Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	church_n	earth_n	triumphant_a	4,427	5	11.4398	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54945	A discourse of prayer wherein this great duty is stated, so as to oppose some principles and practices of Papists and fanaticks; as they are contrary to the publick forms of the Church of England, established by her ecclesiastical canons, and confirmed by acts of Parliament. By Thomas Pittis, D.D. one of His Majesties chaplains in ordinary. Wherefore, that way and profession in religion, which gives the best directions for it, (viz. prayer) with the most effectual motives to it, and most aboundeth in its observance, hath therein the advantage of all others. Dr. Owen in his preface to his late discourse of the work of the Holy SPirit in prayer, &c.	Pittis, Thomas, 1636-1687.	1683 (1683)	Wing P2314; ESTC R220541	149,431	404

Secrets of Princes and administer occasion to disturb the Order and Government of the World Which they indeed ought to introduce who undertake to be so particular and nice in confessing the sins of other men or praying for the things individuals stand in need of But to proceed By our absolutions the true penitent is only incouraged and that authority which our Saviour left with his last Commission to the Ministers of his Gospel is kept up and maintained in pursuance of what Christ said to his Apostles after his Resurrection when the state of his humiliation ceased and he was ready to ascend with triumph to his Father Joh. 20.23 Whose sins ye remit they are remitted and whose sins ye retain they are retained Furthermore we are directed by the Order of our Church to say our prayers day by day that so we may in the sence of the Apostle pray without ceasing and continue instant in prayer and by vertue of our adoption cry Abba Father And this because the prescription of our blessed Lord himself gives us both a pattern and direction for when he teaches us to pray for bread which is the staff and support of our lives day by day As to the object of our prayers we make our Supplications to God alone through the Merits and mediation of Jesus Christ and admit no creature to partake in the honour due to either The matter of our publick prayers is such as includes our general wants we always beg the pardon of sin to be delivered from temptations and evils we petition also for Grace to assist us it being the influence of the Spirit of God And in particular we ask those Theological virtues of Faith Hope and Charity without which we cannot be saved We pray more especially as the Ancients did even when they were persecuted for Kings and all that are in authority that under them we may lead godly and quiet lives Nay we petition for men of all sorts and in all circumstances that none may be shut out from the benefit of our prayers and we beg all things that may be needful for our bodies and our souls We pray for happy seasons of the year for prevention of and deliverance from all Plagues that may hurt the body and all evils that may assault the soul We pray against all the bad accidents and misfortunes of our lives and that we may escape violence and sudden death Because notwithstanding the notions some have of Predestination death may be too surprizing to the best and if not prevented by the Providence of God may advance towards and seize us too before we are prepared to receive it and therefore we further petition Heaven that we may be fitted for our last encounter and that we may submit with Christian comfort and courage to and have a safe deliverance at the day of Judgment We pray not indeed for the Souls of men after their departure out of this lower world Because we believe according to the Scriptures that as the tree falls so it lies and as death finds us so will Judgment too Nor do we know and how can we unless it were revealed of any middle place where the souls of men may suffer to their improvement and be purged by any material fire If we could suppose it to operate upon an immaterial being Yet we pray as far for men departed this life as the Primitive Christians ever did and the form of our blessed Lord teaches us in that Petition Thy Kingdom come viz. That in order to the coming of the Kingdom of Glory God would bring the just that are departed this life to an happy and a blessed Resurrection that so Christs Church which is Militant on Earth may finally become Triumphant in the Heavens And we always give thanks for the examples and triumphs of those who have died in the true faith of Christ that we may rejoice with them whose joy is now full according to their capacity and shall at the great day be much more enlarged Our Liturgy is so excellently framed that as there is no sort of men but what we have some petitions for So there is no condition we can be cast into but the whole community who join in our Service share with us in sympathy and affection because they must remember us in our common Church prayers And of this the Litany is so full and expressive that particular Collects seem to be redundant when this is used yet we have even these too very suitable to the state of any that would desire that their grievances may be expressed to Almighty God by him who offers up the prayers of the Congregation As far as modesty and cleanness of language is able to present them though not in those terms in which they were formerly pitch'd up with a fork to load a Pulpit and the Ministers hearty wishes are assisted by the devout affections and consent of the people In a word our Church directs and her true obedient Sons practise what the Apostle advises the Philippians to do Chap. 4. ver 6. In every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God And as they whom the Apostles first converted to the Christian faith we continue stedfastly in the Apostles doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayer Our Creeds in which we make the publick profession of our faith contain all Articles but yet no more than the purest Christian Churches of the world have in all Ages of their Religion declared They are neither stuffed with the additions of the Council of Trent nor have we abated by the omissions of ancient Hereticks or any that bear a newer date nor do we receive any point of faith but what is plainly evident in the Scriptures And for these we own neither spurious nor generally doubted Books Our fellowship or society is upheld as all others must be by those whose business it is to govern and those whose duty it is to obey And in the quality of our Rulers we have the advantage of some other Churches that are yet Protestant in that we are governed by Bishops for whose order in the Christian Church notwithstanding any personal failures to which all that is called man is subject or the malicious imputations of any wicked and unreasonable men we have the same evidence if this word too is not in disgrace and consent among the Antients for fifteen hundred years as we have for the Baptism of Infants for the abolishing of the day of the Jewish Sabbath and instead of it for the establishment of the observation of the Lords Day And as far as I can yet learn all the three seem to stand upon the same foundation and if they fall they must be ruined together Our Sacraments are no more than what our blessed Saviour instituted and commanded also to be used in his Church that we might have some visible signs which by vertue of his blessing might

he has a brow of brass may say to those who understand not or else never look'd into their allowed Breviary or their common and established Mass-Book that we charge them with what they are not guilty of I must instance in a few particulars in which prayers are made to glorified creatures and to some inanimate things too in the publick Offices of the Roman Church since some of the professors of that Religion are so bold and apparently wicked that to serve a turn they will affirm 't is dark in the face of the Sun and light even in the midst of darkness and nothing almost according to their principles of equivocation and mental reservation if they take also the Doctrine of probable opinions in to their assistance can be propounded but they may either affirm or deny as it makes for the advantage of their Church Nay they are bound according to the determination of Bellarmin to say that Vertue is Vice or Vice Vertue if the Pope so concludes either But yet my present charge is so apparently true that all must own it to any that have knowledge of their publick Service whatever they may at any time reply to the ignorant that receive the charge upon the authority of others For in their Commune Apostolorum there is an Hymn consisting both of prayer and praise in which we find these expressions Vos saecli justi judices c. speaking to the Apostles they say O ye just Judges and Lights of the world we beseech you with the desires of our hearts to hear the prayers of your supplicants ye that shut the heavens with a word and unlock them again loose us we pray you from all our sins by your command you to whose authority is subject both the health and misery of all c. In their Office to the Blessed Virgin you have these expressions O Mary Mother of Grace Mother of Mercy protect us from the enemy and receive us at the hour of death And let the Virgin Mary together with her off-spring bestow her blessing upon us and the like I shall instance yet in one more although many know I might translate a multitude of the same nature into this Discourse and that shall be in the service relating to one who was the Founder of one of the most pernicious Sects that ever infested the Christian world in comparison to many of whom the Gnosticks were Saints the Goths and Vandals were of a Religious Order the Great Turk becomes a Christian and the wild Fanatick is temperate and mild I mean Ignatius Loyola who founded the first Society of the Jesuits to perplex and confound the Councils of Princes and carry on mischievous designs against us as well by those who have been at the top as those that remain at the bottom of the Ladder In the Service at the Celebration of his Festival there is this Prayer or Collect on the one and thirtieth day of July O God! who for the greater propagation of thy glory hast strengthened thy Church militant properly so indeed under the command of a Jesuit with a new aid by blessed Ignatius grant that we who strive or fight on earth by the imitation and help of him may deserve with him to be crowned in the heavens And if they all deserve the same lot may they together possess the same place for fear they should be as troublesome to us in the other world as they have been in this But I will no longer employ my self in translating their prayers Many instances of their petitions to Saints and Angels have been exposed to view in most Books that have been by Protestants written against them I heartily wish that those who use such prayers understood them better because they would then more easily see how poyson is wrap'd in gilded pills Why should I relate the Attributes which the Church of Rome gives to the Cross of Christ as great as to him who suffered on it and yet have no method to shift their blasphemy but by the same way in which they translate their prayers and praises too from the Cross to him who died upon it And though I love not to pursue a Lion to his den for fear that being weary he may be hungry too and take some opportunity to rend and devour Yet it would be a strange expression from a Protestants mouth that which must needs grate upon the ears of all the devout worshippers of God and such as believe that their prayers are heard only through the merits and intercession of Christ Sancta Crux or a pro nobis Holy Cross pray for us And Ave Crux spes unica Hail Cross our only hope would be words that to us would not only seem ridiculous but abominable and if at all considered to any that hope in the mercy of God through him who suffer'd and dyed upon the Cross But notwithstanding all these are things as common with the Papists as whining and another sort of nonsence are among some Separatists that pretend to set themselves at the greatest distance from them Nay any may see if they have skill and leisure to peruse it in an office of or relating to the Holy Cross Printed at Paris 1664. by publick authority such strange expressions as these are After it has begun with a Prayer to God to free men from their enemies by the Sign of the Cross which if we should make a thousand times upon our selves we should hardly be quit from those that are so devout to it we find afterwards these expressions O Crux venerabilis c. I know not how they may edifie in Latin but I am sure that they sound harsh in English and good or bad thus they run O venerable Cross who hast brought salvation to us miserable with what praises shall I extoll thee because thou hast prepared heavenly life for us And in the close of another Hymn the style tho' a new one is in these words O victory of the Cross and admirable sign make us to triumph in the Celestial Court or the Court of Heaven But this is an ungrateful task to me thus to transcribe the most abominable Popish Prayers and as unpleasant as it can be to Protestants to read it And therefore I shall not fill these Papers with those particular addresses which many of them make to individual Saints as they account them who are departed this life for particular things which they suppose to be in the power of them singly to bestow whilst they appropriate one faculty to one and a second to another whilst they constitute a first to be a Patron to their Horses another to their Sheep a third to their Hoggs and another to keep off some Disease from themselves or at least to cure it And so they make them Grooms or Farriers or Swiniards or Shepherds or Physicians or Mountebanks or what they please For I am weary of raking in such a dunghill in which there is neither Barley-corn nor Jewel

of the mischievousness and sinfulness of Schism lib. 5. Cap. 21. Schism saies he is a grievous sin 1. Because it is against Charity to our Neighbour 2. B cause it is against the Edification of him who makes the Separation in that he deprives himself of Communion in Spiritual good 3. Because it is against the honor of Christ in that as much as in it lyeth it takes away the Unity of his Mystical Body And 4. It makes way to Heresie and separation from Christ from whence they conclude that Schism is a sin by all good men to be abhor'd Nay if we look into Pag. 112. we shall find that when men separate from what they acknowledge to be a true Church 'T is Schism And to set up a Church against a Church and as the Ancients call'd it Altar against Altar This is the weakning the hands of the Church hindering the glorious work of Reformation causing the building of Gods House to cease and is a Deformation instead of a Reformation Upon such a dismal state and farther prospect of worse times if any could be so within less than a year after the Throne followed the downfal of the Episcopal Church of England these London Ministers gathered together in a Provincial Assembly thus exhort the people Pag. 110. After their being humbled for the evils that so much abounded for which as they say even those in their daies of Reformation the Earth mourned and the Heavens were black over them when they had mourned seriously every one a part Their desire and advice to them is this That you would put away the iniquity that is in your hand That you would be tender of the Oaths which you have taken and those which may be offered to you That you would prize the Publick Ordinances and reverence your Ministers That you would sanctifie the Sabbaths and hate Hypocrisie and self-seeking That you would receive the love of the truth lest God give you over to believe lies That you would not trust to your own understanding lest God blind your understanding That you would conform to the truths you already know that God may discover to you the truths ye do not know That ye would not have such itching ears as to heap to your selves Teachers nor embrace any Doctrines for the persons sake That ye would seek the truth for the truths sake and not for any outward respect That ye would study Catechism more diligently by degrees be led on to perfection And let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity These were the excellent exhortations of a Province of Divines then separated from the Episcopal Church of England And why should not such admirable instructions and advice be prevalent in this paper since they are transcribed from their own To conclude therefore in the language of this Provincial Assembly If we are a true Church of Christ which the late Doctrine of occasional Communion sufficiently proves and Christ holdeth Communion with us why do any separate from us If we are the Body of Christ do not they who separate from the Body separate from the Head also If the Apostle calls those divisions in the Church of Corinth by the name of Schisms 1 Cor. 1.10 Though Christians there did not separate into divers formed Congregations of several Communions in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper May not your Secession from us and the profession that you cannot join with us as members and setting up Congregations of another Communion be more properly called Schisms Especially when Churches were gathered out of Churches as this Provincial Assembly there complains If any are willing to see more of this let them peruse the Book And the good God give us all a right understanding in all things FINIS

that have been duly educated in the Christian religion and therefore it must be stripped of all the gaudy luxuriances of an Orator not welted with Metaphors nor darkned by any figurative allusions but it ought to be as naked as truth as clear as the light and as plain and open as innocence it self This must not be spoken like the answers of the Oracles in words that may beguile and deceive the simple but it ought to be as plain as the questions of the inquirers were otherwise let the language be what it will 't is but like a prayer in an unknown tongue amusing only but not edifying the Church nor can any person who does not apprehend it rationally pronounce Amen to it because he sets his seal to a blank which men will not do in other cases nay for all that he knows to that which binds him to his own ruin And such prayers S. Paul both redargues and condemns 1 Cor. 14. Secondly our words in prayer must be grave and serious not intermixed with the levities of a Stage as if our words and actions were to be theatrical in prayer and a man were to make a raree shew in religion we must not turn our devotions into a canting burlesque nor cause the weighty conceptions of our souls to be breathed forth in air and fancy as if we were courting a Mistress or a common Hall But our prayers must be wise and grave the business of thought and careful premeditation and our words must be suited to the weight and grandeur of the matter of our petitions What a strange thing is it to hear a man beg by a Romance and to adorn his rags with joques or flowers This better proclaims his madness than his wants What an odd thing is it when a person comes to beg an alms and yet rants a● and tears his benefactor who should be stow it This may be expected at Bethlem only but not in a Church Certainly therefore it must startle and amaze us to see and hear bold men thu● acting towards God Almighty himsel● To find persons raving in their prayer● as if they would hector the gre●● Maker of heaven and earth and sca●● him into a compliance with their d●sires by a loud noise bold words 〈◊〉 too confident importunities woul● make a rational and wise man wo●der where they had learned the Trade Or to hear a man ridiculou●ly groaning and yelping out his prayers in tones unbecoming solemnity making grimaces and wry faces as he had the gripes in his belly 〈◊〉 would think he walked the fields o●ten and had taken notes from the very Cripples Nay to a stranger that had seen and heard both it would admit of some consideration to guess which was the inventor of the faculty and he would conclude both to be artificial but neither to be fitting in the publick service of God Almighty Nay though we pray upon the foundations of promises and Jesus Christ has died for us yet to urge Gods gracious and free promises in such daring and strange language as if it had not been his kindness to make them or our obedience were so compleat that he could not suspend the favours that we petition for destroys that free grace which at other times we magnifie and extol in such a manner as to leave our selves little or no duty to perform As if God must presently be unjust to us if he does not when we please answer our petitions and give us our reward Strange that men in their addresses unto God should no better consider their distance and dependance but assume to themselves such familiarity with their Maker as if they were either his equals or superiors thus robbing him of his glory that they may the better cloath themselves with shame But shall the potsherd fly at the Potters head or dust and ashes endeavour to cloud and obscure heaven shall we do thus who are formed out of the clay whom one word from him to whom we thus rudely address can sentence to an everlasting silence and make the shades below our habitations Nay shall he that can cast our bodies into a grave and our souls into most horrid darkness in the twinkling of an eye and both at last into everlasting burnings who has the disposal of all the blessings and miseries of this life and the eternal rewards and punishments of the next shall he be addressed to in such a manner as if we were his familiar acquaintance Certainly the most high and lofty one the great God of heaven and earth is not so small and inconsiderable a thing as some mens prayers seem to make him Let us hear himself arguing with such rude and careless men Mal. 1.6 A son sayes he honoureth his Father and a servant his Master If I be then a Father where is mine honour And if I be a Master where is my fear saith the Lord of Hosts unto you O Priests That despise my name and yet say wherein have we despised it The Psalmist gives excelent advice in such a case as this Serve the Lord with fear nay our very rejoycing must be with reverence Psal 2.11 And if the great Kings and Judges of the earth to whom David there speaks must thus perform their duty and service to him who is higher than the highest much more ought those who are of a meaner allay to be admonished not to be malepert with their Maker lest instead of favour they receive vengeance and he gives no other answer to their prayers but a speech of Hailstones and coals of fire Let men therefore use such expressions in their addresses to God as may evidence some dread and awe upon their minds and declare such humility and reverence as become those that draw nigh to God Saint Paul justified himself to the Ephesian Bishops by his deportment among them at all seasons but more especially in that he had served the Lord with all humility of mind which they could no otherways discern but by the outward agreement of his words and actions Act. 20.19 And since our words in prayer are only to express our inward sentiments the thoughts and desires of our souls 't is as requisite that they should be grave and serious as they ought to be modest and humble and as necessary too as that our minds should be qualified and adorned with such vertues when we come to speak or present our selves before the great Majesty of the whole world Nay one is so natural a sign of the other that when gravity and humility are planted in the soul they will sprout forth and spread their branches in the words of mens mouths and deportment of their bodies so that where these last things are wanting we have just cause to suspect nay conclude the profession or affirmation that men have the other to be nothing else but a sham and a pretence Thirdly Our words in prayer must be expressive and full because otherwise they answer not the end for which