Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	evil_a	good_a	indifferent_a	2,973	5	9.5052	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33283	Two sermons preached at Cambridge the first at the Lent assizes, 1654, the other on the yearly commemoration of Dr. Andrew Pern, 1655 / by J. Clerk.	Clarke, Joshua.	1655 (1655)	Wing C4481; ESTC R29962	25,596	69

worldly possessions to themselves upon the right of Saintship or priesthood as we know who do yet to make the profession or dispensation of the Gospel inconsistent with worldly possessions is a mistake on the other hand and as grosse as the former God no where approves much lesse enjoyns the voluntary poverty of sullen Philosophers or superstitious Mendicants Is it the mind of God think ye that his Stewards should rid their hands of their charge and retire into a lazy solitude Or is our Master so rigid and niggardly as to make all the trees of his garden forbidden fruit To spread a table before us and bind us up with those strict rules touch not taste not handle not No the kingdome of heaven is a miscellanie of rich and poor noble and base Princes and peasants Ther 's a poor Lazarus in the bosome of a rich Abraham the great nursing fathers and nursing mothers with their little babes in their arms Though our Saviours outward condition was mean and he was sometimes worse provided then the birds and foxes yet a great disciple of his Joseph of Arimathea was a rich and potent man Religion forbids not to possesse the world but to be possessed of it not to have but to serve mammon Though that of the Apostle be true 1. Cor. 1.26 especially of the Primitive times Not many mighty not many noble are called yet some there have been in all times that have left glorious monuments of their Christian love and have demonstrated that liberalitie and magnificence are Christian graces as well as moral virtues Secondly Let us consider the nature of this charge It is stampt by our Saviour who knew best how to estimate it w th a double character a good character on the one side make friends of mammon it is improvable to a good use and an evil character on the other side the mammon of unrighteousnesse It hangs here betwixt good and evil the use and abuse of it as being of an indifferent nature though rather inclining to evil through the generall corruption of our hearts Let us first consider the evil character the Mammon of unrighteousnesse Some interpreters attending rather the inclination of the phrase then the exigency of the sense render it Riches unjustly gotten and most certain it is that in this case according to the example of Zacheus restauration ought to be made to the persons injured if possible or else to the poore who are their lawfull Attornies by Gods appointment But yet there are two reasons that forbid this interpretation here First We cannot think our Saviour would here suppose his disciples for to them he speaks v. 1. enabled by injury violence and oppression to make themselves friends Nor secondly would he honour ill gotten goods and them onely with these excellent properties of making friends and furthering in any sense their reception into everlasting habitations We may therefore safely conclude that by mammon of unrighteousnesse is meant riches indefinitely not onely that which is the forbidden fruit of fraud and violence but that also which is the lawfull fruit of our birth-right or our industrie or our interest in others All worldly riches whatsoever abstracting from the manner of acquiring them are truly call'd the mammon of unrighteousnesse and so Austin understands it Mammona iniquitatis divitiae sunt seculi omnes undocunque sint and that in a double sense The first and most received is a passive sense The mammon of unrighteousnesse that is the object and matter of all unrighteousnesse of injury and violence in the gathering of pride and luxury in the spending In which sense our Saviour calls them thorns Matt. 13.22 and Paul calls them a temptation and a snare 1. Tim 6.9 Hierome applies that trite proverbiall sentence to this place Dives aut iniquus aut iniqui haeres as generally true With him agree many of the ancients and most of our modern divines too Dominos suos iniquitate involvunt saith Calvin Maximè inveniuntur apud injustos ab injustis maximi fiunt saith Grotius This mammon is that golden apple that puts the whole world into disorder and confusion and through the generall corruption of the sonnes of men becomes both the root and the fruit of their unrighteousnesse The second is an active sense 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 false deceitfull unfaithfull mammon for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are observed to signifie the same in the Greek idiome Though this interpretation at first view be not so plausible as the former yet there are two good arguments of probabilitie for it 1. They observe that the Hebrew phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 divitiae mendacii lying false riches was much in use among the Hebrews in our Saviours time and is often met with in their comments upon the Bible and thence conjecture that this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is onely an interpretation of that phrase 2. The next verse but one after the text seems to favour it If therefore ye have not been faithfull in the unrighteous mammon the same phrase who will commit unto you the true riches where the opposition betwixt unrighteous mammon and the true riches seems to argue that by unrighteous mammon is meant false deceitfull riches riches that deal unjustly and unfaithfully with us for whil'st they tarry they are but as empty husks to our belly and as the rotten sand to our feet and they will not tarry long neither but in our greatest need they take to themselves wings and flie away But whether this or the other be our Saviours meaning most certainly his meaning is to set a mark of ignominie and dishonour upon that great idol Mammon to destroy the magnificence of that Diana whom all the world worshippeth to cast her headlong out of his fathers throne and to debase her in the hearts and thoughts of his disciples Secondly Let 's consider the good character of Mammon Make friends c. as bad as it is a good use may be made of it There is a heavenly art of spiritualizing our worldly enjoyments There is a way to clip the wings of riches and to lay up even our earthly treasure in heaven There is a divine Chymistry that can extract the purest spirits from the most grosse and feculent matter that can advance flints and pebbles to a neare resemblance of pretious stones There is a lawfull craft of coyning your money over again and adding the image and superscription of God to that of Cesars For to the pure all things are pure The beast upon the altar differs not in kind from the beast in the slaughter-house and yet the one is holy the other common It is the altar that sanctifies the gift A holy gracious heart sanctifies all that belongs to it And this seems to me the most proper account of that speech of our Saviour which hath met with so many different conjectures