Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	according_a	doctrine_n	holy_a	2,747	5	4.2655	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30304	The peoples zeal provok't to an holy emulation by the pious and instructive example of their dead minister, or, A seasonable memento to the parishioners of Lavenham in Suffolk being a sermon preached to that people, soon after the solemn enterrment of their Reverand and pious minister, Mr. William Gurnall, who aged 63, died October 12, 1679 : and now at their request made publick / by William Burkitt ...	Burkitt, William, 1650-1703.	1680 (1680)	Wing B5737; ESTC R36338	16,492	38

condemnation To conclude this the Throne and the Pulpit above all places call for holiness the Prince and the Preacher above all persons are most accountable to God for their Example 3. Inference I infer from hence in the last place how signal your obligations are to Almighty God for the long enjoyment of that exemplary pattern of all true piety and vertue your deceased Minister I mean whom for your sins I fear he hath lately taken from you Shew now your obedience to God your respects to him your kindness and charity to your own souls by a zealous and faithful care to transcribe impartially in your own lives whatever was truly imitable in your Ministers And not to carry you beyond the confines of the Text let me earnestly bespeak your Christian compliance with a double duty here injoyned 1. To follow his faith 2. To imitate his exemplary conversation 1. Follow his faith and that in a double respect in the soundness of his faith and in the stedfastness of his faith 1. Follow him in the soundness of his faith The faith which he perseveringly profest and taught was that Doctrine which is according to Godliness that faith which owns God for its immediate Author and the Scripture for its infallible Rule the faith that was once delivered to the Saints which is not the result of phansie and imagination but the product of an eternal Counsel which was confirmed by the miracles and sealed with the blood of a Saviour In a word that faith which he so zealously taught had sure footing in the holy Scriptures When-ever he propounded any truth which required not only the assent of your understandings but also the obedience and adoration of your faith he constantly shewed you the Canon of the Scriptures for its confirmation If any then which God forbid should appear after him in this place and attempt the proselyting of you to another Gospel or to any new doctrine of faith foreign to the Scriptures should he pretend to the authority of a commissioned Angel from Heaven let him be held accursed 2. Follow him in the stedfastness of his faith The same rule of faith which he laid before you at his first coming amongst you he lived and preached by to the day of his death and this I take the greater liberty to assert because some persons have not blusht to tell the world publickly that since his conformity to the discipline of the Church he had apostatized and revolted from that faith which he had formerly profest and taught but be ye all assured that as to the great fundamentals of Faith and Religion he was ever the same and what he taught you to his last breath I doubt not but he stood ready to confirm and seal with his blood even in the fiercest flames of martyrdom if God had called him to that fiery trial 2. Imitate his Christian Conversation My meaning is exemplisie those Evangelical Graces and Christian Vertues in your lives which did so oriently shine forth in his To propound a few 1. His Eminent Humility This was the garment which covered all his excellent accomplishments although indeed their beauty was rendred more conspicuous and amiable by casting this veil over it Oh what mean thoughts had he of himselfe and was not only content but desirous also that others should have so too no man ever expressed so low a value of his worth and merits as himself did Every thing in others that was good he admired as excellent whilst the same or better in himself he thought not unworthily contemned his Eyes were full of his own deficiencies and others perfections In a word he was a lowly Valley sweetly planted well watered richly fruitful imitate him then herein and by a holy emulation study to excel him in this adorning Grace and for your help herein recollect what you heard from him in his elaborate Discourses among you upon Phil. 2.5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus this humble mind 2. His extensive Love this grace did variously exert it self 1. His love to God he loved him exceedingly whom he could not love excessively having such high and raised apprehensions of his Makers excellencies as caused him to judge his prime and best affections unworthy to be placed upon so Divine an Object 2. His Love to the holy Jesus this was such a Seraphick and Divine fire in his soul as did marvellously consume his love to the world and all sublunary comforts You are witnesses and all that knew him in how eminent a measure and degree the world was crucified unto him and he unto the world by the Cross of Christ 3. His love to souls this was it no doubt that made him so indefatigable both in his Study and the Pulpit from hence it was that the Throne of Grace his Study the Pulpit and his sick Neighbours had the whole of his time divided amongst them and devoted to them 4. His unbounded love to all Christians though they differed in their sentiments from him he loved Christians for their Christianity and did adore the Image of his Saviour where-ever he saw it in any of his members unhappily persecuting one another with hard names and characters of reproach How often did he publickly deplore and bewail that the greatest measure of love that is found at this day amongst the professors of the Cross was not true Christian love but only love of a party Follow him then in the impartial exercise of this grace and for your help therein remember what he taught you from Eph. 5.2 And walk in love as Christ also hath loved us and as you have any regard for the Author of your profession take heed that a spirit of Division now crowd not in among you your unity is your strength as well as your beauty persist therefore I beseech you in that Christian Order amongst your selves in which it was his great ambition all his days to preserve and keep you Timely oppose the crafty design of the subtile Adversary of souls who will take this occasion if possible now the Spiritual Parents is out of the way to set the Children together by the ears 3. His diffusive Charity his Alms were as exuberant as his Love misery and want where-ever he met them did sufficiently endear their objects to him he was none of those that hide their faces from the Poor nor of the number of them who satisfie their Consciences with a single exercise of their Charity once a year but daily were the emanations of his Bounty Yet although he cast the seeds of his Charity upon all sorts of ground he sowed them thickest upon Gods enclosure my meaning is he did good unto all but especially to those that were of the Houshold of Faith Make him herein and his example the pattern of your daily imitation for the world which is chained together by intermingled love will soon shatter and fall in pieces if Charity shall once fail and dye and

the holy Apostle gives Phil. 4.8 Whatsoever things are pure whatsoever things are lovely what soever things are of good report if there be any virtue praise or comeliness in his Actions those things you must think upon Remember to follow your Spiritual Guide in that even path of piety wherein he hath uprightly followed the Captain of your salvation Hypocrisie singles out one grace and shuns another but sincerity discovers it self by an uniform care and endeavour to transcribe all and doth nothing by partiality 2. It must be a vigorous and industrious imitation indeed to imitate sinners in an evil way requires no great pains in regard of the natural vent and tendency of our natures to sin and vanity as also in regard of the pronity of the Tempter to solicite and invite forth our innate corruption into act and exercise But to follow a Christian in what is eminently good requires a vigorous intention of mind and all the superiour faculties of our souls must be imployed industriously in that noble exercise here our understandings must be exercised to discover the radiant excellency of those Christian Graces which shine forth in others here must our judgements be imployed to discover by the light of Scripture and Reason what is to be chosen and what to be eschewed in the Pattern we propound to follow here our affections also must be concerned in taking a daily pleasure and delight to hold with an unwearied hand the Glass of their holy lives continually before us the better to dress our Souls by it Certainly to perform all this requires a soul fortified with courage and armed with such an impregnable resolution as no difficulties can dismay or vanquish 3. It ought to be a constant and persevering imitation be always endeavouring to keep your Ministers example fresh in memory and make this duty your daily work and constant practice So much I conceive is implyed in that Apostolical injunction Heb. 6.12 Be ye followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises that is follow the Saints with the same Christian patience and persevering faith with which they inherit the glorious accomplishment of all the promises Having thus briefly shewn you how and after what manner a People are obliged to follow the Religious foot-steps of their exemplary Guides The 2. Inquiry followeth viz. from what Motives and upon what Considerations they are concerned thus to do To which I answer A People lye under a threefold obligation to this Duty viz. in regard of God in relation to themselves and in reference to their Ministers 1. In regard of God Because this is one of his principal ends in bestowing such gracious qualifications upon his Ministers yea Gods great design in sending his Messengers amongst a people is that by the holiness of their example as well as by the purity of their Doctrine they may win souls to a love of Righteousness this is the Duty which Timothy is exhorted to when the Apostle bids him hold forth the word of life that is the purity of it in his Doctrine and the power of it in his Conversation from hence no doubt it is that Christ Compares his Apostles to lights ye are the light of the world Mat. 5.14 an allusion as may be probably conjectured to Torches held out in a dark night to direct Passengers their way or to fires upon a Beacon near the Sea-coast to prevent the bewildered Mariners splitting upon Rocks and suffering Shipwrack Believe it God doth not only bestow his graces upon his Ministers for their own sakes to qualifie them for their future happiness and glory but he designs also your advantage by those endowments so that a people do apparently sin against the great end and purpose of Gods love and kindness in sending his Ambassadors among them if they do not fruitfully improve their Religious Example set before them for verily your Ministers gifts are a talent for which you as well as they are responsible to God yea you are as highly accountable to God for the Holy Example they set before you as you are for that sacred Depositum the doctrine of faith I mean which they deliver to you 2. In relation to your selves Without a Christian imitation of the stedfastness of their faith and the exemplariness of their conversation whom God hath set over you and made patterns of solid piety unto you that which was your mercy and priviledge in the enjoyment will apparently tend to the dreadful aggravation of your sin and the eternal heightning of your account St. Paul in his famous funeral Oration for the Saints departed Hebrews 11. tells us of Noah verse 5. that he condemned the world which no doubt he did by his practice as well as by his preaching indeed he preached by his hand as well as with his tongue his building of the Ark was a daily visible Sermon to that unreclaimable generation with what scoffing derision did the old world laugh at Noah for his Ark and tell one another in sport that too much holiness had made the old man mad and that all the alarms of a flood approaching were but the idle dreams of the doting Prophet yet his example not followed brought vengeance upon that people to extremity Think then of this all you the people of this place who have so long enjoyed a Preacher of Righteousness among you and all that while have found him a faithful witness from God unto you for not receiving his testimony you must expect to find him another day an eternal witness for God against you Believe it timely if you be not awakened to a fruitful contention of being like him in all that was truly imitable and praise-worthy in him verily your sins would not have been accented with such an aggravated guilt as they will then be had you never known him 3. A people are obliged thus perseveringly to follow the holy example of their Spiritual Guides with a reference unto them and that in two respects 1. In that your Christian imitation of their instructive example will conduce very much to make up their loss and render them less mist and wanted in the world I doubt not but many of you are justly sensible of the severity of that stroke which the hand of Almighty God hath given your Town in your late Ministers death yet think not I pray your loss irreparable for be assured it is very much within the compass of your power to repair and make up your own loss stand but you all up and appear in your distinct and several capacities for God as he did by a publick owning of his ways and worship fill you up the breach made by the death of him with your gracious influence and his absence will be the better born It is very observable what our dying Saviours comfort was upon the bed of his Cross next to the supports of the divine presence this revived his soul that he had a Seed in the world which