Selected quad for the lemma: faith_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
faith_n	abraham_n	promise_n	see_v	4,562	5	4.1881	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56697	A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor and the aldermen of the City of London at Guild-Hall Chappel, Octob. 31, 1680 being the XXI Sunday after Trinity / by Symon Patrick ...	Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.	1680 (1680)	Wing P842; ESTC R13508	19,534	54

with us and give his Holy Spirit to them that ask it and never leave us nor forsake us but be our helper and deliverer Hath He not bid us not fear them that can do no more but kill the body but fear Him that can throw both Soul and Body into Hell and repeated it again that we should fear this great Lord fear to offend Him fear to lose His favour and the glorious hope He hath set before us Hath He not bid us lay hold on this hope and hold fast our confidence and the rejoycing of our hope unto the end Hath He not bid us trust to this that stronger is He that is in us than he that is in the world than the Devil and all his partakers and instruments who have no power to hurt us unless He consent to it and in that case the thing we account a hurt shall work together for our good We are not Christians if we believe not this And what is there more to be believed but that He hath power to make good his word And how can we question that when we remember that He is the LORD whose power is no less large than his desire So that He cannot be inclined by his good will to design or to promise any kindness to his Servants which He hath not equal ability actually to perform He doth not merely wish us well nor can He be suspected ever to find any impotency in himself whereby He should be disabled from expressing the love which we think He bears us And therefore He cannot be more forward either to conceive good intentions towards us or to make us promises of the good He intends than He is ready and able to do to the full what He purposes and what He promises The consideration of which power of his is the great support of our Faith when we read any of his exceeding great and pretious promises in the Holy Scriptures and should make us heartily depend upon them and with a settled resolution go about our duty in an unshaken confidence of their performance To this Power of God it was that Abraham the Father of the Faithful had respect when God promised to give him an heir though an impossible thing in Nature He staggered not at the promise through unbelief but was strong in Faith giving glory to God being fully perswaded that what He had promised He was able also to perform iv Rom. 20 21. The object of his faith was the promise of God who as He had never deceived him so he knew could not be worse than his word But that which preserved him from staggering at such a Promise as this was his laying hold on the Power of God which made him strong in faith And the Glory he gave to God was his conceiving so highly and magnificently of his Power as nothing to doubt of what He had said nor in the least to imagine the thing He promised was beyond it but to rest fully perswaded that He was no less able to perform than He was willing to promise it The like strong Faith we ought to have in the power of our Lord Christ from whose Majesty we shall extreamly derogate if we think there is any thing too hard for Him to do But to think He cannot do what He hath promised to do for us is to blemish Him with such a weakness that there cannot be a greater disparagement to Him For though it be no discredit to one of us not to be able to do every thing that another man can do yet to put our Friends in hope and expectation by promises of what we know is without the reach of our abilities is such a dishonour that it reflects scorn and contempt in the face of those who are guilty of it And therefore if it could be conceived which we ought not in the least to admit that our Blessed Lord hath any weakness or defect of Power in Him yet so great a defect as this to promise things which He cannot make good to those that believe them and depend upon them must need be far removed from Him And we being sure that the same Goodness and Love which moved Him to make those promises of Grace and strength to us will move Him to imploy his Power to communicate them we ought to trust to this and with an assured Faith depend upon His powerful Goodness and in that Faith stedfastly and couragiously perform most constant obedience to Him who we are sure cannot fail us II. But that we may not deceive our selves with a false dependance on Him nor vainly trust to his Almighty Power for our aid let us always remember which will bring me to the second thing I propounded that it is such a Faith in Him and dependance on Him as makes us use all the means which He hath appointed in conjunction with our trust in his might for our preservation Else it is not a right Faith in the power of his Might nor will derive the communications of it into our souls for He that bids us confide in that requires us also to do many other things in the exercise of which He tells us we may be confident his Power will give us the better And if we believe as we ought we shall take his word as much for the one as for the other According to which Doctrine the Apostle who could best explain his own mind immediately adds this injunction in the words after my Text Put on the whole Armour of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil It was not enough it seems barely to confide in the invincible strength of the Lord Jesus but they must put their own hand to the work and prepare themselves for the incounter and valiantly when occasion was enter into it and sustain it For opposition we must expect as the Apostle shows vers 12. and great opposition from very powerful very subtil very industrious and likewise invisible Enemies For we wrestle not against Flesh and Blood but against Principalities and Powers against the Rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickednesses in high places Who among other ways they have to trouble us stir up the spirits of evil men to give us all the disturbance and do us all the mischief that is in their power and stir them up to so high a degree of rage that they persecute us many times with such inhumane malice and cruelty as flesh and blood could not invent were it not acted by a Diabolical fury This mighty and frightful opposition we are apt to make an Argument why we cannot hold out but should despair of being able to do our duty But the Apostle quite contrary makes it an Argument why we should be strong and resolved and watchful and ready arm'd against all temptations and able to stand because we have to do with such potent and crafty Enemies who are so much above us in high places from whence

one with another For where envying and strife is iii. Jam. 16. there is confusion and every evil work The Devil gets in at this breach above all others and tempts men to the most dangerous sins and most spiritual wickednesses Which prove not only the ruin of particular souls but of whole Societies and Churches and therefore the causes of such divisions ought most carefully to be avoided if we would stand fast like men and be strong in the evil day This is a point to be now most diligently studied because it is of great necessity to this Church and at this time When we had need be all prepared to maintain at least the Truth which we profess but cannot in all likelyhood secure unless we strengthen our selves by being knit together most heartily and firmly in such Brotherly affection that though there be too many Dissenters God knows who cannot or will not conform to the publick Laws yet the peace be preserved and not the least thing done to disturb the settlement of this Church Which whatsoever defects any man may think it hath is so well constituted that as there is little hope to see a better so if it be disturbed we shall find to our cost that we have changed for one infinitely worse though it be one of our own making and devising Let us consider that if the Apostles and others thought themselves obliged to propagate the Truth it self in a peaceable manner even the most necessary and essential Truths of the Gospel of Christ which they Preached without any disturbance to the publick Government much more ought we to be very careful not to unsettle a Christian Church well established nor to make a rupture in it about those things which are now controverted Which might be better handled and to more advantage and hope of convincing one another if we did live in Unity and in the same Communion notwithstanding our differences than when we separate and divide one from another For then we begin to look upon each other as Enemies and are not so apt to be moved by those Arguments which might be very effectual if we continued knit together in the same Society But if this cannot be yet whatsoever different perswasions we have about Rites and Ceremonies and such like things I am sure it is every mans interest to be thus far a peaceable Dissenter as to comply with the publick order so far as he is able with a safe Conscience and where he cannot comply to be quiet not to make a stir by contradiction and opposition but merely to omit what he cannot do Not reviling the Publick Establishment nor indeavour to bring it into contempt and to overthrow it For whosoever spends his zeal that way and takes himself for a man of spirit doth but abuse himself and the Gospel in giving the name of courage to hardness of heart and calling that resolution which is mere insensibility of Gods Holy Laws about Humility Meekness Patience Peaceableness long-suffering and such like Vertues Which great things did we lay to heart we should be more quiet and not make a quarrel about the small matters which now divide us but rather bear with what is well settled and not impious than go about to mend it by fierce oppositions Which commonly produce bitter strife and contention and that is followed by worse disorders which the Apostles to avoid connived at many things among the Jewish Christians which they by no means approved of but desired to see reformed And after men have done all they can if they be not able to endure some things peaceably which they do not like they must seek for another kind of world than this and for more perfect Creatures than Men. There will be defects in all humane constitutions there will be variety of apprehensions even in those things which God himself hath declared after never so many changes we shall be as far from settlement as ever if we will not be quiet till all things be according to our mind And therefore I take it to be much better as a wise man resolved many years ago to be driven on shore by a storm though in a crazy vessel than in a stronger to be still upon a tempestuous sea in the power of the winds and in danger of Shipwracks As for us who have consented to be governed by the Laws of this Church and have submitted to its orders there needs not many words sure to perswade us to lay aside all our enmities though never so small at such a time as this together with all jealousies suspicions and evil surmises much more all evil-speakings and whatsoever is contrary to that love which ought to be between us We ought not now especially to be so much as cold towards one another because of any differences that may happen to be in our opinions or which we fancy to be between us but embrace each other with a fervent Charity as those who are linkt together by the same common faith and ingaged in the same common cause and must stand or fall together But in the prosecution of this weighty point I have been transported so far that I have left but little time for the remaining which I must therefore pass over the more briefly IV. The next is the Shield of Faith v. 16. which the Apostle saith we must above all things guard our selves withal That is we must continually represent to our minds by a strong and lively Faith the great rewards which Christ hath promised to his valiant followers These we must ever carry before our eyes as a Souldier did his shield that by an actual present sense of them we may beat off all assaults either from pleasure or from pain which are made upon us to move us from our duty For either of them may be understood by the fiery darts of the wicked which the Apostle here speaks of the motions to inordinate pleasure being sometimes no less hot and violent than the grief and pain which we feel by sore persecutions which are more peculiarly called in the Holy Scriptures by the name of the Fiery Trial. As those work very fiercely upon fear so do pleasures upon desire and by this Faith we shall be able to vanquish both Witness the Confessors and Martyrs who having first overcome themselves could not be moved from their stedfastness when they saw a real Fire before them into which they were threatned to be thrown if they did not recant the profession of Christianity This Shield of Faith was their security they being fully perswaded that Christ our Lord who is greater than all Kings having all power in Heaven and Earth would raise them from the dead to an immortal and more glorious life if they did not to gain or save the best thing in this world break any of his Sacred Laws For this Faith was so potent that it wrought in them a lively hope which is the next thing V. And take the Helmet