Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	believe_v	church_n	know_v	4,058	5	4.1423	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67616	A sermon preached at St. Margarets in Westminster at the funeral of Mrs. Susanna Gray, daughter of Henry Gray, Esq., of Enfield in Staffordshire, who on the 29 of October 1654 began her eternal sabbath.	Waring, Robert, 1614-1658.	1657 (1657)	Wing W869; ESTC R27055	15,128	48

your sight after the better part ascended above to the Heavens as we have great cause to believe and hope by the assurances of eternal life in this Virgin departed And what greater assurance can there be If in the words of the Church we are to know for a truth Preface before the Catechism and it is certain by Gods word that Children being baptized have all things necessary for their salvation and are undoubtedly saved How much more this child who was blessed with a Lois and an Eunice that gave her a Bible for the first thing to play withall and taught her first to lisp the language of Canaan before she could speak her Mothers Tongue who even with her milk suck'd in the sincerer milk of the word As they write of the blessed Virgin Mary that at three years she entred the Temple offer'd her self as a living Sacrisice at the Altar warm'd her hands and her heart at the holy flame and made Religion her pastime before the vanities of the world or the pleasures of sin could seduce her so was this Virgin brought by her Parents to the Temple as it were after her Saviours steps to ask of the Doctors the way of life even before she could firmly walk in it She learn'd Repentance ere she knew what it was to Sin She first began the life of Grace ere she attain'd the full life of Nature and had her Senses exercised in the knowledge of Good and Evil before she could distinguish the degree of bravery and Pride She yeelded her self to be regulated by Religion before she could be abused by sense or reason Her first care was not her Dress or Looks but her pensum quotidianum de flore Scripturarum as St. Hierom directs Laetal l. 2. Ep. her dayly task out of the choicest Scripture to sanctifie her memory as well as her Affections Instead of wanton Songs she repeated the Psalms which was an ability required to make a Divine in the Primitive times but was it not strange in those tender years she had not only strength and force to hold Davids Harp but to tune it when others of her soft age would call for a Companion she cryed out come Lord Jesu come quickly and I pray thee help thy servant whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood What can we imagin but that she who breath'd her first air in Devotion and her last in Prayers who was sealed to eternal life by Baptisme and kept in the assurance and blessed hope thereof by a pious education had gained the Love of our Saviour much sooner than the young man who had observed all that God commanded even from his youth though not so perfectly as he conceived In summe she was brought up One of the Order of St. Pauls Virgins who from her Infancy onely cared for the things of the Lord. And here might it be safe to expostulate with the Almighty I should aske Why these Graces that are not to be received in vain by us or rather Offer'd than Given Why so fair characters that others might take copies from thus immediately blotted out and dust thrown on them VVhy doth God delight to crop such fragrant flowers in the bud ere they are fully blown Is it that the unwholsom Air or rude Touch might not fully them Indeed so we read some hastily snatched out of the world as out of a Pest-house Ne malitia corrumperet Intellectum before Malice or Vanity should infect their minds Some are taken away out of a special Love and Tenderness of God because there is some good Thing in them towards the Lord God as Jeroboams son 1 Kings 14.13 Is it to shew that we have here no abiding City that this world is but our Tyring room or stage where some Mute persons are brought in onely for Number or shew meerly to passe over the Stage and so serve to grace it even in the Passage not unlike Angelical apparitions Or is it as a devout pensive VVriter observes that God trains us as we do our children by giving them gay and precious things but demanding them immediately again to try our Submission whether we could with Abram yield up sacrifice a child at Gods call and give thanks with Job to God even when he resumes his Gifts The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let not this yet discourage Parents from making their Children fit for Heaven and the society of Angels But rather shame those careless and indulgent Parents Parents indeed as the Apostle terms them afte rthe flesh as who had no share in the Soul who being forward to surrender to God in Baptism by a most holy Vow the Children they received from him are not yet afraid with Ananias and Saphira to withdraw that they had once devoted to the Lord and neglect the teaching them to keep their Vow as religiously at least as formal Nuns would VVill they not allow that Diligence that senselesse Creatures use in trayning and practising their young ones seeing we bring them forth as deformed and mishapen in the sight of God as any ugly Lumps of flesh the Bear is said to whelp Shall we deny them the labour of our Tongues to instruct them and to lick them into shape Having betray'd them to a life of Sin and Misery Ought we not in conscience in Equity procure them that other life of grace and glory Let the Duty or the Shame the Terror or the Comfort answerable to the Education of your Children move you to express your Affection in this pious Care of providing a richer stock of manners then of Fortunes and hopes of a more lasting Inheritance St. Hierom observes from Ezekiel 18.28 The Sonne shall not bear the iniquity of the Father nor the Father the iniquity of the Son That this only frees and secures the Parents in these Children that yet arrive not to the use of Reason that live not on their own score that have no proper Motion of their own but as the Parents limbs what the Parents derive to them in these the Parents negligence or sinfull Indulgence makes them who are said to live again in their Children to perish rather in their sinfull courses and to invert the threat of the Commandement that the sins of the 3 and 4 Generation shall be visited and avenged on the Parents who have propagated those sins by their loose neglect or example On the other side the joy of those shall be redoubled and multiplyed with their seed who being not more ambitious to enlarge their Family than the Houshold of the Faithfull or to propagate their own name more than Gods may with boldness present themselves with their righteous seed at the Throne of God Behold us and the Children that thou hast given us These are they that may with more comfort lose their Children at Gods Call than others enjoy them amidst other frail possessions and uncertain contents of this life seeing children so lost are not to be accounted lost Whence the Father observes Job having by his patience merited a double Restitution of all his other losses had not his Children redoubled for they are not taken away they are only secured in the hands of God and sent as pledges before us to be more happily recovered and enjoyed for ever when some shall be gathered to their Fathers and others more gloriously gather'd to their Children whom they are to follow first in their Innocence then in their Inheritance and Happiness That Kingdom of Heaven which none shall enter that are not like unto those little Children To both which God fit us and then hasten his Kingdom Even so sweet Jesu come quickly Amen FINIS