Selected quad for the lemma: knowledge_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
knowledge_n	faith_n	kindness_n	temperance_n	3,273	5	11.5097	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35343	A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons at Westminster, March 31, 1647 by R. Cudworth ...	Cudworth, Ralph, 1617-1688.	1647 (1647)	Wing C7469; ESTC R22606	36,595	94

sonnes of men and their souls as much overwhelmed and sunke with the cares of this life Do not many of us as much give our selves to the Pleasures of the flesh and though not without regrets of Conscience yet ever now and then secretly soke our selves in them Be there not many of us that have as deep a share likewise in Injustice Oppression in vexing the fatherlesse and the widows I wish it may not prove some of our Cases at that last day to use such pleas as these unto Christ in our behalfe Lord I have prophecied in thy name I have preached many a zealous Sermon for thee I have kept many a long Fast I have been very active for thy cause in Church in State nay I never made any question but that my name was written in thy book of Life when yet alas we shall receive no other return from Christ but this I know you not Depart from me ye Workers of Iniquity I am sure there be too many of us that have long pretended to Christ which make little or no progresse in true Christianity that is Holinesse of life that ever hang hovering in a Twilight of Grace and never seriously put our selves forwards into clear Day-light but esteem that glimmering Crepusculum which we are in and like that faint Twilight better then broad open Day whereas The Path of the just as the Wiseman speaketh is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day I am sure there be many of us that are perpetuall Dwarfs in our spirituall Stature like those silly women that S. Paul speaks of laden with sinnes and led away with divers lusts that are ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth that are not now one jot taller in Christianity then we were many years ago but have still as sickly crazy and unsound a temper of soul as we had long before Indeed we seem to do something we are alwayes moving and lifting at the stone of Corruption that lies upon our hearts but yet we never stirre it notwithstanding or at least never roll it off from us We are sometimes a little troubled with the guilt of our sinnes and then we think we must thrust our lusts out of our hearts but afterwards we sprinkle our selves over with I know not what Holy-water and so are contented to let them still abide quietly within us We do every day truly confesse the same sinnes and pray against them and yet still commit them as much as ever and lie as deeply under the power of them We have the same Water to pump out in every prayer and still we let the same leake in again upon us We make a great deal of noise and raise a great deal of dust with our feet but we do not move from off the ground on which we stood we do not go forward at all or if we do sometimes make a little progresse we quickly loose again the ground which we had gained like those upper Planets in the Heaven which as the Astronomers tell us sometimes move forwards sometimes quite backwards and sometimes perfectly stand still have their Stations and Retrogradations as well as their Direct Motions As if Religion were nothing else but a Dancing up and down upon the same piece of ground and making severall Motions and Friskings on it and not a sober Journying and Travelling onwards toward some certain place We Doe and Undoe we do Penelopes telam texere we weave sometimes a Web of Holinesse but then we let our lusts come and undoe and unravell all again Like Sisyphus in the Fable we roll up a mighty Stone with much ado sweating and tugging up the Hill and then we let it go and tumble down again unto the bottome and this is our constant work Like those Danaides which the Poets speak of we are alwayes filling water into a Sive by our Prayers Duties and Performances which still runs out as fast as we poure it in What is it that thus cheats us and gulls us of our Religion That makes us thus constantly to tread the same Ring and Circle of Duties where we make no progresse at all forwards and the further we go are still never the nearer to our journeys end What is it that thus starves our Religion and makes it look like those Kine in Pharaohs Dream illfavoured and lean fleshed that it hath no Colour in its face no Bloud in its veines no Life nor Heat at all in its members What is it that doth thus bedwarfe us in our Christianity What low sordid and unworthy Principles do we act by that thus hinder our growth and make us stand at a stay and keep us alwayes in the very Porch and Entrance where we first began Is it a sleepy sluggish Conceit That it is enough for us if we be but once in a State of Grace if we have but once stepped over the threshold we need not take so great paines to travel any further Or is it another damping choaking stifling Opinion That Christ hath done all for us already without us and nothing need more to be done within us No matter how wicked we be in our selves for we have holinesse without us no matter how sickly and diseased our souls be within for they have health without them Why may we not as well be satisfied and contented to have Happinesse without us too to all Eternity and so our selves forever continue miserable Little Children let no man deceive you he that doth righteousnesse is righteous even as he is righteous but he that committeth sinne is of the Devil I shall therefore exhort you in the wholesome words of S. Peter Give all diligence to adde to your faith vertue and to vertue knowledge to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience to patience godlinesse and to godlinesse brotherly kindnesse and to brotherly kindnesse charity For if these things be in you and abound they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitfull in the knowledge of our Lord Iesus Christ The Apostle still goes on and I cannot leave him yet But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see far off and hath forgotten that he was once purged from his old sinnes Wherefore the rather Brethren give diligence to make your calling and election sure for if ye do these things ye shall never fall Let us not onely talk and dispute of Christ but let us indeed put on the Lord Iesus Christ Having those great and precious promises which he hath given us let us strive to be made partakers of the Divine Nature escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust and being begotten again to a lively hope of enjoying Christ hereafter let us purifie our selves as he is pure Let us really declare that we know Christ that we are his Disciples by our keeping of his Commandments and amongst the rest that Commandment especially which our Saviour Christ himself

faint away though we strive to raise them and recover them never so much with the Strong Waters and Aqua vitae of our own ungrounded presumptions The least inward lust willingly continued in will be like a worme fretting the Gourd of our jolly confidence and presumptuous perswasion of Gods love and alwayes gnawing at the root of it and though we strive to keep it alive and continually besprinkle it with some dews of our own yet it will alwayes be dying and withering in our bosomes But a good Conscience within will be alwayes better to a Christian then health to his navell and marrow to his bones it will be an everlasting cordiall to his heart it will be softer to him then a bed of doune and he may sleep securely upon it in the midst of raging and tempestuous seas when the winds bluster and the waves beat round about him A good conscience is the best looking-glasse of heaven in which the soul may see God's thoughts and purposes concerning it as so many shining starres reflected to it Hereby we know that we know Cbrist hereby we know that Christ loves us if we keep his Commandments Secondly If hereby onely we know that we know Christ by our keeping his Commandments Then the knowledge of Christ doth not consist merely in a few barren Notions in a form of certain dry and saplesse Opinions Christ came not into the world to fil our heads with mere Speculations to kindle a fire of wrangling and contentious dispute amongst us and to warm our spirits against one another with nothing but angry peevish debates whilst in the mean time our hearts remain all ice within towards God and have not the least spark of true heavenly fire to melt and thaw them Christ came not to possesse our brains onely with some cold opinions that send down nothing but a freezing and benumming influence upon our hearts Christ was Vitae Magister not Scholae and he is the best Christian whose heart beats with the truest pulse towards heaven not he whose head spinneth out the finest cobwebs He that endeavours really to mortifie his lusts and to comply with that truth in his life which his Conscience is convinced of is neerer a Christian though he never heard of Christ then he that believes all the vulgar Articles of the Christian faith and plainly denyeth Christ in his life Surely the way to heaven that Christ hath taught us is plain and easie if we have but honest hearts we need not many Criticismes many School-distinctions to come to a right understanding of it Surely Christ came not to ensnare us and intangle us with captious niceties or to pusle our heads with deep speculations and lead us through hard and craggie notions into the Kingdome of heaven I perswade my self chat no man shall ever be kept out of heaven for not comprehending mysteries that were beyond the reach of his shallow understanding if he had but an honest and good heart that was ready to comply with Christs Commandments Say not in thins heart Who shall ascend into heaven that is with high speculations to bring down Christ from thence or Who shall descend into the abysse beneath that is with deep searching thoughts to fetch up Christ from thence but loe the word is nigh thee even in thy mouth and in thy heart But I wish it were not the distemper of our times to scare and fright men onely with opinions and make them onely solicitous about the entertaining of this and that speculation which will not render them any thing the better in their lives or the liker unto God whilst in the mean time there is no such care taken about keeping of Christs Commandments and being renewed in our minds according to the image of God in righteousnesse and true holinesse We say Loe here is Christ and Loe there is Christ in these and these opinions whereas in truth Christ is neither here nor there nor anywhere but where the Spirit of Christ where the life of Christ is Do we not now adayes open and lock up heaven with the private key of this and that opinion on of our own according to our severall fancies as we please And if any one observe Christs Commandments never so sincerely and serve God with faith and a pure conscience that yet happely skils not of some contended for opinions some darling notions he hath not the right Shibboleth he hath not the true Watch-word he must not passe the Guards into heaven Do we not make this and that opinion this and that outward form to be the Wedding-garment and boldly sentence those to outer darknesse that are not invested therewith Whereas every true Christian finds the least dram of hearty affection towards God to be more cordiall and sovereign to his soul then all the speculative notions and opinions in the world and though he study also to inform his understanding aright and free his mind from all errour and misapprehensions yet it is nothing but the life of Christ deeply rooted in his heart which is the Chymicall Elixer that he feeds upon Had he all faith that he could remove mountains as S. Paul speaks had he all knowledge all tongues and languages yet he prizeth one dram of love beyond them all He accounteth him that feeds upon mere notions in Religion to be but an aiery and Chamelion-like Christian He findeth himself now otherwise rooted and centred in God then when he did before merely contemplate and gaze upon him he tasteth and relisheth God within himself he hath quendam saporem Dei a certain savour of him whereas before he did but rove and guesse at random at him He feeleth himself safely anchored in God and will not be disswaded from it though perhaps he skill not many of those subtleties which others make the Alpha and Omega of their Religion Neither is he scared with those childish affrightments with which some would force their private conceits upon him he is above the superstitious dreading of mere speculative opinions as well as the superstitious reverence of outward ceremonies he cares not so much for subtlety as for soundnesse and health of mind And indeed as it was well spoken by a noble Philosopher {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that without purity and virtue God is nothing but an empty name so it is as true here that without obedience to Christs Commandments without the life of Christ dwelling in us whatsoever opinions we entertain of him Christ is but onely named by us he is not known I speak not here against a free and ingenuous enquiry into all Truth according to our severall abilities and opportunities I plead not for the captivating and enthralling of our judgements to the Dictates of men I do not disparage the naturall improvement of our understanding faculties by true Knowledge which is so noble and gallant a perfection of the mind but the thing which I aime against is the dispiriting of the life