Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	humane_a	law_n	positive_a	2,470	5	10.9031	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66346	The excellency of a publick spirit set forth in a sermon preach'd (since much enlarged) at the funeral of that late reverend divine Dr. Samuel Annesley, who departed this life Dec. 31, 1696 in the 77th year of his age : with a brief account of his life and death / by Daniel Williams.	Williams, Daniel, 1643?-1716.	1697 (1697)	Wing W2648; ESTC R26373	66,824	154

in my Reformation Safety or Liberty c. Your Families have a Right to Godly Education as well as other Benefits but they do testifie against you as injurious in not instructing perswading and striving with them to rescue them from the power of the Devil and to become devoted to the Lord. The Poors cryes go up to Heaven against you for keeping back their Portion of your Substance and denying that Advice and Help whereby you might have made them useful and comfortable Such just Complaints may well touch their Hearts against whom they are directed perhaps you would hate to defraud any Man in what the Laws of the Land declare unjust but is not the Law of Nature and the positive Laws of God as sufficient to determine what 's Just or Unjust as Humane Laws can be And these do accuse you to be injurious to Men in your wilful unprofitableness But besides all this it may be many are exclaiming against you among the Damned already as accessary to their Miseries by your neglects as well as otherwise They are dead in their sin for want of thy reproof and thy slackness in pulling them out as Brands out of the burnings If our Hearts have any tenderness under a sence of so many and manifest injuries we must feel this Wickedness much embittered to us 5. You should blush at and bewail your Unusefulness as it is a great hurt to your selves Unprofitable persons govern themselves by a great mistake in that they fall into mischief the way they think to escape it to avoid Self-hurt they refrain being useful to others but you 'll find that thereby you incur a far greater damage For fear of loss you kept from others what you ought to have laid out for their Relief and you think it 's so much saved for your own benefit but God will so order matters that all such riches were kept to your own hurt Eccl. 5.13 Whenever power is mis-applied or not exerted for common Benefit that 's the time wherein a Man ruleth over another to his own hurt Eccl. 8.9 Folly when detected is cause of shame Mischief when perceived forceth sorrow in him on whom it falleth it 's your Blindness and Infidelity that you now find not in your great Unusefulness the plainest evidence of both but what Unbelief will not now discern Experience shortly will force the securest of you to acknowledge and that to the filling of you with shame and grief Oh that you would consider your latter end Deut. 32.29 i. e. that you would consider what this selfish barren course will come to what it will end in I can by good warrant assure you it will not be either so comfortable nor gainful as to justifie your Neglects You perhaps will say With what I save by not relieving the Poor or promoting any good Design I shall get an Inheritance the more hastily by so much Is it so Take God's Word for an Answer But the end thereof shall not be Blessed Prov. 20.21 Write that as a Prophecy upon whatever of your Estates God hath forbidden you to lay up by his Call to lay it out The same is applicable to all that Strength Safety Credit or Interest you think you secure by neglecting to serve your Generation the end thereof shall not be blessed To Evidence this and thereby further Convince you that Unusefulness yields reason of shame and sorrow of shame by your folly in it of sorrow by the mischief of it Consider 1. You can keep nothing with a Blessing which you have gotten or saved by Unusefulness very oft God even disappoints Men of getting what they propose to get by their unfaithfulness to him and unusefulness to others with Balaam they miss of what they so greedily desire and some way or other God signally defeats them in the danger they thought to prevent and the benefit they expected so that they are forced to say even at present I have neither saved nor gotten any thing by refusing to serve my Generation I am as poor as if I had laid out for God what I covetously with held Prov. 11.24 I am as much reproached and as little esteemed by these Men for fear of whose Tongues or Dislike I betrayed the Truth as if I had faithfully adher'd to it But upon supposition you have made some present Advantage yet you may not long keep it God may soon blast it to the terror of others Iudas soon parted with the Silver he got by betraying Christ Matth. 27.34 some have been burnt in their House by God's Hand who refused to burn for the Truths sake Ananias soon lost the use of what he reserved from publick Service and his Life to the Bargain Act. 5. cap. Oh! how many remarkable Instances are upon Record of the ruined Families of such as acquir'd Estates by unfaithfulness to God and uncharitableness to Men Their Children could not keep what their Parents perfidiously heaped Nay Examples are very many that did not keep for their own time the Wealth or Reputation which they secured at the price of a common Harm but became Beggarly and Infamous God hath made many Men's Parts to wither and their Health to decay whose Sloth made their Gifts and Strength unuseful to the Publick such a Method God took with Israel when they disregarded God's House and over-regarded their own Hag. 1.4 9 11. Ye looked for much and it came to little and when ye brought it home I did blow upon it Why saith the Lord of Hostes Because of mine House that lies waste and ye run every Man into his own House What advantage they got was small and that soon turned to no Account because of God's Blast it was presently reduced to nothing But supposing God for wise Ends suffer you to keep what you have gotten or saved yet I am sure you cannot keep it with a Blessing If you are Ungodly it 's your Snare which is the worst of Curses If you have serious Spirits you must uneasily enjoy it and use it with bitter reflections as what you hold not with God's Good-will a desecrated accursed thing that hazardeth and curseth the rest which without this might have been possess'd comfortably and safely yea and have been employed to blessed Uses whereas now God disdains to accept or succeed the residue to his Service but he embittereth it to your disquiet as well as emptieth it to your dissatisfaction 2. You shall be great losers by your unusefulness notwithstanding all you can get or save thereby No profit by deceitfulness towards God will countervail the loss you will sustain Bethink you whether you have not lost already more than that amounts to Do you enjoy that peace you once had Have you that free access into his presence as sometimes you found Doth he afford you that communion with himself and tokens of his favour in which you were accustomed to relish the highest delight Have you not less composure and fixedness of Heart when dangers threaten