Selected quad for the lemma: conscience_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A61711
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Sermons and discourses upon several occasions by G. Stradling ... ; together with an account of the author.
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Stradling, George, 1621-1688.; Harrington, James, 1664-1693.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing S5783; ESTC R39104
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236,831
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593
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It was the design of his Spirit to imprint his Image in their Hearts which consisted in true holiness and righteousness But how could that Image be imprinted on them till they were first adopted his Children Or how could they be owned for his Children but in and through Christ his only begotten and beloved Son That Peace which his Holy Spirit brings into and settles in our Consciences is founded in that other which our Mediator hath procured and merited for us by his Death and Sufferings nor could our Minds ever have been calmed had not the Lamb of God taken away the sins of the World Our Peace was to be prepared by the Father ere it could be purchased by the Son and purchased by the Son ere it could have been applied by the Spirit The Gift of the Comforter was an effect of Christ's Intercession I will pray the Father and He shall send you another Comforter And it was requisite that He should go away to send that Comforter since he was the Effect of his Intercession and that Intercession the last Act of his Sacrifice in the Heavenly Sanctuary But then 2dly it was not fit that Christ should bestow his best and most excellent Gifts on us till he had recovered his first Majesty or that the Members should be thus adorned till the Head was perfectly glorious 'T is at the time of their Coronation and Triumph that Kings and Emperors scatter their Largesses When our Lord had ascended up on high and had led Captivity captive then was it a proper time for him to give gifts unto men and among the rest of his Gifts the Fountain and Giver of all Gifts and Graces the Holy Spirit it self This St. Peter tells his Auditors Act. 2. 33. That Christ being by the right hand of God exalted and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear Christ was first to rise from the dead and to be glorified before he could send down the Spirit And this we learn from Joh. 7. 39. where 't is said That the Holy Ghost was not yet given because that Jesus was not yet glorified nor could he be fully glorify'd without the descent and testimony of the Spirit For 1. It had been some impeachment to Christ's equality with the Father had our Lord still remained on Earth for as much as the sending of the Spirit would have been ascribed to the Father alone as his sole Act. This would have been the most That the Father for his sake had sent Him but He as God had had no honour of sending Him 2. Nor indeed till he ascended up to Heaven could he have been fully glorified on Earth his appearance here having been very mean void of all pomp and state nothing about Him to strike men's Senses nothing of worldly grandeur to affect them who conversed with him neither wealth nor honour exposed he was to want and other inconveniencies of life and put at last to a cruel and an ignominious Death What strong prejudices had both Jews and Gentiles against Him upon this account And how could those prejudices be removed so long as he continued in that low state and condition But they were now quite taken away by the descent of the Holy Ghost which he had so often promised to send after his departure and which when they saw he made good their mean opinion of him was soon changed into veneration when they saw him who was made a little lower than the Angels nay who had appeared on Earth lower than the lowest of Men for the suffering of death crowned with such glory and honour And how can we but adore Him as God when we now behold Him that once stood before Herod and Pilate as a criminal exalted above all the Kings and Potentates of the Earth whose pride and glory now it is to be his Disciples to doe him homage and to lay down their Crowns and Scepters at the foot of his Cross We now see Temples every-where erected to his honour The most remote obscure Regions of the World enlightned by his beams That Jesus once so much despised become now the glory of the Earth His Name dreadfull to Devils adored by Turks and Infidels so that his Kingdom knows no bounds as it shall never have an end Had he still remained here below he had been lookt upon as no better than what the Arrians once styled Him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But now his Godhead is as visible to each Christian as his Manhood heretofore was to each Man the Spirit of God whom He sent down having born witness to Him in all those wonderfull Signs and Miracles that were wrought by his Apostles through his Name And thus we see how that Christ could not have been glorify'd on Earth as God had he not ascended up into Heaven and from thence sent down the Holy Ghost Nor 3. could the Holy Ghost himself otherwise have been discovered Christ's stay here would have been a lett to the manifestation of his Godhead also which appearing in those many great signs and wonders done by Him had not our Lord gone away those glorious Works would in all probability have been wholly ascribed unto him and so the Holy Ghost should have lost that honour which was due to him while his Deity should have been concealed from the notice of the World 4. A fourth reason of the necessity of Christ's departure respects his Apostles and all other his Disciples 1. His Apostles who we know were to be sent abroad into all Coasts to be dispersed over the whole Earth to preach the Gospel and not to stay in one place Now Christ's corporal Presence could herein have availed them little in order to this purpose He could not have been with St. James at Jerusalem and St. John at Ephesus whatever Ubiquitaries Papists or Lutherans say to the contrary in flat contradiction to all Philosophy and Scripture too which allows not this priviledge to Christ's Body now glorified Whom the Heavens must receive saith St. Peter untill the times of Restitution of all things Act. 3. 21. There He must be till He comes to fetch us to Him and when He promised his Apostles to be with them always even to the end of the World Mat. 28. 20. He meant no otherwise than by his Holy Spirit who should comfort and guide them into all Truth And therefore it was expedient for them as our Lord says here in the Text that himself should go away to make room for the Spirit as fitter for his Disciples in their dispersed disconsolate condition since He could be and was present with them all and with every one of them by himself as filling the compass of the whole World which cannot be affirmed of our Lord 's bodily Presence 2. Besides had this manner of Christ's Presence been possible without confounding the Properties of his humane and divine Nature it had been very
are we to those who bequeath them to us And if we think we have reason to be so to Men for such mean Inheritances how much more ought we to be to our Heavenly Father for this Inheritance in light Now since we cannot be thankfull to him for an Inheritance which we are not well assured does belong unto us it will concern us here to try and secure our Evidence and for that we need go no farther than the Text. If as that tells us it be an Inheritance of Saints and an Inheritance in light what Right or Title can we pretend to it without being our selves Saints and Children of the light And if as St. Peter hath described it it be an Inheritance incorruptible and undefiled how can we hope to partake of it unless our Corruptible even here put on Incorruption and we endeavour to be pure as God who is our Inheritance is pure 1 Joh. 3. 3. Heaven is no place for the polluted Into the Heavenly Jerusalem shall in no wise enter any thing that defileth or is defiled Revel 21. 27. Nor will Christ receive any into his Kingdom but whom He shall find when He cometh without spot and blameless 2 Pet. 3. 9. If these things be found in us Innocence Vertue and Holiness of Life an entrance shall then be ministred unto us abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 2 Pet. 1. 11. And so when St. Peter bids us give diligence to make our calling and election sure 1 Pet. 1. 10. He shews us the way how to doe so and that is by adding to our faith vertue and to vertue knowledge and so on verses 5 6 7. by practising the Vertues of the Moral Law there set down These are the clear Evidences of the Inheritance in light as well as the means to attain it which we are to find in our selves continually and to clear up still fearing lest any of us come short of our Inheritance Heb. 4. 1. If we doe these things we shall never fall Let our Inheritance be as sure as God can make it yet is it not sure to us till our Consciences can bear us witness that we are the Children of God by obeying our Heavenly Father And since he has provided such a glorious Estate for those that doe so how ought we to despise those poor Inheritances He allots us here below in comparison of what He prepares for us above How willing to part with those for that when He requires it and we cannot keep both Heaven will make up all our losses here it will pay for all at last And this is the main Argument the Apostle useth here to persuade the Colossians unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness in the precedent Verse because by outward afflictions God did make them meet to be partakers of such an Inheritance in light as could not be taken from them as their Earthly Ones daily were by Heathens Tyrants and Oppressors That with other Saints of God they should take joyfully the spoiling of their goods knowing in themselves that they had in Heaven a better and an enduring substance Lastly As God the Father first makes us meet to be partakers of the Inheritance of the Saints in light so when he has once made us meet by his Grace let us endeavour by the assistance of that Grace still to make our selves meeter always blessing and thanking him as for all sorts of Blessings he bestows upon us so in an especial manner for this in the Text for the blessed hope and assurance he gives his Saints of partaking one day of such an Inheritance as is All Blessedness Here He crumbles his Blessings unto us we have them here by Retail In Heaven we shall have them all in a lump and that for ever All the satisfactions and enjoyments of this present life are so thin empty and comfortless that we have need of patience to be able to endure them The Prophet David found them so and had He not had a prospect of far better things as a Cordial to cheer up and enliven his Heart it would quite have failed him I should utterly have fainted but that I believe verily to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living Psal. 27. 15. Let this Faith bear up our drooping spirits as it did his And let our Thoughts continually dwell on Heaven and on the Happiness we shall there enjoy when we shall come into the City of the living God the Heavenly Jerusalem to an innumerable Company of Angels to the general Assembly and Church of the first-born which are written in Heaven and to God the Judge of All and to the Spirits of just Men made perfect who now partake of the Inheritance in light To which blessed Society God bring us all Amen Soli Deo gloria in aeternum A SERMON Preached on the Fifth of NOVEMBER St. Matt. VII the former part of v. 16. Ye shall know them by their fruits THE main design of Satan as it hath ever been the same to ruin the Church of God so his arts and methods to compass it have been various and different Sometimes he hath endeavoured to destroy her by force otherwhiles to undermine her by subtlety His first attempt was to crush her in the Birth and the second Man that ere was born dy'd a Martyr Ever since the Church has been an Acheldama a Field of Bloud and its Kalendar markt all along with Red letters the profession of truth having still been fatal as to its Author so to all his followers in succeeding Ages distinguishable not so much by the several Reigns of Heathen Emperors as those various storms that in their times have fallen upon Christians 2. But as these storms were ever blown away by the breath of God and Satan by strictly winnowing the Church gat nothing thereby but his own tares when he saw that Phoenix grew fruitfull from her own ashes and the fertile bloud of her Martyrs did but bring her in a larger harvest of Proselytes He then shifted the Scene laid aside those terrible Arguments of Racks and Gibbets to compell Men to come into his Kingdom and took up other more plausible and insinuative the allurements and blandishments of this World to baffle them out of the rewards of another thinking by out-bidding Christ to gain a more numerous party to himself wherein how successfull he has been the frequent Apostasies of Men in all Ages do abundantly testifie 3. Lastly As he met with some of a stouter and wiser temper than to be prevail'd on by either of these Methods Men not to be beaten off from their Profession by threats nor drawn away from it by such mean hopes as this World could afford them His subtlest policy has been to work upon their Judgments to deprave their Understandings by poysoning the very Fountains of Knowledge the Scriptures To which end he made choice of corrupt Teachers as the most proper