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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	father_n	know_v	truth_n	5,230	5	5.7940	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60331	Christian practice described by way of essay upon the life of our Saviour by Stephen Skynner ...	Skynner, Stephen.	1693 (1693)	Wing S3946; ESTC R1647	46,475	162

that of loving their enemies 44. and doing good to them that hated them Such lastly Mat. 16.24 is that of taking up their cross and forsaking father and mother life and estate for the Gospel For I think there is no greater Argument of the Perfection of any Precept than the Difficulty of it as is evidently implied in that Saying of our Saviour's to the young man Mat. 19.21 If thou wilt be perfect go sell that thou hast and give it to the poor And I am sure there are no Precepts in the Gospel more difficult than these and therefore had our Saviour thought his Disciples unfit to bear any Doctrines of a Practical nature no question but he would have concealed these as soon as any others being the most likely to discourage his Disciples from following him Besides that no greater Perfection can be supposed than those Sayings of our Saviour's to his Disciples do expresly enjoin That they should be holy as God is holy Mat. 5.48 and perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect Wherefore also that Passage of St. John must necessarily be interpreted to refer only to some extraordinary matters which concerned the Oeconomy of Christ's Church in those times Such was the calling in of the Gentiles a matter that the Apostles were so hardly brought to believe that it required a special Revelation from God to ascertain it to them Such also was the Abolishing the Ceremonial Law of Moses which occasioned such violent Contests for a long time in the Church These indeed were things that we may suppose the Apostles ill able to bear at the time our Saviour spoke as being possessed with strong Prejudices against them from their youth up And it might well require an extraordinary Effusion of the Spirit to guide them into such Truths which after all they could scarce be persuaded to believe This Interpretation is the rather to be received because our Saviour tells his Disciples in the foregoing Chapter John 15.15 that he had made known unto them all things that he had heard of his Father it being very hard to reconcile this with the other place if by all things here is not to be meant all things necessary to Salvation 33. A Third and last Objection that I shall mention against this Discourse may be drawn from those places of Scripture wherein the ways of Salvation are represented as very difficult and hard to be found particularly that Saying of our Saviour's where he exhorts his Disciples to strive to enter in at the strait gate Mat. 7.13 14. because narrow is the way that leadeth to life and few there be that find it This seeming contrary to what is intimated all along in this Discourse the main drift of which has been to make Religion appear easie and natural to men Now to answer this Objection our chief business will be to reconcile this Saying of our Saviour's with that other of his where he declares his yoak to be easie and his burden light this last making no less for every thing I have said than the other does against it And it will be no hard matter to do this by considering That Christ's Yoke is indeed easie in it self the Precepts of his Religion are no other than such as men assisted by God's Grace may even with Comfort and Pleasure perform But as the easiest Yoak may become hard by fretting and striving against it so Christ's Religion is made difficult to men through Prejudices and evil Habits which put them upon endeavours of shaking it off the better to satisfie some unruly Passions and Lusts which gain the dominion over them And this is that alone which straitens the Gate to Heaven this makes the way thither seem rough and melancholy and desolate a very Wilderness to many that tread therein Otherwise far be it from God to delight himself in seeing men struggling with difficulties which he himself has made He that courts and importunes us to come to Happiness so earnestly as he does what an odd Notion of him must it imply to make the means of attaining this hard as if he designed it on purpose that few might arrive at it No there are no Difficulties in the way to Heaven but what we make to our selves by our own gross fault Without this the Road to Heaven would be as void of Briars and Thorns as Heaven it self is The ways of wisdom being ways of pleasantness as Solomon speaks and all her paths are peace But then the Difficulties which men have brought upon themselves in the ways of Godliness through their own Corruptions are certainly none of the least And these are such as the greatest Pretenders to Perfection may find abundant cause to be sensible of tho they aim at nothing higher than what is prescribed in this Discourse For even to be Just and Righteous in our Dealings Chaste in our Actions and Thoughts Humble and Charitable in our Conversations if we consult Experience and not the nature of the things themselves are not such easie Duties but that many who reckon themselves great Proficients in Grace are found notoriously to fail in them At least there are few it 's to be feared that make a Conscience of these or any other Duties so far as they ought in reason to do And therefore considering the Hypocrisy of the world on one hand and the too gross Immorality of it on the other it were well if there were not too great grounds for that Saying of our Saviour That narrow is the way to life and few there be that find it Though still it is to be hoped the Few there mentioned are no inconsiderable Number only as opposed to the vast Company of Jews Turks Infidels and Prophane persons who proudly despise the Means of Salvation which Christ has offered to them And for those who have a Saviour to trust in and a Merciful God to fly to who make allowances for the common Infirmities of Human Nature we trust that a wide Gate of Salvation may be opened to such as long as with Faith and Sincerity they endeavour to walk in the way of God's Commands and pretend not to act the Cripple before him 34. Wherefore in short the Sum of this Discourse is That the Religion of Christ according to his Precepts and Example and we need no better Rule to judge of it by is a most admirably Wise Gracious and Manlike Religion such as accomplishes Human Nature in the highest degrees it is capable of in this life imposing nothing mean or servile upon us Such as looks upon Ceremonies only as things indifferent neither refusing what is Decent or commanded by just Authority nor yet encouraging Vain or Superstitious Observancies Such as commends a Sober and a Rational Piety to us a Piety that consists not in high Notions or wild Expressions of Zeal but in Worshipping and Serving God with Diligence and Sincerity Such as takes off from the Exorbitancies of our Passions and

Defiance to all the Comforts of Sense and looked upon it as a great part of Wisdom to be mean and sordid in their Habit pale in their Looks and poor in their Purses The Platonists little inferior to these in Strictness of Discipline who talked as if they lived out of their Bodies upon Air and Contemplation alone Concerning whose Austerities there are highly remarkable Instances to be produced in the Lives of Epictetus among the Stoicks and Plotinus among the Platonists Though it may seem more considerable perhaps to instance in the Emperor Julian the Apostate a man of high Birth and great Power at last and consequently much exposed to Temptations of Luxury and Softness who yet to the last we are told was wont to lye upon a hard course Quilt and rise continually in the middle of the night to forbid all Delicacies to be brought into his Camp and to feed upon the Common Soldiers Provisions which things he himself glories in and professes to have learned them from his Heathen Masters Now the Primitive Christians being to Converse and Dispute with such people as these how could they more effectually recommend the Gospel to them than by shewing themselves Examples of like Severity with what they practised Had they not done this Christianity would certainly have been thought as loose and scandalous a Profession as it was counted Foolish by these vain Pretenders to Wisdom and Virtue And confidering how mightily such shews of Holiness are apt to take among the Vulgar the Philosophers of those times would have had the greatest advantage by this means of confirming the people in their Gentile Superstitions whilst they compared their own lives with the lives of the Christians And therefore in process of time when Persecution being ceased the Primitive Christians began to allow themselves a greater Liberty about these things we find the Apostate Julian making it the great subject of his Raillery upon the Antiochians whom we must suppose to be generally Christians by Nazianzen's writing in their vindication that the chief ground of their offence at him was the Roughness of his Beard and the Austerity of his Life that he made War continually with his Belly and delighted not in Dancing and Shows as they did And it is to the same purpose what he tells us of Constantine the Great the first Christian Emperor that finding none among the gods like himself and so fit for him to converse with he betook himself to Luxury and Intemperance as his Tutelar Deities with whom he lived very contentedly and recommended his Sons afterwards to their care A little innocent freedom we must think in the Primitive Christians was enough to occasion such malicious Reflections from their Adversaries And this made it necessary for them to depart from their Right as it were in this respect and to strain the Bow not a little the other way that their Enemies might have no pretence if possible to speak reproachfully of them or their Religion 31. But then our Saviour did not design that his Church should continue in the Wilderness always and God no more envies a Canaan of Worldly Felicity to us than he did of old to his people the Jews The Primitive Christians Examples are certainly an excellent Argument for whetting peoples Industry and provoking Emulation For if they endured so great hardship for the sake of Christ it is a great shame for men now-a-days to refuse Obedience to the more easie and rational Precepts of the Gospel But Christ's Example is the only obligatory Pattern to us and since we find nothing there of those Austerities which the Primitive Christians observed we have little reason sure by adding these of our own accord Mat. 11.30 to make Christ's easie yoke heavier than he designed There were special Reasons we see that moved God's Providence to incline the Primitive Christians to do what they did of this nature which are now ceased in a great measure For God be praised we live not in such an Age as they did where our Lives our Liberties and Estates are in danger of being taken from us every minute but these are guarded by Laws and secured to us by a Wonderful Providence and there is no reason we should despise such a Blessing as this but use that with Comfort and Thanks to God which he has given us to enjoy in Safety Nor do we live among such persons whom we ought to consider as the Primitive Christians did the Heathens lest they take offence at our just Liberty For if any are offended amongst us it is their own fault having the Scriptures in their hands to read which the Heathen had not to inform them better Those Scriptures which will teach them either that a greater Liberty is allowed by Christ than the Primitive Christians used or at least that they ought not to think the worse of Religion for other mens failings in it nor yet to censure and condemn others for taking greater freedom than themselves approve of unless they can plainly make it out to be contrary to the Precepts of the Gospel To abstain from little Indifferent things rather than offend our weak Brother is certainly a very reasonable Duty But in such things as these which affect the whole Course of our lives and are of mighty concern to the good of men if other mens Weakness and not the Scriptures must be a Rule of walking to us it will be impossible to know where to fix our Duty Thus I think the Objection about the Primitive Christians Example is sufficiently answered 32. Another Objection that may be made against this Discourse is That our Saviour's Doctrine as it is contained in the History of his Life is not a sufficient measure of Perfection and therefore not fit to be proposed by it self as a Rule of Life because our Saviour in many things condescended to his Disciples Weakness leading them by Precepts suited to their Infant Estate as they were yet but Novices in Religion and reserving others of a more sublime nature for after-times when the Spirit being poured out in extraordinary measures they were more advanced in Knowledge and the fear of God Which may seem to be implied in that Saying of our Saviour's to his Disciples John 16.12 I have yet many things to say unto you but ye cannot bear them now howbeit when he the Spirit of Truth is come he will guide you into all truth But that this is no Objection against us will easily be made appear when we consider in the first place that the substance of it is false and groundless in it self as far as it relates to matters of Practice generally necessary to Salvation with which alone we have to do For it is plain our Saviour prescribes Practical Doctrines to his Disciples of as great Perfection as any contained in his Religion Such is that of cutting off their right hands Mat. 5.29 30. and pulling out their right eyes when they offended them Such is