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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	believe_v	faith_n	word_n	6,678	5	5.1905	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77434	Errours and induration, are the great sins and the great judgements of the time. Preached in a sermon before the Right Honourable House of Peers, in the Abbey-Church at Westminster, July 30. 1645. the day of the monethly fast: / by Robert Baylie, minister at Glasgow.	Baillie, Robert, 1599-1662.	1645 (1645)	Wing B459; Thomason E294_12; ESTC R200181	39,959	57

it First The first cure of hardnesse is The embracing of the word by faith believe the Word of the Lord. Gods Word is the means that softneth the heart like the Sun that melteth the wax likethe Hammer that breaketh the stone the Fire that softneth the Iron the watry cloud that moistneth the dry and parched ground With all care and conscience set thy heart under the beams of that Sun the stroke of that Hammer before the heat of that fire under the droppings of that cloud The contempt the neglect the misbelief of this holy instrument of the Spirit is a great cause of all the hardnesse of heart we speak of Heb. 3. To day if ye will hear his voice harden not your heart Take heed there be not in any of you an evil heart of misbelief Who will not hear the voice or doth hear but with an evil heart of misbelief they harden their heart The Word which should melt them as the Sun doth Wax hardneth them as the Sun doth Clay that Word which to the believer is the loud voice of the Trumpet of God to waken them when sleeping to quicken them when dead becomes to the unbeliever and carelesse hearer the song of a pleasant voice to sing them asleep and to keep them sleeping To such the most powerfull Ministery of a Prophet of an Apostle of Christ himself serveth to make the heart more hard and fat and dead then it was before as from the sixth of Isai and twelfth of John it is manifest That which to the faithfull is a quickning Spirit to the misbeliever is a killing letter What to the one is the power of God to salvation to the other is but as sounding Brasse and a tinkling Cymbal Let it therefore be your earnest endeavour in all holy exercises about the Word private or publike be it preaching or reading or conference to embrace it with an honest heart with all attention reverence and faith Particularly Especially the promise of a soft heart embrace and lay up in thy heart the promise of a soft heart as it is set down Ezek. 36.26 there the people of God were in a worse condition then we yet The fury of the Lord was so far kindled against them for their sins that they were cast out of their Land they were swallowed up on every side as it is in the third verse They were taken up in the lips of talkers they were an infamy of the people and the reproach of the Nations and for all that were not reformed but continued to profane the Name of God and to encrease their provocations in the midst of all their Judgements Yet even then the Lord doth promise For my own Names sake not for your sake will I do this A new heart will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and will give you an heart of flesh Let this Word as a pickle of good seed be laid up in the heart it will in time break up to good fruit This is a part of the new Covenant as appeareth from Jer. 31 and 32. and Heb. 8. which belongs to us as to any other which we would embrace humbly waiting till the Lord perform it to us A second help to softnesse of heart will be a Catalogue of sins for which we ought to mourn The second Cure of hardnesse is A clear sight of sin for softnesse of heart is either the same thing or proceeds in a great part from grief and forrow for sin as hardnesse of heart and impenitency are the same or are always conjoyned Thou from thy hardnesse or impenitent heart The tendernesse and melting of Josiahs heart was his mourning for the Lands sin The softning of the Jews heart from their long Plague of induration is when they are weeping and in bitternesse for their sins as one for his first-born The clear sight of sin being a help to grief sorrow and repentance must be so towards the softnesse of heart The speciall end of these solemn Humiliations is for registrating in clear and legible letters in the hearts of the godly the sins both of the Land and of their own persons The Tables of our conscience have been so oft impressed with these Types that I need no more but to remit every one to the books of their brests There you may read in capitall letters the cause of our Woes the matter of our Mourning While the Lords Candle did shine over our head What are the sins of the Land and we washed our steps in butter while to all the Neighbour-Nations for a great number of yeers we were a wonder of Prosperity and with abundance of all Temporall blessings we had likewise plenty of the Gospel How did we meet the Lord Great numbers of all ranks and estates were obstinate in Idolatry and known Papists Of them who professed the Truth how many were altogether void of knowledge void of fear without any conscience of God The most did pollute the Service and Church of God with manifold Superstitions and Prelaticall Tyranny persecuting all who had the least zeal to oppose their Corruptions True Piety was mocked The Sabbath by publike Authority profaned Covetousnesse Pride Oppression Pampering of the flesh Uncleannesse like a flood did overflow the Land In these very times when the Lords patience is broken off and he from heaven is revealing his wrath against our wickednesse yet where is our Repentance How many have an ear to hear more what the present Rods of God do speak then what his former Favours How many Popish and Prelaticall spirits have yet mourned for their old ways How many upon conscience have left any of the named abominations How great an addition have we made to our old heap of sin How much have we put to our old treasure of wrath Rather then to be reclaimed from their ways Hath not a great part run to the Sword and covered the Land with more innocent blood more Rapines and Ravishments then this Isle did see for many Ages together Many whom Gods mercy hath separate to the right hand Episcopacy and Independency flow both from one fountain How do they still provoke the Lord continuing without grief for their old ways And sundry of them who professemost Piety advancing the old unhappie way of this Land an affectation of singularity and difference from all the Reformed The bitter Potions of Gods Judgements have not yet purged out this very evil humour of many stomacks The vain spirits of this Land made that the peculiar glory of England which was truely her peculiar infamy and proper unhappinesse and the speciall grief of the most godly in the Land The gloriation of these light spirits was That England did excell all other Reformed Churches in their Episcopacy and Service-book also That the moderation of their King and Prelats was such that Romane Catholikes might enjoy a sober liberty

weighty a difficulty upon such a meer Grammatication Holding therefore to our vulgar translation The matter of a sinfull action must be distinguished from its form How does God cause us to erre and yet is not the Author of our errours For the understanding hereof we must distinguish sin and the actions of God about sin In sin there are two things albeit inseparably joyned yet essentially distinct The matter and form the act and its pravity the one is naturally good the other morally evill This is visible in two actions whose matter is the same but the forms much different For example the stoning of Naboth and the stoning of Achan the substance of the actions the casting of the stones at both was the same but the forms was much different The casting at an innocent man and at a man condemned by God and all Israel the one form makes the stoning of Naboth an act of unjust murder the other form makes the stoning of Achan an act of just punishment The acts not of Gods will and decrees Three acts of Gods effectuall providence about sin for such concern not the words in hand but of his actuall providence about the matter and form of sin are many The most considerable of these to us for opening of our Text are three His concourse his efficacious permission his judiciall tradition so to speak For the first 1 An active concourse in the substance of the action the Lord hath an actuall yea an active concourse and if you will an efficiency in every act of sin so far as concerns the substance or matter of the sinfull action for in him we live we move and have all our being in the most sinfull action the matter of the act being a positive entity it must be a naturally-good thing and have its existence from the first and universall mover the fountain of all Being Without this kinde of efficiency and concourse Shimei could not have moved his tongue to curse David nor Doeg drawn his sword to have killed the Priests When God denies this kinde of concourse sin is necessarily stopped When he removes the life of the two Captains they cannot oppresse Eliah When God leaves the life but takes away the sight from the Sodomites at Lots door and the power from the arm of Jeroboam their sin is impedite When by suspending of his operation he takes away the will from David to kill Nabal though both life and power remained the sin is marred But for such kinde of working in the sinner and cooperation with the sinfull act Sin uses not to be ascribed to God more then the generation of living Creatures to the motion and influence of the Heavens for effects are denominate from the second and particular causes not from the first and universall though their efficiency and concourse be never so necessary and certain The next action of God about sin is 2 An efficacious permission of the sinfulnesse of the act his efficacious permission This for its object hath not onely the matter and substance of the sinfull act but its very form its pravity its anomy its sinfulnesse This malignant quality is a morall evill and so cannot be of God who is goodnesse it self it s a privation and defect and so the cause of it is not efficient but deficient If we would render the cause of a lame mans crooked walking we behoved to distinguish betwixt the walking and its crookednesse The walking we would ascribe to the motive power of the mans soul and to the instruments of motion in his body but the crookednesse of it to the defect and hurt of some instrument of motion not to the soul or to the faculty or to the instrument of motion but onely to some defect of the instrument So the finfulnesse of sin is to be ascribed not to any efficiency of God but to the deficiency of mans will which now is sinfull and before sin was weak as being made of nothing and so able to change it self from good to evill but however the sinfulnesse of sin cannot be charged on Gods either efficiency or deficiency yet it must exist by his free permission for nothing can have any existence in the world any being in the dominion of God without the leave and permission of the great Lord and Master of the World That action of God which in respect of sin is called a permission in regard of the sinner is a desertion This is really one thing with desertion This considered will help to clear that which is the hardest knot in this matter the efficacy that is said to be in the permission and yet without all efficiency of the permitter in the sinfulnesse permitted This matter which naturally is exceeding dark will be best seen in similitudes When the Sun goes down the darknesse of the night necessarily doth follow when the Sun declines towards the Southern signes of the Zediack the Winter blasts certainly do come on the Sun the fountain of light and heat in propriety of speech cannot be called the cause of the nights darknesse or of the Winters cold yet these as ordinary and necessary consequents are usually ascribed to the Suns removall Hot water removed from the fire becomes incontinent cold A ruinous Wall when its props are removed falls quickly to the ground The coldnesse of the water flows not from the fire but from its own nature the falling of the Wall comes from the naturall heavinesse of the stones which without the impediment of a supporter makes them to fall downward It is so with God and man when he withdraws we become dark as midnight cold like Ice we fall to the ground These effects necessarily follow his desertion but not as effects onely as consequents their proper cause is neither in God nor his removall but in our nature which of it self since the fall is full of these malign qualities This kinde of providence about our sins is expressed in words of the active form of blinding the eyes and hardning the heart Not that the Lord infuses any darknesse or hardnesse in the heart which is not its own but because upon the removing of his illuminating and softning Spirit the naturall blindnesse and hardnesse of mans spirit lurking before doth then appear The third action of God about sin Gods third action is a Judiciall Tradition is that which I did call a Judiciall Tradition when God as a just Judge punishes sin by sin when he gives over men not onely to their own heart but to the devil and his instruments to be tempted seduced and drawn away to commit wickednesse with greedinesse However all the sinfull actions be immediately the works of the sinner alone and the upstirring to these actions be from the devil and his instruments laying arguments objects and occasions as baits and snares in the way of the sinner yet God as a just Judge sending out Satan and men as his executioners and making way for

person Achan may be stoned to death in the valley of Achor in the midst of Israels triumph The misbelieving Prince in Samaria may see the Plenty but be crushed before he taste thereof Thy hardnesse of heart if it remain will ruine thee What the fury and curse of an angry God hath ever brought on a miserable sinner in this life think upon it for shortly it may be thy portion and which is infinitely worse the whole treasures of the wrath to come a greater then ordinary condemnation for thy impenitency hardnes of heart if thou remain as thou art cannot but fall upon thee The last help I propone is Earnest Prayer A fourth Cure of hardnesse is Prayer Sometimes all the former helps will not do it for the heart is desperately wicked and incredibly hard like that of Leviathan Job 41.24 His heart is firm as a stone as hard as the nether milstone When we finde it thus shall we give over in d●spair Not so For there is yet mercy and power in God to make the rocks flow down to melt the mountains to dissolve the Adamant-stones There is a Warrant Neh. 9. once and again proponed for the people of God to lay hold on Gods mercy and power in the midst of their greatest Rebellion and Induration verse 16. Our father 's dealt proudly and hardned their necks and heackned not to thy Commandments But thon art a God ready to pardon gracious and mercifull thou forsakest them not Also in the 29 verse They dealt proudly and withdrew the shoulder and hardned their necks and would not hear Yet in the 31 verse Neverthelesse thou didst not forsake them for thou art a gracious and mercifull God What heart can be more hard and blinde then Pauls when he made havock of the Church yet the Lord made the scales to fall from his eyes and put in his brest in place of the stone a most gracious soft and spirituall piece of flesh The spectacle of the greatest induration the Jews when the Spirit comes on them their most obdured hearts fall to the greatest mourning Zech. 12. Let it therefore be our care in our greatest hardnesse to lie at the Throne of Grace to cry on still for this mercy of a soft heart who knoweth how soon the Lord may hear and answer When nothing else can help us if he himself come down all will yeeld to his power When the King of Glory comes to assault the most stiff and best closed heart all doors are cast open to him Psal 24.9 He breaketh the gates of brasse and smiteth the bars of iron in sunder Psal 107.16 When he puts his finger in the hole of the door the bowels of the secure Spouse will shortly be moved for him Cant. 5.4 It must be our continuall prayer that the Lord would come to put away the hardnesse of our heart to enlighten it with faith to melt it with repentance to break it with fear that so it may be a fitted Sanctuary for his perpetuall inhabitation If time were not past The last part of the verse exponed there are in the second part of the Text the Churches petition for the Lords return sundry things usefull for the present occasion Look in a little upon the meaning of the words The returning of the Lord is a metaphor taken from finite creatures that go and come But properly the Lord cannot move from place to place for his Essence is infinite he is essentially omni-present God is every where in the heaven in the earth in the Sea Psal 139. If I ascend up unto heaven thou art there if I make my bed in hell thou art there neither so onely but he fills the heaven and the earth Jer. 23.24 Do not I fill the heaven and the earth saith the Lord But not so as if when he filled all things he could be within the circle of the highest heavens 1 Kings 8.27 Behold the heavens and the heaven of heavens could not contain thee We have the reason in Job 11.8 The perfection of God is such that it is as high as heaven deeper then hell longer then the earth and broader then the Sea But beware to conceive of this infinite and immense Essence of God which is in all places and without all places as of a bodily substance for God is a Spirit and that of an infinite simplicity take heed of all grosse imaginations of him left thou turn him to an idol of thine own making Not long ago The zeal of the Court of England against Vorstius heresies Verstius and some of the Arminians in Holland began first to brangle with their Problems and thereafter to deny with their positive assertions these ground-stones of Religion At that time the zeal of England brake out to the joy of all the Churches Then the care of the King and the very Prelats was great not onely to keep Heresies as hellish vapours out of England but to have them suppressed among their neighbours in Holland with all speed We hope it shall never be told to posterity that the zeal of this Parliament was lesse against Errours at home then the Courts wont to be against that evil abroad And however for the present there be nothing so sacred in the Divine Nature and Persons which the boldnesse of Heretikes among us arising onely from impunity dare not wickedly profane yet ere long we expect a remedy to this and many more evils The Returning whereof our Text speaketh is not to be understood of the Divine Effence Nature Substance nor of the Lords common Operations but of his gracious Works of his Mercy and Compassion as we have it expresly Zech. 1.16 I am returned to Jerusalem with mercy And Jer. 12.55 I will return and have compassion on them As a man in his anger turns his back and goeth his way but when reconciled he cometh back So the Lord when grievously provoked with the sins of his people for a time departeth to his place hideth his face withdraweth the signes of his favour but thereafter when appeased he maketh his face to shine and by his Spirit works graciously in the seduced and obdured heart For this the Church here petitions That the Lord would return and make himself sensibly present to her and by the gracious work of his Spirit reclaim her from these errours and that hardnesse of heart whereinto by his absence she had fallen The Ground whereupon the Petition is builded is Gods Relation to them and their Interest in God They were his servants he their Lord and Master as it is in the last verse We are thine thou never barest rule over them they were never called by thy Name Since the Lord had taken them to be his people to serve him this was a ground to them That he would not fully nor finally cast them off but for his interest in them would return This is cleared in the last words his returning to them was not for any good was in

them but because they were The Tribes of his Inheritance Among all the inhabitants of the earth he had chosen for his portion the Tribes of Jacob as the word signifies the Rods or Branches that sprang out of the Root of Jacob for his peculiar possession Deut. 32.8 When the Most high divided to the Nations their Inheritance when he separated the sons of Adam the Lords portion was his people and Jacob the lot of his inheritance Out of the whole world he chose Israel for his peculiar portion as it is in Amos 4. Thee on●ly have I known of all the families of the earth Not for any good in them but alone for his own love and good will as it is Deut. 7.8 Were not the time past we would have enlarged these Observations First Observ 1 The proper the sovereign the onely Cure of an erring spirit and hardned heart is the presence the return the gracious entrance of God in the heart Secondly When the Lord upon entreaty hath come into the heart and begins to enlighten and soften it he would be entertained with much love humility fear care All in the heart that may grieve his holy eye would be swept out lest if again he depart in anger the last estate be worse then the first Thirdly A Land wherein the spirit of Errour and Induration doth predomine cannot enjoy the gracious presence of the Spirit of Truth 2 Cor. 6.15 What communion hath light with darknesse What concord hath Christ with Belial Fourthly All who plead for a Liberty of habitation to errenious spirits in this Land require in plain English a Liberty so far as is in them to banish God out of England Fifthly When by the Judgement of God the spirit of Errour hath entred a Land there is no putting of him out but by Gods own Arm for he is a great deal stronger then men Zech. 13.2 It is the Lord who takes it on him to cause the false Prophets and the unclean spirit that leads them to passe out of the Land Sixthly Though the Judgement of Erring and Induration cannot be cured but by the return of the Lord though the subduing of the spirit of Errour and Obstinacie be the work of Gods hand yet every good man according to his place and calling above all the Nobles of a Land and the Houses of Parliament would employ their whole strength to help the Lord against that strong one We tempt God when we neglect to use the means for doing of that work wherein he hath the principall hand Because we live in God Shall we not eat and drink and keep our selves from seen dangers It is the Lord that subdues our enemies under us therefore shall not our Souldiers fight The Lords Spirit is the subduer of the spirit of Errour therefore Assemblies and Parliaments need to have no care of this matter When Satan reasoned thus with Christ He hath given his Angels charge over thee therefore cast thy self down headlong he replieth wisely Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God Seventhly God will return for his servants sake in the most desperate times When Calamities have wracked the State when Errour and Obstinacy and these Judiciall lie on the spirits of a people the faithfull expect believe pray for favour upon the ground of their relation to God still remaining in the mids both of sins and miseries they are his servants and he their Lord. The conscience of a desire to serve the Lord is a Ground of hope in our hardest conditions Eighthly No hope of a deliverance by God in mercy from any Judgement unlesse we be willing to serve him as an absolute Master The greatest enemies of a State are those who would evert or enervate the Relation of master and servant between God and a people for this Relation is the ground-stone of all the Protection of all the Deliverance we may expect or pray for from God Popes Kings Bishops have been striving to be lords over Gods Flock that ambition hath cost all the three dear Let Christ alone by his own Laws his own Officers and his own Courts have the full Spirituall and Ecclesiastick Government of his Churches The taking of this from him may spoil us of his protection Those men that are most carefull to vindicate the right of Christ are best servants to the State for they lay a sure foundation of Christs favour and protection to that State wherein they settle Christ as the onely King Lord and Master of the Church Ninthly Consider the unexpressible benignity of God chusing out among the children of sinfull and miserable men some to be his own inheritance That the Infinite and All-sufficient God who hath need of nothing and to whom all creatures can adde no perfection in all Agesshould delight to have a possession and inheritance among men as his peculiar treasure they to be his and he to be theirs it s a wonderfull love to men Tenthly Gods Inheritance his peculiar People his dearest Children if they will venture on sin they shall be sure of Plagues both Spirituall and Temporall rather then any other people of the world For their sins are greatest being against a most loving Father It concerns him in honour and glory not to let them go with their scandalous trespasses He would be blasphemed if they went unpunished Thee onely have I known of all the families of the earth therefore I will punish thee for all thy transgressions Eleventhly The Spirit of Adoption under great sins and grievous punishments therefore moves the children of God to lay hold on their priviledges for the melting of their heart and bringing them to Repentance Finally The sweetest exercise of a Christian is the improving of the priviledge in band The making use daily of this mutuall Relation We are Gods Inheritance and God is our Portion A soul truely religious must give it self up fully to be possest and filled by God to be replenished in minde will affections memory conscience and every faculty with the whole fulnesse of God as an inhabitant as a due proper and onely heritor On the other part it will claim and lay hold by faith on the power the glory the truth the mercy and all that is in God as its own peculiar portion as the onely heritage which either in earth or heaven it desireth to enjoy But being cut off by time from enlarging these things I commend them and the rest to your meditation and the blessing of God FINIS