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
A33078	The Church of Rome unmask'd, or her false principles briefly detected with some reasons of so many retaining or returning to communion with her, and the great danger of everlasting destruction, that such persons, especially after separations from her, return to her communion, do run themselves on / written by a learned divine, by way of letter to a friend in the country.	Learned divine.	1679 (1679)	Wing C4196; ESTC R18501	78,331	77

inquiry and search into the truth as it is in him that they might understand it and be led and guided by it And then 5. The just and righteous Judgment of God it is to harden both this Harlot and her Adherents for their unfaithfulness in seeking after or not admitting the truth of God but either slightly neglecting the inquiry after it or against evident shinings of it closing their eyes lest they should see with their eyes or hear with their ears or understand with their hearts what they see would tend to convert them from their gainful and delicious interests and enjoyments Even as Gods Judgments were upon Pharaoh and the Aegyptians to harden them for as Pharaoh and the Aegyptians hardning themselves and doing wickedly against Israel were left of God to their hardness or hardened by him that he might glorify himself on them in their destruction so it is with this falsly Infallible but truly inflexible impenitent Church he gives her and her Adherents up to their own hearts lusts and to walk in their Idolatrous and bloody ways to fill up the measure of their iniquities that he might glorify himself in executing upon them the Doom and Judgment that is written concerning them 6. Though also some occasion of hardning this Church and some advantage her subtle Factors take to harden people in their obstinate cleaving to her from the too great divisions found and by them also fomented among us Protestants with the too much iniquity also practised among us and some harsh Principles about Gods Decrees of Reprobation in some among us Whence they possess the minds of her Followers that they are in a better state more at unity and perhaps many of them less outwardly vitious though not their generality and more devout than they should be should they forsake their Communion to embrace ours Yea and they can aggravate our divisions represent them as if they were the just judgment of God upon us for deserting her Communion though that be as false as and no truer than that the Divisions Feuds and Wars among us Christians both Papists and Protestants are the just judgment of God upon us for casting off Heathenism or for not turning Jews or Mahumetans 7. To which add the fair paints and cunning carriage of this Harlot for as it is with other Whores they may and often have as handsom bodies as comely faces as smooth carriages as good parts and witty winning behaviour as honest Women and chast Matrons Yea sometimes they may in some of those things if not in all exceed them and being rich or richly maintained may and often have as costly apparel as rich ornaments and Jewels as other honester persons nay and where they find defect of beauty can supply it by art painting their faces with such fresh lively colours as shall make them seem young and youthful when in truth and underneath they are black and deformed Even so this Romish Church being a rich and subtle Harlot is not void of many taking and winning matters wherewith she sets forth her self to draw or keep in Lovers and trims her way to seek love as the Prophet said of the Adulterous Church that did precede her Jer. 2.33 Yea to her may well be applyed that of the Prophet Nahum to the bloody City That she is a well-favoured Harlot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Mistriss of witchcrafts that selleth Nations through her whoredoms and Families through her Witchcrafts Nah. 3.4 For it is true that she hath in her Persons indued with great natural parts and endowments Men of learning and policy and that she hath many good gifts from God by Jesus Christ wherewith she might and ought to serve and please him Yea she hath Jewels of his gold and of his silver as it were which he in her better state was pleased mercifully and gratiously freely to impart unto her But as it is the fault of Harlots to abuse the gifts of God men to dishonest arts and ends so it fares with this Church also for she doth as Jerusalem did before her of whom the Lord saith That she took of her garments namely that he had given her for he found her naked and in her blood and decked her high places with divers colours and played the Harlot thereupon And she took her fair jewels of his gold and of his silver and made to her self Images of a male and committed Whoredom with them and she took her broidred garments and covered them and set his Oyl and his Incense before them and his meat which he gave her even fine flower and oyl and honey wherewith he fed her she set it even before them for a sweet savour c. Ezek. 16.16 17 18 19. Even so we may say of this Church that she serves her Idols with the gifts of God and makes use even of the truths that she hath received from Christ and his ordinances to make up an Image of them as mixed with her inventions a frame of Religion which she worships and causeth all to worship Yea and she decks her self with her natural parts and gifts Moral Virtues and acquired Sciences and with many things which she hath received from God But not that she might singly serve Christ therewith but to seek love from the Kings and Princes and people of the World to commit fornication with them and many are taken and led captive with these her ornaments that is with her Learning seeming Devotion Charity and Piety which are all made use of subserviently to the grand design of making her self a Goddess or an Object of worship by the poor simple Souls that she that way deludes and as artifices of drawing them to commit adultery with her With such things she paints and guilds over her self to inamour men of her and make them her Vassals that she might inrich her self though with the spoil of their Souls As in a vision was forerepresented by the Holy Ghost concerning her in Rev. 17.4 while the holy man saw her as a Woman arrayed in purple and scarlet colour and deckt or gilded with Gold and pretious Stones and Pearls having a golden Cup in her hand in which she gives forth her abominations Signifying hereby what a gawdy Church she would be in her appearance and worship and how she would be adorned with many fine glittering and rich colours the better to inamour the Kings and people of the Earth on her Yea and as crafty and witty Whores can conform themselves to the different tempers of their Paramours the better to work upon and captivate and keep their affections so it is with this wiley Church and her Panders For those that are melancholly or of a more grave sober temper or religiously inclined she can entertain them with Books of Devotion formes of Penance rules of Mortification and many learned Discourses that may suit their humors but yet so as they must take in therewith her Superstitions and she hath her

Omnipotency will make the one as possible as the other Or that the same thing that is shut and hung up in the Pix being a Consecrated Host is the same numerical body that is glorified and gloriously appears in Heaven also what was eaten by the people in their receiving eating what of it was given them But we may see how these men straining the words of Christ where they please as they do also some expressions of the Ancient Fathers make the word of God subject to their wills and pleasures and where they please they will grant a Figure and where they please they shall be properly and literally understood yea and strained beyond their litteral expression for Christ said no such thing as this is transubstantiated into or is the substance of my very body as they say though the like absurdities following upon the litteral sence of or collection from it as would from taking the other expressions litterally makes it necessary to understand them figuratively and sacramentally in the one place as well as in the other It 's true that in this Supper Christ would have us and it 's necessary for us to abstract or withdraw our minds from the consideration of the bread and wine in their own proper substances and to fix them only upon the body and blood of Christ whereof they are a communion or communication 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so to have no more to do with those Elements in our thoughts in a manner than as if there were no such matters only as they may occasion us to meditate and consider that his flesh is meat indeed the true bread and everlasting nourishment of our Souls and his blood or the New Testament confirmed by it Drink indeed a most comfortable matter of refreshing for the Soul to take into it's believing consideration and so spiritually and sacramentally to feed upon his flesh and blood But to impose upon peoples Faith that the things which they see with their eyes to be very bread and wine are very Christ his very flesh and blood yea God-man their Saviour and to cause them to worship them is a very gross departure from and abuse of Christ's institution and of his command for our observation of it And why may they not as well impose upon mens faith that St. Peter after he Confessed Christ was transubstantiated into a hard stone and his flesh blood and bones yea his Soul and body and all was metamorphiz'd into a Rock For our Saviour said unto him Tues Petrus in the Syriac Cephas which in our English Language signifies a stone Mat. 16.18 with Jo. 1.42 here is Christs assertion as plainly of Peter as there of the bread And if the word Est is imply the substantial change of the bread in the one why may not the word Es thou art imply the substantial change of Simon Bar-Jonah in the other And why may it not be as rationally believed that his flesh and bones yea Soul and body were immediately and substantially turned into stone living stone as that the bread was changed into the body of Christ substantially seeing the Omnipotency of God was as well able to do the one as the other And that is pleaded as sufficient for our Faith to believe this And so St. Peter was a living walking Stone that had not the substance of either flesh or blood or bones in him though the appearance of them all to the sences Yea and why may it not be as well imposed upon mens Faith that Christ himself is so changed in his substance into stone too For he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the living stone 1 Pet. 2.4 and that the Altar that Jacob built at Shechem was transubstantiated into the Essence of God because Jacob Consecrating it called it El Elohe Israel God the God of Israel Gen. 33.20 Surely they are strangely infatuated or obstinately wilful that cannot or will not see the absurdity of this Doctrine of theirs so contrary both to sence and reason and so void of any solid ground for it in the Holy Scriptures Object Oh but they will say they are the Church and their judgment is to be taken as the infallible truth and therefore if they did assert the like changes and transubstantiations in other things then they were to be believed too For our Faith is to be resolved into their sayings as our Saviour tells us that they that hear not the Church are to be accounted as Heathens and Publicans Ans But to that it 's said and shewed before that they are not the Church Catholique but only a part of the Church and a very corrupt part too To which I add that I find it injoyned to us that we should hear Christ the great Prophet of God in all things which he shall say unto us but I find it no where injoyned us that we should hear the Church in all that she shall say unto us And that the Scripture here quoted by them to serve their design is perverted by them from it's true and genuine intent rnd scope For our Saviour did not there intend nor speak any thing as signifying an intent to teach us to build our Faith or belief of the Scripture-sayings or the Exposition of the Scripture upon the Authority of the Church or it's sayings much less of any uppermost party that unduely challenge to themselves the title and appellation of the whole Church much less the Church of Rome But his discourse is evidently about offences given by any sinning Brother which being evident in themselves might by any particular person against whom they were committed be reprehended and faulted and in case the party offending would not hear a private admonition then it should be reproved by the same person again taking one or two persons as witnesses with him who might also join in reproving or admonishing him And if still he harden his heart and retain his offensive or evil way or practice then they should declare it to the Church who might all testifie their dislike or give him a joint admonition of the same fault And if he hear not them in such joint admonition given them by the Church then the offended Brother might disclaim communion with him and leave him as no more to be owned by him than an Heathen man or a Publican Here is nothing of the Church's giving the object of faith to be believed or of her being to be heard in whatsoever she shall say though never so contrary to sence or reason or to the Scripture sayings or to the commands of God and Christ but of the Chuch's admonishing an offending Brother who being admonished by her ought to hear the Church therein But that 's in no other thing than in what he ought to have heard first the offended Brother in upon his own private admonition or the offended Brother with one or two joining with him upon his slighting the admonition given by the offended Brother alone But