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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	call_v	hear_v	lord_n	1,763	5	3.8748	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A55106	Popery and hypocrisy detected and opened from the Holy Scriptures as it respects magistrates, ministers, and people. In a sermon upon the occasion of a general fast, kept Decemb. 22. 1680. By the author of the Plotters doom, a true son of the Church of England.	Palmer, Samuel, d. 1724.	1680 (1680)	Wing P252; ESTC R217473	30,180	38

for all our new fashioned Divinity is for the other Calculation and mightily dissatisfied if you don't put the Church before the State however I address my-self first to you Is it so that true repentance and such as is acceptable unto God consists not in renting the garments or exterial observations then be you exhorted to examine your selves whether you lay out your Magistracy consonant to and agreeable with this Doctrine The highest Character that was veer given to any Magistrate is that which we find given to David That he was a man after Gods own heart And indeed the heart and mind of a Magistrate should be agreeable to the heart and mind of God for he bears his Image and is his Deputy in the Earth Upon which account Magistrates are also stiled Gods in Scripture Now therefore examine your selves as to this duty before you and see how your hearts stand affected towards it God is all for renting of the heart for zeal and spiritual worship on such days and in such duties as we are now engaged in But are you not more or rather for renting the garment for vain Ceremonies and humane invented observations How then comes this discrepancy betwixt the heart of God and your hearts between Gods mind and your minds Inquire well into the matter for there must be a fault some where and it cannot be on the Lords part Hath not God told you by his own Son That he is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth and that his Father seeketh such to worship him Joh. 4.23 24. And will you seek such to punish them Examine your selves and do not think to shamm it off That 't is for the Church that you do this Pray turn to 1 Sam. 15. and you will there find one of the greatest Cheats that you meet with in the whole Word of God for 't was by a Magistrate and a Magistrate of the highest Order and 't was a Cheat that had a pretence for the Church too The business is this King Saul received a commission from God to go and smite the Amalekites for laying wait for Israel in their way when they came up from Egypt and the summ of the Commission you have in the third verse Go and utterly destroy all that they have and spare them not but slay both man and woman infant and suckling ox and sheep camel and ass Pursuant to this Commission Saul gathers 210000 of the people together and goes up and smote the Amalekites but spared Agag their King and the best of their sheep and of the oxen and the fatlings and the lambs and all that was good and would not utterly destroy them But every thing that was vile and refuse that they destroyed utterly vers 9. Upon this breach of his Commission the Lord sends his Prophet Samuel to meet Saul at his return and you find that Saul met Samuel in a very brisk humour vers 13. for Saul said unto him Blessed be thou of the Lord I have performed the commandments of the Lord. But Samuel replied What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear vers 14. And now pray see the Cheat that Saul would have put upon the Almighty and his Prophet for he saw he was run on ground and therefore observe his answer The people says he spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God ver 15. So he would have shuffed off and excused his sin upon the specious pretence of maintaining the Church and the Worship of God But this would not do for the Prophet reproves him in vers 22. thus Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord Behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams for Rebellion is as the sin of Witchcraft 'T is the disobedience of a King against his God is so stiled and therefore he proceeds and tells him his doom That because he had rejected the word of the Lord the Lord had rejected him from being King And that 's all that Saul got by this Cheat. Do not think therefore to palliate your faults with your esteems for the Church and the Divine Service of God for God had rather have no such Worship at all than a Worship that must be supported and maintained by the breach of his holy Commands In the 7th of St. Mark you may see a knot of Hypocrites and such as were of no inferiour rank neither So much for the Charch that they break not only the Law of God but the Law of Nature too for the Law of Nature as well as the Law of God obligeth us to honour our Parents and as a part of that honour to succour and relieve them in their necessities but they were so unnaturally Religious that they would give to the Church what they should give to their Parents and by their gift to the Church they were held absolved from the Law of God and Nature to do ought for their father or mother vers 11 12 so that let their father and mother starve if they would for them they were resolved to be superabundantly Religious But God bless us from such an unnatural and abominable Religion Well therefore might our Saviour conclude that Discourse with this remark That Traditional men and such as are so much for exteriour observations do ever make the Word of God of no effect vers 13. You were as good have no Bibles for they will suffer you to make no use of them for these Jews they had the Law of Moses and it was read in their Synagogues every Sabbath day as St. James assures us Act. 15.21 And though in that Law it was written Honour thy father and mother and that too with a promise of length of days yet you see when mens Traditions prevailed it had been as good they had had no Law at all And therefore by the way whatsoever Profession or form of Religion makes you barbarously sowre and unnatural to your Relations friend and neighbours which the Law of God and the bands of Humanity obligeth you to love respect and tender you may lay your life upon it that that Profession and form of Religion is but a false and counterfeit Christianity be what it will Wherefore you that are Magistrates had need examine and try your selves and to purpose too whether you are for that Religion which is acceptable to God the renting of your heart or whether you are for that only which consi●ts in renting the garments and trifling reservations And so much to the Magistrates The next Head is to the Ministers and would to God there were no cause to press the improvement of this Point upon us also But methinks I hear the Lord saying Physician cure thy self Luk. 4.23 We are called the Physicians of Souls and usually say the

thorow Conformity to a few Humorous and Caprioious Ceremonies In the 15th of St. Matth. and the beginning of the Chapter you find the Scribes and Pharisees for want of other matter quarrelling our Saviour because his Disçiples transgressed the Tradition of the Elders in eating Bread without washing their hands A tidy crime and cause of quarrel was it not And yet you may see by our Lords reasoning that they were such Traditional and Ceremony-Fopps that they would quarrel him and his Disciples too sooner and fiercer upon this account than if they had broken a Commandment of God Would to God the Papists only had the Succession of this Pharisaical temper among them but the more is the pity we daily see and hear protestant Pharisees as well as Popish who had rather mix Heaven and Earth together and hazard the consusion of Church nay and State too than part with a dry and empty Ceremony what if I should instance but in Christening with the Sign of the Cross I doubt I am not uncharitable in thinking that many even of us Protestant Ministers would rather never Christen a Child at all than to Christen it without that Ceremony though they do acknowledge that Christening is a Divine Command and the Signing with the Cross is but a Humane and that the Child is never the better for it nor never the worse without it As for them indeed that do think that the Sign of the Cross hath some magical vertue in it that it is a spiritual Spell to drive away Spirits and Hobgoblins and a good guard against Jack o' th' Lanthorn and haunted Houses and that do believe it keeps the Devil in some better decorum towards us than otherwise he would observe they have some pretence to be tenacions of it but we that laugh at such fooleries and that deny these Popish and pious Frauds as sitter to be ridiculed than to have any Reverence done them for us I say to be so peevishly fond of it as that we will break all the bonds of Love and Peace rather than part with it does shew us rather of an obstinate and a passionate than of a Religious Mind I might instance in other Ceremonies also but this is sufficient to instruct us that our Conformity to formal and exterior Observations in Religious matters is no Essential part of a sound and true Repentance Secondly Is it so that true Repentance and such as is acceptable unto God consists not in any formal and exterior Observations then be instructed not to overvalue them there is a mighty propensity in our Natures to say of our exterior Observations as Micah did of his Consecrated Levite Judg. 17. last ver Now know I says he that the Lord will do me good seeing I have a Levite to my Priest But he was so mistaken that you find in the very next Chapter that this very Priest which he hugg'd himself so much for joyn'd with a company of Robbers to plunder his Masters House and steal away his Gods from him ver 20. So all your Confidence in the external parts of Religion will but serve you like this Levite Cheat and deceive you Nay of all the deceits in nature this is the most dreadful for it not only deludes you to the day of your Death but continues its delusion at the very day of Judgment for in the 7th of St. Matthew you find that these Confidents come with such a marvellous boldness to Christ that they argue the matter with him saying Lord Lord have we not preached in thy Name and in thy Name have cast out Devils and in thy Name done many wonderful works vers 22. Nay the Evangelist St. Luke goes further and tells you that these mistaken Souls demand entrance into Heaven saying Lord Lord Open unto us For we have received the Sacrament eat and drunk in thy presence and thou hast taught in our Streets Luke 13.25 26. Good Lord what a dreadful delusion is this that carries exterior Professors not only through Death but to the day of Judgment too and are never convinced of their mistake till they receive that final and eternal doom Depart from me ye warkers of Iniquity v. 27. And certainly it is from hence that St. John the Baptist thus chargeth the Pharisees and Sadduces that came to his Baptism Think not to say within your selves we have Abraham to our Father Matth. 3.9 As if he should say Have a care for that thought will make you rest short of true Religion and make you miscarry at the last And as St. John bid them that they should not think to say that they had Abraham to their Father so I bid you do not think to say that you have the Church for your Mother for it is not your being Sons of the Church if you reckon your Sonship merely from your Birth or Baptism or outward Conformity that will profit you any thing for you may come to Church and perform all the Ceremonies and exterior parts of worship and yet be bid depart at last among the workers of Iniquity if the Power of Godliness as well as the Profession thereof be not found in you Wherefore be instructed not to overvalue any formal or external part of Religion whatsoever And thus much for Instruction Come we next to Rproof If it be so that true Repentance and such as is acceptable unto God consists not in any outside Formalities then be Reproved all ye of the Clergy that do so utterly pervert your Office and the Ends of your Ministry What were you sent of God to preach Repentance and remission of Sins to the Children of men Are you sent by God to cry out to men that they should Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand Matth. 3.2 And to awake them that sleep that they should Arise from the dead that Christ may give them light Ephes 5.14 What were you sent to bid men Rent their hearts and not their garments and to turn men from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God Matth. 26.18 And do you spend your Ministry about such tristing stuff such sorry things as you your selves acknowledge to be but indifferent Truly this is but indifferent Divinity and such as I doubt you will give but a very indifferent Account of when our great Lord and Master shall appear therefore pray bethink your selves For First Consider seriously whether ever God required this at your hands He hath required here in the Text you see that you should bid men Rent their hearts and not their Garments But where hath he required you to teach men to Rent their Garments and not their hearts to observe the formal and exterior parts of Religion more than the real and interior parts thereof For Religion is a heart work and consists not in Formality but Reality and therefore the good men of God have prayed in all Ages like David in the 51 Psal ver 10. Create in me a clean heart O God