Selected quad for the lemma: sin_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sin_n	eternal_a	life_n	remission_n	6,333	5	9.3811	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A23769	A sermon preached before the King at White-hall, October the 12th 1662 by Richard Allestrey ...	Allestree, Richard, 1619-1681.	1663 (1663)	Wing A1165; ESTC R15228	15,707	44

and it was imputed to him for righteousness and he was called the friend of God James ii 23. and then is Christ more inaccessible and harder to be made a friend Why truly God and Christ both are so much friends to all true believers that the life of Christ was given for them for God so loved the world that he gave his onely begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life John iii. 16. nor are there any qualities more signally peculiar to friendship more engaging then confidence and trust dependance and relying embosoming my self in him now these are but the exercise of Faith and t is most certain if we heartily endeavour to do what he commands there is employment then for all this work of Faith place for its applications and assurances My Text does make this good But when his friendship is made over on conditions as t is not onely in these words but every where in Scriptures there being not one promise absolute that does concern Gods favour justification and eternal life he does not once offer remission of sins but to those that amend their lives nay does express as if he could not give it otherwise peradventure they will repent that I may forgive them Jeremy xxxvi 3 The promises therefore being conditional Faith must be answerable to the promises that it does rest on and apply and at the most can be but an assurance that you shall be partaker of what 's promised that is to say partaker of the favour and the life of Christ if ye do his commands But then if I perform not this condition to trust upon his friendship which I am not qualified for to think by faith to receive a pardon which in that case I am was never offered me to apply to my self promises which were never made me for none were ever made to them that do not do and to assure my self Christ will transgress his everlasting Covenant for my Vices sake meerly to give me leave to enjoy my sins will do that which God may not do forgive one that will not repent If I believe thus against promise and against decree am confident whether Christ will or no and will rely upon him in despite of him if such a faith will make us friends affronts do reconcile This is indeed to lay violent hands on his favour and to invade his friendship and without metaphor take Heaven by force But sure I am that this is not the faith made Abraham be called the friend of God in that place of Saint James but a faith that was perfected by doing v. 22. of that Chapter a faith that made him offer up his onely Son upon the Altar v. 21. 'T is true he did in hope believe against all hope Rom iv 18. So that his faith was stronger then a contradiction but yet his resolutions of obedience seem stronger then his faith for he did that even to the cutting off the grounds of all his Faith and hope He trusted God would make his promise good to him make all the Nations of the Earth be blessed in the seed of Isaac though Isaac had no seed nor could have if he should be slain And he resolved at Gods command himself to slay that Isaac so to make him have no seed His Faith indeed did no dispute the great impossibility but his obedience caused it He did not question how can God perform with me when I have offered up my son I cannot look that a large Progeny should rise out of the Ashes on the Altar nor will those Flames that devour all my seed at once may my seed numerous lasting and glorious as the Stars in Heaven which he promised me but much less did he question why should I obey in this He that does his commands can but expect what he hath promis'd but if I should do this command and slay my Son I make his promise void and detroy my own expectations and if I disobey I can but suffer what he bids me do my own obedience will execute all that his indignation would threaten to my Disobedience Though Abraham had three daies time and journy to the Altar that Nature might have leisure the mean while to reason with the precept thus and his affection might struggle with his duty yet he goes on resolves to tear out his own bowels and cut of his hopes will Sacrifice his onely Son and Sacrifice God's promise to his commands And then He that will trust to Abraham's example of believing yet will not follow him at all in doing will obey no commands that is so far from offering up an onely Son he will not slay an onely evil custome nor part with one out of the herd of all his vicious habits will not give up the satisfaction to any of his carnal worldly or ambitious appetites not Sacrifice a passion or a lust to all the Obligations that God and Christ can urge him with he hath nor faith nor friendship no nor fore-head 'T is true indeed he that hath Abraham's faith may well assure himself he is Christ's friend but t is onely on this account because he that believes as Abraham believed he will not stick to do whatever Christ commands which is that universality of obedience that is the next condition that entitles to Christ's friendship and my last part Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you There is no quality so necessary to a friend or so appropriate to friendship as sincerity They that have but one soul they can have no reserves from one another But disobedience to one precept is inconsistent with sincerity that hath respect unto all the commandments and he that will not do whatever Christ prescribes hath reserves of affection for some darling sin and is false to his Saviour He is an enemy indeed so that there is no friendship on either side Saint Paul says so of any of one kind the minding of the flesh saith he whether it be providing for the belly or any other of the organs of carnality is desperate incurable rebellion Now such a rebel is we know the worst of enemies Saint James does say as much of any of those vicious affections that are set on the world Whosoever will be a friend of the world is an enemy of God James iv 4. and he calls them adultereses and adulterers who think to joyn great strict Religion to some little by-love of an honour or a profit of this world Such men are like a wife that not contented with the partner of her takes in another now and then she must not count her self her husbands friend though she give him the greatest share in her affections no she is but a bosom enemy and so any one vice allow'd is a paramour sin is whoredome against Christ and our pretended friendship to him in all other obediences is but the kindness and the caresses of an adulteress the meer hypocrisie and

treachery of love If it be necessary to the gaining of Christs friendship that thou do his commands 't is necessary that thou do them all that thou divorce thy self from thy beloved sin as well as any other because his friendship does no more require other obedience then it does that but is as inconsistent with thy own peculiar vice as with the rest Indeed it is impossible that it should bear with any they being all his murderers If thou canst find one sin that had no hand in putting Christ to death one vice that did not come into the garden nor upon mount Calvary that did not helpe to assassin thy Saviour even take thy fill of that but if each had a stab at him if no one of thy vices could have been forgiven had not thy Jesus died for it canst thou expect he should have kindness for his agony or friendship for the man that entertaines his Crucifiers in his heart if worldly cares which he calls thorns fill thy head with contrivances of Wealth and Greatness of filling Coffers and of platting Coronets for thee as the Thorns did make him a Crown too would'st thou have him receive thee and these in his bosom to gore his Heart as they did pierce his Head If thou delight in that intemperance which filled his deadly Cup which Vomited Gall into it can he delight in thee That Cup which made him fall upon his Face to deprecate will he partake in as the pledg of mutual Love He that sunk under could not bear this load of thine when it was in his Cross upon his shoulders will he bear it and thee on his armes when thou fall'st under it When thou wilt cast a shameful spewing on his glory too if he own such a friend Thou that art so familiar with his name as thou wer't more his friend then any in the world whose Oaths and imprecations Moses sayes strike through that name which they so often call upon thou mayst as well think his heart did attract the Spear that pierc'd it and the wound close upon its head with unions of Love as that he hath kindness for thee If Christ may make friendship with him that does allow himself a Sin he may have fellowship with Belial for him to dwell in any heart that cherisheth a vice were to descend to Hell again But as far as those Regions of darkness are from his habitation of Glory and the black spirits of that place from being any of his guard of holy myriads so far is He from dwelling with or being friend to him that is a friend to any wickedness to him that will not do whatever he commands And now if these conditions seem hard if any do not care to be his friend upon these terms they may betake themselves to others Let such make themselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness A friend indeed that hath not so much of the insincerities as many great ones have for this will furnish them with all that heart or lust can wish for all that necessities or wantonness proposeth to it self to dress out pomp or vice But yet when with enjoyment the affections grow and become so unquiet work them so as not to let their thoughts or actions rest make them quicken themselves and like the motions of all things that go downwards tending to the Earth increase by the continuance grow stronger and more violent towards the end then when they are most passionate it failes them and having fill'd their life with most unsatisfied tormenting cares it leaves them nothing but the guilt of all when their great wealth shall shrink into a single sheet no more of it be left but a thin shroud and all their vast inheritances but six foot of earth be gone yet the iniquity of all will stick close to them and this false friend that does it self forsake them will neither go along nor will let its pomp follow them raises a cry on them as high as God's tribunal the cry of all the bloud all the oppressed rights that bribery till then had stifled the groans of all those poor that greatness covetousness or extortion had grown'd and crush't the yellings of those souls that were starved for want of the bread of life which yet they payed for and the price of it made those heaps which will that day appear against their friends and masters and prove their adversaries to eternal death Let others joy in friends that wine does get them such as have no qualification to endear them but this that they will not refuse to sin and to be sick with their companions men that do onely drink in their affections as full of friendship as of liquor and probably they do unload themselves of both at once part with their dearness and their drink together and alike I know not whether it be heats of mutual kindness that inflame these draughts and the desires of them so as if they did drink thirst but sure I am that these hot draughts begin the lake of fire Let others please themselves in an affection that carnality cements These are warme friendships I confess but Solomon will tell us whence they have their heat Her house saith he does open into Hell and Brimstone kindles those libidinous flames There are straite bands fetters in those affections indeed for the same wise man sayes The closets of that sinner are the chambers of death that none that go unto her return again or take hold of the paths of life it seems she is a friend that takes most irreversible dead hold she is not onely as insatiate but as inexorable as the grave and the eternal chains of fate are in those her embraces But God keep us from making such strict Covenants with death from being at friendship with Hell or in a word that I say all at once with any that are good companions onely in sinning Such men having no virtue in themselves must needs hate it in others as being a reproach to them and therefore they are still besieging it using all arts and Stratagems to undermine it and having nothing else to recommend them into mens affections but their managery of vice no way to merit but by serving iniquity they not onely comply with our own evill inclinations that so they may be grateful and insinuate into us but they provoke too and inflame those tendencies that they may be more useful to us having no other means to work their ends And then such friends by the same reason must be false and trecherous and all that we declaime at and abhorre in enemies when that shall be the way to serve their ends because they have no virtue to engage them to be otherwise and to be such is to be constant to their own designs their dispositions and usances These are the pests of all Societies they speak and live infection and friendship with them is to couple with the Plague These do