Seekings of God yet which is horrible to be spoken they are as it were prepared for the Triumphs of the Justice and Indignation of God over those Prov. 1.28 who would have none of his Counsel in former times but despised all his reproof Lastly Whoever seeing and knowing calls himself with design upon Repentance at Death is like to fall headlong by tempting God and expecting he should stand ready for him with that Grace at last he hath so long resisted and refused And now when this Judgment of Divines with this Ballance upon it is compared with the former the result will be only this the kindest Divinity in the point and that seems to do the most favor is very dreadful and leaves such Men in a Condition next to desperate which is but an Aggravation of the danger when what Men would choose to appeal to so far condemns them It is then agreed on all hands that for any Man to live so as if he did contrive and forecast a Dying Repentance altho it be yielded him it is no impossibility as the safe expedient first of an Irreligious Life free from the troublesome Thoughts of a present Amendment and then of a secure Passage into Eternity It is first an exceeding Irreligion and Immorality in it self and then to run so desperate a Risque and Adventure for an Immortal Soul that he is a pardonable Mad-man in comparison of such an one that drinks a deadly Poyson because he hath heard there is a certain Antidote in the World that will expel it though he cannot tell whether he can have it at all much less whether time enough for his necessity and lastly whether the Endeavors he uses for it will not be deluded with the Counterfeits of it it being supposed they are thousands for one of the true kind and he thereby perish pleasing himself with the hopes he hath it when he hath indeed but a likeness of it 2. Head I come now to the second Proposal which is to make inquiry seeing the Case is thus as it every way appears to be How the name or notion of a Death-Bed Repentance as such an universal Refuge came up in the World for it is a new Repentance much like those new-come-up Gods Moses speaks of Deut. 32.17 that Christianity and the Gospel know not The