Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	call_v	day_n	sabbath_n	4,345	5	10.2877	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50672	A moral paradox maintaining, that it is much easier to be vertuous then vitious / by Sir George Mackeinzie.	Mackenzie, George, Sir, 1636-1691.	1667 (1667)	Wing M181; ESTC R19878	25,281	86

it flies This hath made Philososophers conclude that all motion tends to some rest Lawiers that all debates respect some decision Statesmen that all War is made in order to Peace Physitians that all fermentation and boiling of the blood or humours betokens some dissatisfaction in the part affected And to show how much happinesse they place in ease they term all sickness diseases which imports nothing more then the absence of ease that happiest of States and root of all Perfections and that Divinity may sing a part in this requiem Scripture tells us that GOD hallowed the seventh day because upon it he rested from his creation and that Heaven is called an eternal Sabbath because there we shall find ease from all our labours there GOD is said when well pleas'd to have savour'd a sweet savour of rest and he recommends his own Gospel as a burthen that is easie That then wherewith I shall task my self in this discourse shall be to prove that Vertue is more easie then Vice For clearing whereof consider that all men who design either honour riches or to live happily in the World do either intend to be vertuous or at least pretend it these who resolve to destroy the liberties of the people will stile themselves keepers of their liberties and such as laugh at all Religion will have themselves beleeved to be reformers and of these two the pretenders have the difficultest part for they must not only be at all that pains which is requisit in being vertuous but they must superadde to these all the troubles that dissimulation requires which certainly is a new and greater task then the other and not only so but these most over act Vertue upon design to take off that jealousie which because they are conscious to themselves to deserve they therefore vex themselves to remove Moses the first and amongst the best of the reformers was the meikest man upon the face of the earth But Iehu who was but a counterfit Zelot drove furiously and called up the By-standers to see what else he knew they had reason not to beleeve and the justest of all Israels Chair-men took not so much pains to execut justice as Absolon who is said to have staid as long in the gates of Ierusalem as the Sun stay'd above them informing himself of all persons and affairs though with as little design to redresse their wrongs as he shewd much inclination to know them and all this that the people might be gained to be the instruments of his unnatural Rebellion and such is the laboriousnesse of these seeming coppiers of Vertue that in our ordinar conversation we are still jealous of such as are too studious to appear vertuous though we have no other reason to doubt their sincerity but what arrises from their too great pains from which we may conclude that these who intend to be vertuous have a much easier task then these pretenders have because they have not their own conscience nor the jealousness of others to wrestle against and which is yet worse these want that habit of Vertue which renders all the pains of such as are really vertuous easie to them and what is more difficult then for these to act against customs which time renders a second nature and which as shall be said hereafter is so prevalent as to facilitat to vertuous persons the hardest part of what Vertue commands Besides this these dissemblers have a difficult part to act seing they act against their own inclinations which is to offer violence to nature and the working not only without the help of that strongest of all seconds but the toiling against it and all the assistance it can give which how great a torment it proves appears from this that such as have as much generosity as may intitle them to the name of Man will rather wearie out the rage of torture then injure their own inclinations I imagine that Haman was much distrest by being put to lead Mordecai's horse in complyance with his Masters commands and one who is obliged by that interest which makes him dissemble to counterfit a kindness for one whom he hates or emit an applause of what he undervalues is certainly by that necessity more cruciat by a thousand stages then such as intend upon a vertuous account to love the person and really to praise that in him which they are forc'd to commend which is so far from being a torment when it is truly vertuous that that real love makes him who has it hungry of an occasion to shew it and to pursue all means for hightning that applause which torments the other consider what difficulty we find in going one way whil'st we look another and with what hazard of stumbling that attempt is attended and ye will find both much difficulty and hazard to wait on dissimulation wherein we are tyed to a double task for we must do what we intend because of our inclinations and what we pretend because of our professions and if we fail in either which is more probable then where simplicity only is profest two tasks being difficulter then one then the world laughs at us for failing in what we propos'd And we fret at our selves for failing in what was privatly design'd and not only does dissimulation tye us to a double but it obliges us to two contrary tasks for we needed not dissemble if what we intend be not contrary to what we pretend and thus men in dissimulation do but like Penelope undoe in the night what they were forc'd to do in the day time Dissimulation makes Vice likewise the more difficult in that dissemblers are never able to recover the losse they sustain by one escape for if they be catcht in their dissimulation or dogg'd out to be impostors which they cannot misse but by a more watchful attendance then any that Vertue requires then they of all persons are most hated not only by these whom they intended to cheat but by all others though inconcerned in the crime and both the one and the other do yet hate it as what striks at the root of all humane society and for this cause murther under trust is accounted so impious and sacrilegious a breach of friendship that Lawiers have hightned its punishment from that of ordinar murther to that of treason and the grossest of Politicians have confest this dissimulation to be so horrid a crime that it was not to be committed for a lesse hire then that of a Kingdom Whereas vertuous persons have their escapes oftner pitied then punished both because these escapes are imputed to no abiding habit and because it is not to be feared that they will offend for the future seing what they last failed in was not the effect of any innate and permanent quality but was a transient and designless frailty Dissimulation is from this likewise more painful then the Vertue which it emulats that the Dissembler is oblidged not only so to dissemble as