Selected quad for the lemma: enemy_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
enemy_n	evil_a	good_a	overcome_v	2,148	5	9.0851	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36270	A sermon preached before His Majesty on Good-Friday at Whitehall, March 24, 1664/5 by J. Dolben ...	Dolben, John, 1625-1686.	1665 (1665)	Wing D1831; ESTC R5322	28,655	60

That some face of Government should always be preserved among the Children of Israel as there was in their greatest distresses untill Shilo Judah's son after the flesh should begin to reign spiritually in the hearts of Men till both Jew and Gentile should submit to his Scepter of righteousness and be govern'd by the Divine Laws of his heavenly Discipline By this prime fundamental Prophecy you see the purport of all the rest For nothing can be more expresly foretold then is Christs Spiritual Kingdome in these words Nor was ever the event of any Prophecy so signalized A Nation chosen by God from the Mass of mankind a solemn way of worship invented and prescribed by himself both destroyed utterly to proclaime and perpetuate the memory of its completion and assure us that Gods Temporal favours in Canaan were but Types and shadows the substance whereof is Christ and therefore they ought of their own nature to vanish and disappear when he brought in the solid eternal blessings of his heavenly Kingdome which they prefigured So that I shall not need now to add any more upon this head unless it be to give you a short but real view of that Kingdome in Christs own exercise and administration of it Look therefore into his Sermon on the Mount I had rather you should find it in your hearts then in your Books where you shall discover a Perpetual Edict of that Law by which Christ will govern his Kingdome and a Scheme of that Policy whereby it must subsist A Divine Law and a Policy all spirit Had a Solon or Lycurgus been to lay the Plot and ground-work of a Common-Wealth you should have seen an institution apt to make their Citizens Rich Politique and fierce successfull troublers of the World Had Machiavel been the Contriver he would have recommended Craft Jealousie profound dissimulation crooked Arts of Deceit and Circumvention advanc'd Ambition Avarice Rapine and Bloud-shed the vertues of the Iron age and the accomplishments of Caesar Borgia These are the methods by which worldly Greatness is usually acquired and maintained But Christ founds his Kingdome on nobler Principles because it's interests are of a sublimer Nature And therefore here instead of anxious cares and fears the sollicitous plots and contrivances which carnal men set up as a Counter-Providence of their own to check and controul that wisdome which governes and sustaines the World We are taught by retrenching and mortifying our desires to need little and to be sure of what we want by asking it of God And be happy whether we obtaine our petitions or no by our unconcernednesse for these outward things Depending securely on that goodness which suffers not a Sparrow to be unprovided for nor a flower of the field to lack that nourishment and those influences which are requisite to maintain its verdure In stead of that Ambition which makes men climb till they grow giddy and most an end like Falcons lessen as they mount We are directed how to find Honour in the Dust in that Humility which makes us like the coequal Son of God Instead of Fraud Lying Hypocrisie which use to be called Cunning but are fripperies of folly for sure he that wants not wit hath no need to be a knave Christians are shew'd a straighter way to their ends by the rule of strict severe justice with honest upright intentions ingenuous open single hearts Thus Christ builds his new and holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God according to St Johns description and the elder designe of Isaiah with Christal Saphyres and Carbuncles where every part is transparent and seen through by its own light That which is all beauty needs hide nothing and when its brightness ought to illustrate others must shine out T was onely sinne made nakedness inconvenient and shamefull and that innocence which Christ design'd to retrive takes away the fig-leaves from before our minds as well as bodies introducing a simplicity which fears not Momus his window and privy light into our souls A charity apt to keep out Breasts always open ready to receive and cherish our Brethren In the place of false perficlious friendships those kindnesses which are but properties and baits for Treachery Christ advanceth a real affectionate amity and good will even to enemies whose Evil we are commanded to overcome with our good being taught a new skill by heaping our Love like Coals of fire upon their heads to subdue their most obstinate hardness and melt them down into the same Masse of Christian charity with our selves And that no pretence be left of hating any person under the notion of enmity the very name of Enemy and of Stranger is for ever banished the World The partition wall of Jewish uncharitableness raz'd and demolished and every man become brother to every man Indeed no body can properly be an enemy to a Christian because he cannot truly hurt him unless the Christians own sin give a sting and venome to the others malice For what can the supposed enemy do He can make me Poor Christ made himself so and if I be Poor in spirit too that conformity to my Saviour gives me a Title to his * Kingdome where all my real solid Concernments are He can make me Mourne and then I shall be comforted He can soften my meekness by oppression and tyranny and that gives me an inheritance in the Earth He can do me wrong and thereby need my Pardon and offer me an occasion of being Mercifull which shall secure me the Mercy that I need infinitely more He can put me to those fiery Tryals which may refine and burnish my Purity and so make me more fit to see God He can take away my life and so send me sooner to Heaven give me an earlier entrance into that Region of Eternal Bliss for which the previous temporary Paradise of Christs Spiritual Kingdome on earth is designed to prepare me I must not insist on all the parts of this Divine Sermon In a word therefore that one Golden Rule of Doing as we would be done by not onely abstaining from offering such injuries as we are unwilling to suffer but doing all the good to the Bodies and Souls of our Neighbors which we desire to receive from God or Man This short but comprehensive Precept which wise Heathens have admired and almost Deified would at once do all the great things which the Prophets have in so many Allegories and Hyperboles ascribed to Messiah this would beat Swords into Plough-shares and Spears into Pruning-hooks this would bring the Wolf and the Lamb to feed quietly together and make the Lion eat straw with the Bullock Not by changing the nature of those Animals as the Jews fondly imagine and teaching Wolves to graze or Lions to pull their fooder from a Rack But by taming our ravenous appetites cicurating our fierceness and rage those savage Beasts within us and introducing such a sweetness into the souls of men as