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	word_n	2,977	5	4.2034	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63684	Christ's yoke an easy yoke, and yet the gate to heaven a strait gate in two excellent sermons, well worthy the serious perusal of the strictest professors / by a learned and reverend divine.	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.; Hove, Frederick Hendrick van, 1628?-1698.	1675 (1675)	Wing T295; ESTC R38275	26,780	106

Woman taken in Adltery or have been discontented at the Doctors of the Law for being strict and severe exactors of the Law of God at the people's hands or check'd them for observing the innocent customs of their Nation and Tradition of their fore-Fathers Since all these acts were Pious or Just or Charitable or Religious or Prosecutions of some part or other of their Duty The several reasons of these reprehensions our Blessed Saviour subjoyns at the end of every of them respectively They wanted a circumstance or a good manner their actions were better than their intentions and sometimes their malice was greatest in their very acts of Charity And when they gave God thanks they did despite to their Brother something or other did envenom the face of these acts of Piety Their heart was not upright or their Religion was imperfect their Piety wanted some integral part or had an evil Eye A word a thought a secret purpose a less holy intention any indirect circumstance or obliquity in an accident makes our Piety become impious and deprives us of our reward Here therefore we had need to Watch to Strive to Pray to Contend and to do all diligence that can be express'd by all the Synonyma's of care and industry 2. We had need to Strive because though Vertues be nice and curious yet vitia sunt in facili et propinquo Sin lies at the door and is thrust upon us by the violence of Adversaries or by the subtilty and insinuation of its own nature which we are to understand to the following sence For when we are born of Christian Parents we are born in puris naturalibus we have at first no more promptness to commit some sort of Sins than to commit some good acts We are as apt to learn to love God as to love our Parents if we be taught it For though Original Sin hath lost to us all those supernaural assistances which were at first put into our Nature per modum gratiae yet it is but by accident that we are more prone to Sin than we are to Virtue For after this it happened that God giving us Laws made his restraints and prohibitions in materia voluptatis sensualis he by his Laws hath enjoyn'd us to deny our natural Appetites in many things Now this being become the matter of Divine Laws that we should in many parts and degrees abstain from what pleases our sense by this supervening accident it happens that we are very hardly wean'd from Sin but most easily tempted to a Vice our Nature is not contrary to Virtue but the instances of some Vertues are made to come cross our Nature But in things intellectual and immaterial we are indeed indifferent to Virtue and Vice I say where neither one nor the other satisfies the sensual part In the Old Law when it was a duty to Swear by the God of Israel in common Causes Men were indifferent to that and to swear by the Queen of Heaven they had no more natural inclination to the one than to the other except where something sensual became the argument to determine them And in sensual things if God had commanded Polygamy or promiscuous concubinate and indifferent unlimited Lust Men had been more apt to obey that Commandment than to disobey it But then the restraint lying upon our natural appetites and we being by ill Education determin'd upon and almost engag'd to Vitious Actions we suffer under the inconveniences of idle Education and in the mean time rail upon Adam and Original Sin It is indifferent to us to love our Fathers and to love strangers And if from our Infancy we be told concerning a stranger that he is our Father we frame our affections to Nature and our Nature to Custom and Education and are as apt to love him who is not and yet is said to be as him who is said not to be and yet indeed is our natural Father The purpose of this Discourse is this that we may consider how Sin creeps upon us in our Education so tacitely and undiscernably that we mistake the cause of it and yet so effectually and prevalently that we guess it to be our very Nature and charge it upon Adam when every one of us is the Adam the Man of Sin and the Parent of our own Iniquities We are taught to be revengeful even in our Cradles and taught to strike our neighbours as a means to still our frowardness and satisfie our wranglings Our Nurses teach us to know the greatness of our birth or the riches of our inheritance or they learn us to be proud or to be impatient before we learn to know God or to say our Prayers After we are grown up to more years we have Tutors of impiety that are stronger to perswade and more diligent to insinuate and we are more receptive of every vicious impression And not to reckon all the inconveniencies of evil company indulgence of Parents publick and authoriz'd customs of Sin and all the mischiefs and dangers of publick Society and private retirements when we have learn'd to discern good from evil and when we are prompted to do a good or engaged to it by some happy circumstance or occasion our good is so seldom and so little and there are so many ways of spoyling it that there are not more ways to make an Army miscarry in a Battle than there are to make us perish even in our good actions Every Enemy that is without every weakness and imperfection we have within every temptation every vitious circumstance every action of our life mingled with interest and design is as a particular argument to engage our earnestness and zeal in this Duty ut contendamus acriter that we strive and make it our business to enter into the Strait Gate For since the Writers of Moral Institutions and Cases of Conscience have made no such abbreviatures of the Duty of a Christian but that I think there are amongst them all without hyperbole five thousand Cases of Conscience besides the ordinary plain Duty of a Christian and there may be five thousand times five thousand and the wit of Man can no more comprize all Cases which are or may be within their Books than they can at once describe an infinity or set down the biggest number that can be it will follow that it is a nice thing to be a Christian and all the striving we can use will be little enough towards the doing of our duty And now if you enquire what is meant by striving in this place and what is the full intention of this Precept I Answer it is an infinite or indefinite term and signifies no determinate degree of labour and endeavour but even as much as we can supposing our weaknesses our hindrances and avocations that is to make it the business of our Lives the care of our Thoughts our study and the greatest imployment of the whole Man to serve God Holy Scripture gives us general notions and

CHRIST'S YOKE AN EASY YOKE And yet the Gate to Heaven a Strait Gate In two excellent SERMONS Well worthy the serious perusal of the strictest Professors By a Learned and Reverend Divine HEB. 11.4 Who being dead yet speaketh LONDON Printed for F. Smith at the Eliphant and Castle near the Royal Exehange in Cornhil 1675. D. IER TAYLOR OBIIT AVG 13. 1667. F. H. Van Houe fec Wee Speak not great things But Liue them Variety in Opinion unity In affection are not Inconsistent Printed for f. smith at y e Elephant ● Castle in Cornhill TO THE READER READER THese Sermons need no Epistle of Commendation before them the Works of this Reverend Author already extant praise him in the Gates By means of a Person of Honour yet living they are now come into the Press for Publick use and benefit For the subject matter of these excellent Sermons it is of all other the most necessary to make the Way of Christ pleasant to us and to assure us of a blessed and glorious Reward at the end Both which are handled by a Workman that needeth not to be ashamed What can more endear a Christian to the obedience of Christ than to find his very Yoke made easie none of his Commands grievous but his Ways ways of pleasantness and all his Paths peace besides the great and everlasting Reward to all them that walk in them And to quicken our diligence that we be not slothful but followers of them who through faith and obedience inherit the promises the Author hath added another serious and weighty Discourse to shew us That strait is the Gate and narrow is the Way that leadeth unto life Though Christs Precepts are plain and easie to a sincere heart that truly loves him yet his Promises are not to be obtained but by a universal endeavour in a uniform obedience to all his Commands In a word Christs Yoke is easie this should invite us to take his Yoke upon us The Way is narrow that leadeth unto life this should provoke us with care and circumspection to walk in it The Reward is certain and infinite this should encourage us with greatest diligence that we may at last obtain the Promise This we dout nobt was the design of the Author in preaching these Sermons and we do assure thee no less in printing of them Which that they may conduce to so happy and blessed an end is the hearty desire and shall be the sincere prayer of thy Friend to serve thee CHRIST'S YOKE An Easie YOKE Matth. 11.30 For my Yoke is easie and my Burden is light THE Holy JESUS came to break from off our necks two great Yokes the one of sin by which we were fettered and imprisoned in the condition of Slaves and miserable persons the other of Mose's Law by which we are kept in pupillage and minority and a state of imperfection and asserted unto us the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God The first was a despotick Empire the Government of a Tyrant the second was of a School-Master severe but it was in order to a further good yet nothing pleasant in the suffering and load And now Christ having taken off these two hath put on a third he quits us of our burden but not of our duty and hath chang'd the former Tyranny and the less perfect Discipline into the sweetness of paternal Regiment and the excellency of such an Institution whose every Precept carries part of its reward in hand and assurance of after Glories Moses Law was like sharp and unpleasant Physick certainly painful but uncertainly healthful For it was not then communicated to them by Promise and universal Revelation that the end of their Obedience should be Life Eternal But they ere full of hopes it might be so as we are of health when we have a learned and wise Physician But as yet the reward was in a cloud and the hopes in fetters and confinement But the Law of Christ is like Christ's healing of Diseases he does it easily and he does it infallibly The event is certainly cons●quent and the manner of cure is by a touch of his Hand or a word of his Mouth or an approximation to the hem of his Garment without pains and vexatious Instruments My meaning is that Christianity is by the assistance of Christ's Spirit which he promised us and gave us in the Gospel made very easy to us and yet a reward so great is promised as were enough to make a lame Man to walk and a broken Arm endure the burden a Reward great enough to make us willing to do violence to all our Inclinations Passions and Desires A hundred weight to a Giant is a light burden because his strength is disproportionably great and makes it as easie to him as an ounce is to a Child And yet if we had not the strength of Giants if the hundred weight were of Gold or Jewels a weaker person would think it no trouble to bear that burden if it were the reward of his portage and the hire of his labours The Spirit is given us to enable us and Heaven is promised to encourage us the first makes us able and the second makes us willing and when we have power and affections we cannot complain of pressure And this is the meaning of our Blessed Saviour's invitation in my Text Mat. 11.30 Which St. John also observed 1 John 5.4 5. For this is the love of God that we keep his Commendments and his Commandments are not grievous For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the World and this is the Victory that overcometh even our Faith that is our belief of God's Promises the promise of the Spirit for present aid and of Heaven for the future reward is strength enough to overcome all the World But besides that God hath made his Yoke easie by exterior supports more than ever was in any other Religion Christianity is of it self according to humane estimate a Religion more easie and desirable by our natural and reasonable appetites than Sin in the midst of all its pleasures and imaginary felicities Vertue hath more pleasure in it than Sin and hath all satisfaction to every desire of Man in order to humane and prudent ends which I shall represent in the consideration of these particulars I. To live according to the Laws of Jesus is in some things most natural and proportionable to the desires and first intentions of nature II. There is in it less trouble than in Sin III. It conduces infinitely to the content of our lives and natural and political satisfaction IV. It is a means to preserve our temporal Lives long and healthy V. It is most reasonable and he only is prudent that does so and he a fool that does not and all this beside the consideration of a glorious and happy Eternity I. Concerning the first I consider that we do very ill when instead of making our natural infirmity an instrument of humility and of recourse to