Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	prayer_n	read_v	word_n	2,960	5	4.5557	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A40073	The design of Christianity, or, A plain demonstration and improvement of this proposition viz. that the enduing men with inward real righteousness or true holiness was the ultimate end of our Saviour's coming into the world and is the great intendment of his blessed Gospel / by Edward Fowler ...	Fowler, Edward, 1632-1714.	1671 (1671)	Wing F1698; ESTC R35681	136,795	332

be most truly and properly called sins There is no one duty more affectionately recommended in the Gospel to us than is Alms-giving but to give alms to be seen and praised by men is no better than base Hypocrisie as Christ hath told us so far is it from an expression of Christian Charity And whatsoever materially vertuous actions proceed not from the principle of love to vertue though I cannot say that all such are hateful to God yet they want that degree of perfection that is requisite to make them truly Christian. And it is a plain case that he is not the Christian that is much employed in the Duties of Prayer Hearing God's Word Reading the Bible and other good Books c. but he that discovereth a good mind in them in whom the end of them is effected and who is the better for them This is the business for the sake of which Prayer is enjoyned We are therein to acknowledge God's Infinite Perfections and our obligations to him that we may express our hearty sense of them and in order to our being the more affected with those and our having the more grateful resentments of these We are in that duty to address our selves to the Divine Majesty in the name of Christ for what we want that we may by this means both express and encrease our dependance on him and trust in him for the obtaining thereof And to confess and bewail our sins to exercise Godly sorrow and contrition of Soul and that by so doing we may be so much the more deeply humbled for them and have the greater averseness in our wills against them The communion which we are to enjoy with God in Prayer is such as consisteth in being enamoured with the Excellencies that are in him and in receiving communications of his Nature and Spirit from him Therefore also are we commanded to Hear and Read God's Word that we may come thereby to understand and be put in mind of the several Duties he requires of us and be powerfully moved to the doing of them And the like may be said concerning all the other Exercises of Piety and Devotion the end of them is more and more to dispose our Hearts to the Love and our wills to the obedience of our Blessed Creatour and Redeemer And busying our selves in any of them without this Design may well be counted in the number of the fruitless and unaccountable actions of our lives Thus to do is prodigally to wast and mispend our time as the Jews were upbraided by one of their adversaries with doing upon the account of their Sabbath saying That they lost one day in seven And those that are most constant in their Addresses to the Majesty of Heaven both in the Publique and Private worship of him if they go into his presence with the entertainment and allowance of any sinful Affection they have never the more of the Divine Approbation upon that account If I regard saith David iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me God esteemeth no better of such as do so than as Hypocritical Fawners upon him and false-hearted Complementers of him and hath declared that their Sacrifices are an Abomination to him The Generality of the Jews were such a people God by his Prophet Isaiah speaks thus concerning them They seek me dayly and delight to know my ways as a Nation that did Righteousness and forsook not the Ordinance of their God They ask of me the Ordinances of Iustice they take delight in approaching to God They were a people that loved to fast and pray and afflict their Souls and to make their voice to be heard on high But giving liberty to themselves in plain immoralities God declared that all this was even hateful to him As may be seen in the Fifty eighth of Isaiah And he there likewise telleth them that the Fast which he took pleasure in consisteth in loosing the bands of wickedness in undoing the heavy burthens and letting the oppressed go free in breaking every yoke in dealing their bread to the Hungry and bringing the poor that are cast out to their houses in covering the Naked and the exercise of strict justice mercy and kindness And in the first Chapter he asks them To what purpose the multitude of their Sacrifices were though they were no other than he himself by the Law of Moses required and charged them to bring no more vain oblations to him told them that their Incense was an Abomination to him their New-moons and Sabbaths and calling of Assemblyes he could not away with that their Solemn Assembly was iniquity that their New-Moons and appointed Feasts his Soul hated and that he was weary to bear them And all this because these were the onely or main things they recommended themselves to him by their Religion chiefly consisted in them and they gave themselves leave to be unrighteous cruel and unmerciful as may there be seen God abhorrs to see men come cringing and crowching before him bestowing a great heap of the best words upon him and the worst upon themselves and with dejected countenances bemoaning themselves and making lamentable complaints of their wickedness to him imploring mercy and favour from him c. when they resolvedly persist in disobedience So far are such things as these from being able to make amends for any of their sins that God accounts them no better than Additions to their most heinous impieties as by the Sixty sixth of I●…aiah it further appeareth It is said there He that killeth an Ox is as if he slew a man he that sacrificeth a Lamb as if he cut off a Dog's neck he that offereth an 〈◊〉 as if he offered Swines blood ●…e that burneth Incense as if he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And how came this to pass it follows They have chosen their own ways and their Soul delighteth in their Abomination●… So that if he had such an opinion of the goodliest and most acceptable Sacrifices when offered by Disobedient and Immorall Persons under the Law it is impossible that he should have one jot a better of the most affectionate Devotions of those that take no care to be really and inwardly righteous and holy under the Gospel And in being so consists as was said the Soul and Life of Christianity Not that a true Christian can have undervaluing and slight thoughts of the External worship and service of God nor that he can contemn or neglect praying to him singing his Praises Hearing or Reading his Word c. Nothing less For by the serious and diligent performance of these and the like Duties he comes to acquire and encrease that good temper of Soul that gives him the denomination of such a one through the assistance of the Divine Grace He is one to speak in the words of Hierocles as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 joyns Endeavours to 〈◊〉 and Prayers also with the other parts of Divine Worship to his other Endeavours And besides the solemn acknowledgements of God

his Gospel among us For sin being so apparently the greatest of evils it can be no other than the highest and most significant expression of hatred to us to encourage us to the commission of it It is so far from being part of our Christian Liberty to be delivered from our obligation to all or any of the Laws of Righteousness that such a deliverance would be the most Diabolical yoke of Bondage If any man can be so silly as to object that of the Apostle Rom. 6. 14. Ye are not under the Law but under Grace Let him give himself an answer by reading the whole verse and then make ill use of that passage if he can tell how The words foregoing it in the same verse are these Sin shall not have dominion over you and these words are a proof of that assertion For ye are not under the Law but under Grace That is as if he should say It is the most inexcuseable thing for you to continue under the dominion and power of sin because ye are not under the weak and inefficacious Paedagogy of the Law of Moses but a Dispensation of Grace wherein there is not only Forgiveness assured to truly Repenting sinners but strength afforded to enable to the subduing and mortification of all sin Our Saviour hath told us expresly that he came not to destroy the Law that is the Moral Law but to fulfil it And that Heaven and Earth shall soouer pass away than that one jot or little thereof shall sail And it is absolutely impossible that our obligation thereunto should cease while we continue Men. All the duties therein contained being most necessary and natural results from the Relation we stand in to God and to one another and from the Original make and constitution of humane souls But it is too great an honour to the Doctrine of Libertinism to bestow two words upon its confutation it being so prodigiously monstrous that it would be almost a breach of Charity to judge that Professour of Christianity not to have suffered the loss of his wits that hath entertained it or hath the least favour for it supposing he hath but the least smattering in the Christian Religion It is a most amazing thing that such a thought should have any admission into the mind of such a one while he is compos mentis and not utterly deprived of his Intellectuals Our Saviour's Gospel being wholly levelled at the mark of killing all sorts of sin in us and rendering us exactly obedient to the Divine Moral and also all innocent humane Laws Let me speak to such as so shamefully abuse our incomparable Religion as to take liberty from thence to be in any kind immoral in the words of S. Paul Rom. 2. 4 5. Despisest thou the Riches of God's goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that his goodness leadeth thee or designeth the leading of thee to Repentance But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up to thy self wrath against the day of wrath and Revelation of the Righteous Iudgment of God c. CHAP. XIX The Fourth Inference That a right understanding of the Design of Christianity will give satisfaction concerning the true Notion 1. Of Iustifying Faith 2. Of the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness FOurthly From what hath been said of the Design of Christianity may be clearly inferred the True notion of Iustifying Faith and of the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness First Of Iustifying Faith We thence learn That it is such a belief of the Truth of the Gospel as includes a sincere resolution of Obedience unto all its Precepts or which is the same thing includes true Holiness in the nature of it And moreover that it justifieth as it doth so For surely the Faith which intitles a sinner to so high a privelege as that of justification must needs be such as complieth with all the purposes of Christ's coming into the world and especially with his grand purpose and it is no less necessary that it should justifie as it doth this That is as it receives Christ for a Lord as well as for a Saviour But I need not now distinguish between these two there being but a notional difference between them in this matter For Christ as was shewn as he is a Saviour designeth our Holiness his Salvation being chiefly that from the worst of evils sin and principally consisting in deliverance from the power of it I scarcely more admired at any thing in my whole life than that any worthy men especially should be so difficultly perswaded to embrace this account of Iustifying Faith and should perplex and make intricate so very plain a Doctrine If this be not to seek knots in a Bulrush I know not what is I wish there were nothing throughout the Bible less easily intelligible than this is and I should then dare to pronounce it one of the plainest of all books that ever pen wrote For seeing the great end of the Gospel is to make men good what pretence can there be for thinking that Faith is the Condition or I 'le use the word Instrument as improper and obscure as it is of Iustification as it complieth with only the precept of relying on Christ's Merits for the obtaining of it especially when it is no less manifest than the Sun at Noon-day that obedience to the other precepts must go before obedience to this and that a man may not rely on the merits of Christ for the forgiveness of his sins and he is most presumptuous in so doing and puts an affront upon his Saviour too till he be sincerely willing to be reformed from them And besides such a Relyance is ordinarily to be found among unregenerate and even the very worst of men And therefore how can it be otherwise than that that act of faith must needs have a hand in justifying and the special hand too which distinguisheth it from that which is to be found in such persons And I adde what good ground can men have for this fancy when as our Saviour hath merited the pardon of sin for this end that it might be an effectual motive to return from it And can any thing in the world be more indisputably clear than if the only direct scope that Christianity drives at be the subduing of sin in us and our freedom from its guilt or obligation to punishment be the consequent of this as I think hath been demonstrated with abundant evidence that faith invests us with a title to this deliverance no otherwise than as dying to sin and so consequently living to God are the products and fruit of it And seeing that one End and the Ultimate End too of Christ's coming was to turn us from our iniquities if the nature of Faith considered as Iustifying must needs be made wholly to consist in Recumbence and Reliance on him he shall be my Apollo that can give me a sufficient reason why it ought only to consist in Reliance on the Merits of