Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	world_n	worldly_a	worship_v	47	3	7.4948	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62960	An exhortation unto reformation amplified, by a discourse concerning the parts and progress of that work, according to the word of God, delivered in a sermon preached in the audience of the General Assembly of the Massachusets colony, at Boston in New-England, May 27, 1674, being the day of election there / by Samvel Torrey ...	Torrey, Samuel, 1632-1707.; Mather, Increase, 1639-1723.	1674 (1674)	Wing T1916; ESTC R13732	47,259	54

must also improve and exercise our Liberty in way of Love Peace Union and Communion unto mutual edification and comfort By love serving one another Gal. 5.3 O this is the onely sweet and comfortable life of Christian Liberty It is a very sinful shameful abuse of Christian Liberty to make it an occasion to the flesh to make it subservient to Libertinism to Licentiousness to carnal Reason and Policy to worldly Designs and Ends to the lusts of the flesh the lusts of men in fomenting Divisions Contentions and of making it a cloak of maliciousness 1 Pet. 2.16 Surely it is a great part of our work of Reformation to Reform these Abuses of our Christian Liberty VVe are People highly Priviledged with Christian Liberty and advantaged to the exercise of it O that we better understood it and improved it Let us alwayes remember to keep our Liberty wholly subservient unto our Religion and not set up Liberty above Religion if so we shall lose both our Religion and our Liberty together 6 Labour unto the promotion and progress of the work of Reformation by recovery of your first Love Peace and Vnion O the loss of our first Love Peace and Union hath hitherto been an irreparable loss an incurable wound concerning which we may take up our Lamentation and say Jer. 8.20 21 22. The harvest is past the summer is ended and we are not healed for the hurt of my people I am hurt I am black astonishment hath taken hold upon me Is there no Balm in Gilead is there no Physician there why then is not the hurt of the daughter of my people recovered O are our Divisions become judicial and so incurable If so our state is truly lamentable as Jer. 16.5 Thus saith the Lord Enter not into the house of mourning neither go to lament nor bemoan them for I have taken away my peace from this people saith the Lord even loving kindness and mercies If it should be so well might the hearts and hopes of all our faithful Leaders fail whose labours have hither unto much failed Surely then the recovery of our first Love Peace and Union is a chief part of the work of Reformation and will be found a very hard and difficult part of the work In order hereunto 1. We must remember from whence we are fallen O let the remembrance of the sweetness and blessedness of our first Love Peace and Union convince and humble us under the sin of our Envyings Strifes Debates Divisions Contentions and Emulations c. It was the sad state of the Church of Corinth that although they were lamentably distressed and distracted with Divisions yet they were not sensible of the sin of them but were puffed up and did glory one against another O that it were nothing so with us truly so long as it is so there will be no hope of healing O that we were convinced of the sin of our Division and the multitude of sins that are begotten by it that we might mourn penitentially and bemoan our selves before God with brokenness of heart and earnestly beseech him to pardon and to purge away all that sin and to grant us reforming grace Truly untill we are thus convinced and humbled there will be no Reformation 2. We must labour to recover our first Spirit of Love Peace and Union pray earnestly unto God to pour his Spirit upon us a Spirit of Love to pour out abundance of the grace of Love to create Love Peace and Union for us and to take away the Spirit of Division which we are so deeply corrupted withall 3. We must labour to recover our first New-England Interest that is that Interest upon which this People and these Churches were first founded as to their Religious Constitution which is God and Religion this is the onely uniting Interest our very hearts and Souls will cleave and unite most intirely in Love with Peace and Union in our God and our Religion this Interest will make a people of one heart and of one Soul Jer. 32.39 They shall be my people and I will be their God and I will give them one heart and one way to fear me Observe when a people do cleave close to God and his Covenant and so unto Religion they have one heart and one way that is sweet and perfect Unity and Amity O this is our great mischief and misery and the very original of our defection that we have much forsaken our proper New-England Interest we have committed these two great evils Jer. 2.13 Forsaken our God and hewn out Cisterns We have been changing of our main Fundamental Interest we have been deserting our own Religious Interest espousing another viz. a Worldly Interest we are turning from God after the World the World is becoming the main Interest of N. E. and we are becoming a worldly people a people of a worldly Spirit Principles Practises I do not mean onely nor so much in seeking and prosecuting the things of the World although that be enough to denominate us notoriously Worldly but our turning our very Religion it self into a Worldly Interest by making of it the subject of Carnal Confidences resting trusting and boasting in it and also by making of it the subject of Carnal Contentions and so setting Religion against it self and the Professors of it one against another and so making of it subservient unto worldly designs yea unto worldly lusts and thereby making it in our Profession and Practise of it a meer Worldly Religion yea too many do too much make their professed Confidence in God himself a worldly Interest subservient to their worldly lusts as they Mic. 3.11 Yet will they lean upon the Lord and say Is not the Lord in the midst of us none evil can come unto us When a worldly Spirit worldly Principles worldly Wisdome and Counsels do sway and preponderate in all matters both Civil and Religious then a people are fully and throughly setled upon a Worldly Interest and are truly become a Worldly people And then comes all kinde of Dissentions Contentions Emulations Strifes Debate c. for the World is alwayes a dividing Interest and all our Divisions are carnal and worldly 1 Cor. 3.3 Jam. 4.3 Whatever pretences of a Religious Zeal the Fomentors of Division may make it is a Worldly Spirit that foments all Divisions and it is utterly impossible that ever a worldly spirited people should unite upon sure grounds of Union or that any people should ever unite at all in a worldly Interest And therefore if we can relinquish our worldly Interest and retrive our own onely true and proper Interest which is our God and Religion set and settle our hearts again upon God and Religion this would heal all our Divisions and reform all As a change of Interest hath been the great Cause of our general defection so a change of Interest again would consummate our Reformation It is the Prescription which God gives unto that Backsliding

open and professed Enemies unto pure Churches Worship and Ordinances are arisen unto so high a degree of bold Presumption among us and that notwithstanding they know that Publick Authority is by good and wholsome Laws and so by Oath and so by Conscience and by divers obligations both Civil and Sacred engaged against them I am no Casuist in the great Case of Toleration neither shall I undertake either to state dispute or decide that Question what is in it self or in divers respects or cases at divers times and places either Tolerable or Intolerable in matters disputable But this I take to be undeniable That gross bold scandalous presumptuous transgression of any one or more or all the Commandments of the First Table perpetrated and persisted in with an high hand notwithstanding all due means of Conviction used and against clear light held forth and manifestly under the Prevailing Power of a Spirit of Errour with malignity in open opposition to the Truth the true Churches worship and ordinances of Christ I say I take it to be unquestionable That such transgression it is Intolerable Such I take to be the transgression of those who do grosly and scandalously profane any of the holy Ordinances of Christ in the Administration of them presuming to offer strange fire but much more of those who do both professedly and practically deny most if not all Fundamentals both of Faith and Order and are known and acknowledged so to do by all the Reformed Churches in the world who are in their wayes of corrupt worship no less the Synagogue of Satan then those in Rev. 2.9 Now I say if such Transgressors and Transgressions should after the long labour and patience of these Churches in a strong and stedfast encounter and conflict with this Temptation at last prevail to break open a door unto corrupt worship by Teaching Seducing Tempting and Enticing others unto corrupt Communion with them according to the Doctrine of Balaam to cast a stumbling block before the people of the Lord as Rev. 2.14 I say if this should come to pass our case would be exceeding dangerous especially this coming upon us in our declining and languishing state when we have lost so much of our first life and love that we have soarcely strength enough left to reinforce our former Zeal and Courage in the Encounter yea and at such a time when the Generation is lamentably exposed by the sins of the Times which are all tempting unto a Compliance with such a Temptation and are too much without grace to resist it and in a very unsetled state as to their standing before God under his Covenant even standing upon the dangerous Precipice of a gross Apostacy the very opportunity for Satan to over throw us by such a Temptation Surely if it be thus or likely to be thus then there is very great need of watchsulness against this Temptation Neither let it be slighted or accounted a light thing for such Profanations and Abominations if Indulged will become the sins of the Land and the guilt and Punishment of them will lye and fall exceeding heavy upon the Land in a day of wrath O they will pull down wrath upon this Land and upon this People and the filth of them will pollute and defile the Land it will be such Pollution as will not be purged away without fire the guilt and filth of corrupt worship is not purged away without the fire and the fornace And that which is most Perillous it is the universal diffusion of the Corruption and Contagion of corrupt worship by the subtile and insensible infusion and influence of a Spirit of Libertinism a Spirit and Principle it is of all other most dangerous and destructive unto Pure Churches and will soon open a wide door unto all kinde of Abominations for all false worships although they seem in themselves to be contrary Extremes yet they all agree in this Principle of Libertinism and will break in at that door It will be in vain for us to hope for or Promise our selves Security from gross Superstition and Ceremony if we will leave open this door or admit of a contrary Extreme in corrupt worship And truly if we should give way unto any kinde it will be just with God to give us up Judicially unto all kindes of corrupt worship And let me adde That a Spirit of Libertinism if it prevail will in the end bring in all kinde of Licentiousness and Profaneness for it is a Womb big with all kinde of Abominations for corruption in Worship and conruption in Manners do alwayes grow and go together See at large Ezck. 22. beginning Although Libertinism doth promise much Liberty yet it bringeth into bondage to Corruption 2 Pet. 2.19 It doth gender altogether unto bondage O that these Churches may recover their first Zeal against Libertinism both the Spirit Principle and Practise of it and so against all corrupt worship which hath been the common destruction of Reformed Churches and will most certainly be of these Churches if it should break in upon us O let us consider we have been hither unto a People extraordinarily Priviledged with Immunity from corrupt worship we are yet free from any foraign or forcible Temptation thereunto we have yet all Advantages and Encouragements to withstand it and to keep it out If we admit of will-worship we shall lose all the glorious work of Reformation which our Fathers laboured in which consisted chiefly in Separation from corrupt Worship we shall at once reze the Foundation and ruine the Superstructure of these Churches which in the very Constitution were set up and stand in a way of opposition unto corrupt worship such Churches will not cannot bear any degree of corrupt worship VVill-worship it would even destroy our very Religion and reduce this VVilderness-People unto a kinde of Heathenism O wo unto us if we admit of will worship we shall soon fill up the measure of our sin and prepare our selves for Judgement even wrath to the utmost O wo unto New-England if ever God be provoked to revenge this quarrel of his Covenant upon us according to that Threatning Lev. 26.25 If we admit of will-worship New-England will become the shame and scandal of Religion and of all Reformed Churches the Reproach of the Christian world the Scorn and Triumph of Antichrist and in all respects a most sinful and miserable People Thus we are to do our first works in all things pertaining to the worship of God 4. Labour unto the promotion and progress of the work of Reformation by the full and faithful discharge of duty to the Children of the Covenant multiplying and growing up under the Covenant in those Churches under how great and general omission of duty towards them we have cause seriously and sadly to consider and to lament Truly it is much to be feared that we shall so long doubt and dispute the Interest and Right of fuch Children and controvert and neglect our duty towards them