Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	people_n	zeal_n	zealous_a	49	3	9.5166	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A47301	The measures of Christian obedience, or, A discourse shewing what obedience is indispensably necessary to a regenerate state, and what defects are consistent with it, for the promotion of piety, and the peace of troubled consciences by John Kettlewell ...	Kettlewell, John, 1653-1695.	1681 (1681)	Wing K372; ESTC R18916	498,267	755

Offices and Affairs against the plain Precept of studying to be quiet and to do our own business 1 Thess. 4.11 But the endeavours which we are to use and the means whereby we must try to secure to our selves an unpersecuted freedom in religious Ordinances and Professions must be such as are within the sphere of private men We must be upright and exemplary in the practice of it our selves and press a like exemplariness in the practice of it upon others By our humble modest quiet peaceable and submissive carriage we must convince such as are in Power that it deserves protection and by our affectionate fervent and importunate prayers to Gods we must endeavour to have it put into their hearts to protect and preserve it We must plead its Cause and represent that truth and goodness which may recommend it and try to wipe off the aspersions and rectifie the mistakes of such as plead against it or think hardly of it These and such like means are the laudable service in this Case and the proper business of private Christians And whilst their care is contained within this compass and they act thus within their own sphere it is excellent and praise-worthy they seek to preserve Religion and their seeking to do it in this way is it self very pious and religious 2. In shewing their care to preserve the free and unpersecuted profession of Religion they must exercise such only of those actions within their own sphere as are lawful and innocent but by no means endeavour to maintain it by such as are sinful and disobedient They must not defend it by lyes and forgeries by wrath and bitterness by fierceness and revenge by slandering and reviling of their Opposers They must so defend Religion as not to disobey it because that is not defending but betraying it A free profession is no further desirable than it tends to an upright practice So that to disobey for it is to lose all that wherefore we endeavour after it Truth must never be bought with the loss of innocence nor must we ever commit any one sinful action to promote a freedom of orthodox and true professions 3. In evidencing their care in preserving the free and unpersecuted profession of Religion they must be zealous in the first place for the practice and preservation of religious Laws and next to that for religious Ordinances and Opinions S t Paul directs us to the great Object of all religious zeal when he tells us that Christ came into the world to purchase to himself a peculiar people zealous of good WORKS Tit. 2.14 Nothing in the world is so warrantable a matter of a mans zeal as Gods Laws and mens obedience For the Laws of Christ's Gospel are that part which he esteems most he has made them the measure of life or death the Rule of our eternal absolution or condemnation And as he accounts of them so should we too Our zeal for them must be more warm and our care more watchful than for any other thing because God himself is most especially concerned for them and all men are most highly concerned in them they being that whereby all men must live or dye eternally This I will says S t Paul to Titus that thou affirm constantly That they which have believed in God may be CAREFVL to maintain GOOD WORKS these things are good and profitable unto men Tit. 3.8 So that the practice of religious Laws must be the great point wherein we are to be zealous and careful in the first place Next to which we must take care of those opinions which have a great influence upon and are the great productive instruments of all obedient practice such as are all opinions which are either motives or inducements helps or encouragements to obedience In which sort of opinions our Religion abounds there being as I said no idle Article in the Christian Creed but such Doctrins and Declarations concerning God and Christ and our selves and the other world as are either absolutely necessary or very helpful to a holy life All which according to their several proportions in promoting piety and obedience to Gods Laws we are to be zealously concerned for in the next place as we are for that pious obedience which is wrought by them in the first But when we have shown our good affection to substantial piety and Religion by a just zeal for obedience and plainly practical opinions then may it be very fit for us to shew our zeal for other true Doctrines and Professions likewise For it is a great honour to God and an ornament to Religion that we have it pure and sincere free from all things that are liable to just exception and from all mixture of errour and falshood And it is also a great happiness to men to have orthodox apprehensions in Religion and to embrace nothing for Gospel truths but what God has thereby declared to them But it is a further happiness still and such whereof men are the most sensible to be free from the imperious imposition and tyranny of errour so as neither to be forced upon the impossible belief of that which in our own minds we see is false and therefore cannot believe nor upon the feigned and hypocritical profession of believing a thing when really we do not believe it one of which two is mens unhappiness when their professed Religion falls under persecution Now both these are severe and rigorous impositions For the first is utterly impossible to any so long as it continues a free and impartial head as the latter is to any whilst it remains an honest and obedient heart So that all men have very great reason so far as they can by all innocent and honest ways to be zealous against them and to use all the lawful care and caution that possibly they can to avoid so powerful a motive as a sharp persecution is to tempt them to a thing so unreasonable as is the first and so wicked and sinful as is the latter So long then as men will moderate their zeal for the unpersecuted use of religious Ordinances and profession of religious Opinions with this discretion let them be zealous and concerned for it in God's Name For it is their Duty so to be and God will reward and all good men commend them for it If they take care that their zeal transport them not beyond their own sphere that it carry them not against their Duty and that it be concerned in the first place for Laws and practical opinions they may allow it after that to spend it self upon other Points which have more of speculative truth but less of practice This zeal now is excellent 't is truly pious 't is religious But if they have a zeal without obedience if for preventing of persecution in the profession of true opinions they run upon sinful means and undutiful transgressions their zeal is ungodly and all their pretended care of Religion is plainly irreligious For

to disobey in it our obedience in other things is all that we have to shew besides and therefore it must be our excuse for it And this being an errour of such eternal moment and a Rock whereupon all the souls which miscarry under any appearances of piety are split I will be particular in recounting and evacuating those colours and pretences wherewith men deceive their own souls and think that they justifie and defend it Now as for those false grounds and pretensions whereby men seek to shelter themselves under the practice of such bosome-sins as they overlook because they have no mind to leave them hoping to be secured whilst they continue in them because of their obedience in other parts of Duty which is a partial obedience Those pretensions I say which are most pleadable in this matter are these that follow viz. because their indulgence of themselves in those instances wherein they disobey is either upon one or more of these accounts 1. For the preservation of their Religion and of themselves in times of danger and persecution 2. For the supply of their necessities by sinful arts compliances and services in times of want and indigence 3. For the satisfaction of their Flesh in sins of temper and complexion age or way of life 1. The first pretence whereby men justifie to their own thoughts the indulged transgression of several Laws whilst they obey in others is because those transgressions wherein they allow themselves are necessary for the preservation of their Religion and of themselves in those times of danger and persecution wherein Gods Providence has placed them Religion is in danger and like to be undermined by the close and subtle arts or overborn by the more open and powerful violence of strong and witty Enemies And this is Gods Cause and Christ our Lord and Saviours interest so that whatever is done here we think is in service of our Maker If we fight it is his battles if we spitefully persecute and devour it is his enemies if we rob and spoil it is to weaken his adversaries if we lye and dissemble it is to defeat the designs of such as he will call Rebels if we transgress in all the instances and use all the lawless liberties of war it is because we are engaged in his quarrel The Cause which we contend for and have to manage is sacred and that we believe will justifie all means and hallow any services whatsoever So that our heat and fierceness wrath and bitterness envy and malice revenge and cruelty endless strife and ungovernable variance spoils and robberies seditions and murthers wars and tumults in a word all the transports of passion and peevishness anger and ill nature rigour and revenge are all sacred under this Cover and pass for holy zeal and pious vehemence and religious concern for God whenas in reality they are a most impious throwing off and bursting through all the Tyes of Religion and Bonds of Duty towards men All these enormous effects and horrible instances of an indulged disobedience are at this Day the consequents of this pretension For some on one hand who call us Hereticks and enemies to Christ and holy Church think no means sinful whereby they can weaken and divide seduce surprize or any way destroy us For they esteem it lawful to dissemble under all shapes to gain a Proselyte or to disaffect a Party to our Communion and Government They act a part and play the Hypocrite in all Disguises and under cover of all Trades the better to insinuate themselves among all sorts of men they will affirm falshood even of their own Church when it serves their turn and deny any Doctrines Precepts or Parts of it when they are a scandal to the persons whom they would practise upon and make against them They make no conscience of lyes and perjuries in conversation when thereby they can promote the Churches interest For they have found out ways to deceive without lying and to lye without sin and to forswear without perjury and to perjure themselves without danger by their pious frauds and religious arts of equivocations mental reservations dispensations pardons and indulgences They can be treacherous and faithless without breach of faith if it were made to Hereticks they assassinate and murther Magistrates embitter and embroil Subjects against their Governours and against one another they conspire the death of Kings the confusion and fall of Kingdoms the ruine of all that dare oppose them yea even of all that differ from them And all this they do for Christ's sake in a zealous concern for God and Religion and for the utter extirpation of all heresie and schism It is this pretence which bears them out through all and makes them believe that they are serving God whilst after this extravagant rate they are overturning his whole Gospel And others again even of our own selves who justly abhor these damnable instances of disobedience upon the pretence of preserving or propagating Religion in some furious and fiery spirited sort of Papists for God forbid that we should think them all to be of this temper do yet run into the same extravagance which upon so great reason they condemn in them For if we look into our zeal for the common Religion of Protestants we shall find that we transgress many and those most material and weighty Laws of it whilst we express our affection and concern to defend and preserve it For doth not this pretence of preserving our Religion carry us beyond all the bounds of peaceableness and good subjection Our great fears about its defence make us daily to distrust our Governours to think and speak irreverently and reproachfully of their persons to undervalue all their counsels to misconstrue all their actions and proceedings and with much undutifull credulity and unchristian rashness to believe and spread abroad concerning them most odious suspicions and invidious reports they make us pragmatical and busie-bodies to go out of our own sphere and to usurp upon the Magistrates in projecting means and expediencies prejudging Criminals and irreverent censuring reproaching yea and oft-times slandering of our Governours if they either in Court or Council at the Board or on the Bench determine contrary to our anticipations They make us to disturb the quiet and to unsettle the peace of our fellow-subjects in filling their minds with endless jealousies about their Princes care and their own safety and in possessing them with discontents and undutifull suspicions words and actions to the great weakning of Government and disturbance of the publick peace Yea I add further these same fears for our endangered Religion transport us into the transgression of sundry weighty Laws which oblige us towards our very enemies who have contrived to destroy us For they have made us most partially backward to believe any thing that is good and forward to catch at every thing that is spoken ill against them They have made many of us fierce and implacable malicious