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	damn_v	delusion_n	1,893	5	11.0930	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77856	The first sermon, preached to the Honourable House of Commons now assembled in Parliament at their publique fast. Novemb. 17. 1640. / By Cornelius Burges Doctor of Divinitie. Published by order of that House.	Burges, Cornelius, 1589?-1665.; Marshall, Stephen, 1594?-1655.	1641 (1641)	Wing B5671; Thomason E204_8; ESTC R19018	57,778	90

gives any deliverance from thence there is more than ordinary cause to close with the Lord in a more solemne and extraordinary manner giving him the praise and glory of so great a mercy But then more especially when God works out the full deliverance of his Church by the totall and finall ruine of Babylon Oh then then is the time when all the people in heaven must sing Hallelujah ascribing salvation and honour and power unto the Lord our God Revel. 19. 1. And againe Hallelujah vers. 3. as if they could never sufficiently expresse themselves to God for such a deliverance such a mercy such a vengeance 2. Againe When God delivereth from Babylon there is more than ordinary cause of entring into solemne Covenant with him because the very subjecting of the Godly under that iron yoke argues more than ordinary breach of Covenant with the Lord in time past which stirred him up to deale so sharply with them as to put them under the power of Babylon The Provocation was exceeding great too much to be endured even by infinite Patience it selfe else the People of God had never been cast into such a furnace It was for such a fault as dissolved the very marriage knot between God and his people it was for going a whoring from him For this it was that God first put away Israel giving her a Bill of divorce Ier. 3. 8. And for this it was that he afterwards cast Iudah also out of his sight 2 King 17. 19 20. And as it was in former times so in later Ages of the world What was the reason that so many millions of soules have been exposed to the butchery of Antichrist in Mysticall Babylon and to be so hood-winckt and blinded by strong delusions as to beleeve nothing but lyes even that Great Great soul-killing Lye that they might be damned Saint Paul tells us it was this They received not the love of the trueth that they might be saved but had pleasure in unrighteousnesse 2 Thess. 2. What unrighteousnesse Is it meant of every unrighteousnesse that is in the nature of it damnable which is to be found in the world Surely no but signanter of that unrighteousnesse whereby men turned the truth of God into a lye Rom. 1. that is by corrupting the true worship of the true God and afterwards falling off to down-right Idolatry even within the pales of the Church it self Most of you are well seene in the History of the Church and can soone point with your finger to the times wherein Babylon began to besiege Hierusalem and Antichrist began to pull of his vizzard in the Churches of Christ even then when Pictures and Images began first to be set up in Churches for remembrance then for ornament then for instruction too and at last for adoration and worship Then God suffered her to be over-run and over-spred by Babylon as by an hideous opacum or thick darknesse and to be exposed and prostituted to all manner of whoredomes and filthinesse so as the slavery of the Jewish Church in old Babylon was scarce a flea-biting in comparison of the miseries of the Church Christian under the New which makes havock and merchandise not of the bodies only but even of the soules of men Revel. 18. 13. Now then when God pleaseth to deliver a people from such bondage and to awaken them effectually to look up and to reflect even with astomishment upon those great and gastly sins of theirs which had cut asunder the cords of the Covenant between God and their Soules and provoked God to subject them to so much bondage and that they must either renew Covenant or be obnoxious to more wrath and be laid open to more and greater temptations and sins this cannot but exceedingly work upon their souls causing their hearts to melt and their very bowels to yearne after the Lord to enter into a new an everlasting Covenant that shall never be forgotten This is that which God by his servant Ezekiel spake touching the deportment of the remnant of Israel which should escape the sword among the nations and countries whither they had been carryed captives Ezek. 6. 9. They should upon such a deliverance remember God not only with griefe but resolution also to joyne themselves to him more firmely in a perpetuall Covenant For of them he saith there they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations because I am broken with their whorish heart which hath departed from me and with their eyes which goe a whoring after their idols and they shall loth themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations And of the same people he saith afterwards * that upon their returne home They shall take away all the detestable things and all the abominations thereof from thence And I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them I will take away the stony heart out of their flesh and give them an heart of flesh that they they may walke in my Statutes and keep mine ordinances and doe them and they shall be my people and I will be their God So that here is a full Covenant striken and that upon this ground viz. the Consideration of those great sinnes they formerly committed whereby they had broken their first Covenant and departed from their God So farre the Reasons and Grounds of the point I shall now as breifly as I can endeavour to bring home and set on all by some Application which I shall reduce to 3. heads namely to matter of Reproofe Information and Exhortation For if When God vouchsafeth any deliverance to his people especially from Babylon it be most seasonable and necessary to close with him by a more solemne firme and inviolable Covenant to be onely his forever Then 1. How may this reprove and condemne of great ingratitude and folly many sorts of men among us that are farre from making any such use of the deliverances which God hath wrought for them O beloved Should I but give yóu a Catalogue of the many great stupendious and even miraculous deliverances which God hath given us the personall deliverances he hath often given to each of us apart the publique eminent glorious deliverances he hath given to us together with the whole State that in 88. and that of 1605. I meane from the horrid hellish Gun-powder-Treason but especially and above all the rest our happy deliverance out of Babylon by the blessed Reformation of Religion begun amongst us some good number of yeeres by past the time would faile me But alas What use have we made of them Hath this use ever been so much as thought of by us Nay verily For 1. Some thinke it bootlesse thus to close in with God after an evill is over When Gods hand is heavy upon them sense of smart compels them to thinke it then a fit season to do somewhat to confesse their sins to humble themselves and

provoke the eyes of his Glory more against them causing him infinitely to loath and abominate both their persons and service nor shall they ever by all their crying and sighing no not by whole rivers of teares be able to draw down an arme of Mercy from Heaven to come and save them The more effectually therefore to provoke both my selfe and you at this time to the due performance of this most neglected but most necessary dutie I have thought fit in a very plaine and familiar way sutable to the nature of this exercise which ought to be as serious as solemne to worke and chafe into all our hearts the strength and spirit of that good Word of God which you shall finde written for our instruction in Jer. 50. 5. They shall aske the way to Zion with their faces thitherward saying Come and let us joyne our selves unto the Lord in an everlasting Covenant that shall not be forgotten WHich words are part of a Prophecie terrible to Babylon but comfortable to the Church uttered and penned by the Prophet Ieremy about the fourth yeere both of the Babylonish captivitie and of the tributary reigne of Zedekiah The occasion this The Prophet having laboured about thirtie yeers to humble Judah by continually ringing in her eares the dolefull tydings of a sore captivitie approaching could not be beleeved But when once the quick and sad sense of their bondage under the Chaldean yoke had forced from them an acknowledgement of the truth of his prophecies he found it as hard a taske to worke their hearts to any hope of deliverance For as it is a worke even insuperable to possesse a people ripe for destruction that any evill is neere them till the wrath of God breake in upon them and overwhelme them so is it a businesse of little lesse difficultie to hold up the spirits even of Gods owne people once cast under any great extreamitie with any hope of rescue This was Iudah's case Before the Babylonian had laid this yoke on their necks God had plainly revealed and often inculcated that it should lye upon them just 70. yeeres and no longer after which they should have libertie of returne to their owne Land againe Howbeit the weight of their misery the absence of God who had cast them out of his sight together with the insolence and crueltie of their proud oppressors had throwne them downe so low in a disconsolate condition that nothing which God could either now say or doe was sufficient to raise up their hearts to any assurance of returne The same strength which Lust hath to draw men from obedience it will surely have afterwards to drive men from beleeving in their greatest necessities of living by faith The maine beame which stucke in their eyes to hinder ther sight of deliverance promised was the greatnesse and invincible potency of the Chaldean Monarchy then in her pride and more especially the strength of Babylon the Queene and Mistresse of that puissant Empire How could they hope to be delivered when she that commanded the world detained them Shall the prey be taken from the Mightie or the lawfull captive delivered To cure them therefore of this desperate desponsion of minde the Lord stirred up this Prophet to foretell the totall and finall subversion and ruine of Babylon and of that whole Monarchy and further to declare from God that the desolation thereof should be the dissolution of the captivitie of Iudah in it The better to assure them of all this Ieremiah wrote the whole Prophecy against Babylon contained in this Chapter and the next following in a Book by it self which he sent to Babylon by the hand of Scraiah Lord Chamberlaine to Zedekiah and now going in an Embassie from his Master to Great Nebuchadnezzar with Command from the Prophet that after the reading thereof to the captives he should binde a stone unto it and cast it into the midst of Euphrates with this saying pronounced over it Thus shall Babylon sinke and shall not rise c. But to hasten to my Text In the five first verses of this Chapter the Prophet summarily compriseth the substance of his whole Prophecy against Babylon declaring 1. her destruction 2. the Meanes 3. the consequent thereof to the people of God And first he makes Proclamation and an Olyes as it were to all the world to come and behold the Great Worke he was to doe against Babylon the chiefe Citie of the Empire against Bell the chiefe Idol of that Citie and against Merodach the glory both of that Citie and Empire yea though the King then reigning when God meant to destroy it should prove as potent as that great King the first of that name who for restoring the declining Empire to her ancient Splendor and for translating the Imperiall Seat from Nineve to Babylon was by posteritie worshipped as a God and transferred his name to all his successors as the name of Pharaoh to the Egyptian Kings of Benhadad to the Syrian Monarchs and of Augustus to the Romane Emperours Although all these should be joyned together to withstand the downfall of that Monarchy yet desolation should be brought over them all they should all be confounded and removed for ever Vers 1 2. and all to make way for the deliverance of the Church But what should be the meanes of such an unexpected destruction This was to be done by an Army from the North that is by the Medes and Persians both of which but more especially the Medes were situated towards the North from Babylon and therefore ominous That these were the men appeares more fully by their description in the residue of this and of the 51. Chapter This Northern Army should be the confusion of Babylon the confusion of Babylon should prove the restoring of the Church vers. 3. And the restoring of the Church should produce a Covenant with God For behold the issue and consequent of the ruine of Babylon was the return of the captive Jews from thence to Jerusalem and a renewing Covenant with him that had shewed such mercy on them vers. 4 5. For in those dayes and in that time saith the Lord the children of Israel shall come they and the children of Iudah together going and weeping they shall goe and seek the Lord their God They shall aske the way to Zion with their faces thitherward saying Come and let us joyne our selves to the Lord in an everlasting Covenant that shall not be forgotten This began to be fulfilled at the end of 70. yeeres determined when the Empire was first over-run and subdued by Cyrus the Persian For he made Proclamation of libertie to returne in the first yeere of his reigne And when they returned this was their deportment they went weeping and to seeke the Lord their God They goe not so much to repossesse their ancient patrimony and inheritance and to grow rich in the world as to seeke and finde the Lord their