Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	action_n	good_a	sin_n	2,029	5	4.5198	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28214	The god-father's advice to his son shewing the necessity of performing the baptismal vow and the danger of neglecting it : with general instructions to young persons to lead a religious life and prepare them for their confirmation and worthy receiving of the blessed sacrament : very necessary for parents, &c. to give their children or others committed to their care / by John Birket ...	Birket, John.	1700 (1700)	Wing B2975; ESTC R16106	33,239	50

much discoursed of just before Repair therefore to your Seat or usual place in the Church and falling upon your Knees offer up to God this or the like prayer with the most devout affection Holiness O Lord becomes thine House for ever and therefore I beseech thee so to assist me with thy holy Spirit that I may offer unto thy divine Majesty such a lively sacrifice of prayer and praises as may be accepted through thy beloved Son and grant also that I may so hear thy holy word and attend to the Doctrine of the preacher that I may daily grow in grace and godliness and spiritual strength thro our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Amen When you have thus privately begg'd the Divine assistance you may then do well to exercise your self in pious meditations or in reading some portion of Gods word till the publick service of the Church begins which that you may be the better able to join in with all your Heart and Soul together with all those devour Christians who make conscience of waiting upon God in his holy Temple I advise you in the 3d place to be throughly acquainted with every part of the Common Prayer which you may do it to your satisfaction by a frequent and serious perusal together with an impartial consideration thereof for I am fully perswaded that none are so ready to despise it as those who are least acquainted with it I shall not therefore now give you a particular account of its method or of that admirable connexion which is observable between the several parts of it for these things are already done by some pious and learned Divines of our Church but shall only show you the necessity of that reverence which is due to the Majesty of that great and glorious God whom we are to worship when we assemble our selves together in those places which are dedicated to his service You must know therefore that the Reverence which we owe to Almighty God is twofold 1. Inward which is that of our Souls 2. Outward which is that of our Bodies In the first place when you come to worship the Lord you must be sure to sanctifie him in your Heart yielding unto him that inward and spiritual worship which is due to his infinite Majesty and this you must do by believing in him fearing him and loving him with all your heart and with all your mind with all your soul and with all your strength For when our hearts are deeply affected with the love of God our service will be abundantly the more chearful But yet we must not so love him as to neglect the getting our hearts also possest with an awful dread and reverence of his glorious Majesty for David tells us in Ps 89. 7. that God is greatly to be feared in the Congregation of Saints and to be had in reverence of all those that are about him When our hearts therefore are thus possest both with a reverential fear and love of God we shall then also be more careful to cleanse them from all impure and worldly thoughts and fix them with due attention upon those acts of Religion wherein we are exercis'd Thus as the more inward parts of Solomon's Temple were still more and more beautiful and glorious so we who profess Christianity and are said to be the Temple of the living God should be very careful that all the thoughts and intentions of our hearts be holy and spiritual every way so prepared and beautify'd that the Lord may be pleas'd to take up his residence in our hearts when we draw nigh to serve him But then 2. You must have a care that under a pretence of inward sanctity you do not destroy all outward decency for as in the first Commandment the Lord requires the inward and spiritual worship of your heart and therein doth more especially delight so in the second Commandment we are forbid to give any religious outward worship to any other Now by this we are to understand that the Lord expects that homage from us and challenges it as peculiarly due to himself because his honour and authority are hereby upheld greatly in the world So that we must not think it enough at all times to glorify God in our Spirits only but upon some occasions and especially when God is publickly worshipped by us we ought to glorify him in our Bodies also And the reason hereof as St Paul has plainly told us 1 Cor. 6. 20. is because he has not only created but redeemed both Soul and Body Ye are bought with a price says he therefore glorify God in your Body and in your Spirit which are Gods So that you see both Soul and Body should joyn together in all those acts of devotion whereby God is glorified For as to pretend that we can worship God sufficiently with our Souls only shows too much irreverence and rudeness in his presence so to imagine that we have no more to do than to be exact in all our outward gestures is the greatest Hypocrisy We have no reason it 's true to doubt but in some cases the Lord may accept the inward devotion of our hearts when we are not in a Capacity or have not an opportunity of giving any outward testimonies of it but we have no reason at all to hope for his acceptance of a few bare bodily actions while our hearts are wholly unconcern'd in his service Thus having shewed you the necessity both of that inward and outward reverence which we owe to God in his publick worship I shall in the next place take notice of those particular expressions of reverence to which we are obliged by the word of God the rules of our Church agreeable thereunto and to all which the practice of good and pious men in all ages have been conformable Now this outward reverence you must know may either be expressed by words or actions In words we reverence God provided always that our Hearts go along with our Tongues when we confess our sins unto him and offer up our prayers and praises with an audible Voice And this is undoubtedly a very great priviledge that the whole Congregation in some parts of Divine service are admitted to joyn with the Minister in offering up their devotions unto God and we should rejoyce in this Liberty especially since by this means we testifie to one another how ready we are with one Heart and one Mouth to glorify God And it is also to be consider'd that the people bearing a part with the Minister in the publick devotion may very much tend to the more inflaming one anothers devout affections and to the better fixing our mind in a diligent attendance upon our duty and so to the rendring our devotions the more acceptable Under the Law the people indeed were to bring their sacrifices and oblations to the Temple but the Priests only were to offer them up Whereas now under the gracious dispensation of the Gospel the people are so far