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	delusion_n	unrighteousness_n	1,978	5	11.2673	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30259	A sermon preached to the Honourable House of Commons assembled in Parliament at their pvbliqve fast, Novem. 17, 1640 by Cornelius Burges.	Burges, Cornelius, 1589?-1665.; Marshall, Stephen, 1594?-1655.	1641 (1641)	Wing B5683; ESTC R19994	56,507	64

from vers 9 to verse 17 yet he will never perfect the deliverance till this be done The people which returned from Babylon found God to keepe touch with them to a day So soone as the 70. yeares determined their captivity was dissolved and somewhat was done the foundation of the Lords house was laid but the building went slowly up the reformation of Church and State went heavily on and they were never in a thriving condition till Nehemiah 3. Why it is so by the good hand of God lighted upon this course Some Fasts they had kept before yea very many but they never thrived till he added to their publique and solemne Fasting the fastening of them to God by a solemne Covenant Then the worke of Reformation and establishment went on merrily then they prospered Thus farre the Reasons concluding for a Covenant upon receit of deliverances in generall 2. The Reasons inducing us thereunto upon deliverance from Babylon 2 why for deliverance from Babylon in speciall in particular are these 1. Because Babylon 1. Babylon hath ever bin the sorest enemy after once the Church was put under her power had alwaies been the most insolent heavy bitter bloody enemy that ever the Church felt The violence of Babylon was unsupportable her insolency intolerable her bloud-thirstinesse insatiable Hence the Church is bold to challenge all the world to match her misery under the yoke of Babylon Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me that is by the heavie hand of Babylon in the day of his fierce wrath Lam. 1.12 This was so sore that it hath been by some Fathers and others conceived to be the fullest and most lively typical expression of that matchlesse agony and extremity which our Lord himselfe hanging upon the Crosse sustained when he bare all our sins and the wrath of God due to us for them so farre as to make a full satisfaction to the Iustice of his Father in behalfe of all his people And as it was with old Babylon so it is now and ever wil be with the new I meane mysticall Babylon to the end of the world might she so long continue Even she also delights in no other drink but the bloud of the Saints as you shall finde in Rev. 17.5 where the very name written upon her forehead sufficiently sets out her nature Mystery Babylon the Great the Mother of harlots and abominations of the earth And what of her I saw saith St Iohn the woman drunken with the bloud of the Saints and with the bloud of the Martyrs of Iesus and when I saw her I wondred with great admiration v. 6. And well he might A woman and drunke And if drunke would no liquor suffice but bloud no bloud but that of Saints and Martyrs She is never in her element but when she is swimming in bloud So insatiable is she that like the horse-leeches daughter she never saith it is enough Therefore when God gives any deliverance from thence 3. Why it is so in speciall there is more than ordinary cause to close with the Lord in a more solemn 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 Halleluiah ascribing salvation and honour and power unto the Lord our God Revel 19.1 And againe Halleluiah verse 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 2. Such a deliverance implyes more than ordinary breach of Covenant on our parts for which God formerly put us under such a yoke 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 This 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 hee afterwards cast Iudah also out of his sight 2 King 17.19.29 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 bee 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 S. Paul tels us it was this They received not the love of the truth 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 selfe 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 off 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 bee over-run and over-spread by Babylon as by an hideous opacum or thick darknesse and to bee exposed and prostituted to all manner of whoredomes and filthinesse so as the slavery of the Iewish 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 onely 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 astonishment upon those great and gastly sins of theirs which had cut asunder the cords of the Covenant betweene God and their Soules and provoked God to subject them to so much bondage and that they must either renew Covenant or bee obnoxious to more wrath and be laid open to more and greater temptations and sinnes this cannot but exceedingly work upon their soules causing their hearts to melt and

duties than in working up their hearts to that in dispensable pitch of heavenly resolution sincerely to strike through a religious and inviolable Covenant with their God Whereas without this all their labour will be utterly lost their expectations frustrate they take the glorious Name of God in vaine 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 downe 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 The Prophesie of the Prophet Ieremiah Chap. 50. V. 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 Prophecy terrible to Babylon but comfortable to the Church uttered The Introduction to the maine Discourse and penned by the Prophet Ieremy about the fourth yeere both of the Babylonish captivity and of the tributary reigne of Zedekiah The occasion this The Prophet having laboured about thirtie yeeres to humble Iudah by continually ringing in her eares the dolefull tydings of a sore captivity approaching could not bee beleeved But when once the quicke and sad sense of their bondage under the Caldean Yoke had forced from them an acknowledgement of the truth of his Prophesies 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 extremity with any hope of rescue This was Iudah 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. yeares and no longer Ier. 25.11 29.10 after which they should have liberty of return to their own Land again Howbeit the weight of their misery the absence of God who had cast them out of his sight together with the insolence and cruelty of their proud oppressors had throwne them down 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 their sight of deliverance promised was the greatenesse 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 Introduction How could they hope to be delivered when she that commanded the world detained them Shall the prey be taken from the Mighty Isay 49.24 or the lawfull captive delivered To cure them therefore of this desperate desponsion of mind 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 captivity 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 selfe which he sent to Babylon by the hand of Seraiah Lord Chamberlaine to Zedekiah Ier. 51.59 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 Oiyes 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 Idoll 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 posterity 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 Roman 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 Verse 1.2 and all to make way for the deliverance of the Church But what should bee the meanes of such an unexpected destruction This was to bee 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 Omne malum ab Aquilone and therefore ominous That these were the men appeares more fully by their description in the residue of this and of the 51. Chap. This Northerne Army should bee the confusion of Babylon the confusion of Babylon should prove the restoring of the Church ver 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 returne of the captive Iewes from thence to Ierusalem 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 seeke 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 seventy