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
A56742	Discourses upon several practical subjects by the late Reverend William Payne ... ; with a preface giving some account of his life, writings, and death.	Payne, William, 1650-1696.; Powell, Joseph, d. 1698.	1698 (1698)	Wing P902; ESTC R21648	184,132	418

so blinded and hardned by their sins that they continued Insidels so that the utmost and one would think irresistible evidence could not prevail upon them Human Nature is still the same it was then and liable to the same corruptions and depravations and when it has suffered its Lusts and Vices and unreasonable Inclinations to grow upon it and have power over it they will quickly bring Men to a wretched blindness of mind and hardness of heart so that the best evidence for Religion and the strongest arguments and demonstrations for the Truth or the practice of it shall not prevail upon 'em but whilst they indulge themselves and continue in their sins this will corrupt their Minds and deprave their Faculties darken their Understanding and spoil their Judgment bring them to hardness of heart and a reprobate mind and to gross and unreasonable Insidelity and at last to a total defection and apostacy from all Religion Take heed therefore says the Apostle Lest there be in any of you an evill heart of unbelief in departing from the living God v. 22. and the way to prevent that was not to be drawn in by any sin nor deceived by any Vice or Lust that should bring 'em to this but to take a present and immediate care to free themselves from every such sin and to perswade one another to keep close to Religion and not to give way to any Vice or Wickedness deluding them at first or growing afterwards more upon them Wherefore exhort one another daily while it is called to day lest any of you be hardned through the deceitfulness of sin From these words I shall consider these two things 1. How sin deceives at the beginning 2. How it hardens the mind afterwards How it first cheats and horribly imposes upon us and then how it brings the mind into a more wretched and depraved and hardned state 1. Of the deceitfulness of sin One would think that either Human Nature were not so rationall as we pretend it is and that this were not our inseperable property or else that Vice were not so foolish and unreasonable so pernicious and destructive as we suppose it to be when we look into the state of the World and see Vice every where prevailing and abounding and most Men choosing and preferring it before Vertue as Men are rational Creatures that act as from principles of Liberty and Judgment so always from an instinct of self good and self preservation which seems to be a natural principle that prevents all reason and which we can never with all our choice and freedom act wittingly and willingly against We can never choose evil as evil but under the colour and appearance of good but our nature is made with an inward spring that runs of it self from a naked evil but always pursues what we apprehend is good for us what appears to us as conducing and tending to our Welfare and Happiness and therefore we must bring Religion and every thing else to this if we would have it fall in with Nature and be lastingly and surely sixt in our Minds But either Vice is not so great an evil so destructive and contrary to the good Welfare and Happiness of Humane Nature or else our reason must be very much cheated and deluded and imposed upon when we are drawn into it and we must be mightily deceived by some false reasoning or other about it in our own minds for there is a sort of reasoning and arguing judging and concluding however short and quick and precipitate and mistaken this be in every moral action we do and some process there is in the mind and thoughts even when we are led never so much by our senses and act not upon thoughts or reason else the action would not be Voluntary or Criminal or capable either of guilt or blame as proceeding from a misuse of our reason and choice our judgment and fieedom Our understanding and reason must therefore judge amiss and be grosly deceived and imposed on when contrary to our good and interest we are drawn into the practice of sin and seduced by its temptations and inveigled by the deceitfullness of it for tho' it be against our reason in one sense i. e. against the right use of it yet it carries our reason along with it at that time we commit it and our judgment determines for it at that instant tho' very rashly and unadvisedly as we find when we come to consider it over again The deceitfulness of sin lies therefore chiesly in these following things 1. In having too high an Opin on Fancy and Imagination of those little Goods Pleasures Profits or whatever present sensual and worldly Enjoyments any of our sins may yield to us or that we can hope to reap by them These are the three Lusts the Apostle mentions Of the Flesh of the Eye and the pride of Life or rather the objects of those these are the gilded bait the fair fruit the alluring charms and inviting temptations that draw in and inveigle every sinner for no Man would be wicked or serve the Devil for nought nor commit any sin out of pure malice to God and Religion and mere hatred to Vertue at least not till he is arrived to a very high degree of diabolical wickedness No 't is to purchase and attain some fancied good and imagined pleasure or advantage something gratefull and desirable to the senses Appetites and Inclinations of our nature that tempts and allures us Now there being a small natural good in many of those sinfull temptations for such it must be allowed bodily pleasure and worldly profit and other enjoyments are which therefore good men may desire and partake of within such bounds and limits as are allowed by God and Religion and those are even the blessings of God's left hand as the Jews phrased them and it is an unnatural piece of Stoicism and an Hypocritical affectation to renounce them wholly and declaim weakly against them Riches and Honours and Pleasures are Lawfull objects of our desire in some degree and may have a proper good allowed to them suitable to our present state and nature and their contraries may be called evils else it would be no Virtue to deny them or forgo them in any case nor would have any reward at God's hand but they are not the great goods our nature was made for nor those that can make us truly and compleatly happy tho' we had never so many of them nor are comparatively any goods because nothing so great as Wisdom and Vertue as Peace of Mind and Tranquility of Soul as an inward Sense of God's Favour and chearfull hopes of Heaven these will make a Man truly and inwardly happy without or with a very little of the other and give him the true perfection and happiness of his nature and make him eternally blessed when all others are perished and gone and signifie nothing 'T is an ignorance of the true nature of good and evil