Selected quad for the lemma: rest_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
rest_n	day_n	observation_n	sabbath_n	2,346	5	9.4956	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30364	Spiritual bondage and freedom, or, A treatise containing the substance of several sermons preached on that subject from John VIII, 36 by the late Reverend Mr. Nathanael Ball ...	Ball, Nathanael, 1623-1681.	1683 (1683)	Wing B581; ESTC R20020	203,915	466

God not Synagogues of the Devil And when some objected their want of gifts for prayer he gave them such Directions and Instructions both for matter and manner that in a short time the blessed fruits and effects thereof was very visible many being able to pour out their Souls in prayer unto God with proper Words and melting Affections He always charged them to be upon their knees in prayer Gods familarity with us should not make us saucy towards him but to ingage us to keep our distance and to serve him with a more holy fear and filial reverence The Lord gave him a large seal unto his Ministry in so much that he was the Spritual Father of many whom he begat to Christ in the Gospel When he altered his condition he sought and found a meet help for him every way a neighbour Ministers Daughter to whom he was Married and with whom he lived Religiously and comfortably to his dying day and the blessing of God was upon his Marriage giving him by his vertuous Wife ten Sons and three Daughters She is now left a desolate Widow like the chast Turtle mourning for the loss of her Mate and her Children Orphans but he laid up for them Treasure in Heaven a stock of prayers to the God hearing prayer and they have the Promises God is the Husband and Judg of his Widow and Father to the fatherless out of his holy Habitation their Fathers God will be their God and his seed will be blessed after him Leave thy Fatherless children unto me and let thy Widows put their trust in me saith the Lord. In the government of his Family he was very exact and shewed a rare example of piety to his whole Family He began with God first in his own closet and suffered none under his roof to live without secret prayer When it was a convenient time for the whole house to meet together he came from his Study and summoning them to Duty he expounded one or two Chapters and examined his Children and Servants what they did remember encouraging the diligent reproving the negligent which being done he called upon God for them and with them In prayer he was always fervent vehemently wrestling with the Lord for his blessing In his daily prayers he begged hard for Mercy for King and Kingdom for Church and State he sought the prosperity of Zion earnestly and would not brook a denial Duty being ended he retired shortly upon it into his Study where he commonly abode till Dinner and when he crav'd a blessing upon his meat it was in the presence of his whole Family he was very sparing in his diet and at Table ever turning his discourse Heavenwards and would lead his guests and family from their mercies to the God of Mercies At every meal he preached as it were a short Sermon and Thanks being returned unto God he hastned again into his Study allowing himself no recreation but what arose from reading praying and instructing others He spent most of his time in studying the Scriptures searching out the Mind and Will God in them Well knowing that all humane writings had their defects but the Book of God was perfect and infallible He common-plac'd all his reading this was a store-house for present and after uses At night he carefully kept good hours for Evening-prayer so that his family did not serve God between sleeping and waking A Chapter being read and prayer offered up unto the Lord he withdrew himself again into his Study where as he began so he closed the day with secret Devotion When he lay down in his bed it was with some heavenly discourses which took up his time till he fell asleep His first thoughts in the morning were of God His meditations before his uprising were improved heavenward He rose early and would discourse in the day how his reins instructed him in the night season 'T is a thousand pities that so many precious thoughts as Gods Saints have of God should be lost and not recorded A godly Gentleman of the Inner Temple told a Reverend Minister that he would not lose his morning-thoughts of God for all his worldly estate which yet was a very fair and great one But his observation of the Lords day was most strict and religious The fourth Commandment is the hedg and mound about the whole Law Break down this and you violate all the rest The Jews stiled the sabbath the Bride of the Synagogue This holy man of God decked himself up for it as a Bridegroom to meet his Bride The Sabbath was his delight and he was exceeding careful not only in his own person but that all in his family and under his charge should sanctifie it unto the Lord. He had no worldly business no worldly discourses on that day but he and his whole houshold spent the whole day in the Service of God Blessed is the man that doth this and the son of man that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it In his house 't was the Lords day indeed the Queen of daies all his children servants and whoso lodged within his gates were wholly taken up in reading hearing repeating meditating praying and singing of Psalms that day On the Sabbath evenings he examined his childrens servants proficiency by the Sabbath-ordinances and laboured mightily to awaken their consciences and to put them upon early seeking of God He was very communicative of his knowledg As a Fountain freely yields its water and the field its corn and the garden herbs for the use of man so did his heart and tongue disperse abroad his spiritual gifts and experiences to the edification of others He would talk with any child or servant that so he might drop into them something of the mystery of godliness Frequently would he take his younger children into his closet and offer up particular supplications for them he would not indulge any of them in a sinful action 'T was his judgment that a Father might wink at any thing saving sin against God Therefore in his use of the Rod he designed their good He first convinced them of the dishonour they had done the Lord the danger they had brought upon themselves and professed that as God their heavenly Father had not so neither had he any pleasure in chastising them that sin being bound up in the heart of a child 't was the Lords Ordinance that the rod of correction should drive it out and therefore he always accompanied the rod with prayer that so they might have the spirit and blessing of the rod and correction might be seconded with conversion and crowned with universal reformation He seemed by his indulgence and kindness to his servants a Father rather than a Master He was very compassionate on their Souls and pressed them powerfully to secure the main their interest in Christ And some of them have cause everlastingly to bless God they came under his roof and stood related to so pious and good a Master The tenderness of

his conscience and great zeal for the purity of Gospel-worship kept him from conformity Hereupon with some thousands of his brethren he was slain by that fatal Axe the Act of Bartholomew-day O! when will the living God give them resurrection Lord revive thy work in the midst of our days in the midst of judgment remember mercy These Abels tho dead are yet speaking The Bush burns and is not consumed Certainly God hath some great work for them who tho sentenced unto death are yet alive We hope in the living God who quickneth the dead who hath delivered them from many and great deaths we hope I say that he will yet deliver them from this death also For sometime after his silencing Mr. Ball lived in the same Parish where he had been formerly Minister and when the Oxford Act came forth he removed five Miles farther Where he peaceably behaved himself and won upon many of a different perswasion by his moderation sweetness of deportment and holy and unblameable conversation He bore a singular love to all that lookt heavenward tho of a different perswasion from himself therefore kept up a brotherly and Christian correspondence with that worthy Conformist in whose Parish he lived He judged it his duty to preach and that necessity was laid upon him a wo unto him if he did not preach the Gospel Hereupon be neither could nor would be idle but preached frequently and studied to preach in such times and places as were least offensive to authority It grieved him to hear his spiritual children complain they wanted Bread when he had it for them Very many reaped the fruit and benefit of his labours since he was outed his publick Ministry as Cambridg Epping Bayford and other places to which he was related He spent himself in doing good to Souls for maintenance he relied upon that providence which feeds the fowls and cloathes the Lillies and was of blessed Mr. Hierons mind That God who feeds the Ravens would not starve his young Hierons And indeed his numerous family were maintained to a miracle He sought not the world but his God He did his masters work trusting to his bounty for wages and would often say he never lived better than when he knew not how to live He liv'd by faith upon Gods promises committed his ways unto God and had a firm perswasion that the Lord would provide for him and his which was verified He kept a Diary of Gods providences to himself and family of mercies and afflictions of supports and deliverances This quickned him unto thankfulness these experiences strengthned his faith and made him abound in hope in the Lord his God When his goods were seized on for preaching contrary to Law this holy man took that spoil patiently and joyfully knowing that he had a better and more enduring substance reserved in the Heavens and that those losses sustained for Christ and a good conscience would prove gains at last and work out for him a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory If he was concerned it was for his enemies whom he pitied from his Soul and for whom he prayed as his Lord and Master that they might be forgiven because they knew not that they did the Devils work His great labours in his Masters Vineyard shortned his days but drew him the nearer and sooner to his rest In his sickness his patience was most exemplary bearing his pains with a Christian fortitude resigning himself for life and death unto his Lords disposal For him to live was to glorifie Christ to die gain So he might be farther useful and serviceable in his Ministry he was well contented with life but to be dissolved and to be at home with Christ being better for him in case of unserviceableness this was earnestly desired by him To such as visited him in his languishing he gave serious counsels of providing in health for sickness in life for death in time for eternity He was much in prayer for the afflicted Church of God bitterly lamenting the case of England mourning for those great sins committed in the midst of us and trembling at the thoughts of those heavy Judgments hanging over our heads He sadly and sorrowfully laid to heart the unnatural breaches among Protestants the divisions of Reuben the quarrels and enmities among Joseph's Brethren especially now the Canaanite was in the Land He was grieved at the heart for the unbecoming lives of many Ministers and of multitudes of professors of so pure a Religion whose lives indeed are a flat contradiction to it and for whose abominations God would certainly visit unless there were speedy sincere and extraordinary humbling and reforming with seven worse plagues than ever But the Lord took him from the evil to come after he had languished for some time in a Consumption and breathed ardently after Heaven and Glory He was called upon as the Witnesses to come up hither He had long waited for his blessed charge and that salvation he had believed prayed and expected the Lord his Master whom he had faithfully served put him into the possession of at last He left this life for a better this vale of tears for a Paradise of joys for rivers of evelasting pleasures the eight day of September and in the year of our Lord 1681. and the 58th year of his age Blessed are the dead that dye in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the Spirit for they rest from their labours and their works follow them Spiritual Bondage AND FREEDOM John 8. 36. If the Son therefore shall make you free ye shall be free indeed CHAP. I. The Text opened The Doctrine inferred thence The first Branch of it handled FOR the making of our passage clear to this Text we must look back a little upon the foregoing Verses where we shall see that Christ is a preaching to the people and what the success of his preaching was In his preaching amongst other things I would desire you specially to take notice of Two things that he delivers concerning himself which I mention because I would by no means have you to let them pass because they are of great moment to your Souls One is that in ver 12. a very precious place Christ was sent to give light to the World i. e. to bring them out of that darkness which they are in by nature 'T is just as if a man stood in some dismal dark place where he can see nothing knows not where he is nor whither to go and one comes to him with a light and if he does but follow it it brings him into the open view of things So Christ those that follow him he leads them into the light of life into the light of spiritual life that he shall see spiritual things which no man doth or can that does not follow Christ and into the light of Eternal life where at last he shall see and be with God for ever So that all that live without Christ they