Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	depart_v	evil_a	unbelief_n	2,143	5	10.6595	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A40986	The content of a wayfaring man ; and The accompt of a ministers removall : two sermons, the one preached at the morning lecture in the citie of London, the other more enlarged in another congregation / by J.F. ...	Fathers, John.	1648 (1648)	Wing F552; ESTC R32801	36,733	50

But I shall onely desire you to reade over and consider well that passage in Jere. 34. from the 15. ver to the 21. In ver the 15. the Lord commends the Princes and the people that they had entred into the Covenant You have done that which was right in my sight saith God in making a Covenant with mee in the house that is called by my Name But ver 16. he charges them with the dishonest breach of it But yee have turned and polluted my holy Name See my Brethren Covenant-breaking is a polluting of that sacred dreadfull Name which is most solemnly invocated and attested in Covenant-making But how had they broken Covenant Why they proclaimed liberty for Gods people and had done nothing towards it therefore sayes God ver 17. I will also proclaime a liberty for you even a liberty to the sword to the pestilence and to the famine and I will make you to be removed into all the Kingdomes of the earth and ver 20. I will even give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of them that seek their life and their dead bedies shall be for meat unto the fowles of the Heaven and to the beasts of the earth And that you may take speciall notice who they are that are the marks of this direfull wrath the Spirit of God doth notably point them out unto you ver 18. They are the men that have transgressed my Covenant which have not performed the words of the Covenant which they made before me when they did cut the Calfe in twaine and passed between the parts thereof This was a ceremony used amongst the Jewes in maing Covenants wherein they did tacitly imprecate the holy God even so to cut them in pieces who did breake the Covenant as they did cut the Calfe and as they did passe between the divided pieces so the Lord to cause his fiery indignation to passe between them who divided one from the other in the bond of the holy Covenant And now my Brethren if the most just God be so extreamly severe in breach of Covenants between man and man how think you will he make his jealousie to smoake against those that break Covenant with himselfe in those things which doe most neerly concern his worship and the glory of his Name Methinks I could spend in this subject as much more time as I have already spent and need indeed requires it but that I must hasten I will onely bring hither those words which our Saviour in another sense useth Mat. 24.18 Let him which is in the field not turne backe to take up his cloaths so say I to him that is in the Citie if you were to loose your cloaths from your backs doe not turne backe from the holy Covenant Counsell 2 My second Counsell is this Take heed of apostatizing from any knowne experimentall truths of Jesus Christ this enters as iron into the soules of your godly Ministers to see those whom they have looked upon as their spirituall seed and travaile of their soules to recede from that forme of wholesome words they had received to see them suck the bloud of Dragons whom they had so carefully nursed up at the breasts of consolation and to have their affections stolen away from them and from Jesus Christ too by those who never spent a breath towards their spirituall birth And as there cannot be a greater heart-breaking unto Ministers so neither can Religion receive a deeper wound any way then by the Apostasie of professors wee are an hissing not onely to Gath and Askelon to the proud scoffing world but even to Judah and Ephraim to all the reformed Churches of Christendome to see how deeply how suddenly London England have corrupted themselves In the beginning of this Parliament wee admired to see how England was turned Arminian and how neere it was got of a sudden unto to Rome wee have now more cause to wonder how Rome is come into England and how England is turned Libertine Pelagian Socinian Antinomian Antiscriptarian Antitrinitarian yea it hath had so many turnings as that turning unto Christ by repentance and humiliation is now turned out of doores and throwne aside as an old dotage of legall servitude wee know not whether the tyranny of Bishops or treachery of seducers have done London England most hurt for the one kept from us the power of godlinesse the other hath beguiled us even of the forme of it Shall I tell you and with reverence I would that our apostasie from God hath caused God even to apostatize from us I speake in the same sense as God speaks of himselfe that he repents and is sorry for what he hath done God was in a very faire way to have reformed England he had cast us in as rich advantages as ever any Nation or age was betrusted with He had awaked the zeale of all his faithfull ones in three Kingdomes he had contributed the counsells of divers reformed Churches he had broken the strength of all opposers and because wee have apostatized from our former zeale God hath also turned back from his Divine Justice holds proportion with our sin because we have said the time of reformation is not yet come God hath stept aside from us and said well if you let goe this you shall never have such a time more Those that observe the Story of the Eastern Churches doe alledge this as the great provocation of Gods wrath to bring upon them the blasphemous doctrine of Mahomet because they rejected the wholesome truths of the Gospel When once we begin to nauseate at old truths and as flies about a Candle to play about new lights it is a thousand to one but wee singe our wings if wee burne not our selves before we get off The least backsliding is in attendancy to totall and finall apostafie and when wee once look back wee have no more power to turne about againe then Lots wife who was instantly made a monument of her own revolt I will close this with that of the Apostle Hebr. 10.25 Heb. 3.12 Take heed brethren least there be in any of you an evill heart of unbeliefe to depart from the living God This evill heart reignes in some dwells in the best it is the mother of all sinne but apostafie is its primogenite this begins in contempt of Ordinances for such is the departing here a forsaking of the holy Assemblies as elsewhere the Apostle doth interpret himselfe and this he calls a departing from the living God because God in every Ordinance might be enjoyed where there is faith to bring him home now this God lives to take vengeance on all those that depart from him therefore take heed how yee provoke this living God by despising his Ordinances and discouraging his Ministers and so departing from him in the law of his Gospel-worship This is the second Counsell Counsell 3 My third Counsell is that of the 32. Canon of the Councell of Towers Let all

with-holding maintenance from their Ministers The Princes of Jerusalem would have starved Jeremy in the Dungeon if an Aethyopian had not been more pittifull unto him then any Israelite was Maintenance is allowed on all sides that he who waits at the Altar V. 7.9 should live by the Altar And the Apostle makes it out by divers arguments drawn from Natures laws and if men would but measure the quotum by halfe that allowance which they give to one lust they would be more reasonable in judging what were a competency It is a great provocation when people with-draw their affections from their Ministers and bestow them on those who with-draw their soules from the truth as those Galatians gave their hearts to such as plucked out their spirituall eyes who a little before would have plucked out their corporall eyes to have given Paul Gal. 4.15 But when people also with-draw maintenance the bond of covenant between Minister and people is broken For though the Covenant be not alwayes expressed yet it is alwayes implied that the people plus multo should bee as carefull and as certain unto the Minister in temporals as the Minister unto them in spirituals 1 Cor. 9. v. 11. The Civill law allowes the wife and if it did not the law of Nature doth receiving not victum livelihood from him to whom she is a helper to seek alimentum subsistence elsewhere Provoca ∣ tion 3 The third provocation in the people is Apostafie and this Jeremy charges double on Jerusalem both in worship and in practice In reference to the one in the words below my Text he calls them Adulterers and Adulteresses In reference to the other an assembly of evill doers What adultery is to the Marriage-contract that is Apostasie to the Gospel-covenant and no adultery like to the adulterating of the truth and wo●ship of God Now Apostasie is a grievous provocation unto the Lord himself to depart from a people Nos 9.12 Woe unto them when I shall depart from them saith the Lord. And when is that When they depart from his truth and worship And where the Lord ●oes the servant goes after If the Son of Peace abide not in the Citie Luke 10.6 10. the Embassadors of peace must depart and their peace departs with them In Heb. 10. v. 38. the Apostle brings in the Lord protesting against Apostates If any man draw back my saule shall have no pleasure in him Draw back from what The former words run thus The just shall live by faith and if any man draw back that is from faith either from the doctrine of faith or from the life of faith from Gospel Principles or Gospel Conversation my soule shall have no pleasure in him Non erit rectus in anima mea He shall not stand right in my affection I shall on no tearmes approve him yea the words are a meiosis there is much more implied then is expressed My soule shall loath and abominate such a person I will not endure the sight of him in the Congregation And if this be the case of the Congregation the Minister may well say Jerem. 8.5 Hosea 11.7 Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace But this must be understood of a people turned back by a perpetual rebellion and de industria with an heart bent to back-sliding not through infirmity but by a designe Provoca ∣ tion 4 The fourth provocation is Persecution And Apostates soon turne persecuters solus Apostata persecutor they usually become the greatest because they are loath to have that way to bee credited from which they are revolted Julian that was the most notorious Apostate became the most bitter Persecutor that ever lived in the Christian Church There are two sorts of persecution which the red Dragon stirres up against godly Ministers Oris plagae Ishmaels and Esaus persecution Tongue-persecution and Hand-persecution When men do not onely give out hard speeches Jude 15. to reproach the Minister and his Doctrine but doe seek out all advantages to intrap his person Now the Lord had discovered unto Jeremy the treachery of his peoples hearts though it were not come to blowes chap. 11. v. 18.19 There is more danger of the wolf in the lambs skin then in his own and where danger is eminent it is not onely safe but necessary to avoid it If the people receive not our testimony Acts 22.18 Matth. 10.23 Christ would have us to depart but if they persecute us Christ advises us to flye And in personall persecutions all agree with Augustine that it is lawfull to remove which in generall persecutions they question as unlawfull Athanasius in his Apologie to the Emperour on this ground justifies his departure from Alexandria in the persecution of Constantius 1 Kings 18.4 and in the persecution of Jezabel an hundred of the Lords Prophets were hid by Obadiah in a cave You see now the provocations of the people which may warrantize their Jeremies to depart from them and to wish for retiring Cottages in the wildernesse O that I had the Cottage of a wayfaring-man in the wildernesse that I might leave my people and goe from them Vses Two uses onely I shall make of this poynt the one of Examination the other of Exhortation I would desire our English Jerusalem to examine herselfe whether she be not parallel to Jeremy's Jerusalem in all these provocations As 1. Whether there be not a generall inflexiblenesse under the Ministery of the Word yea how doe the Ministers of London prophesie in Sackcloth under a great contempt and scorn of their Ministery The Gospel tels us of a Devil that was too strong for the Apostles to cast out Every lust is a Devil Matth. 17.16 and how many such Devils are there in the hearts of men which are too strong for Ministers too strong for O dinances too strong for the Apostles themselves if they were alive We may sooner destroy our own lives then some mens lusts They will cell you how many Ministers they have out-lived and their sinnes are as long lived as themselves 2. What unmercifulnesse towards their Ministers The Devill was somewhat mercifull unto Christ he would not have had him to starve he would have had him to turn stones into bread Matth. 4.3 But some lesse charitable would have their Ministers to live upon stones in stead of bread It is storied of Calvin in Geneva because he would not give the Sacrament unto the people in such a superstitious manner as they desired the people would give him no maintenance For the very same cause would many Congregations in London either storm or starve their Ministers or bring them unto Luthers pittance an Herring a day and for their aged Ministers they deale with them as men doe with their Horses when they are worn out they turn them into bare Commons 3. How is London turned back as the streames of Jordan by an horrible back-sliding What a desperate revolt from