Selected quad for the lemma: love_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
love_n	commandment_n	keep_v	love_v	23,346	5	7.4368	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60611	A sermon preached on the fourth Sunday in Lent, in the Cathedral Church of Norwich wherein is represented the great sin and danger of neglecting the Holy Communion / by W. Smyth, D.D. ...	Smith, William, b. 1615 or 16.	1680 (1680)	Wing S4282; ESTC R17812	17,831	42

need such an information of their duty or the suteableness of it to your Lordships Design and Inclination I hope it will not be a Presumption in me to beg and expect Your acceptance of it as it 's Humbly presented to Your Lordships Patronage by My LORD Your Lordships Obedient Son and Servant W. SMYTH Norwich March 26. 1680. A SERMON PREACHED On the Fourth Sunday in LENT LUKE xxii 19. This do in remembrance of me THough a Veneration to Primitive Devotion the great President of General practice the express Laws of our own Church and the Prayers that we have joyn'd in to beg for Abstinence at this time cannot be admitted as competent Arguments to us to attend the Discipline of the Lent Fast Yet surely the reason of the thing that is how Fasting in it self may in several respects be made advantageous to the Souls of men might make us afraid to decline much more to despise this Office of Religion But I have already discours'd of those things in this place and upon this occasion That which I at first propounded to my self to endeavour at this time was to prepare you for the Holy Sacrament you will shortly be invited to it being one principal reason why the Ancients practised and press'd the Observance of this Solemn Fast that men might the better prepare themselves for this great Ordinance at the great and Solemn Feast of Easter And for that reason it was commonly called the Paschal or Easter Fast. But while I was limiting my thoughts to that subject I was discouraged with fears that in a great measure I should lose my labour considering that this Sacrament it self is almost as generally neglected as is the Fast which should prepare for it And thereupon I thought it was more adviseable First to endeavour to fetch men off from their disregard to the end and to possess them with a right understanding and due esteem of it before I engaged them in the means preparatory to it For which purpose I have made choice of this Text which I shall not manage as usually it hath been either by making Observations upon the Occasion which our Saviour took for its Institution from the Jews Posteoelium or by wearying you with an accumulated collection of the advanced expressions of the Fathers concerning its worth and excellency or by multiplying cases of Conscience in which I am afraid some men have been too busie as to its preparation And much less by engaging your Attentions to the controversal points about it But my present design shall be to prove that every Christian stands obliged in Conscience to close with all opportunities that are offered him for the receiving of the Lords Supper This I find no proof of in the Ancient writings because the necessity of it was always so presum'd to be understood by every man that bore the name of Christian that they might have been suspected to have thrown away their Bibles or to have renounced the whole Christian Faith as soon as to plead for an habitual neglect or refusal of it Not to receive the Sacrament was all one as not to be a Christian at all in their esteem and would have made a Christian as great a prodigy as he was who at Athens deny'd a Deity 'T is our only Age and Nation that can complain of so many who to the scandal of our Profession have either humorously scrupled it or impudently refused it or that are so unwillingly hald to it This therefore is my Design at present so far as my present Office and the short time for it will allow me to bring mens minds into a better temper to fetch home the scatter'd parties that do run away from Christ's fold and that will not submit to the Communion of the Flock It is to make men truly Christians in the highest instance of the Profession of their Religion and to perswade them to that whereby they are especially distinguishable from Jews and Pagans And all this I shall attempt to do by my mention'd method Not by a kind and passionate Exhortation the Church hath saved me that labour nor shall I do it by suggesting to your notice the just menaces of the Law for both those expedients have been found not sufficiently successful and are daily controul'd by obstinacy and pretence But I say it shall be my endeavour to set before you such sufficient reasons as may uncontrouleably bind the Consciences of men and convincingly prove that every Christian is absolutely and indispensably bound upon the hazzard of his Souls eternal loss customarily to receive the Sacrament of our Lords Body and Bloud And my reasons are form'd into these sive Arguments First the Receiving the Holy Sacrament is absolutely necessary to Salvation necessitate praecepti that is it is an express command of Christ Hespake imperatively in the Institution 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do this 'T is my will my Injunction 'T is not left at your liberty as indifferent to be performed or omitted at your pleasure Neither did our Saviours Injunction relate only to the then present Apostles but St. Paul repeats the very Institution it self and applies the obligation of it to the Corinthians and upon the same account to all Christians in all succeeding ages to the Churches period That thus they should shew the Lords death till his coming again And therefore it ought to lye as close upon your Consciences as any other Commandment of the Gospel whatsoever and perhaps more closely as being with the other Sacramental Precept enacted by Christs purely Soveraign and absolute Authority And therefore the observance of it is a greater tryal of your submission to his peculiar Dominion and manifests a greater regard to his Person than can be expressed in other preceptive cases where our duty was prescribed before by Natural Religion and the reason of the thing And now I advise you to consider what you will answer to those expressions of the holy Jesus when he so solemnly made the keeping of his Commandments Joh. 14. 15. the great Test of our love to him If you love me saith he keep my Commandments And again when he makes the keeping of them to be the most assured evidence of his love to us If saith he ye keep my Commandments Joh. 15. 10. ye shall abide in my love even as I abide in my Fathers love I say what can you answer to Christ in that case if among those Commandments this is especially to be accounted one and that which is more peculiarly his as 't is of his proper Institution and by his own Soveraign appointment What can you think that some one or more of other Christian duties can expiate for the neglect of this that is equally as necessary or shall much hearing and praying believing and applying compensate for such an omission Heavenly Justice admits no such arts of Commutation Why do you make Conscience of any other Commandment or think your selves oblig'd to any other service of God