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spirit_n	adoption_n	cry_v	father_n	9,732	5	5.0154	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77434	Errours and induration, are the great sins and the great judgements of the time. Preached in a sermon before the Right Honourable House of Peers, in the Abbey-Church at Westminster, July 30. 1645. the day of the monethly fast: / by Robert Baylie, minister at Glasgow.	Baillie, Robert, 1599-1662.	1645 (1645)	Wing B459; Thomason E294_12; ESTC R200181	39,959	57

Poor children in distresse whither shall they go but to their father Neither sin nor misery will annull that more then naturall relation that supernaturall Paternity and Filiation Though God clothe himself with a cloud in his anger yet faith will make the soul with Moses run thorow the fire and darknesse to him The Prodigall in the midst of his misery resolves to return to his father The Spirit of Adoption in our hardest times will make us cry Abba Father This reason is used in the same place ver 16. Doubtlesse thou art our Father though Abraham be ignorant of us Vers 19. We are thine thou never bearest rule over them The next Chapter vers 8. But now O Lord thou art our Father behold see we beseech thee we are all thy people The Use is for our Encouragement to continue this practice with all earnestnesse and perseverance The Vse If there be any means to draw down a blessing from the heavens on a distressed Nation it is the prayer of the Saints This is the hand that hath drawn up this sinking Land from the pit of ruine that hath set our feet on that Rock of safety whereon now we stand Whatever difficulties are yet before us by this means or none else will they be gotten overcome Though all other should give over this holy exercise of Fasting and Praying or turn it in a sinfull and provoking formality yet it behoves us to keep it on foot remembring both the expresse command of the Lord Call on me in the day of thy trouble I shall deliver thee Psal 50. Lam. 2.19 Arise cry out in the night in the beginning of the watches pour out your hearts like water before the face of the Lord Lift up your hands towards him And your own visible experience As no people have sown more plentifully this pretious seed so none have already reaped more evident fruits thereof Be not weary of this good work untill all our desires be accomplished In the next place observe The second Doctrine Sins are heavier then afflictions The Proof That the chief part of the Saints complaint to God is of their wandrings from his wayes Their sins are heavier to them then all their afflictions This is proved from divers Scriptures Psal 38. When the Prophets trouble was great Nothing sound in his flesh The Arrows of the Lord sticking in him Gods hand pressing him sore yet the chief burden whereof he complains was his sins verse 4. Mine iniquities are gone over my head as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me Psal 40.12 Innumerable evils have compassed me about but mine iniquities have taken hold on me for them he was not able to look out his heart failed him Daniel c. 9. complains of the heavy wrath and curse that was powred out on Jerusalem and of so great afflictions as had befaln to no Nation under Heaven yet the first chief and longest part of his complaint is of the sins of their Kings of their Princes of their Priests and whole Land The reason of the Doctrine The Reason Sin is the greatest evill it s the fountain of afflictions Affliction cometh not out of the dust trouble springeth not out of the ground Sin is the root of it Also sin is most contrary to the nature of God Wrath and trouble even the greatest the very torments of Hell are not so for they are according to his justice The godly therefore who weigh things aright in the just ballance of the Sanctuary esteem their sins much heavier and more grievous evils then any they can suffer for them The use is for our instruction The Vse Let our complaints be rightly ordered and our sorrows rightly placed Beware to spend the most or best of thy sense on thy sufferings Beware to pour out the vehemency of thy passion the bitterest of thy sorrows on calamities either private or publike The first fruits the flower the first-born of thy grief must be reserved for the chief evill The naturall and kindely children of God will have more sorrow at their heart for the sins of the Land then for the desolations thereof What ever poverty disgrace pain can befall their person the very wrath of God suppose the torments of Hell will not be so heavy so bitter so troublesome to them as their sins the cause of all these evils The third observation The third Doctrine Gods hand in our sins encreaseth their bitternes An Objection answered Gods punishing and judiciall hand in our sins is their aggravation and increase of their bitternesse For this is the head of the Churches complaint That God had caused them to erre from his wayes It is true the Saints in Scripture draw comfort from some acts of Gods mercy about sin as from his gracious directing of its act to a good end Upon this ground Joseph comforts his Brethren that not they but God had sent him down to Egypt That their felling of him which they intended for evill God had ordered it so that it did become the mean of all their preservation Also Gods prediction of sin in sundry Scriptures is made a ground of contentment All this was done that the Scriptures might be fulfilled is a common place of comfort against the treason of Judas and the wickednesse of the Jews Likewise the Apostles Acts 4. quiet their minde on this meditation That God in his eternall counsell had determined what Herod and Pilate in time had done in crucifying of Christ Of such acts of Gods mercy about our sins we speak not be they temporall be they eternall but of the acts of his justice and wrath punishing sin by sin From these actions of God we can draw no comfort but they aggravate the weight of our sins and increase our grief The miscarriage of Absolon The Proof his rebellion and incest could not but grieve David but to increase his grief 2 Sam. 2.10 God tells him I will do this thing before all Israel and before the Sun in that terrible vision Isai 6. the Lord to demonstrate his wrath against that people sendeth to them a message full of anger Make the heart of this people fat and their ears heavy Their excaecation was in it self a grievous evill but it was more grievous when it came as a plague from an angry God John 12.39 Gods blinding of their eyes that they could not beleeve Christs Word is brought as an aggravation of their sin and of the anger of Christ against them so far as he went from them and hid himself The reason of this is The Reason That these acts of God proceed from wrath and justice punishing former sins Again they are the means to make sin more sinfull the person being given over to be carried headlong by his own lusts and Satans tentations Thirdly The punishment of sin in this degree is much sorer then if it had been a simple sin as in the sixth of Isaiah and elsewhere it appears No

ERROURS And INDURATION ARE The Great Sins and the Great Judgements of the Time Preached in a SERMON Before the Right Honourable House of PEERS in the Abbey-Church at Westminster July 30. 1645. the day of the Monethly Fast By ROBERT BAYLIE Minister at Glasgow 2 Thess 2.10 11 12. Because they received not the love of the Truth that they might be saved God shall send them strong delusions that they should believe a Lye that they all might be damned who believed not the Truth Matth. 7.15 Beware of false Prophets which come to you in sheeps clothing but inwardly they are ravening wolves Matth. 15.14 Let them alone they be blinde Leaders of the Blinde and if the Blinde lead the Blinde both shall fall into the Ditch London Printed by R. Raworth for Samuel Gellibrand at the Brasen-Serpent in Pauls Church-yard 1645. Die Jovis 31 Julii 1645. ORdered by the Lords in Parliament That Master Baylie who preached yesterday before the Lords of Parliament in the Abbey-Church Westminster it being the day of the Publike Fast is hereby thanked for the great pains he took in his Sermon and desired to print and publish the same which is to be printed by none but such as shall be authorized by the said Master Baylie Job Brown Cler. Parliamentorum Ido appoint Samuel Gellibrand to print my Sermon ROBERT BAYLIE FOR The Equitable READER HOwsoever I have not adventured to offer unto the Right Honourable House of Peers any Dedicatorie Epistle having taken up alreadie so much of their pretious time in their patient and favourable audience of my prolix enough Sermon Yet presuming upon thy courtesie who shalt be willing to reade the subsequent Notes of that which to their Honours was preached without any variation I have made bold to speak in thy eares as the custome is some words of a Preface At the first instant of my calling to this service the words of my Text were cast into my minde where they remained without my least inclination towards any other till I had delivered from them what followeth I have been for a long time in the opinion that Errour and Induration are albeit not the only yet among the principall both sins and miseries of this time and place Hardnesse of heart is ever a sinne The sinfulness of Induration but then most sinfull when most unseasonable If ever there was a time to weep this must be it when not only the mouth of the Lord from his Word is calling but his hand also from the Heaven is drawing us to it He is a stubborn child from whose eye the rod of the Father can draw no water It is a hard stone which the hammer cannot break It is a piece of unnaturall metall wich the fire cannot dissolve And yet this is the complaint of the best discerning Christians every where That though the Lord at this instant be dealing with us by the rod the hammer the fire of his judgements we are so far from heart-melting that in this extraordinarie and untimous hardnesse of our heart more of the wrath and judiciall hand of God doth appear then in any or in all our judgements beside This plague of the Lord on the spirits not only of the World but of many his dear children ought to be the subject of our deepest groans and lowdest cries to the Heaven whence alone the remedie of this our spirits disease can come For there is but one Father and one Lord and one Physitian of the spirits of men My weak endeavours towards this great Cure must be fruitless till his hand make the application of these prescriptions which with all the faithfulnesse and care I was able for the time I have collected only out of the book of his own method of Physick As for the other evill of Errour Error no lesse sinfull then ●ice it hath been the studie and work of some here and elsewhere to extenuate the sinfulnesse thereof and to arme the conscience of all they could perswade against the sense of its burthen as if the conscience ought to be impenetrable and secure from all Wounds which vice and fleshly lusts doe not inflict But I believe if Errour and Vice were Well weighed in the ballance of the Sanctuarie though you put to vice the grossest aggravations whereby the passions of the soul and actions of the bodie make it justly abominable yet if you Will allow to Errour but the grains of its ordinarie circumstances especially that one of our Text Induration its most familiar companion it will be found to have such a weight of malignitie that if betwixt the two any inequality do appear the sinfulnesse of the last will prae-ponder The intoxication of the spirit of the minde by the venome of Errour is as much contrarie to the Divine Nature and Will is as much hatefull to the Spirit of light and truth and as evidently damnable as the corruption of the will and inferiour affections or any member of the bodie with whatsoever vice or more bodily transgression I hope I have proved this by places of Scripture unanswerable Whence it necessarily followeth that it is more Toleration of errours a grievous sin at least no lesse unlawfull for a Christian State to give any libertie or toleration to Errours then to set up in every Citie and Parish of their Dominions Bordels for Vncleannesse Stages for Playes and Lists for Duels That a libertie for Errours is no lesse hatefull to God no lesse hurtfull to men then a freedome without any punishment Without any discouragement for all men when and wheresoever they pleased to kill to steal to rob to commit adultery or to do any of these mischiefs which are most repugnant to the Civill law and destructive of humane societie But that which my Text points at in Errours The errours of our time appear to be judiciall is not so much their sinfulnesse as their judgement That God in his wrath had given over that people to errour If ever the plague of erring from the wayes of truth was sent upon a land it seems this day to lye upon us The Finger of God in this our judgement is demonstrable by divers Characters imprinted upon the face of our present Errours above all that in ordinarie and not judiciall Errours useth to appear I point at four eminent singularities in them Their various multiplicity Their palpable evidence Their incredible increase and in the midst of universall complaints against them A totall neglect of their cure First their variety is prodigious 1 By their variety I cannot say that all which stand in the ancient Hereseologies of Philastrius Epiphanius or Augustine can be found among us or Were ever to be found upon Earth in any one age But this may be confidently averred That more Errours have set up their head and shewed their mis-shapen countenances lately here then in any one place of the world this day are known I adde that there is not any Errour spoken

There is no interruption of the course of mercy towards a People by the destruction of many particular persons Great Vengeance may be upon Thousands the carcases of Ten Thousands may fall in the Wildernesse even of Moses himself and many of the Shepherds both of Church and State and yet the Lord may graciously march on before his People till he have setled them and his Ark in peace on his holy mountain The Prayer consists of Petitions The second member Complaints Confessions of sin Professions of faith intertexed one with another as the holy passions of the Supplicants hearts do mix them In the fifteenth verse The matter of the 15 verse there is a Petition backed with a Complaint The Lord for a long time had left his People to the outrages of their Enemies he had as it were left the earth gone up to the heaven and miskent all that the Enemy had done to his People Now therefore they petition that he might be pleased to look down upon them from his holy and glorious Throne in the heaven For this is the strange faith of the Church That she is perswaded so far of the power and goodnesse of her God at that very time when he hath left her to sink in misery for her offences that even then if he would but look back to her in never so far a distance if from the very heaven the place of his retiring he would behold her on the earth overwhelmed with misery she is hopefull if she come but in the sight of her gracious Lord he would not fail to take pity upon her and deliver her To this Petition a Complaint is subjoyned of the restraint and withdrawing of Gods ancient favours Sometimes his zeal and strength had been employed in her defence his mercies the tender bowels of his compassions had been extended towards her but now all sense of such favours were away This complaint lest it should irritate The matter of the sixteenth is presently corrected in the sixteenth Verse with a fair profession of Faith ●bove and against all present sense however the beams of Gods loving countenance did not then shine upon them as at some other time yet they professe their certain perswasion that God was their Father Though Abraham and Israel and all their bodily Progenitors should cast them away as unworthy to be counted their children yet they did beleeve that their everlasting and unchangeable God would not cast them off but deal with them as children notwithstanding of all their misdeservings As for the words in hand in the seventeenth Verse The division of the Text. the Church goes on to powre out her spirit before him whom she beleeves to be her Father in the midst of all her afflictions in a new complaint and petition The complaint hath two parts and the petition is backed with a twofold Reason The first part of the complaint is in these words O Lord why hast thou made us erre from thy wayes the second part in these Why hast thou hardned our hearts from thy fear The petition is that he would return after his long absence The first reason They were his servants the second They were his inheritance Let us consider severally the minde and use of every part As for the first part of the complaint The Exposition of the first pars four things in it would be exponed First What are the wayes of the Lord. Secondly What it is to erre from his wayes Thirdly How God makes men erre from his way Fourthly How the Church complains of this divine action Three of these particulars are easie and may be dispatched in a word but in the fourth there is no little difficulty For the first What are the wayes of God Gods wayes here are his Commandments full of holinesse and righteousnesse they are called Gods wayes because of their similitude with his nature that is holy righteous and true All his Commandments and conversation are according to the strait rule of his eternall and essentiall holinesse righteousnesse and truth Secondly Because they are his Law and Prescription his will prescribes them as a way to his creatures to walk in Thirdly Because of his presence therein in that way he is to be found He is graciously present and doth conntenance all that walk into it Fourthly Because of their end they lead to God they are the strait way wherein the godly walk till they come to the glorious palace above The second point What it is to erre from these wayes To erre from these wayes is to sin as it is expressed Psal 119.8 10. To wander from Gods Commandments When we leave Gods way and run out on the right hand or the left to the wayes of our own blinde minde and corrupted heart our false opinions against Gods truth our wicked inclinations and actions against his holy nature and revealed will all of this kinde is our erring from his wayes But the great difficulty is in the third How God makes men to erre How the Lord causes us to erre from his way This would seem to make God the cause and author of sin which is a horrid blasphemy against many Scriptures and all reason To eschew this huge great and intolerable inconvenience sundry famous interpreters do translate the originall otherwayes then we read it Not Why hast thou made or caused us to erre but Why hast thou suffered or permitted us to erre So Junius an excellent translator And many hundred yeers before him the Chaldee Paraphrast did render it Why hast thou cast us away to erre from thy wayes This interpretation is approved by very Learned and Orthodox Divines who bring this reason for it That the Hebrew word here is not simply in the active form not in Kal but as they speak in Hiphil whose signification oftentimes is not to make or cause but to permit Indeed this translation does eschew fully the difficulty The Grammaticall solution of some great men is not selid yet we dare not venture upon it for as it seems it were to make too bold with the Scripture The Septuagens the ancient Latin the French the Dutch the Italian and many more reads it just as our English Why hast thou made us to erre from thy wayes The Grammaticall reason alleaged hath no strength in this place for be it so that Hebrew Verbs in Hiphil sometime have a permissive and not an active sense though this in any word is very rare and the examples alleaged are very questionable yet for the Hiphil of the word in hand we deny that ever it can be so exponed A number of places of Scripture may be produced where Hithah must be actively exponed as here our translators read it but not one if it be not this in question can be brought where it may be exponed of a meer permission without some agency and operation upon the erring and seduced person We dare not trust the solving of so

removall whereof hath been one chief end of all our late Humiliations The longer it lieth on it is the heavier and all good men have the more reason to cry with Abner to Joab upon a lesse occasion Shall the Sword devour for ever Knowest thou not that it will be bitternesse in the later end How long shall it be ere thou bid the people return from following their brethren Our Malignant enemies the onely authors of our present Discord have to this day denied us Peace in any just and safe terms If obstinately they will go on in their refusall we must proceed in our necessary defence and crave from the God of Peace that which these children of Discord do deny unto us and expect from the heaven such a Blessing upon our Armies as may force them to permit us to live in quietnesse when they are no more able to cause troubles In the mean time all should continue their prayers to God so to frame the hearts of all men that the weary and fainting Kingdoms may be delivered so soon as is possible from our destroying Discords The estate of the world abroad Reasons why Peace is to be wished doth much call us to these thoughts The Desolations of Germany farther from any appearance of remedy this hour then Six and twenty yeers ago should be exemplary unto us If our mindes be so large as to look so far abroad we may see the whole Western Kingdoms in a greater danger to be swallowed up with the great Turkish Leviathan then they have been at any by-gone time We know his head this day is bent towards Christiendom The Bulwarks which were wont to keep him out on both hands upon our East in Germany and Hungary upon our South in Italy and Spain are so much brangled with Intestine and irreconcileable Divisions that we have just ground to fear what this his Western Enterprise may produce England ofttimes hath felt the heavie stroke of the Constantinopolitan Arms when they were in much weaker and far lesse terrible hands then at this day they are If these seem far-fetched fears look over to the condition of our neerest Neighbours While we are sleeping and so soon as awakened fallen a destroying our selves the French King hath ingrossed a greater and more formidable power then any of his Ancestors for some hundred yeers did enjoy No wise man of this Isle will close his eyes at the extraordinary and disproportionate encrease of that Estate If there were no other reasons I believe convincing Demonstrations might be drawn from the present estate of the world abroad why we should continue to make it one of our speciall prayers in all these meetings That we might be so happie as quickly to see in all the three Kingdoms a just and well-grounded Peace But if the fatall obstinacy of our enemies will force us to fight it out with all chearfulnesse let us go on till they be brought so low as not to be willing any more to reject the equitable Offers of both Parliaments Onely let this Judiciall Discord be extended to as narrow bounds as is possible Most of all Peace among our selves would be kept with care Let all our Divisions be with the enemy among our selves let the bond of brotherly Union continue and encrease All that are for God and the welfare of the Kingdoms in the three Nations are united together by the Covenant and Band of God All Ages shall call them Cursed who for any imaginable advantage private or publike shal labour to put asunder what God hath conjoyned The greatest advantages cannot make up the losse which unavoidably will follow upon such a Breach We know the Prince of Discord that restlesse Spirit will always be stirring up in the humours both of evil and of good men the sparkles of that fire of jealousie envie malice division wherewith he enflamed the nature of all men in the brest of our old father the first Adam But all the members of the second Adam should make it not so much their profession as their reall care and conscience to smother these smokes whenever they appear I am sure the wisedom the piety the peace of minde the love to his Countrey of that man is greatest who with the greatest sedulity employs himself to cast water on every beginning on every the least appearance of any Division which Satan may be working in the Parliament in the Assembly in the City in the Army and above all betwixt the Covenanted Nations The second Judiciall Errour I point at is Ecclesiastick Anarchy is a Judicial error Our Ecclesiasticall Anarchy How great a sin and how great a judgement this is a little consideration will clear By this wofull Anarchy Christ is robbed of a great part of his Kingdom in this Land That in all the Churches he hath in England there should be no Government at all no execution of Discipline That not one of his Officers should have liberty to keep from his Table to cast out of his House those that are most grievous to him That for so long a time he should be hindered to keep so much as one Court in any of his approved Churches in England it is very strange Which of you would not take it for agrievous offence The absurdity thereof if any would offer to hinder the sitting of the high Court of Parliament at Westminster or wherever else they please to sit Yea it would be taken for a hainous crime if any in the Citie or Countrey should stop the least Committee or meanest Officer whom either of the Houses would send out in their name to execute any of their Orders What man in the Kingdom would not take it for an intolerable affront if his servant were hindred to close his doors and keep out of his house his enemies or any whom he discharged his presence What grief would it be to any of us to be forced to see daily not onely walking in our house but sitting at our Table those whom least we desire We may judge by what we feel in our own brests when such offences are offered to us what sense Christ will have of them when his Spirit so long hath been pierced with them That Christ by whose power alone this Parliament hath sitten so long time in despite of their enemies by whose goodnesse it is that their Sentences get any where obedience who makes their wills in their private States and Families to be regarded That he should not be suffered to keep any Court in his own Church That his Orders should not be regarded in his own House it is very strange Can any man say that ever before it was thus in England these Fourteen hundred yeers or if it be longer since there were any Churches in this Land Was ever a totall Anarchy heard of in any Churches before these late times Is it any where else this day to be seen in the world Doth the Pagan the Turkish the Popish