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faith_n	church_n	invisible_a	visible_a	9,700	5	9.4455	5	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A79826	The abuse of Gods grace: discovered in the kinds, causes, punishments, symptoms, cures, differences, cautions, and other practical improvements thereof. Proposed as a seasonable check to the wanton libertinisme of the present age. By Nicholas Claget, minister of the Gospel at Edmundsbury in Suffolk, M.A. of Magdalen Hall, Oxon.	Clagett, Nicholas, 1610?-1662.; Wilkinson, Henry, 1616-1690.	1659 (1659)	Wing C4368; Thomason E978_2; ESTC R207811	268,515	321

contempt of the Law and Gospel that we should securely fall into an Heathenish loose life that he might finde more abundant and effectual Arguments for our everlasting destructions O I beseech you reason more wisely and thus speak to your selves Though others contend about doctrine worship government Shall I rebell and contend against God Though christians are divided among themselves shall I divide from the profession and power of Christianity Because there is no visible Religious Unity among professed Christians shall I have no Unity with the invisible Church of Jesus Christ Because I cannot finde Peace in the Church shall I have no true peace of conscience nor peace with God Because Reconciliation as to serving God in one way with one shoulder and in points of Faith is fled away from the jarring Congregations of Christian people shall I live in an irreconciled Estate with an angry God When every day his wrath hangs over me and if I die without a Christ and true conversion I am damned for ever I could heartily wish and O that I could fervently pray for it that such sober and serious thoughts in order to the conversion and extraordinary repentance of the discontented dissolute ones of the times were the happy product of the observed Division and Debates of the dis-joynted age in and about the things of God and not a foolish senseless mad arguing into Libertinism and undoing of the precious soul 2. To the seducing triumphing Papists I shall next give a seasonable Hortative Do you fear and tremble in the sense of your high dishonors to the grace of God and Gospel of Christ Though you hope the Fires of divided Protestants will make way for the Prisons Chains Faggots Flames of your Spanish Inquisition though you see some wantons among us though you discern the want of that Scripture-charity Unity Peace and in some things Truth that should be among us Will this excuse you in the wanton dalliance of your Religion An Whore is wanton The Scripture stiles the Papal Antichrist A great Whore she is richly and gaudily attired in her pompous worship glorious out-side to take her Lovers The Church of Rome at Rome looks more like the Court of Rome then the Church of Rome ●er Temple-service is more like a Theater a Stagedelight then the sober chaste humble yet reverent worship of God she hath an inchanting bewitching Love-cup in her hand that hath intoxicated the greatest part of Christendom 'T is stiled a cup of Fornication she hath drunk an health to her spurious ill begot and bred children and whether their pledging of the Church-mens adulterated spiced Cup with flesh-pleasing will be health or death will infallibly appear in the other World O you Jesuitical observers of our Divisions that congratulate and bless your selves in your Union Have you no Divisions What mean your multiplyed Sides and Sects of Popery your party-coloured different Votaries in Error your Franciscans Dominicans Carmelites Capuchins Benedictins Are there no Jars in your Schools between Thomists Scotists Do all your Chairs and Pulpits sing Even Song If you say In many Rites and Points of Worship and Doctrine Laws of your Monasteries you differ but in the main your Trent Counsel your Traditional Religion you agree I say the same We Protestants have the same Essentials and Vitals of Religion though we differ in sundry superstructures as the Body is the same though it wear different Apparel the Bulk and ●ody of our Religion as to practicals and saving things is the same though it be cloathed with different Administrations But suppose you were perfectly United Are you not Brethren in Evil and Confederates in Error Unity in sin is but a more fortified Satanical combination Is the Harmony of Devils among themselves to to murther Bodies and Souls amiable and excusable Nor will the falshood dissoluteness and danger of your Religion finde Apology from your holding many Truths in which we concur with you for which the Churches of Christ never separated from you nor call you Papists we divide from you where you have divided from Christ his Evangelists and Apostles We rather believe you the Apostatical then Apostolical Church What is more frequent and ●loud in your mouthes then Hereticks Hereticks Schismaticks Schismaticks And what are you Monsieur de Croy hath proved That your Papal Unity is a Miscellany of Judaism Heathenism and ancient Here●ies Are you not proved to be the greatest Schismaticks and Sect-masters in the World Do not you make Schisms from the worship Purity Piety of Primitive Apostolick times the great temptation of multiplyed offensive Rents among Protestants many tender consciences so much fearing the corrupt leaven of your Government Worship and Doctrine in a too timerous indiscreet and ignorant Jealousie never thinking they can go far enough from you so far have you gone from Christ till they have gone beyond truth and sobriety into some error and dissoluteness calling that Popery that is not You are pleased to confine true Christianity and Salvation within the Pale of your Roman Catholicism as if you were the onely vineyard and garden of God and all Protestants were a vast Common a desolate Wilderness but in the Pupper-Plays of your Religion your richly arrayed Sainted Idols your vail'd heads before them cringing bowing kneeling making vows unto them who are as senseless of your Devotion as the ignorant besotted Votaries are of the true nature of a Religious Vow and Invocation How do you and Idolatrous Heathens kiss each other Nor will the shuffling distinction of your Schools clear you from gross Idolatry You say your Religious Worship is not terminated in your Images 't is relative onely to carry your Devotion off from them to the Adoration of God and Christ Doth not this justifie the Israelites Idolatry when they said These are thy Gods O Israel which have brought thee up out of the Land of Aegypt Exod. 32. 8. Can we think they had so much forfeited sense and reason as to terminate this high Religious acknowledgement of Deliverance from Aegypt on an artificial senseless irrational weak Idol Surely they meant the living God represented by the Molten Calf Will not this distinction also colour Heathens palpable Idolatry Worship is not ultimate but mediate not terminative but relative so taught the Heathens in their Writings Their Religious worship did not stay and dwell in their Idols but they used them as a Chariot to carry their Devotion to their Gods represented by them How Summus Mariae Honor ipse est filius Christus Zwinglius de Casta Virgine Maia do you wantonly court the Virgin Mary to the sacrilegious dishonor of Christ her Lord and Saviour without her knowledge and thanks Her greatest honor is Christ her Son yet Lord How will she abor your senseless School Distinction at the great day of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first you give to God the second to the Saints the third to her when you are told that in the new Testament

after saith he Was ever man thankful to the Gods that he was a good man He may be indeed that he was Rich Honored Healthy It seems they called Jupiter Optimum Maximum the greatest and best not because he makes just temperate wise but safe honored and wealthy No wonder then if Augustine called the virtues of the Heathens Glittering sins Rivius The vain shadows of virtues and Lactantius The Images of virtues All which speaks morality yea the whole Body of virtuous Paganism without God and Christ but as a Body without an head Dives quod Honoratus quod Incolumis Cicero Splendida peccata Aug. Vmbrae Rivius Imagines virtutum Lactan. Further as the better sort of Heathens were witnesses against the scandalous and profane whose yet moral Eminencies were too low and weak ladders to climb up to their Blessed Making Summum Bonum and its adjunct Perpetuity So in the evil times of Licentious Christians God hath been wont to enter in warnings and protests by his servants against them In this time saith Luther There is no discipline at all no Justice Hoc tempore nulla amplius disciplina nulla Justitia c. Luth. in Gen. Multi bodie doctrina evan g●lii abutūtur interim sibi ipsis blandiuntur c. Dicunt de Duce Georgio potuit in ultimo vitae articulo converti Antinomi contemnunt benedictionem suam Ecclesiam c. no modesty among men We cry we urge we are instant in season and out of season but the Magistrate winks at sin So many now adays saith he abuse the Doctrine of the Gospel and in the mean time flatter themselves though I live in my sins and am wicked I will repent at length 'T is said of Duke George He could be converted in the last Article of life So the Antinomists say They can be converted in their own time and so contemn their blessing The Church Baptism the Keys Remission Repentance Eternal life and receive the grace of God in vain Melancton though a man of a very milde Spirit thus hotly Execrandi sūt Antinomi qui nolunt docere legem in Ecclesia fingunt omnes suos impetus esse motus spiritus sancti Haec deliramementa horrendi furores Diabolici Melanct. de bonis Oper. rebuked lawless Liberoines The Antinomians are to be accursed said he who will not teach the Law in the Church and fain all their Impulses to be the motions of the Spirit and will not be governed by the Law These dotages are horrible Diabolical Furies such as were of old of many Sects Zuinglius sighed out these words If we were called Satanists Si Satanici pro Christian is diceremur Nobile illud vere pretiosum Christi nomen tantâ cum infamia conspunnus perinde ac si instar Mercurii Vsurae Furti c. Deus ac Patronus sit Zuing de Intemerata virgine pag. 349. for Christians there were no need of other maners O calamity never enough to be deplored O inestimable misery We do with such infamy disgrace the noble and truly precious name of Christ as if like a Mercury he were the God and Patron of Usury Theft Rapine and Robbery Brentius thus rebuked the loose Gospellers of his Age There Quid confidas his quibus cares Brentius in c. 3. Matth. Quast Justificatis fide quidvis liceret Hemingius Opusc Ineo is so great a corruption of maners such fludious injustice that we give no occasion to our enemies to believe we trust in good works for how should you trust in what you have not Hemingius a Dane Divine observing the abuse of Justification thus writes 'T is an error of Ancient and Modern Libertines when they hear men are freely justified by anothers righteousnesse they teach carnal security as if the justified by faith many live as they list Musculus thus declaimed against visible licentiousness 'T is clearer then the Meridian light Unbridled men count nothing sin that Meridianâ luce clarius apud homines effiaenatos pro peccato nihil reputatur c. Vah quanta infamia pudendâ turpitudine notamur Musculus Dom. 1. Advent suits with their lusts The Devil doth not let loose the reins more on the necks of the Heathens Turks and Infidels than of Gospellers with what infamy and shameful turpitude are we branded our reproach is our enemies triumph Nicolaus Gallasias taxed the Anabaptists of his time that Sublimia spectare alieni esse à mundo spiritu regi videntur Nic. Gall. Annot. in Irenaeum pag. 358. they were like the Valentian Sect Various Arrogant Curious subtle in their error resembling them in despising others fained Holiness fair Speeches soaring aloft to high things seeming to be estranged from the World and governed by the Spirit Jacobus Andraeas faulted the debauched Germans The Word was preached among them with no Reformation Their life and Horrenda Epicurea bestialis vita c. Atque hoc universum genus ab illis Evangelicum dicitur Institutum Jaco Andraeas con 4. ad c. 21. Luk. conversation was Horrid Epicureal Bestial Christ was not so much blasphemed among Turks they were wanton in their most costly and foolish apparel and all this loose carriage was vailed under a Gospel cover Joannes Rivius a Saxon Divine in his Epistle to the Duke of Saxony thus complains As of old in the infancy of the Christian Church Christ sent his Apostles into the world to preach the Vt in primordio quondam exorientis Ecclesis c. Joannes Rivius Athenodorensis opera Theol. pag. 254. Gospel The Devil stirred up his Apostles under pretence of Christ and his Gospel who used Scripture testimony to corrupt the Purity of Doctrine So when Christ hath stirred up in this age pious Writers to restore the Doctrine of the Gospel The Devil hath stirred up Anabaptists and other Sectaries to defile the purity of restored truth under pretence of promoting the Gospel removing errors and restoring Orthodox Religion Thus the Prince of darkness is transformed into an Angel of light Joannes Spangeburgius thus blamed licentious Libertines that would be kept in no bonds after they saw they were set at liberty Postquam à vinculis Papatus se liberatos esse vident volunt esse liberi ab Evangelio praeceptis Dei. Joan. Spangeb in Narrar henes Dei from the chains of Popery they would be free and discharged from the Gospel and the commands of God Calvin called the Libertines of his time Evil spirits cloathed Omnium mortalium sceleratissimos Adversus Libertinos Calvinus with humane appearance of all mortals the most wicked In his Opuscula he hath written a sad and severe Tractate against Libertines Salvians words were sad What is the Assembly of Christians but a sink of sin Why do we flatter our selves with the Christian Quid est aliud caetus Christianorum quam sentina vitiorum Salv. de Gub. 91. Ideo plus sub religion is titulo Deum ludimus quia

are not worthy of the name of men false to the Law of natural gratitude that serve not their deliverer and are not they as unworthy of the name of Christians false to the Law of supernatural thankfulness that serve not their professed infinite Redeemer Pretended favorites of Heaven are like those selfish Courtiers who abuse their Princes ear Smiles Grace Honors and Bounty to Chambering and Wantonness to the greatning of themselves and families but improve not their Soveraigns Grace to his Honor the glory of his Crown the increasing of his Treasure the establishment of his Dominions the lively Pictures of them that go for the Spiritual Darlings of Gods Court who live not to the glorious interest of their Heavenly King but bias all his gracious dealings according to the motions of worldly and corrupt 6. The Grace of God is turned into wantonness when the heart carryeth wickedly as to Christ Thesaurus omnium Christus donorum Marlorat selfishness SECT 6. 3. THe Grace of God is turned into wantonness When the heart carries wickedly as to Christ in three things 1. When the profuse riotous sinner runs in Gods Debt because Christ is his surety Indeed upon this truth and rocky foundation that Christ is the faithful surety of his people Heb. 7. 22. is built the eternal salvation of his Church It is the richest right orient Pearl in the Gospels Cabinet A Believer would not be without this everlasting prop and succor to faith this assured conveyance of eternal happiness for the world It is dross and dung to this excellent knowledge Christ is a surety But to whom and for what To refusers and despisers of him to loose the reins on the neck of lusts to priviledge the liberties and power of Satan to sin without controll and remorse Surely Christ as our surety on the Cross sustained our person and Christus ut sponsor personam nostram gerebat ut vetus noster homo in nobis necaretur Diks in Rom. 6. Faedus gratiae habet Christum sponsorem ut tanquam Dei amici ambularemus Diks in Heb. 7. made to his Father an engagement for us that our old man in time should die Rom. 6. 6. Yea in the great agreement of the holy and everlasting Covenant of Grace there was this part of suretiship that ●e should walk in holy fellowship with God and Christ by the Spirit as the friends of God and therefore it is an intolerable indignity to our heavenly surety at once to believe him an undertaker that corruption should die and to live in sin This maketh him a surety and no surety A surety in the professed Faith and owning of this suretiship no surety in the Preservation and not Mortification of wanton Lusts Consider this all ye that sin against the grace of your professed surety but without his leave or the least allowance of his Gospel was a gracious pardon-office dearly purchased by the infinite price of the blood of the Son of God that it should lavish out forgiveness of sins to dissolute livers Did God decree and Christ accept of a weighty costly and suffering suretiship that profuse Iewd Debtors might spend more freely merrily and daringly on the stock of their sureties satisfactions Such indignity carnal profession imposeth upon Christs saving undertaking The Lord invites the humbled burthened sinner to accept of Deus nos invitat ad veniam nos quo●idie cumulamus offensam his pardoning mercy and proud Libertines heap up sin These spots and dishonors in Christian Assemblies are like to a young riotous Gallant that spends largely in Gaming Feasting Whoring and comfortably stayeth upon this he shall not be Arrested not Imprisoned because he hath a rich surety will pay all So expensive Libertines give large vent to their corruptions in their sinful creature-excesses in their abominable hypocrisies in their unrighteous dealings in their idolized sensualities in their carnal securities and yet they chear and fully stay themselves in this Indemnity the Law shall not arrest them nor cast them into the eternal prison of utter darkness because they have a rich surety Jesus Christ who as they presume will pay all 2. When the faith of redemption by Christ worketh not Redemptio nos obstrictos tenet ac sub obedientiae fraeno cohibet Carnis nostrae lasciviam Calvin in 1 Cor. 6. Qui redemptus est alter us beneficio non est sui juris Calvin in Jer. 2. 20. subjection to him the grace of God is turned into wantonness Eternal Redemption is an eternal obligation to service a bridle to curb our lascivious flesh not a Feast to feed it God hath on purpose decreed Christ a Redeemer that he might be soveraign Lord over all his purchase as we have dominion over that we pay dear for Now where redemption by Jesus Christ is preached in common that the price of his blood was a sufficient ransome to redeem the whole world there are very few but believe Christ died for them But how is the mystery and mercy of Redemption abused the Faith of Redemption worketh not subjection in most professed Christians They would be saved in their sins not from their sins Christ hath redeemed his people out of the hands of their enemies but they are content to be in them still He died to rescue them from their vain conversation 1 Pet. 1. 18. but they are vain Jam. 2. 20. Walk after vanity Jer. 2. 5. and shall finde vanity their recompence Job 15. 31. He was crucified to deliver from the power of Satan Heb. 2. 14 15. but they are still his possession Eph. 2. 2. as taken Beasts are the Hunters prey as Prisoners are the Conquerors spoil to be carried up and down dealt with at their pleasure 2 Tim. 2. 25. O that such as are by profession Subjects and by disposition and conversation Rebels against Christ would seriously ponder these things 1. Both the Scriptures and experience of loyal Subjects to Christ do clearly evidence that effectual beneficial Redemption is proved by subjection that he died not to redeem us to the life but death of sin not that we should live and die in sin but Non ut nos vivendo pecca tis immorarmur tandem immoreremur Otho Casmannus live and die in the state and power of Grace 2. They that believe themselves the redeemed of Christ and yet are the slaves of their lusts the vassals of Satan have either not considered at all or very slightly That the proper intention of Redemption was Dominion Ye are bought with a price are not your own your Body and Spirits are Gods 1 Cor. 6. 19 20. To this end Christ both died and rose and revived that he might Nullus fidelium juris sui sed alieni Dicksonus Vtinam hoc altissimis radicibus in mente figatur Pet. Martyr in Rom. 14. be the Lord both of the dead and living Rom. 14. 9. Surely no Believer is of his own right but anothers His

debauching Those that seemed to make hast heaven-wards and think they have travelled almost enough in the way everlasting that have dreamed either of their possible or actuall perfection in this life need no better discovery of their nakedness than themselves they are their own sufficient confutation How far are the generation of Popish and Quaking Perfectists from the prize they seem to run after further off were their eyes opened than those they un-saint from Gospel-attainments This sottish supercilious opinion of enoughs in the knowledge and practice of Religion hath begotten monstrous libertines in the present age Such as have been filled with windy swelling conceits not the real fruits of the Spirit like some of the high-flown puffed up Corinthians reigned as Kings 1 Cor. 4. 8. blessed themselves in their high attainments viz. Knowledge Faith Love Mortification Communion with God Joyes of the Spirit and noy as if rich enough they had nothing else to doe but to contemplate their e●●ate and gaze upon their glory their lazy contemplative life hath swallowed up the active they lay by trading in heavenly commodities religious attendances and exercises Their name is up with their deluded fraternitie yea in their own foolish brains and now they may lay abed till noon yea sleep in carnall securitie in and before the light of their high-noon attainments As some men that have gotten vast estates look over their rich Lordships with much contentment are knighted trade no more have goods layd up for many years so many rich Laodiceans that think they abound in spiritual goods and want nothing and have nothing no more than an empty sounding barrel and are sainted in Satans Kalender these trade no more in heavenly negotiation as if they could too much increase their Lords Talent and give fearfull symptomes that for all the puffs of their spirituall estates they are but bankrupts That generation is well known who have already decried and voted down Gods standing Ordinance the Ministry of the Gospel as needlesse who load them with no better honours than the stile of Baals Priests Deceivers of the people the Locusts of the bottomless pit the fewel for the fierie furnace of Hell and so bind up all Preachers in the same bundle of death as well the most industrious circumspect and conscientious as the most lazy loose and unconscionable Hath not this wanton daring Age brought forth such proud pittifull poor it is to be feared but nominal christians that have had the boldness to call mourning for sin a low attainment dayly prayer a poor sapless businesse all private solemn as well as publick vanities carnall things too low for their spiritual seraphical spirits as if they were not in the body nor had no body of sin as if they were so Angelical in their high Revelations and maintained so constant blazing divine fire of love to God as that it needed no further fewell nor bellows of Ordinances nor the Spirits hands to use them for holy and heavenly heart inflammations Now behold with fear and trembling the spirituall Judgement of spiritual Pride spiritual Blindness spiritual Wickedness spiritual yea visible gross Apostasie 'T is just with God that they which will not keep in the safe plain the secure beaten valley but they will be mounting up to the narrow tops of hills perilous pinacles they should fall and that deadly Some men and women have not contented themselves yea to their shame it must be spoken some Ministers with the safe plain the Ordinances of Grace the Doctrines of Faith Repentance Mortification and New obebedience nor keep in the secure valley of walking humbly with God but mounting up in their lofty minds to the tops of Hils Doctrines too high for them injudicious unscriptural Altitudes the perillous Pinacles of conceited Perfection a stupid and sensless assertion of a kind of Adam-like Innocence before the Fall That they that are born of God sin not at all I say some are the spiritual black marks of Gods vengeance from these perillous heights The visible and fearfull falls of haughty adventurous wantons are legible demonstrations to the observing world written in broad characters that without infinite mercy they are very deadly How have some in their scandalous falls from pretended spiritual eminencies betrayed a double fearfull loss both of Christianity and civility of Christianity either with Arrians denying the Deitie of Christ or blasphemously and sacrilegiously getting into the Throne of his God-head using these wicked Phrases they are Godded with God Christed with Christ yea that there is no difference of the God-head dwelling in the flesh of Christ and the flesh of the Saints as if their flesh did as equally subsist in the Infinite person the Son of God as the flesh of Christ did whence it would follow that the fulnesse of the God-head did dwell corporally in them as it did in Christ of consequence speak them sinless perfectly holy and contradict the preheminence of Christs Mediatorly anointing who was anointed with the oyl of gladness the Holy Ghost above his fellows the highest measures and graces in Saints and Angels How unchristianly doe some of those fearfull children of errour set up a Christ within them in opposition in abolishment of a Christ without them who poring upon their spiritual transcendencies have either quite put-out of their Creeds the imputed Righteousness of Christ without them or else forgot it As little honour it is to be feared hath Christ from some of these monuments of delusion as to the faith of the bodily resurrection whereof hee was the First fruits and as if his Ordinances were dead and buried they have no more Communion with them than wee with the dead and lastly as for his visible Image living Christians they are boldly stiled the Devils children As sad a fall is there from pretended perfection even to the abolishment of civilitie as if externall Morallities contained and required in the Second Table were no Ipsa est perfectio hominis invenisse se non esse perfectum Aug. Indefessum proficiendi studium jugis conatus ad perfectionem perfectio repu●adar Bern no part of of Gods will How farre are they from growing to the full stature of Christian practicall Religion whose errors in opinions and practises have made sad breeches upon all civill and naturall callings and relations It had been well if these sad objects of pitty praiers and tears had learned of Augustine a truth which would have kept them safe humble diligent and zealous after true perfection 'T is mans perfection to finde that he is not perfect and of Bernard The unwearied study of proficiency and constant e●deavour after perfection is perfection and of Paul I count not my self to allain but I persson to the mark and of Peter 〈◊〉 que hic viaee imas Taantum cunque h●c proficerimus nemo dicat sufficit mihi c. August Inter profectum defectum nihil medium Nolle proficere non nisi deficere