Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	abide_v	dwell_v	zion_n	36	3	9.1833	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61386	An antidote against distractions, or, An indeavour to serve the church, in the daily case of wandrings in the worship of God by Richard Steele M.A. and minister of the Gospel.	Steele, Richard, 1629-1692.	1667 (1667)	Wing S5382; ESTC R8661	121,210	256

no purpose may not he justly say when I come next to meet you you'st know the difference between the Majesty of a King and the sordidness of a Scullion Just so poor soul do thou and I obtain leave to approach our heavenly Lord and King and when he expects the heart earnestly to sollicit her great affairs she is roving away and bestowed in the Kitchin or worse while the great and holy God stands waiting to be gracious What Father but would take it for a great indignity to see his Son stopping his ears or whistling or playing with Flyes while he is reading his last Will and Testament to him or giving him order about his greatest affairs And is not God greater than a Father and can he with his honour abate such a child his punishment if he do not humbly cry him mercy and study to offend no more Though divine vengeance be not alwaies so visible as a Parents Rod yet it is as real and more heavy A poor man cannot escape with his affronts of a great God SECT VIII THE third Effect of Distractions is That they hinder the benefits of an holy duty God seldom thinks of those prayers that we think not of our selves Isa. 64.7 And there is none that calleth on thy Name that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee The Lord counts such prayers as none at all when a man doth not stir up himself to his business non entis nulla est operatio That which in God's account hath no being can have no working The benefits of Ordinances are many and great they are like the medium to sensation as the air to the eye or ear there is no seeing nor hearing without it so are Ordinances to the soul they are the Conduits to convey God's grace to us and our desires to him when a dirty distraction gets in the Conduit is stopt and the soul starved And in this sense God's Name which should be most sacred and dear to us is most palpably taken in vain When we use a great solemnity to no effect magno conatu nugas agimus The wind and tide to serve and yet the soul to sleep the Mariner to be at Dice or Cards till the opportunity be lost what a great evil is this● when our voyage is for life and death If you could by the expence of one serious hour gain a Lordship would you not be intense and earnest that hour would you not fume at the company that would divert you and disdain any ordinary business that would interrupt you O stay and let me alone this hour for I am busie Now by the cordial management of one serious hour in prayer reading hearing or meditation you may yea shall infallibly gain at least one grain of grace which is worth more than a Kingdom yea than a whole World And is not that an evil thing and bitter that then interrupts you and frustrates your gainful imployment whereby it comes to pass that you get nothing Pearls are dealing and you get nothing Orient graces in the hand of God ready to give and you none of them who would entertain that can be rid of such companions SECT IX THE fourth Effect of these Distractions is That they deprive the soul of its purest comforts The highest truest and purest joys and comforts meet the soul in the service of God Cant. 2.3 4. I sate under his shadow with great delight There are then delights and great ones too in the waies of God And his fruit was sweet to my tast If thou hast any spiritual tast his fruit will be sweet to it He brought me to the banquetting house God's house is his banquetting-house and every Ordinance is a rare Feast to the soul that doth spiritually manage it Now these idle wandrings of the heart first by their Disturbance then by their Guile do damp and deprive the soul of the comforts thereof Just as a black cloud doth hide from you the bright and warming beams of the Sun How often have you mist of those joyes of the Holy Ghost sweeter than the musick of the Spheres by these vain thoughts with what sweet content do you look back on a Duty where communion hath been held between God and you and what a folly is it to lose an hour and neither reap pleasure not profit by it There is fatness in God's house and Rivers of pleasures with him but he shall have leanness in his soul that gives way to these and of all those Rivers drinks not a drop not one drop of true comfort and pleasure O what an Heaven do negligent sinners lose how many gracious smiles blessed tokens coelestial raptures the dainty Diet of Angels and all through the idleness of the soul Psal. 63.5 My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness I am full brim full of joy and comfort my heart runs over and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips Now all these gleams of sweet comfort and refreshing are stollen away by these thievish Distractions For an upright heart and an attentive would seldom want the sweet comforts that usually accompany sincerity and seriousness He that can keep his meditations fixt on the right object his meditation shall be sweet and where should the Lord make his Servants joyful but in the house of prayer SECT X. THE fifth Effect of Distractions in the Worship of God is That they grieve away the Holy Ghost It is true what the blessed Apostle hath said Rom. 8.26 The Spirit helpeth our infirmities and so helps against these when they are but infirmities mourn'd for and striven against but when they are contracted habits then they grieve and quench the holy Spirit The Greek word in that Scripture signifies to take and heave up a thing over against you to heave with you I but now if our spirits instead of helping shrink away and heave none this promise will do us no good If we leave the business wholly to God's Spirit without our diligent co-operation he will leave it to our spirits without his divine co-operation The Holy Ghost will dwell only with an holy heart and these Idols in the heart do heartily trouble that sweet Spirit Ezek. 14.3 Son of man these men have set up their Idols in their heart and put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face should I be inquired of at all by them Read on and you 'l see what consequence this is of What are worldly and sinful distractions but Idols in the heart what are abused objects of the eye or ear but the stumbling-blocks of iniquity before the face and how can the holy Spirit dwell in such a soul or abide such doings Luther somewhat sayes that the Holy Ghost dwells not in Babel but is Salem that is delights not in the heart where is nothing but confusion that 's the english of Babel but in the heart where there is quiet peace and freedom that

's the meaning of Salem In Salem also is his tabernacle and his dwelling place in Sion Psal. 76.2 The unkindness offered is very great as if you should earnestly importune some noble friend to accompany and help you in some arduous affair and he comes to go with you once and again and still when you should come along and promote your own business you steal away about some trivial matters and leave your noble friend in the lurch This is the very case you humbly impor●une the holy Spirit of God to help you in the service of God and he most graciously comes to help you but one distraction or other charms away your heart and the Holy Ghost is left alone And thus the Holy Ghost is so oft sinned against till at length he is sinned away And thus you see the evil of Distractions which is the seventh Point to be handled CHAP. VIII The Cure of Distractions SECT I. AND if there be such great evil in these Distractions and evil effects of them what shall an upright heart do to be rid of them I say an upright heart that inquires for means to use them and craves a plaister not to look at but to apply to his sore And art thou thus resolved that readest these lines For us to spend our skill and you your time without full purpose to practise is labour in vain Nay it will harden your hearts here and increase your condemnation hereafter You will deceive your selves and disappoint us if you rest in hearing without doing what you hear Well then are you resolved unfeignedly to take the Lord's counsel for the destruction of your distractions Stop a little and resolve And now let me put that question to you Ier. 30.21 Who is this that hath ingaged his heart to approach unto me saith the Lord Who is this who will do it who is thus well advised that hath ingaged not only made a proffer but ingaged and that his heart to approach unto God and where in this Congregation doth that man sit or stand that out of a deep sense of the hatefulness and hurtfulness of this sin doth now ingage his heart and soul to use all means against it and that in the uprightness of his heart The Lord your God sees who yields and cries out through grace I am resolved Well on that condition I proceed to Direction I. Dispel the Causes fore-mentioned and use the Remedies prescribed against them and here if you be in good earnest you will look back and review them and the helps adjoyned and beg of God as you read them In this Lord pardon and help thy Servant A man of small skill may easily stop the symptoms of diseases as the present pain in the teeth or the like but he is an Artist that removes the causes of them and it is more easie to turn off two or three of these vain thoughts than to heal the soul of the Thought-evil in the causes thereof If these remain Atheism unpreparedness lukewarmness worldliness and the like in the heart all the rules and receits under Heaven will never cure you of Distractions For there will still spring up continual supplies from these corrupt causes as the lopping of the boughs will still have new sprouts coming until the ●oo● be stocked up and therefore with faithfulness and resolution set upon all those Remedies that have been prescribed Beg of God to dry up the spring else your damming up the streams will do no good When the causes are dispelled the cure is wrought And here is a plain discovery of an Hypocrite in heart if some light easie receit will help him in any case he may set to it but if he must go about and take pains if the way of cure be any whit intricate or difficult then he throws it up never will go to the bottom of his business Whereas the upright heart doth but desire to know what to do what is God's method and way and then long or short hard or easie he never disputes he demurrs not but falls to work he knows every inch he goes he gets advantage and IN keeping of God's Commandments there is great reward The speediness of his cure he desires but the soundness of it he insists on and counts no trouble in the cure like the evil of his sin Are you resolv'd in this else 't is to no purpose to proceed To stumble at the threshold presages But if we be clear thus far I proceed SECT II. II. BEwail your former failings in this respect this will divers waies conduce to your amendment 1. Morally being an Argument that you really dislike the sin and the condition of God's pardon thereof The ordinary Lord have mercy doth herein fall short of pardon because it is not spoke in tears If God did but see a man grieve for his sin a little ado a few words should get forgiveness The Publican had but a short peccavi nor David upon his dreadful fall but they were words that were felt they were heart deep they swum in tears each word fetcht a drop of blood from the heart And God was well pleased with them in Christ. When Antipater had written a large Letter to Alexander against his Mother Olympia his answer was dost thou not know that one tear from my Mother's eye can wash away all her faults so one penitential tear from a believers eye can perswade much with God in Christ for the pardon of his wandrings But the most imbroidered phrases without this Christian grief work not with God at all Lachrymarum lingua disertissimè loquitur If Christ Jesus himself did sue for pardon for an impenitent sinner he would not be heard But when your conscience is toucht and the heart melts and bleeds for your faults herein now saith God I see yonder man cannot live with a wandring heart and therefore he shall live without it I 'le never see him drown'd in his distractions that is thus drowned in tears about them if he really dislike them I 'le really dispel them And then again till their guilt be pardon'd our tear are usually desperate like a wicked spend-thrift while hopeless of a discharge from all treasures up sin unto sin till that dreadful pay-day come the day of Judgement Whereas when sin this sin is truly grieved for the Holy Ghost doth ever bring a pardon in one hand and a plaister in another at the same time to clear the guilt and cure the disease O saies the soul I am defiled I am wounded in my flight to Heaven I am disappointed in my affairs my God is angry I have sinned just then when I should have scored out my sins I have sinned against my remedy and how shall I be cured O was there ever such a rotten backsliding heart such a Cain-like vagabond cursed frame what place but Hell is fit for that heart that cannot rest in Heaven Ah Lord I wonder that the end of