Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	church_n	england_n	reform_a	4,212	5	9.5265	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A40986	The content of a wayfaring man ; and The accompt of a ministers removall : two sermons, the one preached at the morning lecture in the citie of London, the other more enlarged in another congregation / by J.F. ...	Fathers, John.	1648 (1648)	Wing F552; ESTC R32801	36,733	50

But I shall onely desire you to reade over and consider well that passage in Jere. 34. from the 15. ver to the 21. In ver the 15. the Lord commends the Princes and the people that they had entred into the Covenant You have done that which was right in my sight saith God in making a Covenant with mee in the house that is called by my Name But ver 16. he charges them with the dishonest breach of it But yee have turned and polluted my holy Name See my Brethren Covenant-breaking is a polluting of that sacred dreadfull Name which is most solemnly invocated and attested in Covenant-making But how had they broken Covenant Why they proclaimed liberty for Gods people and had done nothing towards it therefore sayes God ver 17. I will also proclaime a liberty for you even a liberty to the sword to the pestilence and to the famine and I will make you to be removed into all the Kingdomes of the earth and ver 20. I will even give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of them that seek their life and their dead bedies shall be for meat unto the fowles of the Heaven and to the beasts of the earth And that you may take speciall notice who they are that are the marks of this direfull wrath the Spirit of God doth notably point them out unto you ver 18. They are the men that have transgressed my Covenant which have not performed the words of the Covenant which they made before me when they did cut the Calfe in twaine and passed between the parts thereof This was a ceremony used amongst the Jewes in maing Covenants wherein they did tacitly imprecate the holy God even so to cut them in pieces who did breake the Covenant as they did cut the Calfe and as they did passe between the divided pieces so the Lord to cause his fiery indignation to passe between them who divided one from the other in the bond of the holy Covenant And now my Brethren if the most just God be so extreamly severe in breach of Covenants between man and man how think you will he make his jealousie to smoake against those that break Covenant with himselfe in those things which doe most neerly concern his worship and the glory of his Name Methinks I could spend in this subject as much more time as I have already spent and need indeed requires it but that I must hasten I will onely bring hither those words which our Saviour in another sense useth Mat. 24.18 Let him which is in the field not turne backe to take up his cloaths so say I to him that is in the Citie if you were to loose your cloaths from your backs doe not turne backe from the holy Covenant Counsell 2 My second Counsell is this Take heed of apostatizing from any knowne experimentall truths of Jesus Christ this enters as iron into the soules of your godly Ministers to see those whom they have looked upon as their spirituall seed and travaile of their soules to recede from that forme of wholesome words they had received to see them suck the bloud of Dragons whom they had so carefully nursed up at the breasts of consolation and to have their affections stolen away from them and from Jesus Christ too by those who never spent a breath towards their spirituall birth And as there cannot be a greater heart-breaking unto Ministers so neither can Religion receive a deeper wound any way then by the Apostasie of professors wee are an hissing not onely to Gath and Askelon to the proud scoffing world but even to Judah and Ephraim to all the reformed Churches of Christendome to see how deeply how suddenly London England have corrupted themselves In the beginning of this Parliament wee admired to see how England was turned Arminian and how neere it was got of a sudden unto to Rome wee have now more cause to wonder how Rome is come into England and how England is turned Libertine Pelagian Socinian Antinomian Antiscriptarian Antitrinitarian yea it hath had so many turnings as that turning unto Christ by repentance and humiliation is now turned out of doores and throwne aside as an old dotage of legall servitude wee know not whether the tyranny of Bishops or treachery of seducers have done London England most hurt for the one kept from us the power of godlinesse the other hath beguiled us even of the forme of it Shall I tell you and with reverence I would that our apostasie from God hath caused God even to apostatize from us I speake in the same sense as God speaks of himselfe that he repents and is sorry for what he hath done God was in a very faire way to have reformed England he had cast us in as rich advantages as ever any Nation or age was betrusted with He had awaked the zeale of all his faithfull ones in three Kingdomes he had contributed the counsells of divers reformed Churches he had broken the strength of all opposers and because wee have apostatized from our former zeale God hath also turned back from his Divine Justice holds proportion with our sin because we have said the time of reformation is not yet come God hath stept aside from us and said well if you let goe this you shall never have such a time more Those that observe the Story of the Eastern Churches doe alledge this as the great provocation of Gods wrath to bring upon them the blasphemous doctrine of Mahomet because they rejected the wholesome truths of the Gospel When once we begin to nauseate at old truths and as flies about a Candle to play about new lights it is a thousand to one but wee singe our wings if wee burne not our selves before we get off The least backsliding is in attendancy to totall and finall apostafie and when wee once look back wee have no more power to turne about againe then Lots wife who was instantly made a monument of her own revolt I will close this with that of the Apostle Hebr. 10.25 Heb. 3.12 Take heed brethren least there be in any of you an evill heart of unbeliefe to depart from the living God This evill heart reignes in some dwells in the best it is the mother of all sinne but apostafie is its primogenite this begins in contempt of Ordinances for such is the departing here a forsaking of the holy Assemblies as elsewhere the Apostle doth interpret himselfe and this he calls a departing from the living God because God in every Ordinance might be enjoyed where there is faith to bring him home now this God lives to take vengeance on all those that depart from him therefore take heed how yee provoke this living God by despising his Ordinances and discouraging his Ministers and so departing from him in the law of his Gospel-worship This is the second Counsell Counsell 3 My third Counsell is that of the 32. Canon of the Councell of Towers Let all