Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	father_n	heart_n	son_n	17,006	5	5.6134	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27605	The general inefficacy and insincerity of a late or death-bed repentance with earnestest disswasives from committing our eternal condition, to that infinite hazard, and a full resolution of the case, how far a death-bed repentance is possible, to be sincere and effectual.	Beverley, Thomas.	1670 (1670)	Wing B2147; ESTC R18995	57,818	104

when by repentance a man Isai 1. 16 17. Mat. 3. 8. ceases to do evil he learns to do well and brings forth fruits meet for repentance and amendment of life On the other side he that seems to make a hasty motion to Holiness without due sense of sin first thinks to overrule the method God hath set who requires humiliation godly sorrow anger revenge fear as preparing to Repentance and further he conceipts a freedom to himself when he is fetter'd and bound without a power given him from God he offers to cast out Devils with ease that cannot be cast out Mat. 9. 29. but by fasting and prayer that is severe courses of self abasement and lowliest dependances together with earnestest application to the Grace of God These unclean spirits therefore that dissemble a retreat return immediately and make a prey of Acts 19. 14 c. the deluded soul Although Heaven and Hell happiness and misery take up the thoughts of the true penitent yet not separated from God and Christ but as it were melted into the sense of God angry and the desire of attonement with him in Jesus Christ Happiness and misery considered apart are not the object of the gracious soul But God and Christ considered apart are an infinitely sufficient reason of Repentance The clear love of God towards the soul as a Father in Christ without reflections upon happiness is though not the single yet the paramount consideration in Repentance unfeigned But men a dying are generally so over possessed with the terrors of an eternal suffering and meer desires of Freedom from pa●n and of well-being and so in haste that they generally miss these higher considerations which being further of not only from corrupt nature but even from natural conscience are not commonly espied but therefore argue greater sincerity and truth of Heart The truest Repentance lies in the bosome of Faith the apprehensions of the love and goodness of God in Christ melt the soule and give it most perfect Separation from sin the most effectual purification of the Heart all which express the height of repentance Upon the so●t fire of the pardoning goodness of God the soul most kindly distils into repentant tears Here flowes that Spirit of Grace and ingenuous goodness which bringeth forth the clearest and holiest affection towards God But at the time we are now speaking of It is very seldom that either horror or presumption do not swallow all Presumption where there is little sense or judgment of the Case Horror where the judgment is clearer and the sense quicker for every thing Rom. 8. 15 disposes now rather to Fear and to the Spirit of Bondage and a man naturally does all he does under a servile dread of God and his eternal Justice And though there may be much mention of Christ and desire of mercy through him yet it is but as a malefactor convicted beseeches the mercy of the Judge no otherwise than as of a Judge So such call out for the mercy of God to pardon them but still as a Judge not with the Spirit of the Son sent into the Cal. 4. 6. Heart the spirit of Adoption crying Abba Father Not with that Love that casteth out unworthy Fear And indeed how can it be otherwise there having been no Iob 22. 21 acquaintance with God in the way but a long enmity and the time now too strait for a free and full consideration of the riches of Grace such as may still an awakened conscience Fear presses in every way and shuts out Faith What can novv redeem the soul from this hellish Terror but a light from Heaven immediately darting into it a Grace above that Grace that ordinarily saves men for a vvell setled trust and confidence in mercy according to the general Rule is not but after some sad debates and experimental consultations that have passed betvveen the sense of sin and the affiancing acts of the soul upon Christ This Repentance then is in great danger of missing the spirit of the Gospel and falling into the rank of those repentances of Cain Esau Judas Thus I have endeavoured to shew that though we suppose a Dying man to spread his soul and thoughts every way and to all the parts of Repentance yet it is extremely to be suspected there will want the true and right quality of them in regard of the very disadvantageous circumstances wherein such an one is found and the great unfitness of the soul at that time to begin to do any thing worthy to which it hath not been before inured or if it did begin it would be much more unlikely to bring forth fruit as our Saviour speakes to perfection Luke 8. 14. I add nothing of the exercises of a full and well grown Repentance whereby it is dayly espying the risings of sin and suppressing them and filling up the defects of Holiness and Obedience because they are not to be thought possible in the point I am now speaking of and I have already given a resolution in that case I shall now set my self to find out the low causes that are alway to be suspected to have the great influence upon such a latter end penitency In general therefore we must take notice that there are several vapors of misapprehension rising upon the Soul when we are a dying that do so disguize it to it self and disfigure the true face of it that from thence arise dangerous mistakes concerning a mans condition towards God We see into how many shapes upon ordinary occurrences we change and how easily we exchange them for quite different without any good cause what continual Ebbs and Flows there are of the humours and how do these cast the ballance of the superiour soul One man is every hour some several sorts of men How much more do great Accidents and removes out of one condition into another alter us Which yet are but the sudden and just now state of our minds upon such alterations which not continuing we return to our former figure Vnstable and weak as water Gen. 49 3 we take the form of every vessel we are put into who knows then whether his Dying Repentance be any more than the mould not of his mind but of his dying condition approaching him big with so great a change We know many things befal us in our lives which put a greater sense of Religion upon us than we find at other times and yet how variable we are our goodness at such times is as the morning Dew Hose 6. 4. and as the early Dew it goeth away How often are we from the occasions of mercies afflictions fears hopes good discourses carried into high apprehensions of God And we lose them again we know not how Now out of doubt a dying condition of any thing vve meet vvith in the World is most apt to move us upon God and a sense of him But can vve think those fleeting shoots of the Soul that

accepts or gives Repentance at the last yet mercy being as much above our thoughts as the Heaven above the Earth what can we define concerning it And though there are so many circumstances of impossibility according to our measure of things Yet the things that are impossible with men with God are possible for with God all things are possible how can we then determine in this Case Can we by searching find out the Almighty in his Mercy and Power Can we find him out to perfection It is high as Heaven what can we do It is deeper than Hell what can we know The measure thereof is longer than the Earth and broader than the Sea Answer Now because in this Objection the sinews of allhope and expectation from this late Repentance meet I will indeavour to give the most punctual Answer to it And though I know after all that is or can be said men will not quit it Yet I shall rest upon this Answer as my last resolution of this Case and by it raise the disswasions from a trust in such a Repentance to the height the greatness of the hazard appearing most fully from it In general therefore it hath been noted The question is not whether God accepts a true Repentance how late soever but whether God will give a true repentance so late and herein the question is not of the limits the absolute limits of infinite mercy and power But what limits it hath set to it self and what seasons it hath limited to us and whether according to these a Death-Bed Repentance be not almost if not altogether an impossibility I 'le therefore lay down several degrees of impossibility notwithstanding infinite mercy and power that must necessarily abate the irregular confidence of such a repentance and under one of them I shall be bold to place it 1. The highest degree of impossibility is of those things that are utterly and absolutely impossible with God because they are irreconcileable with his Nature and such wherein if they were he must deny himself which he cannot do For though there is nothing above God not so much as any goodness or righteousness abstracted from himself that should give him Law Yet he being himself that supreme goodness and righteousness He is a Lavv to himself His nature is his supreme and inviolable Lavv And his Will stands alvvays even vvith his Nature For his Will is himself reciprocal vvith his Nature And all his Actions keep perfect correspondence vvith his Will Upon this immutable reason God cannot lye he cannot do any thing weak or that argues imperfection He cannot but be righteous in all his vvays holy in all his vvorks Upon this reason also he cannot he will not acquit the guilty He cannot he vvill not save or make happy men in their sins God himself speaks this sense Ezek. 18. 31 32. and c. 33. 11. As I live saith the Lord I have no pleasure in the Death of him that dieth why will ye dye Turn your selves and live ye As if he should say except ye turn all my mercy can do you no good For such a mercy vvould not be a mercy but either a foolish softness or loose indulgence to sin Such a povver vvere not a povver but an impotency or turning all things to confusion These therefore are as inconsistent vvith God as Folly Imperfection Sin The Gospel the highest display of mercy rests upon this principle being not a Salvation of men in sin but a most effectual redemption of men from sin Of all that God can be supposed to do for men there is nothing more impossible than this more repugnant to all the true sense of man more overthrowing of the undertaking of Christ more contrary to the nature of true Happiness An opinion of the damned in Hell being annihilated or recovered to Holiness and H●ppiness after some Ages of torment were a high probability compar'd with this He that can tempt himself to believe this may believe any thing and needs no confutation but his own unreasonableness Against this I have been thus large because it secretly lurkes in mens Hearts that God may save them without so much ado about Faith and Repentance though being afraid to speak a thing so monstrous they di●guize it under the pretence of a faint Repentance at last But from what I have said It is plainly to be inferred First That some things which God cannot will not do are not the reproach either of his Mercy or Power but the Glory and Greatness of both And this that He neither can or will save men without sincere Faith and Repentance that is without a recovery to Holiness is one of these things The Death-bed Repentance then that is unto Salvation must without all dispute be a sincere change from sin to Holiness 2. There is an impossibility that arises from the peremptory and absolute and irrepealable determination of the Will and Counsel of God concerning any thing In this degree of things I account a I cannot acquiesce in the exposition of the learned Dr. Hammond in his Annot. concerning these two Cases the unpardonableness of the sin against the divine Spirit The unrene●ableness of total Apostates from Christianity to repentance The impossibility of repentance after this Life Now though those carry not their own evidence of being inconsistent with the Divine nature as the former yet the declaration of supreme pleasure against them is so effectual that we must needs look upon them as impossible And we may see a great consent a high congruity between the things themselves and the determination of God concerning them which reasons are yet clearer with God For in the sin against the Holy Ghost there is so mature so perfect so concocted a wickedness so high a contumely against the God-head it self that it is very irreconcileable with either Repentance or pardon The total Apostacy from Christianity and the evidences of it mentioned Heb. 6th from the very nature of the Case appears irrepairable because there is no other or higher Grace than that of the Gospel for the Apostates to remove to no more sacrifice for sin nor are there any higher Evidences of that Gospel than those he is supposed to revolt from and no more perfect Acts of contrariety to the Gospel than the crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting him to an open shame the doing despite to the Spirit of Grace the treading under foot the Son of God and counting the Blood of the Covenant an unclean thing in the paralel place Heb. 10. Besides all other reasons the unchangeable state of Eternity is so consolidate with so fixed into our very Being that the perpetuity of it is very accountable to our Reason From hence then we derive thus much farther against a Death-bed Repentance First that some things wherin we cannot find an express impossibility in their nature are yet made so by Gods absolute resolution concerning them into the reason of which he also is