Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	day_n	prove_v	sabbath_n	10,739	5	10.5479	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59564	A sermon preached on the 28th of June, at St. Giles in the Fields by John Sharp ... ; at his leaving ye parish ...	Sharp, John, 1645-1714.	1691 (1691)	Wing S2992; ESTC R15037	14,490	31

you mean to make it the business of your lives to recommend your selves to him you would in the next place take care to keep up that sense by a constant and daily Worship of him For God's sake and for your own Souls sake do not neglect your Prayers You must never think that God will bless you if you do not make a Conscience of daily paying him your tribute of Honour and Worship Be sure therefore you be constant in your private Devotions As you every day receive the renewed pledges of God's love and goodness towards you in a thousand instances so let every day your affection and gratitude be express'd to him by hearty Prayer and Thanksgiving This is absolutely necessary to be done as I have often told you if you mean to preserve any hearty sense of Religion in your minds But besides this I have another thing to recommend to all those that have Families They are Heads and Governours of a Society For indeed the first notion of Society is that of a Family Every Family is a little Kingdom and every Kingdom is or ought to be a great Family Now is it natural is it decent that there should be any Society upon earth wherein God should not be owned and worshipped And yet woe be to us how many thousands of Families are there in this Kingdom nay I am afraid even in and about this City wherein God is not so much as named in publick unless perhaps by the way of affront by the way of Cursing or Swearing We deservedly complain of the great looseness and profaneness and irreligion that hath overspread the face of this Nation O! I doubt a great deal of the blame of it lies upon the Housholders the Masters of Families among us If they would take better care of their Children and Servants and let them know what it is to worship God things would not be so bad among us But how can we expect better when there is no Religion either taught or practised in our houses We give our domesticks opportunities enough of learning all our bad qualities but we give them none of learning our good ones if we have any They see us offending God by many rash words and sinful actions but they do not see us repenting and asking God's pardon by our solemn Prayers and applications to the Throne of Grace Let us therefore seriously lay this point to heart I am sure we have just cause to do it Let us bring Religion into our Families and not be contented that once a week some of our people in their turns should hear something of it Let us every day call our family together and pay our common tribute of Prayer and Praise for the mercies we do daily receive in common Methinks our Saviour seemed to have a respect to this very duty and to charge it mightily upon us when he made us that gracious promise that even where two or three were gathered together in his name there would he be in the midst of them Sure his words have most naturally a respect to the worship of God that is perform'd in Families As hath likewise the very contrivance of the Lord's Prayer all the Petitions thereof being so framed as to be most proper to be said by more than one and yet too when we have shut our doors for that purpose But Thirdly As you ought to take care about the worship of God in your Closets and in your Families let me add that it equally concerns you to frequent the more publick worship of God in his own house It is a bad sign of some very ill Principle or other for any man to be much a stranger there Even to have the liberty and opportunity of worshipping God in publick is one of the greatest blessings and priviledges that we can have in this World and hath by good men always been so accounted Now sure if we have this Notion of it we shall think our selves mightily concerned to take all opportunities that come in our way not only on Sundays but on other days of resorting to the publick Assemblies and joyning with them in the solemn sacrifice of Prayer and Thanksgiving and thinking it a good day to us wherein we have thus employed our selves The Sacrifices of this kind that we offer to God with an honest and devout mind we cannot doubt will always find acceptance and produce their effects nay perhaps when our Closet-prayers will not For there are certainly more promises to publick prayers than to private ones Tho' yet both are very good nay both are absolutely necessary But to proceed Fourthly Being upon this Argument of the means and instruments of Religion you may be sure I cannot omit the mentioning of another thing as one of those points that I would most seriously recommend to you and that is the solemn observation of the Lord's Day I am not for laying stress upon the keeping of this day or any other more than the nature of the thing requires I am sensible that the doctrine about the observation of the Sabbath as it is delivered by some Men is superstitious enough and oftentimes where it is believed proves rather a snare to mens Consciences than of use to make them more Religious Far therefore am I from desiring you to be nice and scrupulous about the Punctilio's of the Lord's day service The Laws both of God and men have in that matter left a great deal to your own discretion and the circumstances you are in But however thus much is necessary that every man who professeth himself a Christian should bear a constant Religious regard to the Lord's Day by devoting it to spiritual uses more especially the publick worship of God I do not much doubt of the truth of the observation which some good men have made viz. That a man shall prosper much better both in his Spiritual and Temporal Affairs all the week after for his careful observance of the Lord's day And I am likewise of opinion that those men have little or no sense of Religion that make no conscience of sanctifying that day or that put no difference between it and other days Sure I am were there nothing of a divine command for the setting apart this day to Religious uses which yet I believe there is yet it is one of the most prudent and useful Constitutions that ever was made So that even upon that account all men that have any honour for God or zeal for the publick good should think themselves obliged to observe it The benefits of it are indeed unspeakable Not to mention the Civil or Temporal conveniences of it in truth to the keeping up the Religion of this day we owe in a great measure that the very Face of Christianity hath hitherto been preserved among us And were it not for this for any thing I know most of us in a very few years would become little better than Heathens Barbarians And so great an influence towards