Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	bring_v	evil_a	treasure_n	9,368	5	10.7622	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A31858	Sermons preached upon several occasions by Benjamin Calamy ...; Sermons. Selections	Calamy, Benjamin, 1642-1686.	1687 (1687)	Wing C221; ESTC R22984	185,393	504

necessity the absolute necessity of our duty in order to our happiness till by degrees we come to a love and liking of goodness and Religion and then holy pious and devout thoughts will be easie free and almost natural to us it is I grant it a vain thing to persuade you to look after your thoughts whilst your minds are estranged from God but a renewed mind a new heart as the Scripture calls it would produce new and other-ghess thoughts As the fountain is such will the streams be where the treasure is there will the heart be also An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit nor can we gather figs from thorns or grapes from thistles evil thoughts lusts foolish imaginations are the natural genuine spawn of a wild dishonest mind When I was a child saith St. Paul I thought as a child I spake as a child but when I became a man I put away childish things As it is impossible for a wise man after that he is arrived to years of understanding and his mind is furnished with the knowledge of the best and worthiest things to please himself with those silly fancies and childish imaginations which were the entertainment and diversion of his younger rawer years so 't is no less impossible for any one who is deeply touched with the things of God and hath a due sense of those things which are more excellent to endure such silly worldly extravagant thoughts as possessed his soul and pleased him in the days of his ignorance and folly How do I love thy law saith David it is my meditation day and night This is the first rule look after your heart and affections 2. And more particularly Consider what care and art wicked men use to prevent good thoughts and let us use the same diligence and endeavours to hinder evil and wicked thoughts and motions There is no man especially that lives in any place where Religion is professed and in any tolerable credit that can go on in a course of sin without some regret and remorse sometimes his conscience will find a time to speak to him the natural notions of a God and a future state will ever and anon be stirring and are apt to disturb the repose and jollity of the most secure and hardened sinner Now to one resolvedly wicked such thoughts of a judge a future accompt and everlasting punishments cannot but be very uneasie and unwelcome and therefore doth he strive all that he can to stifle such chilling thoughts in their very first rise to silence or drown the whispers of his conscience he would fain even run away from himself he chuses any diversion entertainment or company rather than attend to the dictates of his own mind and reason is afraid of nothing so much as being alone and unemployed lest such ghastly and frighting apprehensions should croud in upon him he keeps himself therefore always in a hurry and heat and by many other artifices endeavours to shut all such cool and sober thoughts out of his mind till by often quenching the motions of God's good spirit and resisting the light and voice of his own conscience he by degrees loses all sense of good and evil all good principles are laid asleep within him and he arrives at his wisht-for happy state of sinning without disturbance or interruption Now if we would but use equal diligence and watchfulness to prevent or expell evil thoughts we should find just the same effect that in time our minds would become in a great measure free from their solicitations and importunity would we but presently reject them with the greatest disdain and indignation use all manner of means to fix our minds on more innocent and usefull subjects avoid all occasions or provocations or incentives to evil thoughts as carefully as wicked men do reading a good book or keeping of good company we certainly should find in a short time our minds no longer pestered or troubled with them we should begin to lose all savour and relish of those sins we formerly delighted in by their being for some considerable time kept out of our minds there would arise a strangeness between them and us and they would become as uneasie to us as now they are pleasant and gratefull 3. Would you prevent evil thoughts above all things avoid idleness the spirits of men are busie and restless something they must be doing and what a number of monstrous giddy frothy improbable conceits do daily fill our brains merely for want of better employment no better way therefore to prevent evil thoughts than never to be at leisure for them I went by the field of the slothfull saith Salomon and loe it was all grown over with thorns and nettles and therefore indeed those are most of all concerned in this discourse about thoughts whom providence hath placed in such a station as that they are under no necessity of minding any particular calling for the gaining of a livelihood for whom God hath provided a subsistence without their own labouring and working for it such as these are in manifest danger of consuming a great part of their time in idle and unprofitable if not lewd and wicked imaginations having little else to doe the Devil or their own vain fancies will find work for them and when consideration and argument alone are not able to drive out these wicked inward companions yet business will and therefore I know nothing more advisable than that we should be always stored with fit materials and subjects to exercise our thoughts upon such as are worthy of a reasonable creature that is endued with an immortal soul that is to live for ever Those who are most busie yet have some little spaces and intervals of time in which they are not employed Some mens business is such as though it employs their hands and requires bodily labour yet doth not much take up their thoughts nor need their minds be very intent upon it now all such should constantly have in their minds a treasure of innocent or usefull subjects to think upon that so they may never be at a loss how to employ their minds for many of our evil thoughts are owing to this that when our time hangs upon our hands we are to seek what to think of Let us therefore every one resolve thus with our selves the first opportunity of leisure I have the first vacant hour I will set my self to consider of such or such a good subject and have this always in readiness to confront and oppose to any wicked or evil thoughts that may sue for entrance or admission for if we doe thus temptations will always find our minds full and prepossessed and it is an hard case if neither the visible nor invisible world neither God's works nor providences nor word can supply us with matter enough for our thoughts unless we feign extravagant conceits or repeat our old sins in our minds or tickle our selves with wild suppositions of things that never were

his own conscience will be sure to come off well at last in the final account and judgment then God will confirm and ratify the sentence of his conscience and publickly own and approve of what he hath done and clear and vindicate his innocency and reward his fidelity and constancy before all the world At that day when all our great undertakers and contrivers of mischief all the cunning practisers of guile and hypocrisie shall lie down in shame when their secret arts and base tricks whereby they imposed on the world shall be detected and proclaimed as it were upon the house-top and all their unworthy projects and designs shall be laid open and naked being stript of those specious pretences they here disguised them with when the hidden things of darkness shall be brought to light and the counsels of all mens hearts shall be made manifest as the noon-day at that day I say the upright and righteous man shall stand in great boldness and shall lift up his head with joy and confidence and then it will appear that he was the best politician and the onely person that either understood or regarded his true interest To conclude all Our consciences are either our best friends or our greatest enemies they are either a continual feast or a very hell to us A conscience well resolved and setled is the greatest comfort of our lives the best antidote against all kind of temptations the most pretious treasure that we can lay up against an evil day and our surest and strongest hold to secure us from all dangers which can never be taken unless through our own folly and negligence But an evil clamorous conscience that is continually twitting and reproaching us is a perpetual wrack and torment it wasts our spirits and preys upon our hearts and eats out the sweetness of all our worldly enjoyments and fills us with horrid fears and ghastly apprehensions this is that knawing worm that never dieth the necessary fruit of sin and guilt and the necessary cause of everlasting anguish and vexation A SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL The Thirteenth Sermon 2 TIM I. 10. And hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel LIFE and immortality by a figure often used in the holy Scriptures is the same with immortal life which our Saviour hath brought to light that is hath given us undoubted assurance of by the revelation of the Gospel For though all men by the light of nature have some apprehensions of a future state yet their reasonings about it when left to themselves are miserably vain and uncertain and often very wild and extravagant The best discourses of the Heathens about the other life were weak and obscure and the wisest Philosophers spake but doubtfully and conjecturally about it nor even in the books of Moses or writings of the Prophets are there contained any plain express promises of eternal life all the knowledge men had of it before was but like the faint glimmerings of twilight till the sun of righteousness appeared till God was pleased to send one from that invisible world even his own most dear Son to dwell here and converse amongst men to make a full discovery to us of this unknown countrey and to conduct us in the onely true way to this everlasting happiness an happiness so great that we have not words big enough to express it nor faculties large enough to comprehend it but yet so much of it is clearly revealed to us in the Gospel as is most abundantly sufficient to raise our thoughts and incite our sincerest endeavours for the obtaining of it By which plain revelation of this state of immortality First Is most illustriously manifested to us the transcendent goodness and indulgence of our most mercifull Creatour in that he will be pleased to reward such imperfect services such mean performances as the best of ours are with glory so immense as that eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor can it enter into the heart of man to conceive the greatness of it There is nothing in us nor any thing done by us that bears the least proportion to such an ample recompence Our best actions stand in need of a pardon so far are they from deserving to be crowned All possible duty and obedience we certainly owe to him to whom we owe our beings and should God almighty have exacted it from us onely on the account of his sovereign authority over us as we are his creatures we had been indispensably obliged to all subjection to him but that he should over and above promise to reward our faithfulness to him with eternal life this is a most wonderfull instance of his infinite grace and goodness Secondly By this revelation of immortal life is farther demonstrated the exceeding great love of our ever blessed Saviour who by his death and perfect obedience not onely purchased pardon for all our past rebellions and transgressions not onely redeemed us from hell and destruction to which we had all rendred our selves most justly liable which alone had been an unspeakable favour but also merited an everlasting kingdom of glory for us if with true repentance we return to our duty And this if any thing shews the infinite value and efficacy of our Saviour's appearing on our behalf that by his most powerfull mediation he obtained not onely freedom from punishment but also unexpressibly glorious rewards for us vile and wretched sinners upon easie and most reasonable conditions Thirdly This especially recommends our Christianity to us which contains such glad tidings which propounds such mighty arguments to engage us to our duty such as no other religion ever did or could For since hope and fear are the great hinges of all government and the most prevailing passions of humane nature what better thing can be propounded to our hope than to be as happy both in body and soul as we can be and that for ever what more dreadfull thing to our fear than everlasting misery and this indeed is the utmost that can be said or offered to men in order to the reclaiming them from their sins and recovering them to a conscientious observance of God's laws that God hath appointed a day wherein he will call all men to an account for the deeds they have done in this body and reward the sincere faithfull Christian with immortal glory and punish the disobedient and impenitent with everlasting vengeance and if men can harden themselves against these most powerfull considerations if they are not at all concerned or solicitous about their eternal happiness or misery what other motives are likely to prevail with them or able to make any impression upon them For is there any thing of greater weight and moment that can be propounded to the reasons and understandings of men than what shall become of them in a state which they are very shortly to enter upon and which shall never have an end I humbly therefore beg your patience whilst with all the