Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	action_n	good_a	work_n	1,044	5	5.6274	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54857	The signal diagnostick whereby we are to judge of our own affections : and as well of our present, as future state, or, The love of Christ planted upon the very same turf, on which it once had been supplanted by the extreme love of sin : being the substance of several sermons, deliver'd at several times and places, and now at last met together to make up the treatise which ensues / by Tho. Pierce.	Pierce, Thomas, 1622-1691.	1670 (1670)	Wing P2199; ESTC R12333	120,589	186

as we are rational and in what Instance can we be rational wherein 't is possible for us to cease from being voluntary Agents It does concern us therefore as such to ask for Grace when it is wanting and to use it when it is granted and again to pray God to increase our Talent and to beware that we receive not his Grace in vain too 2 Cor. 6. 1. And therefore as such we are injoyn'd as well as intreated by S. Paul not to grieve not to resist not to quench the Spirit of God when he begins to kindle in us that love of Christ which he requires plainly intimating unto us that when the Spirit of God is ready to shed abroad in our hearts such a saving love it lyes in us to shut a Casement that is an Eye to open a Dore that is an Ear to yield up a Castle that is a Heart to draw a Curtain that is a Prejudice to put Impediments out of the way and by the assistance of the same Spirit to employ the noble Faculties which God hath given us unto the noblest of the Ends for which he gave them We are able as we are men to presentiate our Saviour within our selves and so to meditate upon Him as we ordinarily do upon other objects we can frame Idaeas of him in our Imaginations and thereby bring him into our Heads by an Intentional Union although the Grace of God alone can unite him really to our Hearts by servent love and Faith unseigned Seeing therefore the Scripture saith in justification of the praemisses That we are Labourers and Workers together with God and again that we are Stewards of the manifold Grace of God and are diligently to look least any man fail of the Grace of God and again that every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour Let us never cease to labour in the great work of our Salvation till by the help of God's Grace which never fails to work with any who do not fail to work with it we have wrought our selves up to a Love of Christ. Being comparatively neglectful of all other duties until we have throughly attain'd to this We must remember that as our Faith is pre-required to our Love so is our Love to our obedience and our obedience unto our Bliss And we must perfect our Foundation before we build For debile Fundamentum fallit opus the weakness of a Foundation must needs betray the whole strength of a superstructure In vain shall we labour to raise the Fabrick of obedience unless we have a firm love whereupon to build it And therefore first let us be sure of loving Christ in Sincerity before we take upon our selves the effectual keeping of his Commandments And let us use the best engines whereby to screw our Love up to the Pitch requir'd For what we do not much Love we cannot much long for nor can we very much care to espowse the means of its Attainment And therefore in spight of the objection which has an aptness in its Nature to breed a carelesness of our Actions an unconcernment in our end and a contempt of those Assistances which onr Authorized Teachers are wont to yield us let us not cast away the care we ought to have of our Immortality nor be so blinded with the Opinion that all the actions of our Lives were pre-determin'd from Aeternity as thereupon to despair of being the better for our Indeavours and by consequence to resolve never to do our selves any Good But let us labour on the contrary after the Duty of loving Christ for the escaping of the Danger I mean the Curse and the Damnation denounced here to all Persons that love him not And to press this forwards with at least some Hope as well as Ambition of good Success will deserve to be the work of another Chapter CHAP. III. Sect. 1. WHen we are setting about the means which do most of all conduce to our greatest Ends we must be sure of right method as well as of Diligence in our Indeavours And because we are to cease from being Enemies to our Saviour before we can be in a possibility of being denominated his Friends First let us summon-in our Affections which are scatter'd abroad upon the world the love of which S. Iames saith is perfect Enmity with Christ. They that mind earthly things must needs be Enemies to his Cross and being Enemies to his Cross they cannot be Friends unto his Person For the Apostle tells us of such that their end is Destruction The reason of this is very evident For whilst we have Friendship with the world which is Christ's Rival and Competitor our Souls are Adulteresses and Harlots to use the language of S. Iames in the place before cited as being false and disloyal to him who betrothed us to himself and is verbally acknowledg'd to be our Bridegroom Love is evermore so sure to be the Mother of Obedience to whatsoever object it is which is much belov'd that as when we love Christ we will keep His Commandments so when we also love the world we will keep the Commandments of the world to wit the statutes of Omri and all the works of the House of Ahab So that our first labour must be for 't is indeed a great labour to disentangle our Affections to take them off from the things of this tempting world and as it were twisting them all together like the Rayes of the Sun in an Optick Pyramid strive to concenter them so united in the Soveraign Beauty of a Saviour Now one of the proper Engines for this I mean the rescuing of our love from what is worldly and to be seen is to chew and to ruminate long enough in our Thoughts upon this great Truth that even our love of the Body does wholly depend upon the Soul And the titular Beauty of the Flesh must be confessed by the most sensual to lye intirely in the spirit For if we except the sole case of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Herodotus which yet was not love but another thing and that perhaps but a Fable too who ever heard of any Lover fixing his love upon the Body so much as one short minute after the vanishing of the Soul Did the Corinthians court their Lais when nothing was left them but her Body Did Demosthenes take a Iourney in kindness to her when she was dead no there was nothing then desirable besides Forgetfulness and a Grave Nothing then but the Worms was able to covet her Embraces Methinks that this one observable were it as patiently consider'd as it is easily understood should conduce extremely much to the spiritualizing of our Affections For if we love nothing that we can see of our dearest Friends but for the love of somwhat else which cannot possibly be seen what better reason can we give of it than that the Part which is material is arrant Rottenness and Corruption nor only not

provoke us unto obedience by a redoubled Reflexion on our Advantage What can be more for our Advantage or more agreeable to the Ambitions both of the Flesh and of the Spirit than to have our own wills and to be masters of all we have a mind to even all that we are able to want or pray for yet this is every mans portion who does so really love Christ as to keep his Commandments For so saith the Oracle which cannot ly or prevaricate Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do v. 13. and in the very next words If ye shall ask any thing in my name I will do it v. 14. A promise sufficient to make us startle unless we consider it long enough to grasp the whole of its Importance For we see 't is universal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if any thing and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whatsoever we shall have what we ask without exception And universal as it is it is inculcated and insorc't by a sacred kind of Tautology From whence 't is obvious to inferr as it is useful to observe that although vain Repetitions are worthily blam'd by our blessed Saviour yet there are many Repetitions which are not vain It is so farr from being vain for our Lord here to tell us the same thing twice that 't is to rivet it in our memories and to imprint it in our minds And what is that which he desires may take so deep an Impression in us but that we shall have our own asking if we will but so love him as to keep his Commandments Compare the Text with the Context the condition of the promise with the promise it self and you will find that the scope of the whole is this If you will do my will I will not fail to do yours If ye will but hear me speaking to you in my Precepts I will be sure to hear you speaking to me in your Prayers Give me the little that I ask and you shall have your own asking Put your selves into a capacity of injoying as much as you can desire Apply your selves to such a course as by which ye may make me your own and have all my Mercies at your disposal For on condition that ye love me and keep my Commandments I will do what ye will have me setting no bounds unto my grant but what ye do to your Petitions That this is here our Saviours meaning will undeniably appear from those parallel words 1 Iohn 3. 22. Whatsoever we ask we receive of him because we keep his Commandments Not whilst but because Not at that time but for that reason Compare this again with those other expressions of Christ himself Iohn 15. 7. If ye abide in me and my words abide in you ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be don which is as if he should have said do you but keep my Commandments and ye shall have me at your Command for so run the words ask what ye will and it shall be don Let us be perfect in this point before we leave it For besides that there is nothing which more closely concerns the Text I mean as it stands in relation to the Context by how much the longer we think upon it we shall admire it so much the more Admit that we were to make the greatest promise to be imagin'd to Christ himself we could not go beyond this Lord ask what thou wilt and it shall be don And yet the very same thing saith He to us ask what ye will and it shall be don if ye will but so love me as to keep my Commandments Sect. 13. Where now lyes the difference betwixt God's doing our will and our doing His since he is pleas'd to bind himself by such an astonishing kind of promise no less than 4 times repeated in the very same Sermon that all we ask shall be don ask what we will Certainly the difference is only this that God does satisfie our wills by way of answer to our Petitions and we do Homage unto His by way of Answer to his Commands His compliance with us is an act of Grace and ours with Him an act of Duty God reveals his will to us by way of Empire and Exaction because he is our Creator and we the work of his Hands We exhibit our wills to Him by way of Intreaty and Supplication because he is as our Potter and we his clay In this then we differ that we intreat whilst he Commands but in this we agree that we would have our wills don He by us and we by Him Nay what will ye say if he intreates us too as earnestly as we do him It is the saying of S. Paul 2 Cor. 5. 20. We are Embassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled unto God Here is God ye see beseeching us and Jesus Christ praying to us for what he does by his Embassadors he truly does that having don him all the wrong we will admit of a Reconcilement that is to say that we will love him and keep his Commandments Herein then consisteth the great Advantage of our obedience that whilst 't is doing God's will it moveth God to do ours Which must not be accus'd as a bold expression because we are taught it by God himself For if we keep his Commandments we shall abide in his love Iohn 15. 10. And if we abide in his love all we ask shall be don ask what we will Iohn 15. 7. Sect. 14. But here it may easily be objected to all that hath hitherto been spoken that however our Saviour hath made this Promise yet not one of his Disciples hath ever seen its Performance For where is he in all the world who can say his Petitions have all been granted how many sick and poor Christians have pray'd to Christ for health and honour who yet have dyed of their diseases in perfect beggary and dropt unregarded into a grave of forgetfulness and obscurity Sect. 15. The Answer to this will be short and obvious That the great and precious promise is not absolute but conditional Had the promise been absolute the objection brought to it had not been capable of an Answer it would not lye in our power to clear our Saviour from breach of Promise But the promise being conditional is more or less to be perform'd by him that made it as the condition shall be observed by them on whom it is injoyn'd Now thus stands the Case betwixt our Saviour and our selves In the two next verses before my Text and Iohn 15. 7. we have a general promise bestowed on his part and in the words next after we have a reasonable condition requir'd on Ours The promise is on his part that we shall have what we ask ask what we will The Condition is on ours that we abide in him and that his words abide in us that we love him so farr as to

one side and pleasure on the other he hardly knows how to be more voluptuous His Fasting and Praying Mortification and self-denyal Meditation and Solitude are grown agreeable to his Temper and Frame of mind He is gratified by his strictness and very much pleas'd with his Severitie●… He is delighted with the thing which carnal Cowards are afraid of and vitious persons cannot indure Has fought so long as a Souldier under the Captain of his Salvation that fighting is one of his Recreations Fighting I mean against the enemies of Christ against the world and the Flesh and the Powers of Hell T is one of the highest of all his Pleasures to be above the Pleasures of Sin and one of his innocent ambitions to tread ambition under his feet All he covets is contentment and all he lusts after is a Dominion over his Flesh. The greatest of his aims is to be victor of all he fights with and the greatest of his victories is that he gets over himself So beneficial is the duty of being habituated in vertue that as I said once before it makes the glorious Work of Grace become a kind of second Nature For as the Love we bear to Christ begets the keeping of his Commandments so does our keeping those Commandments as much improve and cherish in us our love of Christ. We shall not be able to abstain from the love of Christ when there is something in ourselves to which the Nature of Christ himself does hold conformity and agreement and our keeping his Commandments will beget such a conformity It will I say beget in us such an Harmonie with Him as must needs infer in Him an equal Harmonie with us too And wheresoever there is Harmonie there will be Love in things rational As wheresoever there is Love there will be keeping of Commandments Sect. 11. We may know therefore by this whether or no our Hearts deceive us when they make us believe that we love our Saviour And so by consequence 't is a Transition to the fifth and last Inference the Text affords us CHAP. V. That our obedience to the Precepts of Iesus Christ is the only warrantable Touchstone whereby to try and examin the love we bear unto his person And because by the force of our love to Christ there is a mutual Cohabitation 'twixt Him and Us this will also be a Rule which cannot possibly deceive us in what it most of all concerns us to labour in without Error even the making of our Calling and Election sure Sect. 1. AMongst the several sorts of men who are commonly wont to call on the name of Christ and upon whom his name is call'd there are not Two of Ten Thousand who will not challenge him for a Saviour and make Profession of as much Love as if they could prove it by their Obedience But we may say of God himself as of most great men that his admirers are very many but he hath very few Friends It is agreed upon by all that they all ought to love him but 't is agreed upon by all too that of the all who ought to love few do love him as they ought For how many are there of them who do most of all profess to be lovers of him who yet do reckon their very Rebellions amongst the Arguments of their Loyalty and special Tokens of their Affection As if our Lord had said to Them in a direct contrariety to what he said to his Disciples If ye love me break my Commandments Such as are keepers of Christs Commandments with a Belief that 't is the way whereby to enter into life and that in this they are to work out their own Salvation are not allowed a better character than that of good legal and moral men And the good works of such as These are but glittering sins in the opinion of those projectors who are such Niggards as to ingross the work of Redemption to themselves But such as break Christ's Commandments with a Belief that they cannot or need not keep them whilst they can break them so securely as not to fall into a doubt of their being sav'd yea that they ought not so to keep them as of necessity to Salvation these they peremptorily reckon amongst the Vessels of Election And are not they very sufficiently misconceipted of themselves and their love to Christ who rather than acknowledge any want of love to him will ascribe their foulest crimes to the overflowings of their Affection So very easie a thing it is for men to be flatterers of themselves and quite mistaken in their Affections that as they who flung stones at their Heathen God Hermes made no doubt but they did it in pure Devotion so there are Christians who seem to think that they can break Christ's Commandments with every whit as good a zeal as Moses brake the two stones wherein the Commandments were but written And therefore in this consideration it does concern us very neerly to bring our Love to the Touch-stone before we pass it for currant in our esteem We are to follow that advice which S. Paul gave to his Corinthians That we examin our selves whether we be in the Faith and that we try our own selves It being so ordinary a thing for Devils to be transformed into Angels of light and for the worst kind of vices to look like the greatest and fairest vertues that the most talkative Professors of Christian Purity and Knowledge are seldom able to distinguish betwixt Hypocrisy and Love betwixt Attrition and Contrition worldly sorrow and Repentance betwixt Presumption and lively Faith betwixt Security and Assurance or a downright Stupidity and Peace of Conscience which shews the use and the necessity of bringing them all unto the Test that so we may not be in danger to take them for more than they are worth nor persevere in those Habits of which we cannot too soon be stript That we may not overgreedily catch hold on a Fish which will prove in conclusion to be a Scorpion nor please ourselves with an opinion of our great Love to Christ which will be found after Death to have been but a great Dissimulation By what hath hitherto been spoken I do not doubt but 't will be easily agreed by all that men are apt to be mistaken in the nature and measure of their Affections and that by consequence it concerns them to make a Tryal whether their Affections are right or wrong All the difficulty will be how to agree upon the Touch-stone by which the Tryal is to be made And seeing the world is to be divided about the choice of this Touch-stone some liking one thing and some another I think it fit in proportion that I divide my Discourse too Speaking first of the Negative by shewing what it is not and then in the Affirmative by shewing clearly what it is A method the rather to be admitted because to refuse that which is False is in itself of great vertue to discover

spending upon our sins both to nourish and to adorn them with Food and Rayment Let us spend upon our Saviour in a more liberal proportion and that in such manner as he directs us Let us spend out of our Treasures to feed and cloath him in his members Let us spend to pay him Homage in as many of his members as under Him are our Heads And let us be spent for him as freely like Epaphroditus and S. Paul both by watching and fasting by meditating and praying by suffering paines and persecutions whensoever he shall call or expose us to them not by the leaving of our lives for the paying unto Nature her common Debt but by the laying of them down for the paying to our Saviour our Debt of Grace And as we may help to shame our selves into a love of the Lord Iesus by reflecting on our love to inferiour things so our love to the Lord Iesus just as our love to other things is very apt both to be bred and to be very much nourish't by conversation For Ignoti nulla Cupido We cannot possibly desire him whilst we are ignorant of his beauty And of that we must be ignorant whilst we are strangers to his converse So that the reason why most Professors are wont to love Christ so little doth seem especially to be This their having so little of his Acquaintance Enough of that will so charm us as to beget in us a loathing of all that makes a separation 'twixt Him and us Unto how many things and persons are many men passionately addicted if not absolutely enslav'd for which they can give us no better reason than that of their having been wonted to them let us but wont our selves as much unto an heavenly conversation and we shall find it just as harsh to be weaned from it Hence it follows that we must read and not only read but strictly search into the Scripture not only resting in its literal but also diving into its moral and soaring up too into its mystical significations whereby to acquaint ourselves throughly with the Lord Jesus Christ and more and more to comprehend the great variety of his Perfections And then to the end that his Perfections may so affect us as they deserve nor only float in our Brains but deeply sink into our Bowels we must imprint them within our selves by mental Prayer and Meditation To each of which we must be resolute to be so wonted and inur'd as not to be able without regret to admit of any long Avocation from them Nor can we pardonably excuse our gross neglects of conversing with Jesus Christ by alledging our Inability of taking delight in his converse For conversation must be made easie ere it can possibly be delightful And the easiness of any thing must come by use First 't is the diligence of our converse by which we come to love Christ and then 't will be natural for our Love to make us delight in his converse It argues a shallowness of Reason and a great want of perspicacity to think there are not any Pleasures upon the Mount of Contemplation as Gerson calls it because we cannot yet perceive them at the Foot of the Hill or in the Act of contending to climb up thither 'T is as great weakness as to conclude against the Pleasure of reaping a goodly Harvest from the labour of Cultivation and charge of seed Or to inferr there is no contentment in inhabiting a pleasant and well-built house from the cost of the Materials and Care of putting them together Nemo Montis Cacumen uno faltu conscendit The Hill of Sion is a fair place and Mount Tabor is a delicious one But we must not think to reach the Top of either at a Leap For as the lower and more earthy our pleasures are they must needs be attain'd with the greater ease so we must use the greatest patience and we must take the greatest paines to overcome the steep ascent of the highest pleasures All the Duties of a Christian I mean the Acts and not the Habits are so many steps and degrees to the Hill I speak of Which Acts of Duty whilst they are yet but Acts only will cost the natural man Pain and make him see he hath need of patience But after a competent tract of Time as soon as the Acts have been so numerous as to produce their respective Habits the Acts arising from those Habits will requite the said Patience with ease and pleasure Shall I exemplifie what I say by any one important duty which at first gives us Trouble and after rewards us with Delight I cannot instance in a fitter than that of Prayer because 't is one of the chiefest means whereby to enter and to continue and to complete our conversation with him that bought us How many are there in the world who turn their backs on this Duty upon no better Ground than their erroneous Imagination that 't is of no use to pray till they can do it with Devotion A way of reasoning as irregular as if a man who is very cold should conclude it wholly useless to make a Fire till he is warm Want we Devotion in our Prayers we are to pray for Devotion and Devotion is apt to grow from our customary Praying for other things From when in spite of our Indifferency and perhaps our Averseness to such a Duty we use the Empire of our Wills in the work of Prayer and casting our selves upon our Knees are very resolutely bent to perform the Duty how much soever against the stream of our Inclinations God will reward our Resolution by turning our Labour into delight and so will make it as great a Pleasure in time to come as it has been in time pass't a self-denial If any man shall here ask how we can possibly converse with things invisible or have a Languor after him whom we never saw let them answer saith S. Ierom who have read the answer to it in the Book of Experience and have not been able to forbear crying out with David Wo is me that I am constrained to dwell in Mesech O that I had wings to fly away and be at rest my soul is athirst for the living God And even panteth after Him as the Hart panteth after the water-Brooks O when shall I appear before the Presence of God! Devout S. Bernard himself confess 't that in the beginning of his Conversion he was frequently of an hard and frigid Heart who yet being accustomed to converse with Christ by Grace could not but thirst with great impatience to injoy him also in his Glory Yea that love which of necessity does begin in the Flesh may saith he by Degrees be well consummated in the Spirit For not to mention the seven degrees which are assign'd by Ubertinus as being too nice to be truly useful First 't is natural for a man as he is carnal and depraved to love himself above all things and above