Selected quad for the lemma: grace_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
grace_n	abound_v	jesus_n	sin_n	3,365	5	5.3734	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A93844	A plain discovery of the unrighteous judge and false accuser wherein is soberly ... brought to light ... the spirit of that pamphlet, intituled, The leper cleansed ... by Richard Ballamy ... as also, a clear vindication of ... Anabaptists ... / by Robert Steed and Abraham Cheare ...	Steed, Robert, of Dartmouth.	1658 (1658)	Wing S5376B; ESTC R223912	66,136	82

willingness to lay that disputation aside Accuser I wish that the plain hearted among them would but seriously consider whether they can possibly expect a blessing from heaven under such amans ministery whose course I have a little hinted to you and judge you whether I have not cause to withdraw where such iniquity is indulged Answer Here you have his conclusion with William Facy and now upon the whole of what is said either in defiance or defence of him though we might say much more in the words of truth and soberness it would appear that the man is a poor sinner that stands in dayly need of his Saviour compassed about with weaknesses temptations and tribulations of all kindes without are fightings within are fears whose footsteps are watched and the iniquity of them written in his forehead who was left for a season under the power of the Tempter fell in a grievous manner was sharply rebuked of God severely censured by the Church to the breaking of his bones so that he hath neither the perfection of the flesh nor the honor of the world left him to glory in And yet being gratiously delivered by Love and upheld by Divine power from perishing by sin or sinking is at length brought out to declare the Lords praise in the middest of his Church who being a poor plain despised people abhorring the indulgence of iniquity and not judging aster outward appearance but righteous judgment finding that God hath humbled him to the dust remembring that they also themselves are compassed with infirmities and liable to be tempted have renewed their love toward him and can comfortably wait upon the Lord and their waiting is not in vain in the Lord for a blessing on the faithfull labours of him and others despised like unto him though yet they have not clearness to appoint him to Pastorship in a way of office as the Accuser falsly repeateth often as if they had done Accuser The third particular of my charge is for charging some of the Anabaptists with denying Magistrates and the neglecting of Family-duties and singing of Psalms let me tell you I do not charge you without a cause for these things abound in you at that rate that seeing you and sin will not part you and I must part and though some of you are dear to me whom I trust the Lord will convince in his due time yet the Lord Iesus is neerer and dearer whose communion I must and through grace do prize before yours had you and I continued it s to be feared the Lord and I should have parted for while I sat under your ministery I could never find that blessing which I have found from that Ministery you despise That tenderness which the Lord wrought upon my spirit by the publick Ministery before I came among you did much decay while I continued with you and therefore it is no small mercy that the Lord hath brought me from you Answer That which he calls the third particular of our Charge for charging some of the Anabaptists c. was thus far worthy to be laid before him in the iniquity of it that he had openly and very slanderously affirmed concerning us in the general that we denied Magistrates denied family-duties denied singing of Psalms c. and on this ground had left us The introduction to his Defence is filled with such flourishes and invectives as either we meet with and speak unto elsewhere or will be best answered by committing our Cause to him that judgeth righteously VVe come therefore to consider what he saith in the particulars for himself Accuser 1. For denying the power of Magistrates it 's notoriously known to many good people in Tiverton how you have carped at the Magistracy there for executing their power upon Sabbath-breakers and Quakers yea you confessed it and pleaded it against me as many of my Friends can testifie when I charged you with it affirming that Magistrates had nothing to do with Quakers Answer He publickly and falsly accuseth us that we deny the power of Magistrates or as he also phraseth it we deny Magistrates his proof is It 's notoriously known we have carped at them for executing their power on Sabbath breakers and Quakers We have in great part declared above and still do That we abhor the imputation of denying the power of Magistrates in punishing evil-doers though withal we say That it will be an hard task to undertake the justification of all the actions of persons in Magistracy who may presume to smite and imprison in execution of passion and lust and not of Law and that such things and so acted whether against Quakers or any other People are not onely lamentable but most abominable As to matters relating to the Conscience and what Power the Magistrate may exercise in that respect we leave the Accuser for answer to the publick Edicts of the Magistracy it self without which the Sect to which the Accuser is joyned can claim no more Priviledge in England Scotland and Ireland then any other Sect or party of People professing Religion by the Magistrate allowed We utterly reject what he suggests about Sabbath-breakers as not having the least colour of Truth of which had there been the least pretence to have fastned it upon any somewhat would have been said to tender us odious and liable to punishment in this Pamphlet or at the Meeting abovesaid proceeding his rejection where he was not backward to load us with whatever ignominy he could bring to bear on us or the way wherein we be Touching the Quakers what testimony we hold up against their principles is very well known to this Accuser and divers good people in Tiverton and elswere what measure they have found in that town and by whose violent importunity and instigation it hath been executed whether to the satisfaction in point of conscience of some that did it or whether even constrained to doe it beyond a voluntary inclination what compassions and complaints it occasioned in many good people in that place that are neither Anabaptists nor Quakers are not things unknown there The day may soon enough declare it in other places we judging it not now our work to say any thing unto it Accuser 2. For neglecting family-duties you cannot without blushing say that I wrong you in charging the neglect of it upon you being conscious to your selves that many of your families call not upon God which I can confidently affirme upon my own personal knowledg when I walked with you besides when I charged you with it you affirmed that it was a mans liberty not his duty to pray in his family as my friends can testifie who were then present Answer What his false accusation about this matter was and our defence therein are manifested above to which we refer the Reader Accuser 3. For neglecting to sing Psalmos an ordinance of Christ you never performed this duty in your assemblies but when I charged you with this you affirmed it to

or term in either of his propositions But the next work we find him upon is an impertinent confused accusation that the Anabattists obscure and darken Scripture and perswade the world that children have no right to the promise till they are actually called Wherein we shall use some patience to bear his abuses and frothy traverses to give an answer as God shall inable Our sence of the Scripture alleadged is this That ver 39. hath a necessary and plain coherence with verses 37 38. wherein we have an inquiry of the Jew wounded in conscience for sin and the Apostles full and comfortable resolution of the case to this effect that God hath made his precious promise in Christ to Jew and Centile of pardoning repenting sinners and of giving to them the holy spirit and that in this grace and promise the Jew and his children had a precedency and priority to all other people and therefore they repenting and being baptised should receive the mercy promised This resolution of this Scripture is not only pertinent to the case but also very coherent with it self and consonant to other Scriptures It was a pertinent point for comfort to the Jew that grace was tendred to all that all scruple from personal incapacity might be removed by such rich mercy and it was an additional comfort that the tender of this grace was specially reserved to be made to the Jew and his children before any others as is elsewhere also declared Rom. 2.10 Acts 13.26 46. But withal it was profitable to inform the Jew who boasted much of his birth-priviledg that although he had a priority in the tender yet as to the grace it self he was but in a parity and likeness with all others that a right frame of spirit might keep him from being puffed up under a mistake of that wherein his Interest lay and this also we have elsewhere frequently instanced Gal. 3.28 Rom. 3.29 30. Eph. 4.5 6 7. And that therefore the same common requisite of Faith and Repentance in order to Baptism must be found alike in all persons that would partake in the benefit of this grace indeed Mar. 16.15 16. He that beleeveth and is baptised c. this is the Doctrine that Christ comanded to be preached to every creature for salvation and this is the order by which it should inure to every creature first that they repent and then that they be baptised And let not your mindes be shifted aside from this truth by a pretence that the Spirit of God in these and such-like places of Scripture is onely to be understood of an invisible work of grace in the hearts of the saints and not of the principle upon which the Gospel-Church was to have its constitution Of which you have formerly in like case been warned 1. Jesus Christ came to gather the true seed into his granary the Church and not the chaff Mat. 3.12 and his sanne the Gospel-administration was fitted as a fanne to doe the thing according to the doctrine held forth he came not to set up a Church after the Jewish principle Mat. 16.18 of a natural generation of the sons of men but by spiritual regeneration to be made the Sons of God and therefore tells Peter that he will build his new Church upon the rock of personal profession And 2. who shall presume to lay a right in natural generation as a principle to give an enterance into the visibility of the Church of which there is not one titlte to be found in all the New Testament from Christ or any Apostle while in the mean time the Scriptures of the Prophets and all the New Testament doe everywhere abound with evidences that run upon a supposition of a real profession of a work of grace as the state of the Gospel-Church and many passages against the principle of a seed according to the flesh the principle of the bondage covenant as hath been promised 2. Whereas he chargeth us with perswading the world to believe that children have no right to the promise till they are actually called It is a very odious and false suggestion the man was ill instructed to publish it this we say that a right to the promise doth not conclude a right to be baptised We affirme that children have a right to the promise as well as the aged but to have a right to be baptised is not given to old or young till the rule of the word be complied with according to which baptisme is to be administred As for his discovery of our mistake which he thus rectifieth Accuser Call hath no relation to children but to them that are afar est 1. Because the children are joyned with their parents in the promise which is an intire proposition in the Text. Answer We say that his affirmation and his reason are of the like worth both made up of a meer trinkling about words his reason supposeth that in a continued discourse a word in one proposition can have no relation to words without the same which is sensless or that there may not be more then one logical proposition in the same coherence of matter which is also as vain as the other We have not yet ended with this Scripture Acts 2.39 We lay our claime to it as eminently justifying our practise of baptisme and that it speakes not in favour of our opposites at all although alledged as a chief evidence against us The promise is to you and to your children therefore repent and be baptised This is part of the Apostles argument to the Jew which plainly infers this That the reason upon which the title of the Jew and their children to the promise was to inure was repentance and baptisme thereupon otherwise there lay no force at all in the Apostles argument if the promise would inure where there was not found in the person the prescribed qualification of repentance antecedent to baptisme If the children should be admitted to baptisme before repentance then the promise carries more to the children then it would afford to the parents although the parents title to the promise be reckoned antecedent to the childs and the childs title through the parent If call in the close of the 39. vers is to be restrained to them afar off and to have no relation to children as is alledged what a disproportion would it have produced in the converts to the Church that the Gentiles and their children being comprised under them afar off must first be called and then baptised but on the part of the Jewes the effectuall calling of the parents and their baptism sufficed to justifie the baptisme of the children without calling Our Accuser proceeds with a long train of arguments we cannot pick out the coherence they have with what had been before alledged we shall therefore take them in their course as the Lord shall give assistance and make our answers to them severally without taking advantage from their inconsequential application either to his

propositions or alledged Text. Accuser If children should be excluded from the promise Arg. 2 this could not have comforted the patents but have sadned them that their children should be the same with heathens but here the scope of the Text is urged by the Apostle for consolation Answer This Argument supposeth our denyal of the promise to the children wherein the man runs after his own mistakes denyal of baptisme is no exclusion from the promise As to the odious comparison of children of believers to heathens falsly charged on us we reject Heathens differ as much from the children of believers in our account as open Apostates doe from hopeful expectants of the Church As to the point of consolation our denyal of the baptisme of infants withdraweth from the parent no real ground of consolation founded in the covenant of grace and applyed by the Apostle in this Scripture but we say that the application thereof to particular persons if it be not according to Scripture-●ule will prove a groundless fiction and no consolation And as to the infants of believers we farther say that besides our assurance that the grace of election because it is bestowed without respect of persons doth reach infants as well as others and it 's likely more frequently the infants of the godly then others That the infants of believers have also a nearness not only to the promise but also to the fruition of the grace promised by reason of many high advantages which others enjoy not and among the rest that the godly to whom they stand related and are committed have promises of being heard of God in their faithful prayers even to the pardon of sin Job 1.5 James 5.15 16. 1 John 5.16 And that therefore there is great ground given to such parents of an holy hope that God doth hear their prayers for the salvation of their infants seeing they are not under that sin unto death that is not to be prayed for And we could never finde our soberest opposites to ascribe a greater ground for a believer to conclude the salvation of his infant if he died after he was baptised then if he did before Besides which great advantages there being also reserved to the children the same tenders of grace for their full investure into the real fruition of the promises we remain yet to be informed what discouragement was put upon the parent labouring under the sence of guilt to receive a dectrine thus tendered bringing with it the same grace upon the like termes to be bestowed upon his posterity together with these high advantages premised We also say Whatever benefit may be justly said to accrue to the infant by virtue of the promise through the baptisme of the parent all that would be more effectually and certainly made out to the comfort of them both by baptisme upon faith then can be by baptisine in infancie by how much baptisme upon faith more certainly declares the parent by whom the benefit doth accrue to be really in the covenant then baptisme in infancie can be said to doe Accuser Arg. 3. If so then this could not encourage the Parents to submit to Christ under this administration but would have hindred them that their children should be excluded from the Promise who stood in it two thousand yeers before under the other administration Answer This Argument runs upon the same supposition with the former whither we refer the Reader for an Answer in part only there it pretended to saddening here to discouragement here also we have the old common mistake that an incapacity to Baptism excludes from the Promise But to pass by these faul●s we come to what may be further found a colour for an Objection Object Infants stood visible members of the Church for two thousand yeers in the administration this administration excludes them Answ They stood excluded altogether as much above two thousand yeers before Circumcision as they do now so that an Ordinance for their Church-membership was not so from the beginning but came in by special institution long since 2. The other administration in which they stood was established with a seed to be propagated by natural generation according to express command Gen. 17.9 Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore thou and thy seed after thee in their generations this is my covenant which ye shall keep c. Every man-child among you shall be circumcised But where have we command for the like in this administration That administration was a typical temporary bondage-covenant and in a sigure it ministred unto the ends of the everlasting covenant and therefore it sufficed as unto that administration if the people the children of that covenant were of the seed of Abraham because by that shadowy covenant young and old good and bad were all alike Covenanters and all alike in a capacity to be subjects of an administration which was to serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things till the seed should come to whom the Promise was made Gal. 3.19 as hath been formerly proved whereunto we reser the Reader But the Gospel-administration that brings Christ and all the mystery of his grace in the truth and reality and not in the figure and example is not receptive of children as to the Principle upon which it stands any other way then upon some visible demonstration of Faith whereby Christ comes to be received who are therefore called the sons of God John 1.12 13. As many as received him to them gave he power right or priviledg to become the sons of God to them that believe in his name borne not of blood c. Thus the Apostle Gal. 4 28. calls the saints of the Churches of Galatia children of the promise in opposition to the seed according to the flesh vers 23. And their mother the free Gospel-covenant v. 26. And the same Apostle declareth Rom. 9 8 that the children of the promise are counted for the seed in opposition to the seed according to the fl●sh v. 7 Neither because they are the seed of Abraham c. Whereunto many other scriptures might be added Yea the whole stream of the New Testament witnesseth to a seed according to calling and as to the principle of their admission all living stones for the constitution of the Church of God and not one word in favour of a seed according to the flesh as to admission into the Church upon that principle of birth-priviledge 3. Though the Gospel-Church may not be built by such a seed nor can be receptive of it upon that account yet would there arise no ground of discouragement or sadness to the Jew thereby his shadowy glory was now to cease but real glory was set up in the place of it and the same specially prepared and held forth to him and his seed as amphe as ever and by a better and more lasting covenant to be made good upon better promises But this glory must be received as it is tendered it is tendered to faith