Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A45686
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A funeral sermon preached upon the death of Mrs. Rebecka Goddard, November the 13th. 1692 At Joyners-Hall. By Tho. Harrison.
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Harrison, Thomas, fl. 1700.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing H910A; ESTC R213017
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15,833
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28
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blesses God accounts and acknowledges God to be glorious in Holiness Justice Goodness and Truth when he strips him of his Outward Comforts he justifies God in all his Dealings with him the Language of both his Heart and his Lips is the same with David's Thou hast dealt well with thy Servant according to thy Word Psal 119.65 Fifth Prop. This includes our offering up Praise and Thanksgiving to God under if not for our Afflictions He that thus Blesses God will Praise his Name when he takes as well as when he gives he will return Thanks for those Mercies which are still continued with him though he mourns for the removal of others from him yea if he observes Mercy either in the Circumstances of the Affliction or in the Issue and Event of it he will remember to offer up the Sacrifice of Praise to God even when he hangs his Harp upon the Willows I Proceed Secondly To Prove and Demonstrate the Point and this I shall do more Generally and more Particularly First More Generally God is to be Blessed by us at all times and therefore when he deprives us of our Outward Comforts as well as when he gives them to us This is evident from the Nature of God our Relation to him and the Revelations and Discoveries which he hath made of his Will to us Is God the most excellent Being surely we who stand related to him as Creatures to a Creator and as Subjects to a Sovereign are Obliged at all times to Glorifie him not by making him glorious but by accounting and acknowledging him to be glorious our selves and Proclaiming him to be so unto others Is not Praise and Thanksgiving due from us to him at all times unless he could cease to be God or we cease to be Creatures we can under no Circumstances be freed from our Obligation to glorifie the Perfections of his Nature Those terrible Dispensations of Divine Providence which make a great Alteration in our Outward State and Condition neither make nor argue any Change in God He is the same when he takes and when he gives when he empties us and when he fills us To suppose him a good God at one time and an evil God at another is a flat Contradiction it is to suppose him not to be God And hath he not frequently prohibited those things which are excluded by and Commanded those things which are implyed in Blessing a taking God They must be greatly unacquainted with the Holy Scriptures who are Ignorant hereof Secondly I shall more particularly demonstrate that this Conclusion naturally and necessarily flows from the preceding Propositions First We ought to Bless a taking as well as a giving God Because the same God who takes them away from us first gave them to us The force of this Argument will be apparent from the two following Considerations First That God who gave them to us hath an unquestionable right to take them away from us As I told you before he retained his Propriety in them when he had bestowed them upon us and may not God do what he pleases with his own We may suppose Job speaking to God after this manner Lord Thou hast depriv'd me of my Wealth and my Children but I will subscribe to the Equity of thy Proceedings with me for thou dost but exercise thy Sovereign Right thou gavest them to me and yet still they remained thine therefore thou hast righteously taken them away from me Secondly When God takes our Outward Comforts from us we have reason to Bless him for giving them to us We are very prone to be guilty of this piece of Ingratitude towards both God and Man our Creator and our fellow Creatures if they shew Kindness to us for a time and refuse the Continuance thereof instead of thanking them to quarrel with them Let none of us say when any of our Enjoyments are snatcht away from us Better we had never enjoy'd them than to be so soon depriv'd of them Hast thou lost a Child a comfortable Child a Child in its ripe Age thou hast reason to bless God that he gave thee a Child that he made it a Comfort which might have been a Cross to thee and hath continued it so long with thee Hast thou lost a delightful Wife one that was a Help Meet for thee thou hast reason to bless God that he gave thee such a Wife who might have given thee one that would have been a Continual Torment and Vexation to thee and that he hath spared her so long with you Secondly We ought to Bless a taking God because it is the Lord Jehovah who takes our Outward Comforts from us The Lord hath taken away The Lord who can do no wrong to any of his Creatures The Lord who is Righteous in all his Ways and Holy in all his Works The Lord against whom we have sinned and by our sins forfeited all our Mercies The Lord who had he dealt with us according to our Iniquities or rewarded us according to our Inventions might have cast us into Hell long ago The Lord who is our God The Lord who hath done great things for our Souls who is an alsufficient unchangable and everlasting Good who can make up the Loss of Creature Comforts in himself The Lord who knows what Condition is good for us better than we do our selves who manages all things according to the Dictates of his Infinite Wisdom The Lord whose ways are all Mercy and Truth to his People and aims at their Good as well as his own Glory in all his Dispensations towards them who will support them under Afflictions and sanctifie Afflictions unto them I proceed Thirdly To make some Improvement and Application of this Point which shall be only an Exhortation to all in general and you the Relations of our Deceased Friend in particular to this Necessary Duty of Blessing a Taking God To enforce this I might present you with many Motives but I shall only offer you two which shall be taken from the Context of that Scripture which is the Foundation of this Discourse First Hereby you will Disappoint Satan What was the Devil's design against Job in endeavouring the removal of his Outward Comforts but to make him Curse God as is evident from Ver. 11. of this Chap. and questionless he is in the same Plot against us when in the like Condition He would fain Create some Prejudices against God in our Minds or draw some unbecoming Reflections upon him from our Lips Now as his Design against Job was defeated when instead of Cursing God he Bless'd him so will his Plot against us miscarry if we do the like and shall not we endeavour to frustrate his Designs who is an implacable Enemy both to our God and to us Secondly Hereby you will please God That this Carriage of Job's was well-pleasing to God is apparent from his express Approbation thereof in the words following my Text In all this Job sinned not neither charged God foolishly This is a Negative Commendation inclusive of an Affirmative one q. d. In all this Job acted becomingly suitably to the Character which I have given of him and ought it not to be our endeavour in all things to please God More particularly you my Friends whose Loss hath occasioned this Discourse have cause to be thankful as well as to Mourn under that stroke of God's Hand which hath been lately laid upon you God hath even in Judgment remembred Mercy with you in that he did not take away your Relation by a Violent but by a Natural Death the former is more terrible than the latter not only to those who undergo it but to their surviving Relatives Moreover though your dear Relation was taken away in a short time after Sickness began to seize her yet she did not dye suddenly God gave you some Warning before he gave that fatal blow which separated her from your Embraces Have you not reason to Bless God for those Supports which he gave her and those Manifestations and Discoveries of his Love which he made to her in the time of her Sickness Had she been stupid and insensible of her Condition or gone out of the World full of Horrour your Burthen would have been the greater though then you ought to have acquiesc'd in the Will of God but now you have good ground to Hope that she is not lost but gone before that your Loss is her Gain that she was separated from you only in order to her Enjoyment of her Heavenly Father and her dearest Husband the Lord Jesus Christ that she is gone to that blessed Place from whence she would not for a World return to you That though you have had a doleful Parting you will have a joyful Meeting never to part more And would you Bless this taking God seriously consider those things which I Proposed to you to demonstrate the reasonableness thereof endeavour to clear up your Interest in him go forth by Faith to the Lord Jesus Christ that you may derive that Grace and Strength from him which may enable you to do this difficult Work so I hope you may say with the Holy Man in the Words of my Text The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away Blessed be the Name of the Lord. FINIS Advertisement THe Revelation Unvailed or an Essay towards the Discovering I. When many Scripture Prophecies had their Accomplishment and turned into History II. What are now Fulfilling III. What rest still to be fulfilled with a guess at the time of them With an Appendix proving that Pagan Rome was not Babylon Rev. 17. and that the Jews shall be Converted By Samuel Petto Minister of the Gospel at Sudbury in Suffolk Price 1 s 6 d The Life and Death of that Old Disciple of Jesus Christ and Eminent Minister of the Gospel Mr. Hanserd Knollys who Dyed in the Ninety Third Year of his Age. Written with his own Hand to the Year 1672. and continued in General in an Epistle by Mr. William Kiffien To which is added his last Legacy to the Church Price stitcht 6 d or Bound 8 d Both Printed for John Harrls at the Harrow in the Poultrey
World let us as much as in us lies endeavour the Salvation of their Souls and let us strive to receive what good we can from them for we know not how speedily Death may make a separation between us and them Thirdly Hence I Inferr That when we enjoy any Outward Comforts we ought to be continually expecting and preparing for the loss of them Let us not think that we shall always enjoy them but look upon them as fading and uncertain let us endeavour to wean our selves from them to use them as if we used them not In this respect let those who have Wives and Children be as if they had none That Affliction which comes unlookt for usually comes unprepar'd for The more loose we sit from our outward Comforts when we have them the more easily shall we part with them Jacob could better part with his ten other Sons into the Land of Egypt than with his Benjamin that almost brought his grey Hairs with Sorrow to the Grave No wonder if we immoderately grieve for those things when absent which we immoderately Love when present By dying daily to them let us prepare to follow them to their Graves Fourthly I Inferr How unreasonable it is for us to be surprized when any of our outward Comforts are removed from us These fiery Tryals should not be thought strange of by us for no strange thing hath happened to us If we thought them durable we were mistaken about them and if we thought them uncertain and vanishing why should we be surprized when they disappear It was an excellent saying of a Heathen when one told him of his Son's Death Sciebam me genuisse mortales I knew that I begat Mortals O Parents did not ye know that your Daughter O Husband did not you know that your Wife was a Mortal be not then surprized at her Dissolution Fifthly and Lastly Hence I Inferr That we ought all of us to prepare for our own removal from our Relations As our Relations who are Comforts to us so we who are Comforts to them are fading Dying Creatures How soon our living Relations may walk the Streets in Mourning for us as we have done for those who are already gone to their long Home we know not The daily Instances of Humane Frailty which are given us should put us upon Considering and Preparing for our latter End that we may not be hurried from our Relations Embraces into everlasting Flames but may enter into Abraham's Bosom Let none of us deferr the great Work of Preparation for Death for we know not how soon we may enter into its gloomy shades Job's Children were snatcht away suddenly and so are many others Death is not always usher'd in with the formality of a long and lingring Sickness Our deceased Friend did not lye long upon her Bed of languishing but was quickly carried off the Stage by that Distemper which seized upon her It is not long since she was Worshipping God with us in this Assembly and now she is gone into the Congregation of the Dead Therefore be ye also ready for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh Matth. 24.44 Let not those who are Young put off this Business of highest Concernment to Old Age for young ones are often taken away by the stroke of Death Our Deceased Friend was like a pleasant Flower in her blooming Age blasted by the Wind of Death the Days of her appointed time were but few before her Change came Remember therefore your Creator Oh young Ones in the dayes of your Youth for it may be ye may not live 'till Old Age comes Your Maker may soon take you away Get an Interest in Christ who hath abolished Death and brought Life and Immortality to light by the Gospel So when you come to dye may ye chearfully resign your Souls to him and he will receive them into his Divine Embraces Whatever your Judgments are now when you come to lye upon a Death bed you will think an Interest in Christ more valuable than the whole World if you are not extreamly stupified The Hopes which our Deceased Friend had of this carried her comfortably through the Valley of the shadow of Death Thus much for the first Proposition Second Prop. That when we are deprived of any of our Outward Comforts we must acknowledge the Efficiency of God therein The Lord hath taken away Whoever is the Instrumental God is the Efficient Cause of all our Afflictions The Manichees of old tell us of two Beginnings or two Gods the one a good God and the other an evil God the former they asserted to be the Author of all Good and the latter to be the Author of all Evil the former they called A giving God and the latter A taking God But my Text will sufficiently confute that horrid Notion for Job ascribes the Donation and the Removal of his Outward Comforts to the same Divine Being as the first Cause of both and indeed it was necessary that he should do so because there is but one God Yea many Heathens taught better Doctrine than these Hereticks for they feigned that their great Jupiter had two great Vessels placed at the Entrance of his Palace whereof the one was filled with Good and the other with Evil and these he dispensed according to the Dictates of his own Will among the Children of Men. But not to trouble you with Poetical Fictions the Scriptures frequently assert this Truth says God Isa 45.9 I form the light and create darkness I make peace and create evil I the Lord do all these things Says the Church Lam. 3.38 Out of the mouth of the most high proceedeth not evil and good When any of our dear Relations are taken away by Death they fall by the stroke of God's Hand says God to the Prophet Ezekiel Son of Man behold I take away from thee the Desire of thine Eyes with a stroke Ch. 24. v. 16. The Diseases of which our Relations dye are only the means w hereby God brings about his designed End even their Dissolution These Winds God holds in the Hollow of his Hand and lets them loose at his pleasure to blow poor Mortals from the River of Time into the Ocean of Eternity and this is no Impeachment at all to Divine Goodness Punishments themselves are not Moral Evils in the Person that inflicts though they are Natural Evils in the Person that suffers them I need not insist farther upon the Proof of this Point but shall present you with some Inferences from it First Hence I Inferr That when we are Threatned with the Privation of any of our Outward Comforts it is our wisest and safest way to apply our selves to God for the Continuance of them We may allowably pray for and deprecate the removal of our Temporal Enjoyments provided we do it with Modesty and Humility with these necessary Limitations If it be agreeable to his Will If it may be for his Glory and our good to