Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	love_n	receive_v	unrighteousness_n	1,627	5	10.8118	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46650	A sermon preached on the day of the publick fast, April the 11th, 1679, at St. Margarets Westminster before the Honourable House of Commons / by William Jane ...	Jane, William, 1645-1707.	1679 (1679)	Wing J456; ESTC R13564	23,060	50

to the whole world that Jerusalem is no longer the place of his rest that he has forsook his Footstool abhorred his Sanctuary and cast off his Altar If I had now time to pursue all the fatal circumstances of that dreadful story what incredible numbers most miserably perisht by the Pestilence and the Famine how many were destroyed by the Roman Armies and which was yet more tragical and frightful how many became the executioners of Gods vengeance upon themselves and how visibly the hand of God appeared in all we should quickly conclude it to be the most fearful calamity that was ever executed upon a people on this side Hell so that nothing but the day of Judgment can give us a resemblance of the horror of it Upon this occasion we may fitly use the words of the Prophet Daniel Under the whole heavens has not been done Dan. ix 12. as has been done upon Jerusalem I have no design to make any Application of this fearful story to our selves We have not yet had the voice in the Temple the terrible Earthquake or the flaming Sword and from these late discoveries that have been made amongst us we have some reason to hope that our destruction is not so near But though we have no Commission to forebode destruction yet we have loud Alarms to provide against it And if our impenitence under Gods Judgments continue at the same rate with theirs what can we otherwise expect but that we shall also perish in the like dreadful desolation I cannot here pretend to describe the successive advances of afflicting Providences which God Almighty hath sent upon this unfortunate Generation How fatal were the miseries of the Civil-war How sad and dismal the confusions that succeeded it We heard nothing among us but the cries of the oppressed the confused noise of the Battel of the warrier and garments rould in blood But after we had been long exercised with this severe discipline God at length turns our Captivity brings back our Royal Sovereign to sit upon the Throne of his Fathers and establishes the whole Nation in a full possession of their Rights and Laws their Liberties and Religion And which ought the more to endear our deliverance all this was brought about by a Miracle of Mercy far beyond all our hopes and contrivances at a time when we were quite lost without all visible means of a Restoration And now what ought have been the Natural result of this What language could have been more suitable for a redeemed people than those words of Ezra Ezra ix 14.15 Seeing thou hast punisht us less than our iniquities have deserved and hast given us such a deliverance as this shall we again break thy Commandments But lo thus has it come to pass by a prodigy of Ingratitude more astonishing than the Mercy that we have again provoked the Lord to take the Sword into his Hand to Commission his destroying Angel to bring the Pestilence into our Streets to send upon us a raging and devouring Fire which laid wast the Metropolis of the Kingdom Together with these Calamities he raises up against us a Foreign Enemy to make war upon our Coasts to scoff at Kings and make Princes a scorn unto them to break our chains deride our strong holds Hab. i. 10. and gather our captivity as the sands And ever since that time we have continued under the sad apprehensions of more fearful Judgments than these There has remained upon the Nation great distress and perplexity Luke xxi 25. mens hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things that are coming upon the earth We have long stood in fear of a Famine of the Word of the removal of the Candlestick of the glory of God in his Church ready to depart from us To be plain and in a word we are threatned with the return of Popery upon the Kingdom that is to have the practice of the grossest Impiety Superstition and dolatry introduced among us and all the sincere professors of the Truth of the Gospel in every corner of the Land Massacred Burnt Rackt and Tormented because they will not receive the mark of the beast in their forehead nor comply with these abominations This is the Sword which the Lord seems to hang over us this day And is there any way left to prevent or stop it from the intended execution If instead of our gratitude to God for such signal mercies as he has reacht forth unto us we begin to fret and murmur at our enjoyments and are ready to make us a Captain to return into Aegypt is it not Just with God to cause Aegypt to return to us and enslave both King and People to the merciless Usurpation of a Foreign Power If after we have so long lived under a Faithful Preaching of the Word a sincere Administration of the Sacraments a liberal provision of all the means of Grace we have loathed our Manna and despised our Mercies if we have either quite withdrawn from the Publick Assemblies or not brought forth fruit in any wise answerable to those great advantages which we have of being saved may we not reasonably presume that we have so far provoked the Lord as to give us up to a people who will deprive us of these blessings who with the cruelty of Dioclesian will kindle a Fire either for our Bibles or our Selves who instead of the word of God will obtrude upon us their own inventions rob us of one half of the blessed Sacrament and set up the Idol of the Mass instead of the other 2 Thes ii 10 11 12. If we have not received the love of the truth that we might be saved Is it not greatly to be feared that for this cause God will send us strong delusions that we shall believe lies that all may be damned who believe not the truth but have pleasure in unrighteousness If after all those mixtures and vicissitudes of Providence that we have had as Salvian says of the Spaniards Mutata sors sed non mutata vitiositas there remains still the same senslesness under Gods Judgments the same unthankfulness for his Mercies the same Atheism Prophaneness and Infidelity from which God by all this variety of his methods has indeavoured to reclaim us If the Nation is full of Whoredoms and because of swearing the Land mourneth If Treason dares appear with an open Face and spread dayly Libels and Defamations against the Government If Schisms and Factions thrive and prosper and again threaten the best of Churches in the world surely God will visit for these things his soul will yet further be avenged upon such a Nation as this May we not justly fear that God will raise up against us a bitter and hasty Nation to land upon our Coasts to march through the breadth of the Land and possess the dwelling places that are not theirs that he will henceforth forget to be gracious and shut up his loving kindness in an utter displeasure that he will bring upon us that heavy doom which our Saviour of old denounced to his own people Therefore I say unto you Matth. xxi 43. that the Kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a Nation bringing forth the fruits of it I know but one way left to prevent the approach of these dreadful Judgments which is seriously to put in practice that great duty which we are called to this day to repent and turn from our transgressions that so iniquity may not be our ruine This is the only course left us to rescue us from our present miseries and preserve us from the evil which is otherwise certainly to come upon us And how great soever our fears are we have yet some comfortable grounds to hope that our day of Grace is not yet past the door is not shut against us but that we are still within the possibilities of Repentance It seems that we are not yet quite cast off by that wonderful discovery which God hath made amongst us of a Hellish Plot for the Assassinating of our King and the Subversion of our Government and Religion And therefore though we might be apt to conclude with Manoah in the Book of Judges We shall surely die because we have seen God so terrible in his Judgments in the midst of us Yet we may now with Manoahs wife make a better and more reasonable inference Judg. xiii 12 23. If the Lord were pleased to kill us he would not have shewed us all these things nor would he as at this time have told us such things as these Let us be careful therefore to improve this signal Providence to those serious purposes for which God intends it which are to break off our sins by Repentance to reform and amend our lives Lest by continuing in our transgressions we defeat the designs of his goodness and hinder him from going on to compleat our deliverance Lest this great Mercy prove but a lightning before death and notwithstanding this if we still do wickedly we be consumed both we and our King So that we see a way still lies open for us to appease the wrath of God and procure his favor which if we all sincerely resolve to walk in he will shine upon your Counsels bless your Enterprizes and prosper your Undertakings he will be a wall of fire round about us when he is thus the glory in the midst of us he will heal our back-slidings and make up our breaches he will defeat the designs of the enemies of our Peace and he will remember the Land FINIS