Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A56708
|
A treatise of repentance and of fasting especially of the Lent-fast : in III parts.
|
Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.
|
1686
(1686)
|
Wing P857; ESTC R26184
|
77,506
|
248
|
in the vi Chapter and the offenders are so many that the Church perhaps cannot judge that is punish them God takes the matter into his own hand and some way or other inflicts such punishments on them as he did upon the Corinthians In which case the few good that are among them ought to lament them and weep over them as they should have done if the Censures of the Church had been denounced and executed upon them For which there is the greater reason because as they are members of the same Body so they are in danger to suffer with them in the same common calamity especially if they do not humble themselves to deprecate Gods heavy displeasure If we make a particular application of this to our selves in this Nation we are very blind if we do not see that the hand of God as the Prophet speaks hath been divers ways stretched out against us in a destroying Pestilence even then when the Sword of War was also drawn between us and our Neighbours and afterwards in a devouring Fire whereby many fair Buildings and Holy Places were laid in Ashes which are things that ought not to be forgotten though alas they little now affect mens Minds And therefore we have been again terrified by the great hazard the Church and Kingdom was lately in when their old Enemies strugled once more to get the upper-hand and had brought us even to the brink of the Precipice where we stood for some time trembling to think what would become of us And though we were then mercifully delivered yet when we consider how restless the Spirit of Sedition and Rebellion hath been since among us and brought us again so near the very same dreadful danger that we were just upon the point of beholding all Order and Government over-turned All serious Christians cannot but think that this is a lamentation as the Prophets words are and ought to be for a lamentation The prevention indeed of that utter Confusion by a wonderful Providence ought to fill our hearts with joy But the thoughts of such frequent Calamities which have threatned us ought to put us in Fear also lest in conclusion they should fall upon us if neither Gods mercies nor his Judgments can amend us The only way to keep them off is for all good men and women to humble themselves and weep in secret for these things On which they cannot cast their Eyes seriously to take a view of them but they will find them soliciting their Tears and their Sighs and hear them call upon them to be afflicted and mourn and to let their joy sometimes at least be turned into heaviness This alone is a sad and melancholy sight to behold the Spirit of Blindness and Giddiness of Faction and Rebellion that hath seized on a great part of the Nation Our senseless Contentions and Oppositions the wide Breaches and Divisions for which we can see no Healing may justly challenge if there were nothing else to trouble us great thoughts and searchings of heart II. Especially if we consider the other thing not only how insensible most people are of all such matters which in bodily distempers is counted the worse symptom in the world but how few have been amended by the publick Judgments which have either threatned us or faln upon us The complaint which God makes by the Prophet ii Jer. 30. may still be continued In vain have I smitten your Children they received no correction And which the Prophet makes to God Ver. 3. O Lord are not thine Eyes upon the truth Thou hast stricken them but they have not grieved thou hast consumed them but they have refused to receive correction They have made their faces harder than a Rock they have refused to return For which stubborn impiety and impudent wickedness which hath every where too much abounded among us every good man ought to be very much afflicted and not only content himself with this that he doth not follow them in their ungodly practices but bewail also as many as have sinned and have not Repented as the Apostle speaks 2 Cor. xii ult of the Vncleanness and Fornication and Lasciviousness and other abominable sins which they have committed For this is really the saddest spectacle of all other to behold such numbers as have not been at all touched with any remorse for their own Sins nor any grief for publick Calamities nor any Fear of future danger But have taken their pleasures to the full in the most sorrowful times that this Nation hath seen and would not abate of their mirth and laughter in the least when all things lookt cloudily about them but incouraged one another to think only of eating and drinking and rising up to play which all sober men cannot but look upon to be as unseemly a sight as if men should go and dance about their Parents or nearest Relations when they saw them a dying The ancient Pythagoraeans were wont when any person forsook their School to set a Coffin in the place where he used to sit And then to make a solemn Funeral for him bewailing him with their Tears as one that was really dead And we have not well learned Christ as the Apostle speaks if we do not think we have greater reason to bewail those who have so far forsaken God and their Holy Religion that nothing he can say or do will move them to a sober sadness But they go on with a stiff neck and an hard heart to laugh at all goodness They are in so deplorable a condition that we may give them up for dead and take up a lamentation over them as lost men who will never have any feeling and therefore are the greatest objects of all good mens pity Who have reason to mourn for them and follow them with their Tears as they would a Friend that is carried to his Grave Or rather they are more to be lamented because they are dead even while they live According to that of the Son of Sirach xxii Ecclus. 12. Seven days do men mourn for the dead but for a Fool and for an ungodly Man all the days of his life And if we take into our consideration the causes of that bold confidence which hath made them mock at all seriousness even when we have been in the greatest dangers we shall see still the greater reason for our Humiliations They may be resolved into these two First their obstinate unbelief which makes them contemn all that is told them of future danger And secondly their pride and scornfulness which makes them despise even Gods present chastisements As for the first of these it is too notorious that many men have hardned their hearts against the belief of the Judgment to come in the other World Which dull Infidelity leads them into all manner of licentious living and lets their furious desires loose to run without any check or bridle into the foulest profaneness And when they are deeply drencht in the pleasures of Sense
way but contented our selves with Prayers and some kind of Repentance without such Humiliations and chastening of our selves as our sins and our condition required CHAP. XIII Of Fasting-days particularly Wednesdays and Fridays THE Church of God therefore hath always set some time a part for Fasting as well as Prayer And thought it a duty of such continual use that it is not safe it should be long intermitted For mankind being subject frequently to run into sin it is but reason they should be frequently put in mind of calling themselves to an account and returning to him with sorrowful Humiliations for their faults And therefore it is a most ancient and no less wholsom Ordinance of the Church that we should from week to week assemble our selves for this end To search and try our ways and with Fasting and Prayer to turn unto the Lord that thereby we may turn away his wrath from us which otherways either in general or particular may fall upon us To except against this because there is no Divine commandment upon Record for it is very unreasonable For in the ancient Religion of the Jews there was no Precept given by their Law-giver for more Fasts than one throughout the whole Year which was that I named before on the great day of expiation and yet notwithstanding they held themselves obliged to observe many other Fasts upon set days in several months some of which are remembred in Scripture and approved by God though not prescribed by his particular Commandment Read vii Zach. 3 5. viii 19. where you will find that four Fasts in several months having been upon good reason ordained they durst not alter them though the reason seemed to be altered without a Divine direction which their Elders by whose authority they were first appointed desired to receive from the Prophet But it is most to my purpose to observe that there were also weekly as well as those monthly Fasts among that people which our Saviour found in use when he came and did not reprove no more than Prayer and paying of Tithes which the Pharisee mentions together therewith in xviii Luke 11 12. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself God I thank thee that I am not as other men c. I Fast twice in the week I give Tithes of all that I possess Which were all commendable things if his vanity had not made him glory in them and despise other people And therefore the Pharisees frequent Fasting is mentioned I observed before in other places of the Gospel together with that of John's Disciples who also Fasted oft without the least reflection upon them for it as if they were superstitious or did more than needed No our blessed Saviour rather approves of their strictness in this For he saith his Disciples should not be behind with them in Fasting hereafter though for the present there was a special reason why they did not practise it Of which speech of our Saviour I shall make considerable use presently when I have noted that the two days on which they Fasted every week were the second and the fifth that is our Munday and Thursday Which days no doubt were chosen because they had been of old days of Prayer which the devouter sort observed with Fasting also for such reasons as I have already named If we may give credit to Maimonides these days were appointed by Moses himself for solemn Assemblies which he knew could not with safety be long discontinued And therefore saith he Our Master Moses appointed Israel to read the Law at Morning Prayer upon the Sabbath day and upon the Second and the Fifth that they might not rest three days from hearing the Law Upon which days even they that dwelt in the Villages as Mr. Thorndike * Relig. Assemblies chap. viii further observes out of him were bound to assemble in the Synagogues though on the rest of the days in the week they did not tye them to it no more than they did to Fasting on those days with which the stricter and devouter sort of people observed them as not only the Gospel but their own Writers inform us Now these two days having been thus set apart from ancient time for Prayer and Fasting those pious Jews who became Christians could not think of being less Religious and devout under the Gospel than they had been under the Law and therefore still continued to observe two such days every week though not the very same For as instead of the Seventh which was the Jewish Sabbath they now kept the First day of the week as the principal time for their Assemblies so instead of the Second and the Fifth they chose the Fourth and the Sixth which are our Wednesdays and Fridays for the two other days on which they weekly held solemn Assemblies And for the very same reason it is likely for which Moses or the Elders chose the other because they were at the same convenient distance from the Lords day as Munday and Thursday were from the Jewish Sabbath and hereby it was provided that as Maimon speaks no three days passed without the more solemn sort of Assemblies Certain it is that there was no Church in Epiphanius his time which did not look upon these two days as the stated days for Fasting and Prayer Which he avows so confidently against the Aerians that he fears not to ask this question 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. * Haeres lxxv n 6. Who is there that consents not in this throughout all the Climates of the world that the Fourth day and the day before the Sabbath i. e. the Sixth day are Fasts determined or appointed in the Church No body he knew durst contradict this challenge and undertake to shew the contrary which is the more remarkable because he represents them as set days by a setled Decree or Ordinance and that of the Apostles For so it follows that it was ordained by an Apostolical constitution all should Fast on those two days Which doth not seem to me so unlikely as it doth to some when I reflect upon those words of our Lord in answer to those that askt Why the Disciples of John and of the Pharisees Fasted oft but his did not Wherein as he no way condemns what either the one or the other did for that which was a vertue in John's Disciples could not be a crime in the Pharisees so he doth not go about to excuse his Disciples from the like obligation But plainly saith that though it was not fit for the present yet when he was gone from them they also should Fast in those days And I see no cause why we should not think that he means they should Fast as oft about which the question was as the other did Which being twice every week of which it is very reasonable to understand the often Fasting both of John's Disciples and of the Pharisees I cannot but conclude the Apostles also when our Saviour had left the World