Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	law_n	sin_n	transgression_n	2,243	5	10.5323	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41707	The primitive Christian justified and Jack Presbyter reproved, or, A scripture demonstration, that to be innocent and persecuted is more eligible than to be prosperously wicked delivered in a sermon in the Abby-Church of Bath by William Goulde.	Gould, William, d. 1686.	1682 (1682)	Wing G1441; ESTC R9434	18,041	33

and that Shame is its never failing consequence and so ineligible in both respects Absalon's Rebellion was covered over with a fit of Devotion one Herod murthers with worshipping the blessed Babe and another Herod strikes off the Baptists Head to avoid being perjur'd Saul excused his sin by bringing it to the Altar and the worst of men incarnate Devils of whom St. Paul speaks 2 Timoth. 3. chap. from the 2. to the 7. ver had a form of godliness Now were Sin an eligible thing the proper object of a rational Choyce what need were there of excuses or denials after the commission of any wickedness or giving it glorious or borrowed titles to cover its deformities And so Sin is not to be chosen either for its self or with respect to its immediate fruits or consequences Thirdly Sin is not the object of a rational Mans or true Christians choice because every way opposite to all Gods glorious Attributes and his very Being and Essence If we consider Gods sovereignty Sin is Rebellion if his Justice it is Iniquity if his Goodness sin is Unkindness If God's holiness and pureness Sin is defilement Consider God's holiness as a Rule Sin is a Transgression if as an Excellency Sin is Deformity Thus it is contrary to the whole nature of God and strikes at his Attributes and Essence As God is every way in himself good so Sin is evil in its self and good in no respect and as God is to be loved for himself because the chiefest good so Sin is to hated for it self The holy Ghost could not call it by a worse name than its self as Rom. 7. 13. Sin that it might appear sin and Sin by the commandment appeared exceeding sinful Again God is the great reward of himself and Sin the punishment of its self Dyametrically opposite We are hereby enemies to God Coloss 1. haters of God Rom. 1. 30. Sin is contrary to the glory of God essential and manifestative it denies the glory due to God Rom. 1. 21. Titus 1. 16. despiseth and reproacheth his glory and misimployes it by giving it to men to our selves or to the Devil as they who told our Saviour that he cast out Devils by Belzeebub Sin wrongs God in his very Nature and Being as Psal 14. 1. every sinner wisheth there were no God and saith it in his heart as David observeth Upon each of these Heads I might insist very largely but to avoid trespassing on your patience I pass to the following particulars Fourthly Sin is the transgression of God's Laws and so not the object of a Christians Choice In the Law there is a Rectitude every thing in God's Commands is just and right Sin is crookendness the Law teacheth wisdom Sin is folly and the Wicked man a fool and both in Scripture and very frequent in the Proverbs made convertible terms God's Commands are pure Sin is filthiness Rom. 7. 12. there is liberty in the Law James 2. 8. Sin is a bondage 2 Timothy 2. 26. the keeping of the Law brings a reward but Sin shame and death Rom. 6. 22 23. but that which aggravates the sinfulness of Sin upon this account is that it is the transgression of such Laws as are not grievous 1. Laws reasonable and suitable to our nature and advantageous to our interest 2. Such Laws as the Author of which hath given us sufficient power and strength if not wanting to our selves for the performance 3. Such Laws by obedience to which we arrive at an Eternity of happiness 1. The Laws of God of which Sin is a transgression are reasonable suitable to our Nature and advantageous to our Interest He hath shewed thee O Man what is good and what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to doe Justice and love Mercy and walk humbly with thy God This is the summ of the natural Law that we behave our selves reverently and obediently to the divine Majesty and justly and Charitably towards men and for the better discharge of both to govern our selves in sensual delights with Temperance and Moderation and what is there grievous in all this That we inwardly reverence and love God and express it by external worship and our readiness to obey his will revealed testifie our dependance on him in all Dangers and Wants by offering up to him our constant Prayers and Supplications and acknowledge our obligations by continual Praises and Thanksgivings for all his mercies to entertain of God no unworthy thoughts nor give to others that honour and reverence which is only sutable to his Excellence and Perfections carefully to avoid the prophanation of his Name and take heed of the neglect and contempt of his Worship or any thing belonging to it this is the first part of Natural Religion the generals of those Duties which every mans reason tells him he owes to God and here thus far there is nothing commanded but what agrees very well with the reason of Mankind As for the six last precepts of the Decalogue relating to the good order and government of our Selves with respect to our selves Equals Inferiours or Superiours these are such Laws as tend to our own peace and the happiness of humane Socieites and as expounded in Christ's Sermon on the Mount nothing more can be devised for the welfare of Mankind by sweetning their Spirits and allaying their Passions and Animosities 2. The Author of those Laws of which Sin is the Transgression hath not left us destitute of Strength or Power for performance 't is true We have Contracted a great deal of Weakness by our wilful Degeneracy from goodness but that grace which the Gospel offers to us for our Assistance is sufficient for us greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world 1 John 4. 4. and if so then it clearly followeth that such as apply themselves seriously to Religion and yield themselves tractable to good Motions will find the Spirit of God more ready and active for their Incouragement than the Devil to pull them back unless we think God hath given a greater power and a larger commission to the Devil to doe us mischief than to his holy Spirit and his holy Angels to doe us good which were Blasphemy to assert and the calling in question the goodness of God Some say we cannot keep the Commandments and its true of our selves as of our selves we are not able to think a good thought much less to doe a good work As of our selves Note that for the same Apostle saith I can doe all things through Christ that strengtheneth me and these two must be reconciled we cannot and we can keep the Commandments that is we cannot of our selves but we can through Christ that strengthens us and whose grace is never wanting to us unless we are wanting to our selves To say we cannot keep the Commandments without adding Saint Paul's Comment as of our selves I look upon as a Crude position incourageing Idleness for God inquestionably offers us

an assistance equall to the difficulty of his Commands or else St. John was in an Error which may not be supposed when he tells us that his Commandments are not grievous 1 John 5. 3. and grievous they must be if Gods grace we being weak of our selves be not sufficient for the performance in such Evangelical measures and degrees as God expects from us I can doe all things through Christ that strengthens me Philip. 4. 13. Observe here three things 1. The strength of Christ is the original and fountain of all ours 2. The strength of a Christian derived from Christ hath a kind of Omnipotence sufficient for the whole duty of Christians it can doe all things 3. The strength and power thus bestowed is the work of a Christian the man strengthened by Christ I can doe all things I Paul can through Christs strength and assisted by grace keep the Commandments in the Gospel sense If this be not the Apostles meaning I must even go to School again to understand English Through God who strengthens us we are able to perform what he is able to injoyn we can suffer by his Patience what in his Wisdom he can inslict chuse by his direction what in his goodness he can propose In short we can believe his promises and doe his will we can resist his enemy and drink his Cup but by his Wisdom and by his Grace by his Power and by his Patience and if Arminius say more than this or Calvin less with submission to better Judgments the middle way between both extreams is certainly the safest and proves God's Commands the only measure of our Obedience not to be Grievous and consequentially to chuse Sin which is the transgression of such just and reasonable Laws must be Irrational and Irreligious 3 That Law of which Sin is the Trangression is such a Law by obedience to which we attain through Christ Eternal happiness and well did David speak upon this account Thy Commands O God are Righteous and in keeping of them there is great reward Psal 19. 11. An exceeding Eternal weight of Glory such as eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor hath entred into the heart of man to conceive as St. Paul speaks a happiness that doth silence invention non-plus Hyperbolies exceeds all our Conceptions and Imaginations and the Oratory of Men or Angels Now to chuse Sin which is the transgression of such Laws as are suitable to our Natures advantageous both to our Temporal and Eternal Interest Laws Holy Good and Just in themselves and not Grievous to us to chuse Sin which is opposite to such Laws as these is the greatest folly and madness we hereby degrade our selves from our very Essences and bid defiance to our understanding the candle of the Lord in our own breasts Fifthly As Sin is not eligible for its self or Consequences not with respect to Gods Attributes and Essence nor with reference to his Laws so not the object of a rational Choice because it is destructive to our own Souls As 1. to the purity of the Soul Sin takes away its beauty 2. to its Dignity so sin casts down the Soul from its Excellency 3. to the Souls Liberty Sin makes it a Captive 4. to the strength of the Soul Ezek. 16. 30. Impotens libido Sin makes us weak and Impotent 5. to the peace of the Soul ubi peccatum ibi procella there is no peace saith my God to the wicked and Lastly to the safety and life of the Soul 2 Thessal 1. 9. there are known Topical heads which may be inlarged upon in your private Meditations Sin is Expoliatio gratuitorum say the Schools a stripping of the Soul of all those supernatural Excellencies that God gave men when created after his own image and 't is Vulneratio Naturalium Sin wounds the Soul as to its Naturals and Morals as well as Spirituals In short Sin is the disease of our Souls and no rational man that knows what Health is will chuse a sickness and be in love with a Disease Sin is as destructive of the Souls health beauty and safety as distemper'd Humours defect in any Member Solution of Parts or Dislocation of a Joint can be to the Body An ignorant Mind is equivalent to a blind Eye a Will disabled worse than a lame hand and vile Affections more ugly than deformed Members an evil Conscience is more afflictive than a Cancer in the Breast Pining Envy more vexatious than the knawing of our Stomachs the furies of Lust Rage and Intemperance are as unnatural Distempers as Feverish heats and the insatiable desire after Worldly Wealth and Greatness is an Hydropique thirst and hence in Scripture the sicknesses and diseases of our Bodies are used to represent those of our Souls which he that attentively reads and meditates on will furnish himself with many Instances of great usefulness and advantage our First Parents got this disease by eating of an Apple which the Devil had poysoned and infected all their Posterity with the Venom of it Adam fell in Paradise and all his Off-spring are Mephiboseth's line from their Mothers Womb. Sin now runs in a Blood and flies higher and higher instead of abating its first Vigour 't is Morbus epacmasticus epidemicus contagiousus as Symptoms still heighten it is a catching and contagious Disease seizing upon those that come near such as are infected with it Flee from Sin Ecclesiasticus 21. 2. as from the face of a Serpent for if thou comest near it will bite thee the teeth thereof are as the teeth of a Lyon slaying the Sons of men This was the poyson that lay under the teeth of the old Serpent the Devil when he bit our first Parents Nay Sin is Morbus compositus so complicated a Disease that all other diseases are indeed but the Symptomes of this Which brings me to the Sixth Particular That Sin is not only the Souls Sickness but the sourse and fountain of all the Maladies and Distempers that happen to our Bodies and so an enemy to Body and Soul at once and as so not the proper object of our Election or Choice Hast thou a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Does thy head ake 't is Sin it may be Pride or Self-conceit have distended the membranes of thy Brain Hast thou an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are thine Eyes inflamed Sin is the cause thereof perhaps thou hast been too vain in gadding after sinful Objects Hast thou an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is thy Speech taken from thee 't is Sin hath struck thee dumb perhaps thy hearkning after Lies prophane idle and libidinous Discourses Hast thou an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do thy Loines chasten thee in the night season Sin is the occasion perhaps thou hast given thy youth and thy strength unto strange women Hast thou a Volvulus intestinorum a miserere mei and forc'd to cry out Oh my bowels my bowels as 't is exprest Jer. 14. 19. 't is Sin perhaps thy Gluttony Ryot