Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	aaron_n	apostle_n	old_a	12	3	5.4464	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70803	A decad of caveats to the people of England of general use in all times, but most seasonable in these, as having a tendency to the satisfying such as are not content with the present government as it is by law establish'd, an aptitude to the setling the minds of such as are but seekers and erraticks in religion an aim at the uniting of our Protestant-dissenters in church and state : whereby the worst of all conspiracies lately rais'd against both, may be the greatest blessing, which could have happen'd to either of them : to which is added an appendix in order to the conviction of those three enemies to the deity, the atheist, the infidel and the setter up of science to the prejudice of religion / by Thomas Pierce ...	Pierce, Thomas, 1622-1691.	1679 (1679)	Wing P2176; Wing P2196; ESTC R18054	221,635	492

Regenerate are not Elect. The former may and do often the later cannot fall finally from Grace Concerning the former and Them alone all the Scriptures I have urged and argued from must be understood For the later are onely They who do indure unto the End Onely They that overcome and so are said to have a right to the Tree of life The Elect are onely They that can finally never fall for if they could they could not have been elected to life eternal And yet even of These I am to say in the second place that they fall totally and for a Time many of them and of the Best too Not onely Solomon and Aaron and David himself in the Old Testament but all the Apostles in the New and S. Peter above them all are uncontrouble Examples of This sad Truth if Idolatry and Adultery and wilfull Murther if Lying and Cursing and wilfull Perjury and a repeated abjuration of Jesus Christ are Sins inconsistent with saving Grace and the inhabitation of God the Holy Ghost 'T is true indeed that The Elect who fall away for a time into Deadly Sins and so by consequence whilst impenitent into a State of Damnation cannot possibly die 'till they have repented because they have This Seal upon them The Lord knoweth them that are His. But This which is offer'd as an Answer to what I say is an irrefragable Argument to evince the Truth of it For if David for example could not die till he repented it is for this reason onely that he could not be sav'd without Repentance and that before he repented he was in a State of Condemnation Saving Grace and Impenitence cannot simul semel be in one and the same Man 'T is the Condition of the great and precious promises in the Gospel and in effect the whole Covenant 'twixt God and Man that all shall be saved with repentance and None without it Hear ye me Asa and all Judah and Benjamin said The Spirit of God by Azariah The Lord is with you whilst ye be with Him and if ye seek him he will be found of you but if ye forsake him he will forsake you So again by The Prophet Ezekiel When the righteous turneth from his righteousness and committeth iniquity he shall even die thereby and if the wicked walk in the Statutes of life he shall surely live Promises and Threats are both alike conditional not onely under the Law but as expresly under the Gospel It is the saying of Christ himself Whosoever shall confess me before men Him shall the Son of man also confess before the Angels of God But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the Angels of God 'T is S. Paul 's to the Christians who were at Rome in his days that God will render to every man according to his works To them who seek for Glory by continuance in well-doing aeternal life But unto them that are contentious and do not obey the Truth Indignation and Wrath. And again If ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live And yet more plainly to our purpose in his Epistle to the Colossians You who were Enemies in your minds by wicked works hath he reconcil'd if ye continue in the faith grounded and setled and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel which ye have heard And in like manner to the Corinthians Ye are saved by the Gospel if ye hold fast or keep in memory what I preached unto you unless ye have believ'd in vain The Epistle to the Hebrews is very full to this purpose We are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our Confidence stedfast unto the end Whose House we are if we hold fast the Confidence and the rejoycing of the hope firm unto the End Now the Just shall live by Faith But if any man draw back my soul shall have no pleasure in him Plainly intimating in This what is taken for granted in the very next verse that from the same kind of Faith by which it is said the Just shall live there were some in the best of Times who drew back unto Perdition Heb. 10. 39. § 11. What now is the Advantage we are to make of all This and what the Lesson which all these Scriptures are apt to teach us Truly the lesson is plainly This That if the End of our Prayers if the End of our Hopes the End of all our Endeavours is but Conditional and All the Promises of the Gospel are made unto us with an If we do so and so we must not now boast of our being Christians as the Hebrews once did of their being Israelities We must not glory in our being the younger Brethren or Members of Jesus Christ as They in their being the Seed of Abraham We must not pride it in the Church as They did commonly in the Temple Nor insult over the Jews as They did foolishly over the Gentiles For if God spared not Them who were the natural Branches We must also take heed lest he also spare not us If They were broken off for their unbelief and we by Faith are grafted in the proper use we are to make of the observation is that we boast not against the Branches that we be not high-minded but rather fear for we bear not the Root but the Root us We must consider both the Goodness and Severity of God and the Grounds of Both on them that fell Severity but towards us Goodness with an If we continue in his Goodness Otherwise we shall be broken off too and They shall be grafted in again if they do not still abide in their unbelief We cannot reasonably desire a clearer State of this matter than in That whole Passage of the Eleventh Chapter to the Romans And therefore seeing it is imploy'd by our blessed Lord that even The Salt of the Earth may lose its Savour and become good for nothing but to be utterly cast out and trodden under foot that a Branch of the true Vine may lose its Verdure and become good for nothing but to be cast into the Fire I thought it good as S. Peter speaks to put you in mind of these things although ye know them already and are established in the Truth And still I think it good with the same S. Peter to press the giving all diligence for the making of our calling and election sure I think it good with S. Peter to say Beware lest ye also being led away with the Error of the Wicked fall from your own stedfastness If God was so provoked by the Children of Israel to whom the Conditional Promise was made that he swore in his Wrath they should not enter into his Rest because they fail'd of the Condition on which the promise was made Then I may

that the longer we Catechize the more we lose them And 't is worthy to be observ'd how they wrest and misapply the Word of Life to their Destruction For If we ask how they know they have a Testimony within them from God the Holy Ghost We know it say they by This that God hath given us of his Spirit If we ask how they know that He hath given them of his Spirit We know it they say by This that we cannot sin If we ask how they know that they cannot sin their Answer is We are born of God If we ask how they know This We know it they will answer because we have a new Name given us which no man knows but He that hath it If we ask how they know of a new Name given them they will answer We know it by that Spirit which dwelleth in us If we ask how they know the Spirit of Truth from the Spirit of Errour their Answer is still at hand and still out of the Scriptures He that knoweth God heareth us and he that is not of God heareth not us If we ask them for a Witness whereby to prove it The Spirit their Answer is beareth witness with our Spirits If we bid them produce their Witness He that believeth they will say hath the witness in himself If we call for any Witness of men they tell us The Witness of God is greater Thus they argue by their Circular and Identical way of discourse They have the Holy Spirit of God because they are forsooth assured and assured of it they are because of the Spirit which dwelleth in them So strongly does the Spirit of Perverseness shew it self in such as are delivered up to believe a Lie For that is sometimes the case 2 Thess 2. 11. The other Enemies of Religion who are withall by much the worst in a derision and contempt of supernatural Revelation will have no better Test of true and false Prophets or of right and wrong Doctrins than the Warranty and Allowance of the Sovereign Powers in every Kingdom and Commonwealth of whatsoever Denomination throughout the world Which Position of the Leviathan fetcht as 't is from Japonia and there from the Sect of the Jenxuani is so prodigiously absurd that it either makes no difference 'twixt Right and Wrong and infers True and False to be a couple of empty words which signifie nothing or the same thing the Will and Pleasure of the Prince or else infers this Contradiction that the same Things and Persons are in severall Times and Places both True and False So that according to This Position the Christian Religion was a false one under all the Heathen Emperours who did publickly prohibit the Teaching of it yet a most true one under Constantine surnam'd the Great and under all the following Emperours who strictly commanded it to be Taught Jesus Christ with Mr. Hobbs must have been a false Prophet as not approved of by Herod and the Then-Emperour of Rome whilst Mahomed must be a true one because allow'd by the great Sultan supreme Governour of the Turks The Will and Pleasure of the Prince being set up by That Monster as the sole Touchstone or Criterion whereby a Prophet or a Doctrin or a Religion is to be try'd None says He but a Sovereign in a Christian Commonwealth can take notice what is or what is not the Word of God A greater power than is ascribed by the Jesuites themselves either to the Bishop or Church of Rome a power to abrogate the old and as often as he will to make a new Canon of Scripture or none at all § 5. Had such Seducers of the people appear'd in publick among the Jews a present Death without Mercy had been inflicted as the wages of Their Iniquity Deut. 13. 5. and ch 18. v. 20. The Setters forth of new Doctrins in that Mosaical Dispensation could not escape their publick Trials in the Great Parliament of Israel they call'd The Sanedrim and were condemn'd as false Teachers either to be strangl'd or ston'd to death Yea though they had shewn Signs and Wonders and though their Signs came to pass too yet could it not exempt them from suffering Death in case they tended to seduce the silly Admirers of their Wonders to worship Idols or any other way to enervate the Law of Moses which none could be allow'd to doe and yet be thought a True Prophet unless he could doe as real Miracles as Moses and give as cogent Demonstrations as Moses had given of his having been inspired and sent by God Therefore None but the Messias who out-did Moses and that as well in point of Miracle as in Holiness of Life and in illustrating or compleating the whole Moral Law could lawfully abolish the Ceremonial Yea even Those Divine Prophets or Men of God as they were call'd who still asserted the Law of Moses and disswaded men with vehemence from Idolatry and Schism were fain to prove they were of God by unfeigned Miracles By such a Real Miracle of the anonymous Prophet at Bethel Jeroboam's Hand was dry'd up and restored to him By such a Miracle of Elijah the Fire of the Lord fell down from Heaven and consum'd the Burnt-sacrifice together with the Altar on which it lay Whereby the People were incens'd against the false Prophets of Baal and presently slew them all as Cheats by the River Kishon By such a Miracle of Elisha even Naaman an Idolater was suddenly cleansed from his Leprosie and convinced of Jehovah's being the onely true God By the like unfeigned Miracles Moses baffled all the lying ones of the Sorcerers in Aegypt And if the Prophets Then had need of shewing many and great Miracles to prove the Truth of That Religion which the Israelites were then in Possession of How much a greater need of Miracles should our Seducers stand in whereby to make us leave our Old and wherewith to draw us on to their New Beliefs That Doctrin for example of Jesus Christ and his Apostles that we must obey them who have the Rule over us and that we must submit our selves to every Ordinance of man for the Lord's sake was confirmed by greater Miracles if any greater can be then Moses and the Prophets confirm'd theirs by And by Consequence if our Pretenders to supernatural Illumination will have us adhere to their New Doctrin that we must not submit to every Ordinance of man but rebell against them nor obey but resist such as have the Rule over us nor do any thing in Religion with any Decency or Order but all as rudely and as confusedly as we can they must perswade us by greater Miracles than those of Christ and his Apostles whom we believe At least they must be able to convince us of Errour in Life and Doctrin as Moses did Corah and all his Separatist-Relations by commanding the Earth to open and to swallow us up quick