Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
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A44689
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The right use of that argument in prayer from the name of God on behalf of a people that profess it by John Howe.
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Howe, John, 1630-1705.
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1682
(1682)
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Wing H3038; ESTC R29443
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33,646
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66
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we to resolve the matter only into the absoluteness of his Sovereignty upon the account whereof he may take what time he pleases but the depth of his hidden wisdom for he doth all things according to the Counsel of his will having reasons to himself which our shallow dim sight perceives not and whereof we are infinitely less able to make a sure judgment than a Countrey Idiot of reasons of state He may as to the present case think it most fit most honourable and glorious so often to forgive or so long to forbear such a delinquent people And may at length judge it most becoming him and most worthy of him as he is the common Ruler of the world and their injured despised Ruler to strike the fatal stroke and quite cut them off from him Now here it is therefore necessarily our duty to use this argument with him of his name so as wholly to submit the matter to his judgment and but conditionally if it will indeed make most for the glory of his name that then he will not abhor and reject such a people even for his names sake Nor can we herein be too importunate if we be not peremptory not too intent upon the end the glory of his name for about the goodness excellency and desireableness of that we are certain if we be not too determinate about the meanes or what will be most honourable to his name concerning which we are uncertain Neither is it disallowed us to use the best judgment we can about the meanes and the interest of Gods name in this case It is not our fault to be mistaken he expects us not to use the judgment of Gods But it will be our fault to be peremptory and confident in a matter wherein we may be mistaken and must signifie too much officiousness as if we understood his affaires better than himself and a bold insolence to take upon us to be the absolute judges of what we understand not and to cover our presumption with a pretence of duty Therefore though such a people be dear to us yet because his name ought to be infinitely more dear that in the settled bent of our hearts we ought to prefer And be patient of his sentence whatever it prove to be with deep resentment of our own desert but with high complacency that his name is vindicated and glorifi'd and with a sincere undissembled applause of the justice of his proceedings how severe soever they may be towards us Especially if we have reason to hope that severity will terminate but in a temporary discountenance and frown not in a final rejection 2. Much more are we to submit our own secular concernments which may be involv'd i. e. We ought only to pray we may have the continued free profession and exercise of our Religion in conjunction with the comfortable enjoyment of the good things of this life if that may consist with and best serve the honour of his great name But if he do really make this judgment in our case that we have so misdemean'd our selves and been so little really better to common observation in our practice and conversation than men of a worse Religion that he cannot without injury to his name and the reputation of his Government countenance us against them by the visible favours of his providence That it will not be honourable for him to protect us in our Religion to so little purpose and while we so little answer the true design of it That if we will retain our Religion which we know we are upon no terms to quit we must suffer for it and sanctifie that name before men by our suffering which we dishonoured by our sinning We have nothing left us to do but to submit to God to humble our selves under his mighty hand to accept the punishment of our sin to put off our ornaments expecting what he will do with us And be content that our dwellings our substance our ease and rest our liberties and lives if he will have it so be all sacrifices to the honour of that excellent name Nor can our use of this argument want such submission without much insincerity Concerning this therefore look back to what was said on the former head Nor is there any hardship in the matter that we are thus limited in our praying for what even nature it self teacheth us to desire our safety peace and outward comforts unless we count it an hardship that we are Creatures and that God is God and that ours is not the supream interest The desires of the sensitive nature are not otherwise to be formed into petitions than by the direction of the rational that also being govern'd by a superadded holy divine nature unto which it is a supream and a vital law that God is to be first-eyed in every thing Reason teaches that so it should be and grace makes it be so And it ought to be far from us to think this an hardship when in reference to our greater and more considerable concernments those of our soules and our eternal states we are put upon no such dubious suspenceful submission He hath not in these left the matter at all doubtful or at any uncertainty whether he will reckon it more honourable to his name to save or destroy eternally a sincerely penitent believing obedient soul. He hath settled a firm connection between the felicity of such and his own glory And never put it upon us as any part of our duty to be contented to perish for ever that he may be glorifi'd or ever to ask our selves whether we are so content or no. For he hath made such things our present immediate indispensable duty as with which our perishing is not consistent and upon supposition whereof it is impossible we should not be happy If we believe in his son and submit to his Government his name pleads irresistibly for our being saved by him He can have no higher glory from us than that we be to the praise of the glory of his grace being once accepted in the beloved Neither is it disallowed us to do the part of concives fellow-members of a community civil or spiritual to pray very earnestly for our people city countrey that are so justly dear to us Only since prayer it self is an acknowledgment of his superiority to whom we pray and we have no argument that we ought to hope should prevail but that of his own name we can but pray and plead as the nature of prayer and the import of that argument will admit i. e. with entire subjection to his holy and sovereign will and subordination to his supream Interest to whom we address our selves in prayer Use. And now the use this will be of to us is partly to correct and reprehend our prayers wherein they shall be found disagreeable to the true import of this Argument and partly to perswade unto and encourage such praying as shall be agreeable to it 1. It justly
The Right use of that ARGUMENT IN PRAYER FROM The Name of GOD On behalf of a People that profess it By John HOWE Minister of the Gospel LONDON Printed for Brabazon Aylmer at the Three Pidgeons over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhil 1682. The PREFACE NO sort of men have ever pretended to Religion who have not allowed unto Prayer a very eminent place in it And so much a deeper and more Potent Principle is Religion in the nature of Man than Reason though both are miserably perverted and infeebled that the former doth secretly prompt men especially in great distresses to Pray and expect relief by Prayer when the way wherein it is efficacious cannot so well be explicated or apprehended by the other And as Prayer hath ever been reckon'd a very principal part of Religion So hath Intercession for others been wont to be accounted a very fit and proper part of Prayer In the general Prayer is most evidently a duty of Natural Religion a Dictate of Nature which every man 's own mind suggests to him or may be appeal'd to about it should not a people seek unto their God Whence that personated eloquent Patron of the Christian cause urging for the conviction of his Heathen Adversary the common practice of people in their extremities to lift up even untaught their hands and eyes to Heaven fitly sayes of it Vulgi iste naturalis est sermo that they do herein as it were but speak the language of nature Now hereupon the impression of that Primitive Law of Nature not quite worn out from the mind of man even in this his very degenerate state to love our neighbours as our selves doth as a natural instinct secretly prompt us to pray for others whom we cannot otherwise help especially such to whom we have more peculiar Obligations who are in a more especial sense our neighbours as at least in our last necessities we do for our selves In which recourse to God whether for our selves or others we are led by a sense of our own impotency and dependent state from a deeply inward apprebension of a Deity that is as Epicurus himself seems constrain'd to acknowledge concerning the Idea of God even proleptical or such as prevents reason So that we do not being urg'd by the pinching necessity of the case stay to deliberate and debate the matter with our selves how this course should bring relief but do even take it for granted that it may by an apprehension that is earlier in us than any formal reasoning about it and being Prior to it is also not supprest by it but prevails against it if there be any thing in reason objected which we cannot so clearly answer Yet when we do bring the matter to a rational discussion we find that in our conception of God we have the apprehension of so perfect and excellent a nature that we cannot suppose he should be mov'd by any thing Foreign to himself or that we can inform him of any thing he knew not before or incline him to any thing to which his own nature inclines him not And therefore that though the wise and apt course of his Government over intelligent creatures requires that they should be apprehensive of their own concernments whether personal or that belong to them as they are in communities and pay a solemn homage to his sovereign power and goodness by supplicating him about them yet that if he hear their Prayers it must not be for their sakes but his own Therefore also it cannot upon strictest reasoning but seem most dutiful to him and hopeful for our selves that our Prayers should be conceiv'd after such a tenour as may be most agreeable unto that apprehension The Holy Scriptures and the Divine Spirit do both aim at the recovery of Apostate man and the repairing the decayes of his degenerate nature and do therefore besides what was necessary to be added renew the Dictates of the Law of Nature the One more expresly representing them the other impressing them afresh and reimplanting them in the hearts of all that are born of God Therefore that External Revelation of the mind and will of God doth direct and his Blessed Spirit which is pleased to be in all his Children the Spirit of Grace and Supplication doth inwardly prompt them not only to pray in reference to their single and common concernments but to form their Prayers after this Tenour Which is to be seen in their so frequent use of this Argument in Prayer from the Name of God Whereupon in a time when we are so much concern'd to be very instant in Prayer not only each of us for himself but for the Body of a People upon whom that Holy Name is called I reckon'd it seasonable to shew briefly the import and right use of this Argument and to that purpose have taken for the ground the following Text of Scripture JER 14. 21. Do not abhorr us for thy Names sake Where we have A Petition and The Argument enforcing it 1. A Very serious Petition or a Deprecation of the most fearful evil imaginable Do not abhor us The word doth not meerly signifie abhorrence but disdain A displeasure prevailing to that degree and so fixed as to infer rejection even from a just sense of honour So some of the Versions read reject us not or cast us not forth as we would do what or whom we despise and scorn to own As if it were feared the Holy God might count it ignominious and a reproach to him to be further related to such a People and might even be ashamed to be called their God And consequently that the following Argument is used not without some suspence of mind and doubt lest it should be turn'd against them whereof more hereafter Here it is imply'd 1. To be no impossible thing that God should reject with abhorrence a people once his own or that have been in peculiar visible relation to him Prayer is conversant about matters of Divine Liberty i. e. that are not known to us to be already determined this way or that but that may be or may not be as he pleases and sees fit consistently with the settled course and order of things not about things that he had before made ordinarily necessary nor about things that are simply or in ordinary course impossible In the former case Prayer would be needless in the latter to no purpose We do not pray that the Sun may rise to morrow at the usual hour or that the Sea may ebb and flow nor that they may be prevented of doing so But we must distinguish such necessity and impossibility from a meer certainty that things shall either be or not be We are to pray in the present case with a deep apprehension that this is perfectly a matter of liberty with the great God and that as he took such a people to be his of meer good pleasure so it depends wholly upon his meer pleasure that he