Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	church_n	communion_n	member_n	5,101	5	8.5883	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51228	A sermon preached on the 28th of June, at St. Andrew's Holborn by John Moore ...	Moore, John, 1646-1714.	1691 (1691)	Wing M2553; ESTC R9456	14,371	38

present world For without these Heavenly and Divine Qualifications of Mind we shall never be permitted to behold the pure and glorious Face of God and if we were it would confound us and make us miserable Let then Evil Rulers connive at those Vices which do not seem so directly to hazard and undermine their Government Let the prophane cry up their brutish Sensualities as the most exalted Enjoyments of Human Nature let the frequency of some Sins lessen their ugliness and the sense of their danger with unthinking Men yet the fatal Effects of their Wickedness shall overtake them at the last and they shall find every wilful Sin to have Malignity enough in its Nature to ruin them for the great God does behold all their Lewdnesses and Villanies he causes them all to be recorded against the day of Accounts and they will sink away with extremiry of despair when oppressed with such a vast burden of abominable Iniquities they shall be hailed to the Bar of Judgment For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord and he pondereth all his goings his own Iniquities shall take the wicked himself and he shall be holden with the Cords of his Sins he shall die without instruction and in the greatness of his folly shall he go astray Prov. 5. 21. 3. Moreover if you consider the Precepts of our Blessed Saviour you will be fully satisfi'd that they were all levell'd at this single Mark to make Men Holy that is to confer the greatest Benefit upon them they were capable to receive For this was to render them acceptable to God to make them agreeable Company for Angels and compleatly to qualifie them to be Citizens of the New Jerusalem In this one Point did all the Promises of the Gospel and the whole design of the Life of Christ center and settle there is not a Promise made to the Malicious or the Unclean or the Revengeful or the Perjur'd or the Lovers of fleshly Pleasure nor the least anger of God manifested any where against the Humble and the Chast and the Merciful and the Righteous Persons but all the Beatitudes and Blessings of Heaven are bestowed upon the Godly and all the Curses and Punishments do light upon the Head of the Sinner And so it is plain that our Religion was enacted and published not to replenish our Heads with fine Notions nor to furnish our Tongues with Eloquent Discourse but to fill our Hearts with Humility Love and Purity and to govern our Lives and Actions by most Holy Rules And therefore under the Christian Dispensation nothing will avail us or stand our Immortal Souls in the least stead but the keeping of the Commandments of God It now only remaineth that I present you with some Directions that I hope will make a just Impression upon your Minds and be of durable advantage to you 1. The first is to keep constant and firm to the Communion of the Church in which you were Baptized and brought up a Church whose Faith is founded upon the Scriptures and whose Worship of all others cometh nearest to the Pattern left us by the Primitive Christians A Church the freest from Error in what it Teaches and from Superstition in what it Practices of any perhaps in the World which as it hath reformed it self from the Corruptions of the Church of Rome that were so destructive of a good Life so it hath only reteined a very few Rites and Ceremonies for the preservation of Order and Decency and Reverence in the Service of God and upon which it doth not lay so great weight and stress as to hold them unalterable but hath publickly declared That upon weighty and important Considerations according to the various exigency of Times and Occasions such Changes and Alterations may be made therein as to those in Place of Authority shall seem either necessary or expedient Now to them that duly weigh things it must appear very dangerous to leave the Communion of a Church so excellently constituted if you reflect either upon the grievous mischiefs of Separation or upon the great obligations Christ has laid upon us to preserve the unity of the Church It is observable that hardly any thing does occasion more bitterness and heat than an unwarrantable departure from a Church which imposes nothing sinful as a term of Communion For Separatists to justifie their departure will be apt to charge great faults how little soever deserved upon the Society they have left and so of course grow more sowr and censorious whereby animosities will encrease and the breach will be continually widen'd by fresh provocations Thus by these needless divisions the charity and good will which our blessed Master so strictly required and of which he was so glorious an Example does wast and consume away and Christians thus unjustifiably split into Parties instead of mutually supporting one another against the Common Enemy which doth thirst after their destruction do bite tear and devour each other and hereby the Band of Love which should hold us together is broken and the several Members of that Body whereof Jesus Christ is the Head are disjoynted and become useless to the holy and merciful purposes for which he did unite them It is much to be lamented that divers of those who have forsaken our Church and which they have not yet proved to have enjoyned any thing unlawful under pretence of greater edification and of joyning in a purer Communion have upon the same ground had others separate from them and these again have left others till at length they have been of no Communion at all and so with their Church have at last also lost their Religion And yet nothing is of more necessity than that the Unity of this Body of Christ the Church should be preserved entire This the Christians are frequently exhorted and strictly commanded to keep whole with the greatest care and upon this union of Members mighty blessings are bestowed there being scarce any promise of our Lord made to particular Christians but with relation to their being parts of his Church We are earnestly required to endeavour to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace with all lowliness and meekness with long suffering forbearing one another And the reason of all this is because there is one body and one spirit one hope of our calling one Lord one faith one baptism one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all St. Paul beseeches the Romans to set a mark upon them who cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which they had learned and to avoid them And most pathetically he beseeches the Corinthians by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that they all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among them but that they be perfectly joyned together in the same mind and in the same judgment He also presseth the Philippians to stand fast in one spirit