Selected quad for the lemma: work_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
work_n	create_v	good_a	workmanship_n	4,350	5	11.8942	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45245	A sermon preached at the publick commencement at Cambridge, Sunday in the afternoon, July iij, 1698 by Francis Hutchinson ...	Hutchinson, Francis, 1661-1739.	1698 (1698)	Wing H3831; ESTC R7531	11,786	25

have lies at stake if we look about into the works of God he hath written this part of his Mind in as clear Characters as he hath his Goodness And let the Judgment of God upon the faln Angels be our first Example in this case Amongst us it is no Dispute but that there are Myriads infinite numbers of glorious Spirits banish'd by God from the Regions of Bliss When by an unjust and ungrateful Rebellion they made themselves unworthy of the Glory and Happiness he gave them he would not dishonour his Government by maintaining or suffering them to be happy in their disobedience but condemned them to such Conditions as they deserved Now by his punishing them let us weigh our Arguments against his punishing our Race Let us imagine we see so many glorious Beings falling under God's Justice from the blessedness of Heaven to the miseries they endure Let us set before our Minds the Torments they have gone thorough in so many long Ages as have past since that righteous Sentence And then let us urge our Arguments for the impossibility of God's punishing wickedness But there is no disputing against matter of Fact and whatever Arguments might be plausibly urged before the experiment as perhaps they were such as deceived the new Created Angels yet after the experiment they ought not to deceive Children For it is a plain Argument what hath been may be And what God hath done once He may do again if the case be the same because he is the same and being alwaies infinitly good he must be alwaies infinitly and equally an Enemy to unjust and unreasonable Creatures and Actions But because Men who are willing to deceive themselves will urge all the differences they can find out betwixt Angels and us we will therefore consider God's Providences and Righteous Judgments upon us Men. The Psalmist Meditating upon these Punishments in the 46. Ps 8. v. calls upon Men to behold the works of the Lord what desolations he hath made in the Earth At first when he had Created the World good and every way fitted for a happy Life He Cursed it because of sin and half spoiled such a glorious piece of Workmanship because Man did not deserve a happyer to live in For let Men call these Pains and Sorrows and Deaths that are upon us Natural Calamities that is only cheating our selves with a word and with a very improper one for those evils that are lay'd upon us by a living and thinking and governing God If they had happened by a train of unthinking causes and a fatal course of dead Nature Natural Calamities had been their proper Name but coming from a perfect Mind who does all things with Design and Judgment and Justice they are Punishments and show us very effectually that it is not contrary to his Nature to punish wickedness and disobedience For the wickedness again of Man God brought a Flood of Waters upon the World and excepting Eight Persons drowned every Soul that breathed upon the Earth Millions that knew not their Right Hand from their Left were drowned in their Mothers Arms and Fathers and Children were swept away together Men would not believe that And though God sent a Preacher to give them warning while the Ark was preparing yet still it could not enter into their Minds but that God would be more Merciful But they argued so vainly till the Flood was upon them Now these Examples are as so many Monuments set up to Teach us that we ought not to argue that God's Goodness will not suffer him to punish because he hath shown us he will and our Forefathers have found it To come still nearer even to our own Age and Sight and there will be no uncertainty If we take but the present Face of things and place before our Thoughts the Sorrows Pains and Deaths of our own or of any Generation we have Example sufficient as much as we need for abating for the different way and the commonness which lessens our Sence of it allowing for that we have the Fall and the Flood both acted over again in every Generation For in what I pray does the multitude of sorrowful Deaths that destroys every Age fall short of a Deluge They differ indeed in the way and time of destroying but there is no difference in the desolation this one thing excepted that whereas the Deluge left Eight Persons this takes the Eight also and leaves not so much as one And for the Pains and Diseases and Sorrows and Griefs that alwaies lye upon Mankind and are hasting some towards their end and actually killing others what can be a more sad prospect than this if we see it rightly So many Afflictions and Crosses such numbers of Desolate Widows and Fatherless Children such great poverty and want as many feel The sinking Hearts of Slaves and Captives and Oppressed and weary Servants The terrors of those places where they hide themselves in the Dens and Caves of the Earth for fear of their Neighbours Swords The languishing decays or the torturing pains of Mens Bodies while their Eyes fail to see their certain Death 's a coming Or the still deeper Griefs of wounded Spirits and troubled Minds where the unseen Arrows of God stick fastest and deepest of all others and even drive on many to hasten their own Deaths in hopes that way to lay down that Burden which is greater than they can bear It is a Blessing to us that the commonness of these things does in some measure harden us from the true Thoughts that this case seems to require for otherwise the multitude of Sorrows that are in the World and their nearness to our selves would draw too dark a Cloud over our lives But as this mighty Army of Afflicted Suffering Dying Men are alwaies under God's Eye and Hand let us place them at this time before our Minds And if we add to the Thought how many of these are Righteous Pious Persons who have endeavoured in the course of their Lives both to bear and to do the will of God we shall hardly forbear applying our Saviour's Speech If these things be done in the green Tree what shall be done in the dry If God laies such Judgments upon mixt multitudes what Punishments will he make use of when he shall have separated the Goats from the Sheep and set the Wicked by themselves If such Afflictions and Sorrows as these are for Medicines for Government and good uses under the time of tryal what greater Miseries must there be in store against that time when the Judge of all the Earth shall distribute Justice amongst all his Subjects His Punishments indeed will not be greater than Mens evil works deserve for he will do wrong to none but what their sins do deserve he hath given us sufficient Assurance that it is not against his Nature to inflict them And thus I have Discoursed those Three Points I proposed I am sensible how far below the Dignity of so great a Subject

humility as becomes us but the thing would put a strong Expostulation and Plea into the Creatures Mouth I need not speak the Plea at large for such destruction of Virtuous Men is not the Mind of God and they who know God rightly would hardly ask for a Sign or Miracle to convince them that it is not But if the Eternal Duration be granted there is Secondly The greatness of the Glory and Rewards seems hard to be thought true For our Religion does speak glorious and happy things both of the place of Heaven and the Inhabitants that dwell in it And it lets us know moreover that even those great descriptions are but borrowed expressions from such things as we understand but that the Happiness it self is something that is greater than we can yet conceive And for the furthering of us in our Belief of this I will only oppose this present World and work of God which we are sure God hath made and given us for a dwelling-place Let us cast then our Thoughts and Minds through the vast stretch of space in which it stands Consider how it is fill'd with Sun and Moon and Thousand Stars Think of their Mystick Dance so just so strange Their Motions swifter than Bullets fly yet punctual to their time and place Their magnitudes above what Thought can reach yet steady and even in their violent carreer All things vast every thing rapid yet beautiful and unconfused and regular as an Army marches Our Globe of Earth makes one amongst them and bears its part this pondrous Mass half Land half Water with so many Lakes Deserts Forests burning Hills Isles and habitable Lands with our strange Race that dwells upon it We either swim or hang together with our Earth amongst those Stars like an enchanted thing And tho' we see and feel our Earth to be a dead lumpish heap of matter yet it keeps its time and place as steadily as if it was all Thought and Eye And of those who cannot believe there shall be a Heaven I would ask Would they have believed there should have been such a World as this is if it had been told them If these unbelieving Men had been Created before it and it had been lay'd before them by some Messenger from God That God was about to Build such a glorious piece of work for their Habitation Would they not have believed it less and thought it more unlikely than the new Heavens and Earth which we expect now And yet this Fabrick of the World is really a Thousand times greater and more wonderful in it self than it is in our Thoughts For we only behold the Creation as a Travaller should admire some Illustrious Palace through a Prospective from some distant Hill And tho we are indeed dwellers in a little Angle of it We do no more understand the Beauty and Uses and Greatness and Wisdom of God's World than such a distant Observer could Judge of the Contrivance and Convenience of such a House that he views so far off And if instead of being such remote Spectators we could see it at a nearer view If instead of being chained to our little spot we could leave our Earth and raise our selves till we were amongst those Celestial Bodies And with enlarged Minds could comprehend that deep Contrivance by which our Earth and they have made their mysterious course by a perpetual motion And as God hath not made an Herb upon our Earth but for some good end could we see the true and proper end for which God Created those for he did not make such mighty works only to afford that little Light that guides our nights And could we see those great bodies and their true uses as a Stranger views some Noble House from room to room and side to side there would be no more Spirit left in us We should Believe any thing that the Maker of such a World hath Promised And as for Seats of Bliss for Virtuous Souls and Glorious Mansions for those whom this great Creator should delight to Honour instead of objecting the strangeness and difficulty of the thing we should be taken up with humble wonder how great and glorious those Mansions should be This shall suffice for the Second Point Thirdly The Third is the Punishments of the other World And under this Head I shall not offer at any determination how much of the Descriptions we have of them is Literal and how much Methaphorical and Popular let there be as much Metaphor as there will yet since they will be what is suitable and fit for false and impious Men And since they be Eternal for so no doubt the Souls of all Men are both good and bad And since in the case of pain and misery the feeling does alwaies greatly exceed the imagination I doubt not but the concern and apprehension we should really have of them ought in reason to be ten times greater than what the generality of Men have when they hear the most Tragical Representations But to the fears of this sort unbelieving Men oppose the great goodness of God They think the Text I am speaking of is on their side and that they know not God who represent him so Terrible And I Confess the Superlative Descriptions of infinite indulgence and longing for our Happiness and a severity in tormenting us as infinitly inexorable do seem to stand at a wide distance from one another And I believe many expressions of this sort have something ad hominem But whatever allowance may be made to such waies of speaking in other places in this Auditory even upon this Point we must endeavour to speak with just expressions I make not this Preface as if I had any thing to follow it that should lessen the Divine Goodness that would be Blasphemy in the highest God's Goodness is Perfect and so tempered with Wisdom and Justice as makes a fairer and more perfect Character of the Judge of all the Earth than an infinite indulgence would do And as his Goodness in general is perfect his Philanthropy and Love of our Race is sincere and designs our Happiness if we hinder it not our selves He hath given us instances of that in abundance and especially in his sending to us our Saviour and his Gospel for our Salvation But then he hath let us know as effectually that his Love of our Race is not so great as his Love of True Excellency and Virtue and hatred of base qualities He hath given us abundant proof that his indulgence of our Persons is not so infinite but he can very easily make us miserable and shamefull if we make ourselves deserving to be so And tho' great pains and sufferings be included in such a state He hath given us very satisfactory proof that it is not contrary to his goodness but very well agreable with his Nature to suffer base and wicked Creatures to endure them And that we might not flatter and deceive our selves in a matter where all we