Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	day_n	lord_n	week_n	9,333	5	9.8928	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30259	A sermon preached to the Honourable House of Commons assembled in Parliament at their pvbliqve fast, Novem. 17, 1640 by Cornelius Burges.	Burges, Cornelius, 1589?-1665.; Marshall, Stephen, 1594?-1655.	1641 (1641)	Wing B5683; ESTC R19994	56,507	64

than the eare If the Preacher come home to convince the Conscience of particula s that need reformation which yet was the old course and should be so still the Preacher is either derided as worthy of nothing but contempt or else censured as indiscreet rash factious and seditious And least men should surfeit of Preaching how be all Sermons in the afternoones of the LORD'S Dayes cryed downe as the markes of Iudaizing Puritanisme and as a burden intolerable to the people Indeed it is true that when Authority first commanded the afternoones Sermon to be converted into Catechising there was not only no hurt done but a wise and needfull course prescribed for the best edifying of popular Auditories But as some have handled the matter it is now become a great hinderance to edification If a Minister would carefully and solidly open the severall heads of Catechisme confirme them by Scripture and bring them home by some short and familiar application most sutable to vulgar eares and Capacities I hold it simply the most profitable exercise at least for one part of the day that can bee set up for the increase of sound knowledge and Piety and pity it is that this is so much neglected But this say our new Masters is worse than preaching Therefore they enjoyn all to keep only to the bare Questions and Answers of the Child's Catechisme And if any presume to adde any exposition or instruction hee is by some hurried from post to pillar and censured as a pernitious Malefactor And as they have thus thrust all preaching be it but Catecheticall out of the Church in the afternoones of the Lords Day so have they shut divers able godly discreet Pastors out of their own Pulpits on the weeke dayes even in Populous Townes where the Ministers were willing to bestow their paines and so for many yeares with great fruit and comfort to the whole Country had done gratis for the refreshing of many hungry Soules who had no preaching at home in their owne Parishes and dare not stirre thence on the Lords day to seeke it abroad Nay some of your Cathedrall Men are come to that passe that when any Sermon such as it is is preached in the Cathedrall or Collegiate Church no Sermon must then be preached in the Parish Church or Churches adjoyning meerely to uphold the Pompe and State of the Greater Church and for feare of lessening the Auditory or diminishing the honour of the Preacher who many times deserves little enough whereas not a fourth part of the Congregation by this meanes defrauded of Preaching in the Parish Church can possibly come within hearing or ken of the Cathedrall Pulpit-man O Beloved are these wayes to set forth Christ to the people for their salvation to display God in all his glorious Attributes and Perfections and to bring them within view of the beauties and excellencies of God in his Covenant and Communion with his people so as to draw them to a Covenant Nay hence hence it comes to passe that God is extremely dishonoured his Name blasphemed his day abominably prophaned and his people runne headlong like beasts to the Shambles by droves to Popery Anabaptisme Familisme Atheisme and what not that may cast and locke them under the hatches of everlasting damnation Quis talia fando Temperet a lachrymis I know that some of those Step-fathers and hard-hearted Wretches who bee indeed the chiefe if not the only cause of all this blush not to attribute the daily falling off of multitudes from our Church to over much Preaching but this is as rationall as was his mad opinion touching Saint Paul that much learning had made him mad These are crying Abominations that will cry as loud against you as now they doe against the Authours of them if you reforme them not Wonder not at my length and heate in this point It is a matter of greatest Consequence and of all other most proper for a Preacher to be zealous in And give me leave to tell you that this must bee put in the head of the Catalogue of your weightiest Consultations at this time if you desire ever to draw the people of this and the Adjacent Dominions into any Covenant and Communion with God or to settle any thing for the good of your selves and countries K. Iames indeed took commiseration of the grosse ignorance of multitudes in the North parts of this Kingdom and sent some Preachers at his owne charge among them A Pious and a Noble work But what through the unsetled wandrings idlenesse the superficiall and unprofitable performances of some of these Preachers and what through the supine negligence of some in Authority who should have looked better to those itinerary Ministers most of that labour and charge was little better than lost For some of you know that in no parts of the kingdome hath there been such an increase of Papists as in those very Corners where that sleight meanes was used to reduce men from Popery I beseech you therefore by all the mercies of God by all the bowels of Christ in shedding of his deerest bloud for those precious Soules who now even by thousands and millions miserably perish in their ignorance and sinnes that you would carefully reforme or cast out all idle unsound unprofitable and scandalous Ministers and provide a sound godly profitable and setled Preaching Ministry in every Congregation through the Land and the annexed Dominions and to take no lesse care for their diligent and constant performance of their dutie both in life and Doctrine as also for their liberall maintenance that may be still capable of improvement as the times grow harder and commodities deerer that both themselves who preach the Gospell and all theirs also may cheerefully and comfortably live of the Gospell And let us once see Zion built up by your industry in perfect beautie Lastly when you set upon this great businesse of a Covenant 6. When a covenant is to be made do it with all the heart and forget it not when it is made see that you doe it out of love to God and with all your heart else it will come to nothing If you would to Zion your faces must be set and setled thitherward If you would make a Covenant you must not be unwilling afraid ashamed to be accounted such Covenanters but doe it with a steddy open undaunted countenance and resolution You must love the name of your God to be his servants Isay 56.6 You have seen how Asa and all his kingdome did it they both entred into Covenant and they swore it with all their heart 2 Chro. 15.15 and sought him with their whole desire and he was found of them and gave them rest round about Thus if you do God shall be set up Religion advanced your grievances removed you shall heare no more such complainings in our streets All blessings shall follow not your selves alone but the whole Kingdome in our King and his Government in your Consultations and proceedings in the publike setled and glorious Peace and prosperity of both Church and State The blessings of the Earth in the Citie the field your bodies posterity in all your goings out and commings in The blessings of heaven in the means of Grace the beginnings and growth in grace the light of Gods countenance which is better than life and after all even the fulnesse of both grace and glory in the full cleare and eternall fruition of God Himselfe in the highest heavens shall all compasse and Crowne you for ever Provided alwayes that when once this Covenant is made you take care that it never be forgotten but heeded minded and performed that as you close with God so you may alwayes continue with him Then shall this whole nation and the children which are yet unborne praise and blesse the Lord for ever for this Parliament and your endeavours in it But I feele my selfe spent and therefore must desist yet with this hope that my Reverend fellow-labourer designed for the other part of this work will begin where I leave and set on with more strength what my weaknes is not able to performe FINIS LONDON Printed by T.B. for Philemon Stephens and Christopher Meredith at the signe of the Golden Lion in Pauls Church-yard 1641

from vers 9 to verse 17 yet he will never perfect the deliverance till this be done The people which returned from Babylon found God to keepe touch with them to a day So soone as the 70. yeares determined their captivity was dissolved and somewhat was done the foundation of the Lords house was laid but the building went slowly up the reformation of Church and State went heavily on and they were never in a thriving condition till Nehemiah 3. Why it is so by the good hand of God lighted upon this course Some Fasts they had kept before yea very many but they never thrived till he added to their publique and solemne Fasting the fastening of them to God by a solemne Covenant Then the worke of Reformation and establishment went on merrily then they prospered Thus farre the Reasons concluding for a Covenant upon receit of deliverances in generall 2. The Reasons inducing us thereunto upon deliverance from Babylon 2 why for deliverance from Babylon in speciall in particular are these 1. Because Babylon 1. Babylon hath ever bin the sorest enemy after once the Church was put under her power had alwaies been the most insolent heavy bitter bloody enemy that ever the Church felt The violence of Babylon was unsupportable her insolency intolerable her bloud-thirstinesse insatiable Hence the Church is bold to challenge all the world to match her misery under the yoke of Babylon Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me that is by the heavie hand of Babylon in the day of his fierce wrath Lam. 1.12 This was so sore that it hath been by some Fathers and others conceived to be the fullest and most lively typical expression of that matchlesse agony and extremity which our Lord himselfe hanging upon the Crosse sustained when he bare all our sins and the wrath of God due to us for them so farre as to make a full satisfaction to the Iustice of his Father in behalfe of all his people And as it was with old Babylon so it is now and ever wil be with the new I meane mysticall Babylon to the end of the world might she so long continue Even she also delights in no other drink but the bloud of the Saints as you shall finde in Rev. 17.5 where the very name written upon her forehead sufficiently sets out her nature Mystery Babylon the Great the Mother of harlots and abominations of the earth And what of her I saw saith St Iohn the woman drunken with the bloud of the Saints and with the bloud of the Martyrs of Iesus and when I saw her I wondred with great admiration v. 6. And well he might A woman and drunke And if drunke would no liquor suffice but bloud no bloud but that of Saints and Martyrs She is never in her element but when she is swimming in bloud So insatiable is she that like the horse-leeches daughter she never saith it is enough Therefore when God gives any deliverance from thence 3. Why it is so in speciall there is more than ordinary cause to close with the Lord in a more solemn and extraordinary manner giving him the praise and glory of so great a mercy But then more especially when God works out the full deliverance of his Church by the totall and finall ruine of Babylon Oh then then is the time when all the people in heaven must sing Halleluiah ascribing salvation and honour and power unto the Lord our God Revel 19.1 And againe Halleluiah verse 3. as if they could never sufficiently expresse themselves to God for such a deliverance such a mercy such a vengeance 2. Againe When God delivereth from Babylon 2. Such a deliverance implyes more than ordinary breach of Covenant on our parts for which God formerly put us under such a yoke there is more than ordinary cause of entring into solemne Covenant with him because the very subjecting of the Godly under that iron yoke argues more than ordinary breach of Covenant with the Lord in time past which stirred him up to deale so sharply with them as to put them under the power of Babylon This Provocation was exceeding great too much to be endured even by infinite Patience it selfe else the People of God had never been cast into such a furnace It was for such a fault as dissolved the very marriage knot between God and his people it was for going a whoring from him For this it was that God first put away Israel giving her a Bill of divorce Ier. 3.8 And for this it was that hee afterwards cast Iudah also out of his sight 2 King 17.19.29 And as it was in former times so in later Ages of the world What was the reason that so many millions of soules have been exposed to the butchery of Antichrist in Mysticall Babylon and to bee so hood-winckt and blinded by strong delusions as to beleeve nothing but lyes even that Great Great soul-killing Lye that they might be damned S. Paul tels us it was this They received not the love of the truth that they might be saved but had pleasure in unrighteousnesse 2 Thess 2. What unrighteousnesse Is it meant of every unrighteousnesse that is in the nature of it damnable which is to be found in the world Surely no but signanter of that unrighteousnesse whereby men turned the truth of God into a lye Rom. 1. that is by corrupting the true worship of the true God and afterwards falling off to down-right Idolatry even within the pales of the Church it selfe Most of you are well seene in the History of the Church and can soone point with your finger to the times wherein Babylon began to besiege Hierusalem and Antichrist began to pull off his vizzard in the Churches of Christ even then when Pictures and Images began first to be set up in Churches for remembrance then for ornament then for instruction too and at last for adoration and worship Then God suffered her to bee over-run and over-spread by Babylon as by an hideous opacum or thick darknesse and to bee exposed and prostituted to all manner of whoredomes and filthinesse so as the slavery of the Iewish Church in old Babylon was scarce a flea-biting in comparison of the miseries of the Church Christian under the new which makes havock and merchandise not of the bodies onely but even of the soules of men Revel 18.13 Now then when God pleaseth to deliver a people from such bondage and to awaken them effectually to look up and to reflect even with astonishment upon those great and gastly sins of theirs which had cut asunder the cords of the Covenant betweene God and their Soules and provoked God to subject them to so much bondage and that they must either renew Covenant or bee obnoxious to more wrath and be laid open to more and greater temptations and sinnes this cannot but exceedingly work upon their soules causing their hearts to melt and