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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
rest_n	day_n	rest_v	week_n	2,351	5	9.8954	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39665	Husbandry spiritualized, or, The heavenly use of earthly things consisting of many pleasant observations, pertinent applications, and serious reflections and each chapter concluded with a divine and suitable poem : directing husband-men to the most excellent improvements of their common imployments : whereunto is added ... several choice occasional meditations / by John Flavell.	Flavel, John, 1630?-1691.	1674 (1674)	Wing F1166; ESTC R26136	198,385	305

Rom. 12. 11. in serving God servent in spirit or hissing hot 2 Pet. 1. 10. in securing salvation diligent or doing it throughly and enough 1 Tim. 4. 7. in godliness exercising or stripping themselves as for a race Luke 13. 24. in the pursuit of happiness striving even to an agony Act. 26. 7. in prayer serving God instantly or in a stretched-out manner yea pouring out their hearts before him Psal. 62. 8 as if the body were left like a dead corps upon the knees whilst the spirit is departed from it and ascended to God This is the manner of his work judge then how much harder this work is than to spend the sweat of the brow in manual labour The Husbandman finds his work as he left it he can begin one day where he left the other but it is not so with the Christian a bad heart and a busie devil disorder and spoyl his work every day The Christian finds not his heart in the morning as he left it at night and even when he is about his work how many set-backs doth he meet with Satan stands at his right hand the working hand to resist him Zech. 3. 1. when he would do good evil the evil of his own heart and nature is present with him The Husbandman hath some resting days when he throws aside all his work and takes his recreation but the Christian hath no resting day till his dying day and then he shall rest from his labours Religion allows no idle dayes but requires him to be always abounding in the work of the Lord 1 Cor. 15. 58. When one duty is done another calls for him the Lord's day is a day of rest to the Husbandman but no day in the week so laborious to the Christian. O 't is a spending day to him When he hath gathered in the crop of one duty he is not to sit down satisfied therewith or say as that rich worldling did Luke 12. 19. Soul take thine ease thou hast goods laid up for many years but must to plow again and count it well if the Vintage reach to the seed-time Lev. 26. 5. I mean if the strength influence and comforts of one duty hold out to another duty and that it may be so and there be no room left for idleness God hath appointed ejaculatory prayer to fill up the intervals betwixt stated and the more solemn duties These are to keep in the fire which kindled the morning sacrifice to kindle the evening sacrifice When can the Christian sit down and say now all my work is ended I have nothing to do without doors or within Lastly There is a time when the labour of the Husbandman is ended old age and weakness takes him off from all imployment they can only look upon their labourers but cannot do a stroke of work themselves they can tell you what they did in their younger years but now say they we must leave it to younger people we cannot be young always but the Christian is never super-annuated as to the work of Religion yea the longer he lives the more his Master expects from him When he is full of dayes God expects he should be full of fruits Psal. 9. 14. They shall bring forth fruit in old age they shall be fat and flourishing REFLECTIONS HOw hard have I laboured for the meat that perisheth prevented the dawning of the day and laboured as in the very fire and yet is the Christians work harder than mine Surely then I never yet understood the work of Christianity Alas my sleepy prayers and formal duties even all that ever I performed in my life never cost me that pains that one hour at plow hath done I have either wholly neglected or at best so lazily performed religious duties that I may truly say I offer to God what cost me nothing Wo is me poor wretch How is the judgment of Corah spiritually executed upon me The earth opened her mouth and swallowed up his body but it hath opened its mouth and swallowed up my heart my time and all my affections How far am I from the Kingdom of God! And how little better is my case who have indeed professed Religion but never made it my business Will an empty though splendid profession save me How many brave Ships have perished in the storms notwithstanding their fine names the Prosperous the Success the Happy return A fine name could not protect them from the rocks nor will it save me from hell I have done by Religion as I should have done by the world prayed as if I prayed not and heard as if I heard not I have given to God but the shadow of duty and can never expect from him a real reward How unlike a Christian dost thou also O my soul go about thy work though upright in the main yet how little zeal and activity dost thou express in thy duties Awake love and zeal feest thou not the toyl and pains men take for the world how do they prevent the dawning of the day and labour as in the very fire till night and all this for a trifle should not every drop of sweat which I see trickle from their brows fetch as it were a drop of blood from my heart who am thus convinced and reproved of shameful laziness by their indefatigable diligence Do they pant after the dust of the earth Amos 2. 7. and shall not I pant after God Psal. 42. 1. Ah my soul It was not wont to be so with thee in the dayes of my first profession Should I have had no more communion with God in duties then it would have broken my heart I should have been weary of my life Is this a time for one to stand idle who stands at the door of eternity What now slack-handed when so neer to my everlasting rest Rom. 13. 11. or hast thou found the work of God so unpleasant to thee Prov. 3. 17. or the trade of godliness so unprofitable Psal. 19. 11. Or knowest thou not that millions now in hell perished for want of serious diligence in Religion Luke 13. 34. or doth my diligence for God answer to that which Christ hath done and suffered to purchase my happiness or to the preparations he hath made in heaven for me or dost thou forget that thy Masters eye is alwayes upon thee whilst thou art lazing and loytering or would the damned live at this rate as I do if their day of grace might be recalled for shame my soul for shame rouze up thy self and fall to thy work with a diligence answerable to the weight thereof for it is no vain work concerning thee it is thy life The Poem Religion WHEN advanc'd in power Will make you HUSBAND every hour 'T will make MEN strive with all their might And therein FIND a sweet delight If there were NOUGHT besides that pay Christ gives TO cheer us in our way Should we not DO the best we can For there 's

soul who gave thee a season a day for eternal life which is more than he hath done for thousands yea bless the Lord for giving thee an heart to understand and improve that season I confess I have not improved it as I ought yet this I can through mercy say that how ever it fare in future times with my outward man though I have no treasures or stores laid up on earth or if I have they are but corruptible yet I have a blessed hope laid up in heaven Col. 1. 5. I have bags that wax not old Whilst worldlings rejoyce in their stores and heaps I will rejoyce in these eternal treasures The Poem OBserve in Summers sultry heat how in the hottest day The Husbandman doth toyl and sweat about his Corn and Hay If then he should not reap and mow and gather in his store How should he live when for the snow he can't move out of door The little Ants and painful Bees by natures instinct led These have their Summer granaries for Winter furnished But thou my soul whose Summers day is almost past and gone What soul-provision dost thou lay in stock to spend upon If nature teacheth to prepare for temporal life much rather Grace should provoke to greater care soul food in time to gather Dayes of affliction and distress are hasting on apace If now I live in carelessness how sad will be my case Unworthy of the name of man who for that soul of thine Wil t not do that which others can do for their very kine Think frugal Farmers when you see your mows of Corn and Hay What a conviction this will be to you another day Who ne're were up before the Sun nor break an hours rest For your poor souls as you have done so often for a beast Learn once to see the difference betwixt eternal things And these poor transient things of sence that fly with eagles wings CHAP. XVII When from Tare seeds you see choice Wheat to grow Then from your lusts may joy and comfort flow OBSERVATION GOd gives to every seed it s own body 1 Cor. 15. 38. At first he created every Tree and herb of the field having its seed in it self for the conservation of the species and they all inviolably observe the Law of their Creation All fruits naturally rise out of the seeds and roots proper to them Men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles Such productions would be monstrous in nature and although the juice or sap of the earth be the common matter of all kind of fruits yet it is specificated according to the different sorts of Plants and seeds it nourishes Where Wheat is sown it 's turned into Wheat in an apple Tree it becomes an apple and so in every sort of Plants or seeds it 's concocted into fruit proper to the kind APPLICATION TRanslate this into spirituals and the proposition shadowed forth by it is fully expressed by the Apostle Gal. 6. 7. What a man sows that shall be reap they that sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption and they that sow to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting And as sure as the harvest follows the seed-time so sure shall such fruits and effects result from the seeds of such actions He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity Prov. 22. 8. And they that now go forth weeping and bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again rejoycing bringing their sheaves with them Psal. 126. 5. The sum of all is this That our present actions have the same respect and relation to future rewards and punishments as the seed we sow in our fields hath to the harvest we reap from it Every gracious action is the seed of joy and every sinful action the seed of anguish and sorrow to the soul that sowed it Two things are sensibly presented to us in this ●imilitude That as the seed sown is presently covered from our sight under the clods and for some time after we see no more of it and yet at last it appears again by which it's evident to us that it is not finally lost So our present actions though physically transient and perhaps forgotten yet are not lost but after a time shall appear again in order to a retribution If this were not so all good and holy actions would be to the loss of him that performed them All the self-denial spending duties and sharp sufferings of the people of God would turn to their damage though not in point of honesty yet in point of personal utility and then also what difference would there be betwixt the actions of a man and a beast with respect to future good or evil yea man would then be more feared and obeyed than God and souls be swayed in all their motions only by the influence of present things and where then would Religion be found in the world 'T is an excellent note of Drexellius Our works saith he do not pass away as soon as they are done but as seed sown shall after a time rise up to all eternity whatever we think speak or do once spoken thought or done is eternal and abides for ever What Zeuxes the famous Limner said of his work may be truly said of all our works Aeternitati pingo I paint for eternity O how careful should men be of what they speak and do whilst they are commanded so to speak and so to do as those that shall be judged by the perfect law of liberty Iam. 2. 12. What more transient than a vain word and yet for such words men shall give an account in the day of judgment Mat. 12. 36. That 's the first thing Actions like seed shall rise and appear again in order to a retribution The other thing held forth in this similitude is That according to the nature of our actions now will be the fruit and reward of them then Though the fruit or consequence of holy actions for the present may seem bitter and the fruit of sinful actions sweet and pleasant yet there is nothing more certain that that their future fruits shall be according to their present nature and quality 2 Cor. 5. 10. Then Dionisius shall retract that saying Ecce quam prospera navigatio a Deo datur sacrilegis Behold how God favours our sacriledge Sometimes indeed though but rarely God causes sinners to reap in this world the same that they have sown as hath been their sin such hath been their punishment It was openly confessed by Adonibezek Iudg. 1. 7. as I have done so hath God requited me Socrates in his Church History furnishes us with a pertinent passage to this purpose concerning Valens the Emperor who was an Arrian and a bitter persecutor of the Christians This man when eighty of the Orthodox Christians failed from Constantinople to Nicomedia to treat with him about the points of Arrianism and to settle the matter by

for slaughter But man was made for nobler ends created Lord of the lower world not to serve but to be served by other creatures a mercy able to melt the hardest heart into thankfulness I remember Luther pressing men to be thankful that they are not brought into the lowest condition of creatures and to bless God that they can see any creature below themselves gives us a famous instance in the following story Two Cardinals saith he riding in a great deal of pomp to the Council of Constance by the way they heard a man in the fields weeping and wailing bitterly they rode to him and asked what he ailed perceiving his eye intently fixed upon an ugly toad he told them that his heart was melted with the consideration of this mercy that God had not made him such a deformed and loathsom creature though he were formed out of the same clay with it Hoc est quod amare fleo said he This is that that makes me weep bitterly Whereupon one of the Cardinals cryes out Well said the Father the unlearned will rise and take heaven when we with all our learning shall be thrust into hell That which melted the heart of this poor man should melt every heart when we behold the misery to which these poor creatures are subjected And this will appear a mercy of no slight consideration if we but draw a comparison betwixt our selves and these irrational creatures in these three particulars Though they and we were made of the same mould and clay yet how much better hath God dealt with us even as to the outward man the structure of our bodies is much more excellent God made other creatures by a word of command but man by counsel it was not be Thou but let us make man We might have been nude stones without fence or beasts without reason but we were made men The noble structure and symetry of our bodies invites our souls not only to thankfulness but admiration David speaking of the curious frame of the body saith I am wonderfully made Psal. 139. 14. or as the vulgar reads it painted as with a needle like some rich piece of needle-work curiously embroydered with nerves and veins Was any part of the common lump of clay thus fashioned Galen gave Epicu●us an hundred years time to imagine a more commodious situation configuration or composition of any one part of a humane body and as one saith of all the Angels in heaven had studied to this day they could not have cast the body of man into a more curious mould How little ease or rest have they they live not many years and those they do is in bondage and misery groaning under the effects of sin but God hath provided better for us even as to our outward condition in the world we have the more rest because they have so little How many refre●hments and comforts hath God provided for us of which they are uncapable if we be weary with labour we can take our rest but fresh or weary they must stand to it or sink under it from day to day What a narrow capacity hath God given to beasts what a large capacity to man Alas they are only capable of a little sensitive pleasure as you shall see sometimes how they will frisk in a green pasture this is all they be capable of and this death puts an end to but how comprehensive are our souls in their capacities we are made in the image of God we can look beyond present things and are capable of the highest happiness and that to all eternity the soul of a beast is but a material form which wholly depending upon must needs dye with the body but our souls are a divine spark or blast and when the body dyes it dyes not with it but subsists even in its separated state REFLECTIONS HOw great a sin is ingratitude to God for such a common but choice mercy of Creation and provision for me in this world There is no creature made worse by kindness but man There is a kind of gratitude which I may observe even in these bruit beasts they do in their way acknowledge their benefactors The Ox knows his Owner and the Ass his Masters Crib How ready are they to serve such as feed and cherish them but I have been Both unthankful and unserviceable to my Creator and Benefactor that hath done me good all my dayes those poor creatures that sweat and groan under the loads that I lay upon them never sinned against God nor transgressed the Laws of their Creation as I have done and yet God hath dealt better with me than with them Oh that the bounty of God and his distinguishing mercy between me and the beasts that perish might move and melt my heart into thankfulness O that I might consider seriously what the higher and more excellent end of my Creation is and might more endeavour to answer and live up to it Or else O my soul it will be worse with thee than with the beasts 'T is true they are under bondage and misery but it is but for a little time death will end all their pains and ease them of all their heavy loads but I shall groan to all eternity under a heavier burden than ever they felt they have no account to give but so have I. What comfort is it that I have a larger capacity than a beast hath that God hath endowed me with reason which is denied to me Alas this will but augment my misery and enlarge me to take in a greater measure of anguish But how many steps O my soul mayest thou ascend in the praises of thy God when thou considerest the mercies that God hath bestowed upon thee not only in that he made thee not a stone or tree without sense or an horse or dog without reason but that thou art not an infidel without light or an unreg●nerate person without grace What! to have sense and all the delights of it which stones have not reason with the more high and noble pleasures of it which beasts have not the light and knowledge of the great things of the Gospel which the Heathens have not and such an expectation and hope of unconceivable glory and felicity which the unsanctified have not O my soul how rich how bountiful hath thy God been to thee these are the overflowings of his love to thee who wast moulded out of the same lump with the beasts that groan on earth yea with the damned that howl in hell well may I say that God hath been a good God to me The Poem WHen I behold a tyred Iade put on With whip and spur till all his strength be gone See streams of sweat run down his bleeding sides How little marcy's shewn by him that rides If I more thankless to my God don't prove Than such a Rider's merciless 't will move My soul to praise for who sees this and can But bless the Lord that he was