Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	death_n	jesus_n	life_n	17,697	5	4.4530	3	false

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

are as busily employed in the promoting of that which they love best that which is dearest to God whom they serve the Life and Nature of God There is joy in heaven at the conversion of one sinner Heaven takes notice of it there is a Quire of Angels that sweetly sings the Epithalamium of a Soul divorced from Sinne and Satan and espoused unto Christ What therefore the Wiseman speaks concerning Wisdome I shall apply to Holinesse Take fast hold of Holinesse let her not go keep her for she is thy Life Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of Life of Death too Let nothing be esteemed of greater consequence and concernment to thee then what thou doest and actest how thou livest Nothing without us can make us either happy or miserable nothing can either defile us or hurt us but what goeth out from us what Springeth and Bubbleth up out of our own hearts We have dreadfull apprehensions of the Flames of Hell without us we tremble and are afraid when we hear of Fire and Brimstone whil'st in the mean time we securely nourish within our own hearts a true and living Hell Et caeco carpimur igni the dark fire of our Lusts consumeth our bowels within and miserably scorcheth our souls and we are not troubled at it We do not perceive how Hell steales upon us whilest we live here And as for Heaven we onely gaze abroad expecting that it should come in to us from without but never look for the beginnings of it to arise within in our own hearts But lest there should yet happely remain any prejudice against that which I have all this while heartily commended to you True Holinesse and the Keeping of Christs commandment as if it were a Legall and Servile thing that would subject us to a State of Bondage I must here needs adde a Word or two either for the Prevention or Removall of it I do not therefore mean by Holinesse the mere performance of outward Duties of Religion coldly acted over as a task not our habituall Prayings Hearings Fastings multiplied one upon another though these be all good as subservient to an higher end but I mean an inward Soul and Principle of Divine Life that spiriteth all these that enliveneth and quickeneth the dead carkasse of all our outward Performances whatsoever I do not here urge the de●d Law of outward Works which indeed if it be alone subjects us to a State of Bondage but the inward Law of the Gospel the Law of the Spirit of Life then which nothing can be more free and ingenuous for it doth not act us by Principles without us but is an inward S●lf-moving Principle living in our Hearts I do not urge the Law written upon Tables of stone without us though there is still a good use of that too but the Law of Holinesse written within upon the Fleshly Tables of our hearts The first though it work us into some outward Conformity to Gods Commandments and so hath a good effect upon the World yet we are all this while but like dead Instruments of Musick that found sweetly and harmoniously when they are onely struck and played upon from without by the Musicians Hand who hath the Theory and Law of Musick living within himself But the Second the living Law of the Gospel the Law of the Spirit of Life within us is as if the Soul of Musick should incorporate itself with the Instrument and live in the Strings and make them of their own accord without any touch or impulse from without daunce up and down and warble out their Harmonies They that are acted onely by an outward Law are but like Neurospasts or those little Puppets that skip nimbly up and down and seem to be full of quick and sprightly motion whereas they are all the while moved artificially by certain Wiers and Strings from without and not by any Principle of Motion from themselves within or else like Clocks and Watches that go pretty regularly for a while but are moved by Weights and Plummets or some other Artificiall Springs that must be ever now and then wound up or else they cease But they that are acted by the new Law of the Gospel by the Law of the Spirit they have an inward principle of life in them that from the Centre of it self puts forth it self freely and constantly into all obedience to the will of Christ This New Law of the Gospel it is a kind of Musicall Soul informing the dead Organ of our Hearts that makes them of their own accord delight to act harmoniously according to the Rule of Gods word The Law that I speak of it is a Law of Love which is the most powerfull Law in the World and yet it freeth us in a manner from all Law without us because it maketh us become a Law unto our selves The more it prevaileth in us the more it eateth up and devoureth all other Laws without us just as Aarons Living Rod did swallow up those Rods of the Magicians that were made onely to counterfeit a little Life Quis Legem det amantibus Major lex Amor est sibi Love is at once a Freedome from all Law a State of purest Liberty and yet a Law too of the most constraining and indispensable Necessity The worst Law in the World is the Law of Sinne which is in our members which keeps us in a condition of most absolute Slavery when we are wholly under the Tyrannicall commands of our lusts this is a cruell Pharaoh indeed that sets his hard task-masters over us and maketh us wretchedly drudge in Mire and Clay The Law of the Letter without us sets us in a condition of a little more Liberty by restraining of us from many outward Acts of Sinne but yet it doth not disenthrall us from the power of sinne in our hearts But the Law of the Spirit of life the Gospel-Law of Love it puts us into a condition of most pure and perfect Liberty and whosoever really entertaines this Law he hath thrust out Hagar quite he hath cast out the Bondwoman and her Children from henceforth Sarah the Free woman shall live forever with him and she shall be to him a Mother of many children her seed shall be as the sand of the seashoar for number and as the starres of heaven Here is Evangelicall liberty here is Gospel-freedome when the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Iesus hath made us free from the Law of sinne and death when we have a liberty from sinne and not a liberty to sinne for our dear Lord and Master hath told us that Whosoever committeth sinne he is the servant of it He that lies under the power and vassallage of his base lusts and yet talks of Gospel-freedome he is but like a poore condemned Prisoner that in his sleep dreams of being set at liberty and of walking up and down wheresoever he pleaseth whilst his Legs are all the while lock't

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