Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
soul_n	forget_v	remember_v	sinfulness_n	18	3	16.9720	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27042	A sermon of repentance preached before the honourable House of Commons, assembled in Parliament at Westminster, at their late solemn fast for the setling of these nations, April 30, 1660 / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; England and Wales. Parliament. House of Commons.	1660 (1660)	Wing B1413; ESTC R209398	26,650	54

is much excited by the observation and sense of his exceeding mercies and is conjunct with Gratitude 3. It continueth and encreaseth under the greatest assurance of forgiveness and sense of love and dyeth not when we think we are out of danger 4. It containeth a Loathing of sin as sin and a Love of Holiness as such and not only a love of ease and peace and a loathing of sin as the cause of suffering 5. It resolveth the soul against returning to its former course and resolveth it for an entire devotedness to God for the time to come 6. It deeply engageth the penitent in a conflict against the flesh and maketh him victorious and setteth him to work in a life of holiness as his trade and principal business in the world 7. It bringeth him to a delight in God and holiness and a delight in himself so far as he findeth God and Heaven and Holiness within him He can with some comfort and content own himself and his conversation so far as God victorious against his carnal self appeareth in him For as he loveth Christ in the rest of his members so must he in himself And this is it that self-loathing doth prepare for This must be the self-loathing that must afford you comfort as a penitent people in the way to restoration Where you see it is implyed that materially it containeth these common acts 1. Accusing and Condemning thoughts against our selves It is a judging of our selves and makes us call our selves with Paul foolish disobedient deceived yea mad as Acts 26. 11. and with David to say I have done foolishly 2 Sam. 24. 10. 2. It containeth a deep distaste and displeasure with our selves and a heart-rising against our selves 3. As also an holy indignation against our selves as apprehending that we have plaid the enemies to our selves and God 4. And it possesseth us with grief and trouble at our miscarriages So that a soul in this condition is sick of it self and vexed with its self-procured woe 2. Note also that when self-loathing proceedeth from meer conviction and is without the Love of God and holiness it is but the tormentor of the soul and runs it deeper into sin provoking men here to destroy their lives and in hell it is the never dying worm 3. Note also that it is themselves that they are said to loath because it is our selves that conscience hath to do with as witness and as judge It is our selves that are naturally nearest to our selves and our own affairs that we are most concerned in It is our selves that must have the Joy or Torment and therefore it is our own actions and estate that we have first to mind Though yet as Magistrates Ministers and neighbours we must next mind others and must loath iniquity wherever we meet it and a vile person must be contemned in our eyes while we honour them that fear the Lord Psal. 15. 4. And as by Nature so in the Commandment God hath given to every man the first and principal care and charge of himself and his own salvation and consequently of his own wayes So that we may with less suspition loath our selves then others and are more obliged to do it 4. Note also that it is not for our troubles or our disgrace or our bodily deformities or infirmities or for our poverty and want that penitents are said to loath themselves But for their iniquities and abominations For 1o this loathing is a kind of Justice done upon our selves and therefore is exercised not for meer infelicities but for crimes Conscience keepeth in its own Court and medleth but with moral evils which we are conscious of 2o And also it is sin that is loathed by God and makes the creature loathsom in his eyes And Repentance conformeth the soul to God and therefore causeth us to loath as he doth and on his grounds And 3o there is no Evil but sin and that which sin procureth And therefore it is for sin that the penitent loaths himself 5. Note also that it is here implyed that till Repentance there was none of this Remembring of sin and Loathing of themselves They begin with our conversion and as fore-described are proper to the truly penitent For to consider them distinctly 1o The deluded soul that is bewitched by its own concupiscence is so taken up with Remembring of his fleshly pleasures and his alluring objects and his honours and his earthly businesses and store that he hath no mind or room for the Remembring of his foolish odious sin and the wrong that he is doing to God and to himself Death is oblivious and Sleep hath but a distracted uneffectual memory that stirreth not the busie dreamer from his pillow nor dispatcheth any of the work he dreams of And the unconverted are asleep and dead in sin The crowd of cares and worldly businesses and the tumultuous noise of foolish sports and other sensual passions and delights do take up the minds of the unconverted and turn them from the observation of the things of greatest everlasting consequence They have a memory for sin and the flesh to which they are alive but not for things spiritual and eternal to which they are dead They Remember not God himself as God with any effectual remembrance God is not in all their thoughts Psalm 10. 4. They live as without him in the world Eph. 2. 12. And if they remember not God they cannot remember sin as sin whose malignity lyeth in its opposition to the Will and Holiness of God They forget themselves and therefore must needs forget their sinfulness Alas they remember not effectually and savingly what they are and why they were made and what they are daily nourished and preserved for and what business they have to do here in the world They forget that they have souls to save or lose that must live in endless joy or torment you may see by their careless and ungodly lives that they forget it You may hear by their carnal frothy speech that they forget it And he that remembreth not himself remembreth not his own concernments They forget the end to which they tend The life which they must live for ever The matters everlasting whose greatness and duration one would think should so command the mind of man and take up all his thoughts and cares in despight of all the little trifling matters that would avert them that we should think almost of nothing else yet these even these that nothing but deadness or madness should make a reasonable creature to forget are daily forgotten by the unconverted soul or uneffectually remembred Many a time have I admired that men of reason that are here to day and in endless joy or misery to morrow should be able to forget such unexpressible concernments Me thinks they should easier forget to rise or dress themselves or to eat or drink or any thing then to forget an endless life which is so undoubtedly certain and so near A man

that hath a cause to be heard to morrow in which his life or honour is concerned cannot forget it A wretch that is condemned to die to morrow cannot forget it And yet poor sinners that are continually uncertain to live an hour and certain speedily to see the Majesty of the Lord to their unconceivable joy or terrour as sure as now they live on earth can forget these things for which they have their memory and which one would think should drown the matters of this world as the report of a Canon doth a whisper or as the Sun obscureth the poorest glow-worm O wonderful stupidity of an unrenewed soul O wonderful folly and distractedness of the ungodly That ever men can forget I say again that they can forget eternal joy eternal woe and the eternal God and the place of their eternal unchangeable abode when they stand even at the door and are passing in and there is but the thin vail of flesh between them and that amazing sight that eternal gulf and they are daily dying and even stepping in O could you keep your honours here for ever could you ever wear that gay attire and gratifie your flesh with meats and drinks and sports and lusts could you ever keep your rule and dignity or your earthly life in any state you had some little poor excuse for not remembring the eternal things as a man hath that preferreth his candle before the Sun But when death is near and inexorable and you are sure to die as you are sure you live when every man of you that sitteth in these seats to day can say I must shortly be in another world where all the pomp and pleasure of this world will be forgotten or remembred but as my sin and folly one would think it were impossible for any of you to be ungodly and to Remember the trifles and nothings of the world while you forget that everlasting All whose reality necessity magnitude excellency concernment and duration are such as should take up all the powers of your souls and continually command the service and attendance of your thoughts against all Seekers and contemptible competitors whatsover But alas though you have the greatest helps in subserviency to these commanding objects yet will you not Remember the matters which alone deserve remembrance Sometimes the Preachers of the Gospel do call on you to Remember to Remember your God your souls your Saviour your ends and everlasting state and to remember your misdoings that you may loath your selves and in Returning may find life But some either scorn them or quarrel with them or sleep under their most serious and importunate solicitations or carelesly and stupidly give them the hearing as if they spoke but words of course or treated about uncertain things and spoke not to them from the God of heaven and about the things that every man of you shall very shortly see or feel Sometime you are called on by the voice of conscience within to remember the unreasonableness and evil of your wayes but conscience is silenced because it will not be conformable to your lusts But little do you think what a part your too-late-awakened conscience hath yet to play if you give it not a more sober hearing in time Sometime the voice of common calamities and National or local judgements do call on you to remember the evil of your wayes But that which is spoken to all or many doth seem to most of them as spoken unto none Sometime the voice of particular judgements seizing upon your families persons or estates doth call on you to remember the evil of your wayes And one would think the rod should make you hear And yet you most disregardfully go on or are only frightened into a few good purposes and promises that die when health and prosperity revive Sometime God joyneth all these together and pleadeth both by word and rod and addeth also the inward pleadings of his Spirit He sets your sins in order before you Psal. 50. 21. and expostulateth with you the cause of his abused love despised Soveraignty and provoked Justice and asketh the poor sinner Hast thou done well to waste thy life in vanity to serve thy flesh to forget thy God thy soul thy happiness and to thrust his service into corners and give him but the odious leavings of the flesh But these pleas of God cannot be heard O horrible impiety by his own creatures by reasonable creatures that would scorn to be called fools or mad men the God of heaven cannot be heard The brutish passionate furious sinners will not Remember They will not Remember what they have done and with whom it is that they have to do and what God thinks and saith of men in their condition and whither it is that the flesh will lead them and what will be the fruit and end of all their lusts and vanities and how they will look back on all at last and whether an holy or a sensual life will be sweetest to a dying man and what judgement it is that they will all be of in the controversie between the flesh and spirit at the later end Though they have life and time and reason for these uses we cannot entreate them to consider of these things in time If our lives lay on it as their salvation which is more lyeth on it we cannot intreate them If we should kneel to them and with tears beseech them but once a day or once a week to bestow one hour in serious consideration of their latter end and the everlasting state of Saints and sinners and of the equity of the holy wayes of God and the iniquity of their own we cannot prevail with them Till the God of heaven doth over-rule them we cannot prevail The witness that we are forc't to bear is sad It is sad to us but it will be sadder to these rebels that shall one day know that God will not be out-faced and that they may sooner shake the stable earth and darken the Sun by their reproaches then out-brave the Judge of all the world or by all their cavils wranglings or scorns escape the hands of his revenging Justice But if ever the Lord will save these souls he will bring their misdoings to their remembrance He will make them think of that which they were so loth to think on You cannot now abide these troubling and severe meditations The thoughts of God and Heaven and Hell the thoughts of your sins and of your duties are melancholly unwelcome thoughts to you But O that you could foreknow the thoughts that you shall have of all these things Even the proudest scornful hardened sinner that heareth me this day shall shortly have such a Remembrance as will make him wonder at his present blockishness O when the unresistible power of heaven shall open all your sins before you and command you to remember them and to remember the time and place and persons and all the circumstances of them What a

thousands that will still be so careless of themselves Once more therefore I entreate you Remember your misdoings lest God remember them And bless the Lord that called you this day by the voice of Mercy to Remember them upon terms of Faith and Hope Remembred they must be first or last And believe it this is far unlike the sad remembrance at Judgement and in the place of woe and desperation And I beseech you observe here that it is your Own misdoings that you must Remember Had it been only the sins of other men especially those that differ from you or have wronged you or stand against your interest how easily would the duty have been performed How little need should I have had to press it with all this importunity How confident should I be that I could convert the most if this were the Conversion It grieves my soul to hear how quick and constant high and low learned and unlearned are at this uncharitable contumelious remembring of the faults of others how cunningly they can bring in their insinuated accusations how odiously they can aggravate the smallest faults where difference causeth them to distaste the person how ordinarily they judge of actions by the persons as if any thing were a crime that is done by such as they dislike and all were vertue that is done by those that fit their humours How commonly Brethren have made it a part of their service of God to speak or write uncharitably of his servants labouring to destroy the hearers charity which had more need in this unhappy time of the bellows then the water How usual it is with the ignorant that cannot reach the truth and the impious that cannot bear it to call such Hereticks that know more then themselves and to call such Precisians Puritanes or some such name which Hell invents as there is occasion who dare not be so bad as they How odious men pretending to much gravity learning and moderation do labour to make those that are dear to God and what an art they have to widen differences and make a sea of every lake and that perhaps under pretence of blaming the uncharitableness of others How far the very Sermons and discourses of some learned men are from the common rule of doing as we would be done by and how loudly they proclaim that such men love not their neighbours as themselves the most uncharitable words seeming moderate which they give and all called intemperate that savoureth not of flattery which they receive Were I calling the several exasperated factions now in England to remember the misdoings of their supposed adversaries What full-mouth'd and debasing Confessions would they make What monsters of Heresie and Schism of impiety treason and rebellion of perjury and perfidiousness would too many make of the faults of others while they extenuate their Own to almost nothing It is a wonder to observe how the case doth alter with the most when that which was their adversaries case becomes their own The very prayers of the godly and their care of their salvation and their fear of sinning doth seem their crime in the eyes of some that easily bear the guilt of swearing drunkenness sensuality filthiness and neglect of duty in themselves as a tolerable burden But if ever God indeed convert you though you will pitty others yet he will teach you to begin at home and take the beam out of your own eyes and to cry out I am the miserable sinner And lest these generals seem insufficient for us to confess on such a day as this and lest yet your memories should need more help is it not my duty to mind you of some particulars which yet I shall not do by way of accusation but of enquiry Far be it from me to judge so hardly of you that when you come hither to lament your sins you cannot with patience endure to be told of them 1. Enquire then whether there be none among you that live a sensual careless life cloathed with the best and faring deliciously every day in gluttony or drunkenness chambering and wantonness strife or envying not putting on Christ nor walking in the Spirit but making provision for the flesh to satisfie the lusts thereof Rom. 13. 13 14. Is there none among you that spend your precious time in vanities that is allowed you to prepare for life eternal that have time to waste in complements and fruitless talk and visits in gaming and unnecessary recreations in excessive feasting and entertainments while God is neglected and your souls forgotten and you can never find an hour in a day to make ready for the life which you must live for ever Is there none among you that would take that man for a Puritan or Phanatick that should employ but half so much time for his soul and in the service of the Lord as you do in unnecessary sports and pleasures and pampering your flesh Gentlemen if there be any such among you as you love your souls Remember your misdoings and bewail these abominations before the Lord in this day of your professed humiliation 2. Enquire whether there be none among you that being strangers to the New birth and to the inward workings of the Spirit of Christ upon the soul do also distaste an holy Life and make it the matter of your reproach and pacifie your accusing consciences with a Religion made up of meer words and heartless out-side and so much obedience as your fleshly pleasures will admit accounting those that go beyond you especially if they differ from you in your modes and circumstances to be but a company of proud Pharisaical self-conceited hypocrites and those whom you desire to suppress If there should be one such person here I would entreat him to remember that it is the solemn asseveration of our Judge that Except a man be converted and be born again of water and the spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of heaven Joh. 3. 3 5. Mat. 18. 3. That if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his Rom. 8. 9. That if any man be in Christ he is a new creature old things are past away and all things are become new 2 Cor. 5. 17. That without holiness none shall see God Heb. 12. 14. That the wisdom that is from above is first Pure and then Peaceable Jam. 3. 17. That God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth John 4. 23 24. That they worship in vain that teach for Doctrines the commandments of men Mat. 15. 8 9. And that Except your righteousness exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees you shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of heaven Matth. 5. 20. And I desire you to remember that its hard to kick against the pricks and to prosper in rage against the Lord and that its better for that man that offendeth one of his little ones to have had a mill-stone fastened to his neck