Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	bishop_n	earl_n	sir_n	26,416	5	6.9058	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51227	A sermon preach'd before the Lord Mayor, and the Court of Aldermen, at Guild-Hall Chappel, on the 28th of May, 1682 by John Moore ...	Moore, John, 1646-1714.	1682 (1682)	Wing M2552; ESTC R20127	21,938	53

MOORE MAJOR Curia Specialis tent die Lunae xxix no. Maii 1682. Annoque Regni Regis Caroli Secundi Angl ' c. xxxiiii ta This Court doth desire Dr. Moore to Print his Sermon Preached yesterday at the Guild-Hall Chappel before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of this City Wagstaffe A SERMON Preach'd before the Lord Mayor AND THE Court of ALDERMEN AT GUILD-HALL Chappel ON The 28th of May 1682. By JOHN MOORE D. D. Chaplain to the Right Honorable Heneage Earl of Nottingham Lord High Chancellor of England LONDON Printed for Walter Kittilby at the Bishops Head in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1682. To the Right Honorable Sir John Moore Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen of the City of London My LORD THE Meekness Peace and Charity of which our Saviour was so Zealous a Preacher and so great an Example seem to be in a manner lost in the beats bitterness and noise with which men manage their Disputes about his holy Religion as if the Character of a true Christian was to be taken rather from the contentiousness of his Spirit and his skill in Controversy than the Purity of his Mind and Conversation When yet nothing can bring a greater disparagement upon Christianity and prove more fatal to the Professors of it than to make it the occasion of those Evils and Mischiefs among Men and of that disturbance in the World which God purposely intended it should allay and extinguish It was my design in this Discourse which in obedience to your Commands I now make Public to take men off from their furious debates about 〈…〉 often not material to 〈…〉 earnestly to press them unto the ex 〈…〉 of those Primitive Vertues upon which our Religion has always laid so much stress and which our Lord hath so plainly declared to be the indispensable conditions of our Salvation by shewing that all necessary Christian Doctrines have a natural tendency to that Godliness which is now too generally neglected And I am the more bold to perfix your Lordships name to it because you are known to be so fair a Pattern of that Practical Religion I recommend both in your private life as a Christian and in your Public Capacity as a Magistrate I am My Lord Your Lordships most humble and obedient Servant John Moore A SERMON Preached before the Lord Mayor c. May 28. 1682. 1 TIM VI. 3 And to the Doctrine which is according to Godliness WHen we consider there never was any Religion in the World which did so earnestly recommend and so strictly enjoyn Godliness as the Christian Religion has done and yet that so little of it do's appear in the lives of Christians we must conclude that there are either great defects in the Religion or faults in the Professors of it we must either say there is not a sufficiency in the means Christianity do's prescribe and afford towards the attainment of true Piety and Virtue or else that the blame is to be laid upon them who having undertaken the Christian Profession do neglect or despise the means and instruments provided by their Religion to make them Holy here and happy for ever And it will not be hard to determin on which side the fault lies for God and Religion have not been wanting to Men but Men have been wanting to themselves There being nothing required in our Religion as our Duty and a necessary Condition of our Happiness which is above our strength assisted with that Grace which every one may obtaine who sincerely prays to God for it Therefore if men will not make use of that Grace which God so plentifully poures forth upon all it is but fit and equal that they impute their defects to themselves And few have had the boldness directly to charge their Vices upon God as if he had denyed them power and opportunitys to have been better They will lay their faults upon themselves but with some privat reserves and Suggestions that those faults are very pardonable ones as being neither much offensive to God nor plainly repugnant to the state of good men So the Common way has been for men to frame such a model of Religion to themselves as might sute with a vitious life and help to quiet the complaints of an uneasy conscience Thus when Persons are debauch'd in their morals they are apt presently to turn Hereticks in their Faith It having been observed that nothing is more usual than for men to shelter the Monstrous impiety of their lives under some or as notoriously impious Opinion and to depart as far in their belief from the true Doctrins of Christ as they had before Strayed in their practice from his Holy precepts Thus some men have justified a wicked life by denying the differences between Good and Evil and others have excused it by pretending all their actions are under a fatal decree and come necessarily to pass Some again make the performance of Obedience to Gods Laws very needless by disowning his providence and care of the World Others would exempt themselves from the ties of godliness and virtue by fansying their Religion to consist only in true believing and others place it all in outward shew and Ceremony Some again hope they may enjoy both the brutish pleasures of this life and the pure ones of the next and carry their sins a long with them to Heaven by so exalting and extending Gods mercy unto obstinately Impenitent Sinners as to deny both his Justice and Truth and others cut the sinews of Religion by calling in question the Resurrection of the Dead and the rewards of the Life to come So Simon Magus that infamous Magician and Founder of all the Heresys which followed him that he might serve his vain Glory and Ambition did covet the gifts of the Holy Ghost and hoped to purchase them by Money he also boasted that he himself was God and appeared in Samaria as the Father among the Jews as the Son and to the Gentiles as the holy Spirit he also deny'd that Man had any liberty of will or that there was any necssity of good Works So the Nicolaitans for a cover to their abominable Lusts taught there ought to be Community of Wives and that to commit Fornication and to eat meats offer'd to Idols were things indifferent Thus Menander and Marcion disowned Gods being the maker of the World ascribing that work of Omnipotency to Angels Thus also Himenaeus and Philetus denied the Resurrection Some of these ungodly Men lived in the days of the Apostles of whom St. Jude saies they turned the grace of God into lasciviousness denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ Now what in the Primitive Church was the disease only of some few Men seems in our unhappy age to have been a plague which has generally infected and spread its malignity over the Face of the Christian World Great numbers in these times as they have given themselves up to the filthiest of the vices among