Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	abundant_a	gracious_a	lord_n	1,650	5	4.2037	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27009	The right method for a settled peace of conscience, and spiritual comfort in 32 directions : written for the use of a troubled friend / and now published by Richard Baxter ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1653 (1653)	Wing B1373A; ESTC R17485	252,137	602

sad a thing is it that we should thus add to our own Afflictions and the heavier we judge the burden the more we lay on As if God had not done enough or would not sufficiently afflict us We may more comfortably bear that which God layeth on us then that which we immediately lay upon our selves Crosses are not great or small according to the bulk of the matter but according chiefly to the minde of the sufferer Or else how could holy men rejoyce in Tribulation and be exceeding glad that they are accounted worthy to suffer for Christ Reproaches wrongs losses are all without you unless you open them the door wilfully your self they cannot come in to the heart God hath not put the Joy or Grief of your Heart in any other mans power but in your own It is you therefore that do your selves the greatest mischief God afflicts your body or men wrong you in your state of name a small hurt if it go on further and therefore you will afflict your soul But a sadder thing yet is it to consider of that men fearing God should so highly value the things of the world They who in their Convenants with Christ are engaged to renounce the world the flesh and the devil They that have taken God in Christ for their Portion for their All and have resigned themselves and all that they have to Christs dispose whose very business in this world and their Christian life consisteth so much in resisting the devil mortifying the flesh and overcoming the world and it is Gods business in his inward works of Grace and his outward teachings and sharp afflictions and examples of others to convince them of the vanity and vexation of the world and throughly to wean them from it And yet that it should be so high in their estimation and sit so close to their hearts that they cannot bear the loss of it without such discontent disquiet and distraction of minde Yea though when all is gone they have their God left them they have their Christ still whom they took for their Treasure they have opportunities for their souls they have the sure promise of Glory yea and a promise that all things shall work together for their good yea and for that one thing that is taken from them they have yet a hundred outward Mercies remaining that yet even Believers should have so much unbelief and have their Faith to seek when they should use it and live by it and that God should seem so small in their eyes as not to satisfie or quit them unless they have the world with him and that the world should still seem so Amiable when God hath done so much to bring it into contempt Truly this and more shews that the work of Mortification is very imperfect in professors and that we bend not the force of our daily strivings and endeavours that way If Christians did bestow but as much time and pains in Mortifying the flesh and getting down the Interest of it in the soul that Christs Interest may be advanced as they do about Controversies external duties formalities tasks of devotion and self tormenting fears O what excellent Christians should we then be and how happily would most of our disquiet be removed Alas if we are so unfit to part with one outward comfort now upon the disposal of our fathers providence how should we forsake all for Christ or what shall we do at death when all must be parted with As ever therefore you would live in true Christian Peace set more by Christ and less by the world and all things in it and hold all that you possess so loosely that it may not be grievous to you when you must leave them So much for the Troubles that arise from your Body and outward state All the rest shall be directed for the Curing of those Troubles that arise immediatly from more Spiritual Causes DIRECTION III. 3. Be sure that you first lay sound apprehensions of Gods nature in your understanding and lay them deeply THis is the first Article of your Creed and the first part of Life Eternal to know God! His substance is quite past humane understanding therefore never make any attempt to reach the knowledge of it or to have any positive conceivings of it for they will be all but Idols or false conceptions but his Attributes are manifested to our understandings Well consider that even under the terrible Law when God proclaims to Moses his own Name and therein his Nature Exod. 34.6 7. the first and greatest part is The Lord God Mercifull and Gracious long suffering and abundant in Goodness and Truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin And he hath sworn that he hath no pleasure in the death of a sinner but rather that he return and live Think not therefore of Gods Mercifulness with diminishing extenuating thoughts nor limit it by the bounds of our frail understandings for the heavens are not so far above the earth as his thoughts and wayes are above ours Still remember that you must have no low thoughts of Gods Goodness but apprehend it as bearing proportion with his Power As it is blasphemy to limit his Power so it is to limit his Goodness The advantages that your soul will get by this right knowledge and estimation of Gods Goodness will be these 1. This will make God appear more Amiable in your eyes and then you will Love him more readily and abundantly And Love 1. Is effectually consolatory in the very working so much Love usually so much Comfort I mean this Love of Complacency for a Love of Desire there may be without comfort 2. It will breed perswasions of Gods Love to you again and so Comfort 3. It will be an unquestionable evidence of true Grace and so Comfort The Affections follow the Understandings conceptions If you think of God as one that is glad of all advantages against you and delighteth in his Creatures misery it is impossible you should Love him The Love of our selves is so deeply rooted in nature that we cannot lay it by nor Love any thing that is Absolutely and directly against us We conceive of the devil as an Absolute Enemy to God and man and one that seeks our destruction and therefore we cannot Love him And the great Cause why troubled souls do Love God no more is because they represent him to themselves in an ugly odious shape To think of God as one that seeks and delighteth in mans ruine is to make him as the devil and then what wonder if in stead of Loving him and Delighting in him you tremble at the thoughts of him and fly from him As I have observed Children when they have seen the devil painted on a wall in an ugly shape they have partly feared and partly hated it If you do so by God in your fancy it is not putting the Name of God on him when you have done that will reconcile your Affections

rising from their sin It seems at present the interest of the flesh is actually predominant when no Reason or Conviction will perswade them to contradict it As ever you would have sound Comfort then in such a Case as this spare not the flesh When you have sinned you must rise again or perish If you cannot rise without fasting without free confessing without the utter shaming of your selves without restitution never stick at it This is your hour of Trial O yield not in the Conflict The dearer the Victory costeth you the greater will be your Peace Try it and if you find it not so I am mistaken Yet if you have sinned so that the opening of it may more discredit the Gospel then your Confession will honour it and yet your Conscience is unquiet and urgeth you to confess in such a case be first well informed and proceed warily and upon deliberation and first open the case to some faithful Minister or able Christian in secret that you may have good advice 3. The same counsel also would I give you in the performance of your duty A Magistrate is convinced he must punish sinners and put down Ale-houses and be true to every Just Cause but then he must steel his face against all mens reproaches and the solicitations of all friends A Minister is convinced that he must teach from house to house as well as publickly if he be able and that he must deal plainly with sinners according to their conditions yea and require the Church to avoyd Communion with them if they be obstinate in evill after other sufficient means But then he shall lose the Love of his People and be accounted Proud Precise Rigid Lordly and perhaps lose his maintenance Obey God now and the dearer it costeth you the more Peace and Protection and the larger blessing may you expect from God For you do as it were oblige God the more to stick to you as you will take your self obliged to own and bear out and reward those that hazard state and credit and life for you And if you cannot obey God in such a Trial it is a sad sign of a false-hearted Hypocrite except your fall be only in a temptation from which you rise with renewed Repentance and Resolutions which will conquer for the time to come As Peter who being left to himself for an example of humane frailty and that Christ might have no friend to stick by him when he suffered for our sin yet presently wept bitterly and afterward spent his strength and time in preaching Christ and laid down his life in Martyrdom for him So perhaps many a poor servant or hard labourer hath scarce any time except the Lords day to Pray or Read Let such pinch the flesh a little the more so they do not overthrow their health and either work the harder or fare the harder or be cloathed the more meanly or especially break a little of their sleep that they may find some time for these duties and try whether the Peace and Comfort will not Recompence it Never any man was a loser for God! So private Christians cannot conscionably discharge the great plain duty of Reproof and Exhortation lovingly yet plainly telling their friends and neighbours of their sins and danger and duty but they will turn friends into foes and possibly set all the Town on their heads But is it a Duty or is it not If it be then trust God with the Issue and do your work and see whether he will suffer you to be losers For my part I think that if Christians took Gods work before them and spared the flesh less and trusted themselves and all to Christ alone and did not balk all the troublesom costly part of Religion and that which most crosseth the interest of the flesh it would be more ordinary with them to be filled with the joys of the Holy Ghost and walk in that Peace of Conscience which is a Continual Feast and to have such full and frequent views both of the sincerity of their Evidencing Graces and of Gods Reconciled Face as would banish their doubts and fears and be a greater help to their certainty of salvation then much other labour doth prove If you flinch not the fiery furnace you shall have the company of the Son of God in it If you flinch not the Prison and Stocks you may be able to sing as Paul and Silas did If you refuse not to be stoned with Stephen you may perhaps see Heaven opened as he did If you think these Comforts so dear bought that you will rather venture without them let me tell you you may take your course but the end will convince you to the very heart of the folly of your choyce Never then complain for want of Comfort remember you might have had it and would not And let me give you this with you You will shortly find though worldly Pleasures Riches and Honours were some slight salves to your molested Conscience here yet there will no cure nor ease for it be found hereafter Your merry hours will then all be gone and your worldly Delights forsake you in Distress but these solid Comforts which you judged too dear would have ended in the Everlasting Joys of Glory When men do flinch God and his Truth in straits and juggle with their Consciences and will take out all the honourable easy cheap part of the work of Christ and make a Religion of that by it self leaving out all the disgraceful difficult chargeable self-denying part and hereupon call themselves Christians and make a great shew in the world with this kind of Religiousness and take themselves injured if men question their honesty and uprightness in the faith these men are notorious self-deceivers meer Hypocrites and in plain truth this is the very true description by which damnable Hypocrites are known from sound Christians The Lord open mens eyes to see it in time while it may be cured Yea and the nearer any true Christian doth come to this sin the more doth he dis-oblige God and quench the Spirit of Comfort and darken his own Evidences and destroy his Peace of Conscience and create unavoydable Troubles to his Spirit and estrangedness betwixt the Lord Jesus and his own soul Avoyd this therefore if ever you will have Peace DIRECTION XXV 25. My next Advice shall be somewhat near of kin to the former If you would learn the most expeditious way to Peace and setled Comfort Study well the Art of Doing Good let it be your every-days contrivance care and business how you may lay out all that God hath trusted you with to the greatest pleasing of God and to your most comfortable account STill remember lest any Antinomian should tell you that this savours of Popery and trusting for Peace to our own Works 1. That you must not think of giving any of Christs honour or office to your best works You must not dream that they can do any thing to