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	send_v	unrighteousness_n	1,800	5	11.2922	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85887	A treatise of prayer and of divine providence as relating to it. With an application of the general doctrine thereof unto the present time, and state of things in the land, so far as prayer is concerned in them. Written for the instruction, admonition, and comfort of those that give themselves unto prayer, and stand in need of it in the said respects. By Edvvard Gee, minister of the gospel at Eccleston in Lancashire.	Gee, Edward, 1613-1660.	1653 (1653)	Wing G451; Thomason E1430_1; ESTC R209520	284,427	526

Baals Priests in Elijahs contest with them 1 King 18 26 but sometimes it was a doubtful and aenigmatical or a downright false and lying answer Hab 2.18 The molten Image is a teacher of lyes the Idols have spoken vanity and the Diviners have seen a lye and have told false dreams Zech. 10.2 5 The answer is further described That I may take the house of Israel in their own heart that is the consequence of their enquiry shall be their catching and ensnaring they shall be possessed with the error and misprision of their own brains in stead of a true revelation from God and by it they shall be held and led on with confidence as in a net or snare to their own ruine This sentence is the same both in effect and in cause with that of the Apostle For this cause God shall send them strong delusion 2 Thes 2.10 11 12 that they should believe a lye and wherefore is it because they received not the love of the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness and the special means by which they should thus fall into the trap is in the subsequent words And if the Prophet be deceived Verse 9 when he hath spoken a thing I the Lord have deceived that Prophet It should be by the deceiving and deceivedness of false Prophets whose falshood and delusion whether subjective or effective whether in themselves or in the people though it be their own sin as the peoples delusion also is their own sin in that they seek to and credit such Prophets yet it is also penal and so from God not by active infusion but by giving them up to Satan his instruments and engines to themselves and their own stumbling blocks 2. The other part of the sentence is Vers 8. I the Lord will answer him by my self and I will set my face against that man and will make him a sign and proverb and I will cut him off from the midst of my people Here is still more weight added to the punishment of the presumptuous sinner that dares enquire of God with his heart upon his sin he shall not only be denyed a favorable and resolving answer from God nor only besides that be given up by God to others and his own deceits but he shall have thereto an immediate positive return from God and it is an heavy one it containeth much it is a most dreadful thing for a man to have the face of God set against him it is one of the terriblest expressions in the whole Scripture and he that will seek to God but will not sincerely set himself towards him to seek his face but will keep up the stumbling block of his iniquity before his own face he must look for this return Therefore it behoves every one not only in relation to the well-speeding of his enquiry in this or any other matter but in reference to all other his concernments to that dearest concernment of his own Soul that there be an unfeigned parting betwixt him and his iniquity To close up then this Rule let that admonition of God himself annexed to the rebuke and sentence I have been insisting on in this place be embraced and followed Vers 6 which is this Therefore say unto the House of Israel thus saith the Lord God Repent and turn your selves from your Idols and turn away your faces from all your abominations and let us together with this remember that in Psal 111. when the Psalmist had discoursed of the great honorable glorious and wonderful works of God and of the duty of searching them out he concludeth with this sentence as containing the way thereto and with it I will conclude this particular The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom a good understanding have all they which do his Commandments Other two Rules there are which I shall dispatch shortly 4. Come to the enquiry with an humble heart 1. With an heart-humbled under this condition of Gods hiding himself from us in relation to prayer according to the nature of it and as it deserves We have great reason to take it very heavily The Lords hiding from his servants or from his Church hath ever been the matter of their deepest hearts-piercing bitterest sorrow and dolefullest lamentation So it was to Job to David Job 30.28 to Heman Job saith I went mourning without the Sun Psa 30.7 88.15 I stood up and I cryed in the Congregation David saith Thou didst hide thy face and I was troubled Heman complains I am afflicted and ready to dye from my youth up while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted And so it hath been to the Church of God When the Lord told Israel in the Wilderness upon their sin and notwithstanding Moses intercession for them that he would not go up in the midst of them for that they were a stiff-necked people it 's said When the people heard these evil tydings Exod. 33.3 4 they mourned and no man did put on his ornaments The Church in that allegory of Solomons Song when she arose up and opened to her beloved and found that he had withdrawn himself Cant. 5.5 6 8 and was gone her Soul failed or melted and when she sought him and could not find him when she called him but he gave her no answer she charges the daughters of Jerusalem if they could find him to tell him she was sick of love 2. With an heart humbled under the sense of our ignorance and inability to see into this matter of our selves There must be an ingenuous and lowly acknowledgment of our blindness and unskilfulness to discern what we should see herein and of our proneness to be puzled non-plussed and offended at all those ways of God wherein he walks behind a cloud in any sort towards us If we would be enwised in this particular 1 Cor. 3.18 we must become fools in our own sense that we may be wise He that intently looketh over the History of Job may find this failing both in Job and his friends which might be one cause of their mistaking touching the ways of God towards his afflicted servants that they arrogated too much to themselves and insisted too much upon comparisons with each other in point of wisdom and understanding Agur going to utter his Prophecy or Doctrine of Christ under the Titles of Ithiel and Vchal the former rendered God with me the latter God Almighty thus vilifies yea nullifies himself Prov. 30.2 3 Vide Jun. Trap Cleaver in loc Surely I am more brutish c. or as some interpret Surely I have been brutish since I was a man neither is there in me the understanding that was in Adam I neither learned wisdom nor have the knowledg of the holy And if we will understand the reason why he who is Ithiel or Emmanuel God with us doth sometimes withhold or conceal his presence from us we must take Agurs course and abase our selves

and his offering which he hath commanded in his habitation or at least fly higher then the Church-assemblies Worship and Sacraments and the Scriptures too he is scarce one of the godly or well-affected Again look into the disposition of hearers when they are come May it not be said of divers yea of the most and in some places of all Their ear is uncircumcised they cannot harken behold Jer. 6.10 the Word of the Lord is unto them a reproach they have no delight in it The Word of God was unto David more desireable then gold and sweeter then honey now it is generally nauseous and wearisom How hard dead careless disdainful quarrelling are mens hearts unto it Some can hardly stay it out others can scarce refrain their tongues from breaking out against it many come and sit it out but their hearts are gone from it Plain and pure doctrine pleaseth but a few Now the common temper of them that lend their ear to hear the Word is nicety and novellizing So great is the affectation of novelty and disrelish of ancient and wholesom truth that no doctrine will go down with many but what is quaint and new either for the matter or the dress Men are never swift to hear but when they smell something that is uncouth The beaten rode of plain and familiar doctrine though in the Apostles sentence it be safe for the hearer * Phil. 3.1 yet it is no way satisfying but tiresome Again Look into mens houses and closets What constancy care delight is there used of men in the Reading of Gods Word Are not the Bibles of many that have them and can read cast into a corner the week through never taken up unless to carry to and from the Church scarce ever looked upon but when their ear should rather be employed in hearing then their eye in reading At home they are seldom or never opened What was once spoken as a heavy Judgment is now become a wilful practice Isai 29.11 The vision of all is become as the words of a Book that is sealed In what account was the Word of God in England when it was first translated by Mr Tindal and then under what peril did many procure and keep it in their houses and with what diligence eagerness and pleasure did they read or hear it Some that could not read it hired others with their money to read it to them Now the Book of God is reputed as strange and antiquated whilest Diurnals and Prognostications those worse then legendary lyars the one for time past the other for the future those constant publique scandals of our Religion and Nation are in all the request upon which it may be doubted the continual users of them do bestow more time and cost and it s well if they give not more heed and credit to them then they do upon or to the Word of God Rome and some other Cities are infamous for the permission of Stews Is it not as disgraceful to our Commonwealth to suffer such Marts of falshood cozenage and slander as are practised by those weekly and yearly Pamphlets Their officious lyes and flatteries will not be found advantageous at all to the State if the dishonor and guilt that they lay upon it be well weighed But I had almost in pursuit of these shameful abuses digressed but sure I am not transgressed 2. In point of believing we manifest our contempt of the Word in this respect That exclamation of the Prophet Isaiah applyed by the Evangelist John and by the Apostle Paul unto the Jews of whom they wrote may be justly taken up of us Isai 53.1 Joh 12.36 Ro. 10.16 Lord who hath believed our report The preaching of Christ and Faith in him is very plentiful and general but the Faith which is in Christ is very rare if we may judg by the Apostle James his demonstration of Faith * Jam. 2.18 Christ Jesus is layd forth unto us now as once he was layd in Sion 1 Pet. 2.6 Isai 28.16 as a most precious tryed stone a chief corner stone a sure foundation but with multitudes he is a stone disallowed set at nought and rejected If Christ were our sure foundation there would not be so many rents and divisions If he were our tryed stone or touchstone * See on Isai 28.16 Div. Annot 2 Edit there would not be taken up so many apparantly false doctrines and unlawful courses If he were a stone precious and in honor with us there would not be so much stumbling and falling at him If he were really believed on among us there would not be such making haste Isai 28.16 so much impatience and and fear of man such shrinking in and deserting of the way of Truth and Righteousness upon the least imagination of trouble 3. In point of obedience The Word of God consisting in a great part in Commands and containing the Will of God which we are to do and being spoken to us for that end that we may become conform to the Will of God the most immediate direct and real contempt of it after we come to know it is disobedience to it Now our contempt of it in this respect breaks forth most notoriously and in all kinds of contumacious and rebellious carriages how unsubjugate we generally are thereto would be endless to discover Look into our Congregations once again after the power success and fruit of the Word of God herein who almost is there that gives up himself to the Lord 2 Cor. 8.5 Rom. 6.17 who that obeys from the heart that form of doctrine unto which he is delivered May not the Lord say of us as of Israel sometimes Isa 65.2 3 I have spred out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people which walketh in a way not good after their own thoughts a people that provoke me to anger continually to my face There is a sort of men among us who dispute and deny the binding power of the Moral Law of God unto Christians but we are generally practical Antinomians When the Commandments of God are delivered unto us though we do not flatly say unto him as the first son in the Parable unto his father Mat. 11.28 We will not go yet we do as the second son did who answered his father I go Sir and went not The Land is full of nothing so much as of disobedience and contemptuous violations of the Commandments of God and of Jesus Christ We cast off and abrogate the Precepts of both Testaments We reject both Law and Gospel we not only break in sunder the bands of the Lord but we cast away the cords of his anointed the easie and light yoke of Christ is refused The general vote among us even against Christ himself is We will not have this man to reign over us Witness both the impetuous resistance that hath been made against his regiment in his house and the searedness of mens Consciences