Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	harden_v	hardness_n	pharaoh_n	2,882	5	10.8987	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30262	Two sermons preached to the Honorable House of Commons assembled in Parliament at their pvbliqve fast, Novem. 17, 1640 by Cornelius Burges ... and Stephen Marshall ...	Burges, Cornelius, 1589?-1665.; Marshall, Stephen, 1594?-1655.	1641 (1641)	Wing B5687; ESTC R19851	56,506	88

when you come to manage debate vote any Question I am the Lords not mine owne not my friends will this I doe stand with my Covenant will it please God will it be profitable for the State is it agreeable to Justice and equitie Then on with it no man shall divert or take me off But till then one will entreate for his friend another for his one will make you one way another would draw you another way and they are both your friends and you knowe not how to deny either and thus are you even torne in peeces betweene them in so much as you sometimes resolve to be absent or to sit still and say nothing or to gratifie him that hath most power with You be the Cause what it will But when once the Covenant is sealed all this will be at an end You will quickly stop your eares against all perswasions that may hinder Justice and Reformation and when this is known men will soone forbeare also to trouble You with such solicitations Againe fourthly Wicked men stick not at a Covenant with death and hell it self so they may but satisfie their Lusts though they know the end thereof will be damnation Oh then shall not we much more make a Covenant with our God to do his will which will be beneficiall and comfortable both here and hereafter and procure a full torrent of his mercies bountie grace and eternall life to flow in upon us 5. Consider that the Devill himself will have a Covenant from all his vassals that expect any extraordinary matters from him else he will not be engaged to be at their Command There is not a Witch that hath the Devill at her beck but she must seale a Covenant to him sometimes with her bloud sometimes by other rites and devices and perhaps he must suck her too as in those hellish bargaines you know they use and then he is for her during the time agreed upon And shall we think God will be so cheap as to be with reverence be it spoken at our Command to help direct assist deliver and save us who will not do so much for him as Witches and Sorcerers will do for the Devill In the 45 of Isay vers. 11. there is a strong expression this way Thus saith the Lord the Holy one of Israel and his Maker aske of mee things to come concerning my sonnes and concerning the work of my hands Command ye mee It is not to be thought that God complementeth with his people but is free and heartie in the expression of what they shall really find him But marke it concernes his Sonnes that is those that are truely in Covenant with him This priviledge is for none else So that the way to have God at Command with humilitie be it used is to be his sonnes and daughters by Covenant For to whom it is said I will be their God and they shall be my people to them is it spoken I will be a father unto you and ye shall be my sonnes and daughters saith the Lord Almightie 2 Cor. 6. 18. And to them he saith also Command ye me 6. Consider that it is the proper and chiefe businesse of a Fast to enter into Covenant with God You see it to be the practise of the Church in Nehemiah's time And where this hath been omitted the Fast hath been lost God never accounted any of those foure annuall solemne Fasts before mentioned that were so long in use among the Jews to be fasts unto him but calles them fasts to themselves Zach. 7. 5 6. Why but because they looked no further in their Fasts but to afflict their soules for a day to bow down their heads as a bullrush and to spread sack-cloth and ashes under them and there an end But they lost all their labour getting nothing from God but a chiding and contempt And in trueth when will we thus joyne our selves to the Lord if not at a Fast Then are our hearts in more than ordinary tune for such a work when we are brought to set our sinnes before us and humbly to confesse bewaile and renounce them when we have taken some paines with our Soules to soften and melt them before the Lord especially if then they be in any measure raised up towards Him with any apprehension of his love in the pardon of so many and great sinnes even when the Soule is most cast down for them Then I say strike through the Covenant or it will never be If you let slip this opportunitie you may perhaps never obtaine the like while you live but either your selves may be cut off or your hearts shut up in desperate hardnesse like unto Pharoah whom every deliverance and new experience of Gods favour in taking off new evils hardened more and made worse 7. In the last place and let it not have the least force of perswasion remember and consider that this day even this very day the 17. of November 82. yeeres sithence began a new resurrection of this Kingdome from the dead our second happy Reformation of Religion by the auspitious entrance of our late Royal Deborah worthy of eternall remembrance and honour into her blessed and glorious Reigne and that from thenceforth Religion thrived and prospered under her Government with admirable successe against a whole world of oppositions from Popish factors at home and abroad So as the very Gates of hell were never able to extinguish that Light which God by her meanes hath set up amongst us Consider I beseech you that it is not without a speciall Providence that this your meeting was cast upon this very day for I presume little did you think of the 17 of November when you first fixed on this day for your Fast that even from thence one hammer might be borrowed to drive home this nayle of Exhortation that the very memory of so blessed a work begun on this very day might throughly inflame you with desire to enter into a Covenant and so to go forward to perfect that happy Reformation which yet in many parts lyes unpolished and unperfect Oh suffer not that doore of hope by Her set open this day to be again shut for want of a Covenant If you would indeed honour Her precious memory yea honour God and your selves and not only continue the possession of what she as a most glorious Conduit pipe hath transmitted to us but perfect the work set upon this duty of joyning your selves to the Lord in an everlasting Covenant that shall not be forgotten And so have you the Motives 2. I shall now shut up all with some few Directions to help us in it And here passing by what hath been already spoken touching the preparatives to it the Substance of it and the properties required in it I shall only give you these sixe subsequent Directions 1. Give a Bill of divorce to all your Lusts or kill them out-right This Covenant is a

of the Serpents root shall come forth a Cockatrice and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent Ahaz shall leave an Hezekiah behind him that shall pay all his Fathers debts upon the Philistines and plague them yet more than all that went before him And have not we seen this verified also neerer home Have not some in former times been taken away who have been great Oppressors and Instruments of many sore pressures And how have men rejoyced at their falls Nor know I why they should not if Justice in a just way have cut them off But alas what Good in the issue hath followed or can be yet hoped for so long as men continue Philistines enemies to God his Church Anti-Covenanters even with Hell rather than true Covenanters with God Whether is our Condition any what better now than heretofore when those Leviathans were alive and in their height I appeale to yourselves And the reason of all is this that men mistake the meanes of Cure or at least fall short of it The cutting off of evill Doers how necessary soever it be is not all nor the maine requisite to make a people happy unlesse also there be a thorough joyning of themselves to God by Covenant If you therefore that be now convened in Parliament should sit so long as you desire even these 7 yeares if your businesse should require it and think you would make such Examples of men that have violated the Lawes and invaded your Liberties and enact so many wholesome Lawes to prevent the like presumptions for the future as should put us into a new world causing men to admire the happy state and frame of Government which you would set up yet all this would never produce the expected effect but prove as a meer dreame of an hungry man who in his dreame eateth aboundantly but when he awakes is empty unlesse you also not onely resolve upon but execute this maine duty of entring Covenant with your God Againe thirdly others can roare like beares and mourn sore like doves when they find themselves disappointed of their hopes when Parliaments have been broken up in discontent when they have looked for Iudgment and there is none for salvation but it hath bin farre from them then they have howled like dragons not onely for afflictions but perhaps for sinnes also especially if deliverance upon deliverance hath been snatcht from them even when it hath seemed so neer that they had begun to take possession of it yet silly men that they are their evills haunt them still and prevaile more and more after all their fastings humblings and strong cryes to God their Redeemer For alas what will all this doe without a Covenant without taking hold of God and joyning themselves to him to be his for ever you may see such a State of the Church as this described by Isaiah good were it for us to take warning by it We all doe fade as a leafe and our inquities like the wind have taken us away And why all this The next words will tell you there is none that calleth upon thy name that stirreth up himselfe to take hold of thee say they to the Lord who had hid his face from them and consumed them for their sinnes Not that they did not at all call upon God but because they did not so call upon him as to stirre up themselves to take hold of him by Covenant therefore is it accounted no better than a not calling upon him at all Thus men lose not onely their opportunities of deliverances offered but their duties also by which they desire to further it against another time 4. Some it may be goe yet further Vpon the hearing of such a duty so much pressed and inculcated they begin to be a little stirred they are convinced that it is is indeed true such a Covenant is fit to be made but here like Ephraim an unwise sonne they stand still at the breaking forth of the Children of the Covenant They faine would but loth they be to go thorough with the bargaine They begin to come on and then fall back againe They are so long a cheapning treating complementing disputing how safe it may be for them how well it may stand with their profits projects ends interests relations that they coole againe never come up to a full resolution Oh sayes one this is a good course and fit to be taken but my engagements callings Alliance company service will not consist with it Another sweares he could find in his heart to make triall of it but that he should be jeered scorned and perhaps lose his place or hopes for it another he is for it but at present he cannot enter upon it Thus one thing or other still keepes this duty without doores and holds most men off from the worke for ever But beloved take heed of this dallying What ever you think it is no better than a departing away from the living God that springs from an evill heart of unbeleife when being fully convinced of the weight necessity and commodity of the duty you will yet while it is called to day adventure so farre to harden your hearts as not to set upon the work instantly and to go thorough with it Heb. 3. Woe unto all such dodging Christians they shall find to their cost that God will write them Lo-ammi Hos. 1. 9. and pronounce of them They are not my people and I am not their God If any think what adoe is here what meanes this man to be so earnest would he have us all turne Covenanters yes with God Why what if I doe not Then never looke for good from him how faire soever thy hopes be No sayes another I le try that sure I have seene many a good day in my time and hope to see more though I never swallow this doctrine therefore he resolves to goe hence as he came hither as he lived yesterday so he will to morrow though this day he doe as his neighbours doe keeping some order much against the will of his base lusts that ring him but an harsh peale in his eare for this little abstinence yet to morrow he will be for his swearing drinking whoring any excesse and riot as much as ever and yet by grace of God he hopes to prove all these words to be but wind and to doe as well as the best of them all when he comes to die But woe worth the day that ever such a man was born that when he heares God calling him with so much importunity to-stand even this very day before the Lord to enter into Covenant with the Lord his God and into his Oath shall so harden his neck and harbour such a roote of gall and worme wood within his heart as when he heares the of the Curse upon all those that will not enter into Covenant or entring into it shall not keep it he shall blesse himselfe in his heart saying