Selected quad for the lemma: conscience_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
conscience_n	die_v	hell_n	worm_n	1,009	5	9.7957	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65594	One and twenty sermons preach'd in Lambeth Chapel Before the Most Reverend Father in God Dr. William Sancroft, late Lord Arch-bishop of Canterbury. In the years MDCLXXXIX. MDCXC. By the learned Henry Wharton, M.A. chaplain to His Grace. Being the second and last volume.	Wharton, Henry, 1664-1695.; White, Robert, 1645-1703, engraver.	1698 (1698)	Wing W1566; ESTC R218467	236,899	602

Nature will be so far from helping it that it will infinitely aggravate the sharpness of its Pains For its Immortality will render them eternal and its Understanding will heighten the sense and feeling of them In this Life Sinners often are pleased with their own miserable Condition and Fancy themselves seated in Paradise when environed with Pleasures and glutted with Enjoyments They can stifle the Dictates of their Consciences and securely make use of their imaginary Happiness But in Hell their fire is not quenched and their worm dieth not The Sharpness of their Torments will not suffer them to rest And if those should be extinguished yet will they still be tormented with an inward Fire so much the more violent because then they will be certainly convinced in Judgment that they acted against their own Interests and the plain Rules of Reason in running the Danger of eternal Punishments for the sake of a few gross and trifling Pleasures We may next consider the peculiar influence of that Sin which our Saviour here chiefly intends This is the Sin of Apostacy or denial of the true Religion against which Christ fore-arms his Followers by inculcating this necessary truth of preferring the goods of the Soul to those of the Body For this foul Sin is ever committed for some temporal End being too odious to recommend it self without some outward Advantages Men deny not their God out of a dislike or disbelief of him but to secure to themselves a Fortune in the World prevent some Inconveniencies or gratifie some Lusts. This is a Crime of the same Nature and Contagion with Idolatry under the old Law For to worship a false God is the same thing as to deny the true one and the first cannot be done without the latter How heinous God accounted this appeareth from the whole Tenour of the Mosaick Law which is chiefly directed against this Sin alone All the Writings of the Prophets are employed against it and all the Judgments which God ever inflicted upon his People of Israel are solely owing to this Cause Insomuch as there is no Record left in sacred History of any Pardon ever granted to the Commission of this Sin And indeed a wilful Apostacy from the true Religion dissolves the very Union between God and Man and leaves no place for Pardon Such a Person openly by his Act proclaims to the World that he will have nothing to do with God bids defiance to him and disclaims his Pardon It would prostitute the Divine Mercy and make it cheap and easie to bestow it upon such execrable Villanies which do violence to Heaven and are the very last Efforts of Impiety This cannot but degrade the Soul from its Affinity to God and debar it from all nearer approach to his Presence We cannot hope to have any Interest left in God after a denial of him nor can without Horror entertain any remembrance of him How then shall we make our Souls happy with the continual Meditation of his Perfections or please our selves with the Hopes of the future Fruition of him In that Case it will be our Interest to banish all thoughts of God and remove from our selves as far as possible all Considerations of a future State that so we may not be alarmed with the dread of an angry God and the Terrors of future Torments Thus a denial of God against the Light of our own Consciences doth not only render us unhappy but causeth us to endeavour to become yet more unhappy by a total and wilful stifling of all Thoughts and Meditations of God in which alone true Happiness consists And this is true not only in the Case of notorious Apostacy when any one openly renounceth his Religion and denieth his belief of the true God which Case in these peaceable times of the Church doth not often happen but also in the Commission of every deliberate Sin which in truth is a no less formal Apostacy from God than that before-mentioned where the Sinner puts in the Scale the present Pleasure and Convenience of the Sin with the future Consequence and Divine Prohibition of it and after having weighed each rejects the Command of God of which he is very Conscious and prefers the present Satisfaction of the Sin This is done in every deliberate Sin and this is indeed a no less true Apostacy than an open denial of God For this we may be assured that whosoever upon a deliberate Choice prefers the seeming Pleasures of any sin to the Command of God would never foregoe all the Pleasures of this Life and even Life it self in obedience to the Will of God It remains that I make some Application of what hath been said First then if the Interests of the Soul be much greater than those of the Body and the Happiness of the Soul consists only in the due Contemplation of God and the possession of Piety and Vertue let us endeavour to render our Soul even in this Life as Happy as we possibly can It is not reasonable that all the Cares of our Life should be employed in providing Necessaries or rather Superfluities to the Body or attending to the Pleasures of it That no farther use should be made of the Soul than to serve as a Slave to the Body to heighten its Enjoyments and refine its Pleasures Let us remember that we carry about with us a more noble Being which deserveth our Care in the first place and cannot be neglected without the loss of Happiness May not God justly say to Mankind I have given to you great and Celestial Souls endued with wonderful Perfections and capable of much greater when rightly cultivated your Bodies I formed from the Clay of the Earth but your Souls I sent down from Heaven the one I permit to return to Corruption but the other I have invested with Immortality How justly might I expect that you would have valued these two according to their several worth and Dignity That you should not indeed starve the Body nor Tyrannize over it but however attend chiefly to the Concerns of the Soul that it might not fall short of that Happiness which I intended for it nor be deprived of those spiritual Enjoyments which it is capable of But alas Man is turned back and grown foolish employeth himself with all his Diligence to procure Pleasures for his Body rises early sits up late and eats the bread of carefulness to heap up Riches for the Continuation of these Bodily Enjoyments makes this the only Business of his Life and thinks of nothing else As for his Soul he makes it a Slave to his Body refuseth to receive Directions from it and sometimes forgets that he hath any What shall we answer to these Expostulations of God I fear we cannot plead Innocence Our Actions and the whole Course of our Lives demonstrate the contrary We are continually busie about enlarging our petty Acquisitions in the World we trouble and turmoil our selves about the Conveniencies of the Body but