Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	church_n	doctrine_n	time_n	4,041	5	3.7132	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59556	A sermon preached on the day of the public fast, April the 11th, 1679, at St. Margarets Westminster, before the Honourable House of Commons by John Sharp ...	Sharp, John, 1645-1714.	1679 (1679)	Wing S2984; ESTC R17020	18,372	44

A SERMON Preached on the Day of the Public Fast April the 11 th 1679. AT St. Margarets Westminster BEFORE THE Honourable House of Commons BY JOHN SHARP Rector of St. Giles in the Fields and Chaplain to the Right Honourable Heneage Lord Finch Lord High Chancellor of England Published by Order of the House LONDON Printed by M. C. for Walter Kettilby at the Bishops Head in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1679. A SERMON ON REVEL ii 5. I will come unto thee quickly and will remove thy Candlestick out of his place except thou repent WE are this day met together to humble ourselves for our sins before God and to implore his mercy to this Nation in the Preserving our King our Laws our Religion and our Lives and in Blessing the present Publick Counsels in order thereunto And never was a work of this nature more seasonable or more necessary than at this time and to us of this Kingdom For as our sins were never greater never cried louder to Heaven for Vengeance so the Judgments they deserve did never more visibly threaten us than they do at this Day Insomuch that if our circumstances be duly considered we may have just reason to apprehend that our Saviour in the way of his Providence does now speak to the People and Church of England the same words that he ordered St. John by the way of Letter to speak to the Church of Ephesus Remember from whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first works or else I will come unto thee quickly and will remove thy Candlestick out of his place except thou repent This Church of Ephesus as also the other six Churches of Asia to each of which St. John by the command of our Saviour doth here address a several Epistle were at the time when these Letters were dictated very flourishing Churches favoured as much with the especial presence and influence of Christ as ever any Churches were This appears from the Preface to this Epistle in the first Verse of this Chapter wherein Christ the Author of the Epistle is described as holding the seven Stars in his right hand and walking in the midst of the seven Golden Candlesticks The seven Stars are the Angels of the seven Churches as he himself Interprets them that is according to the sence of all Antiquity The Bishops the Presidents the Governours of those Churches His holding them in his hand is his supporting and directing them for the good of the people The seven Golden Candlesticks in the midst of which he walked are as he himself likewise expounds them the seven Churches themselves as being the places where those Stars those Lights did shine And his walking among those Candlesticks is his presence in those Churches Encouraging or Reproving Rewarding or Punishing the members of them as there was cause having the power in his hands either to continue those Lights among them or to remove them to another place I insist on the Explication of this passage because it lets us in to the meaning of the phrase that we meet with in the Text of removing the Candlestick out of its place which from hence we plainly see to be the Un-Churching any people the withdrawing the Light of the Gospel from them Well But this Church of Ephesus to which the Epistle I am now concerned in was written how much soever Christ had done for them had it seems made but a bad requital of his kindnesses At first indeed they had walked very worthily and are much commended by our Saviour for their Zeal and Piety and Labour in Religion but now they were fallen to a great degree of negligence and remissness It is true they at this time continued Orthodox in their Doctrines and Opinions they did both know and profess the true Religion and were Zealous against false Doctrines which also our Saviour takes notice of and commends them for This saith he thou hast That thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans which I also hate but yet notwithstanding so offended was he with the Loss of their first Love the decay of Devotion and Charity among them that he threatens them solemnly in the Text That if they did not repent and do the first works he would remove their Candlestick out of its place that is as I said he would withdraw from them his presence and the Light of his Gospel This is a brief account of my Text as to the first design and litteral meaning of it that is as it concerns the Church of Ephesus I now desire leave to make such Application of it to ourselves as may be subservient to the ends designed in the Solemnity of this Day And we have warrant enough to make such an Application for let us not flatter ourselves what is here Reproved and what is here Threatened hath not such a peculiar respect to the particular Church of Ephesus but that it doth equally concern all Churches so far as they fall under the same Character Which whether we at this day day do or no it is fit we should seriously examine ourselves about Here are three things considerable in the Text. First a great Sin and Guilt supposed Secondly a great Judgment denounced for that Guilt no less than the Un-Churching of that people that had contracted it Thirdly the means prescribed for the averting that Judgment viz. Repentance My Application of the Text shall proceed upon the same Heads that is I shall first desire leave to enquire whether we of this Nation at this day for our manifold sins and guilt may not be judged to be in as bad or worse circumstances than the Church of Ephesus in the Text and consequently have not just reason to fear the same Judgment that they are here threatned with Secondly I shall consider the Judgment here threatened how grievous a one it is and consequently how great an argument the consideration of it ought to be to us all to Repent Thirdly I shall speak somthing of this Repentance how it ought to be exprest if we would thereby prevent the Judgment I begin with the first of these points which concerns our sin and our guilt to make some representation of the Spiritual Maladies and Diseases that this Nation groans under those publick grievances by which the Holy Spirit of God is provoked to withdraw himself from us and to give us up to the Power and Dominion of other Masters This I must confess is a very melancholy and unpleasing Argument but yet very necessary to be insisted on and that very freely too especially upon such an occasion as this and most of all when I speak to those whose Concernment and whose Care it is to inspect these Matters and from whom we hope for a Cure of our Distempers It is here taken notice of the Church of Ephesus to her commendation that she retained the truth of the Christian Doctrine in opposition to the Heresies of those times and this God be thanked may be

spoke of us at this day we are not much degenerated from the purity of Christianity as to Doctrinals Our Church may vie with all the Churches in the world for Orthodoxy and Conformity to the Primitive Church in matters of Faith And blessed be Gods Name this Light is not put under a Bushel There is perhaps no Church since the Apostles time wherein the divine-Divine-Truth hath been more publickly and more purely taught or the Sacraments more rightly and duely Administred than among us and no Church wherein Knowledg has more abounded among all the members of it than it does now in Ours But the thing that is charged upon the Church of Ephesus is their corrnption in Manners and this is the point we are now concerned in and which t is fit the whole Nation should examine themselves upon and deeply lay to heart Though we still keep up the form of Godliness yet have we not in a great measure lost the power thereof Though the Principles which our Church Owneth and Professeth be excellently good Yet do not many of us horribly contradict them in our Practices Is there not a visible decay of Christian Piety to be observed among us and a Deluge of Vice and Wickedness of all sorts overspreading the face of the Land I speak not here of the faults of this or the other particular person for we know there was never any Age nor any Religion that was free from such but I speak of the National sins the reigning Vices of the Times the miscarriages that are so prevailing and so common that a publick guilt is contracted by them and the whole people may justly share in the punishment of them I must confess to speak strictly the Degrees and Proportions in which any Age grows better or worse than those that went before it are not easily to be measured unless we could live the space of several Ages and out of our own experience make observations and remarks upon them All that we have to make our estimate by is the Histories and Records that are left us of the state of former Ages with which we may compare our own But yet this way is often very fallacious because it is the common humour and custom of men even of those that transmit the Memoires of their own Times to Posterity still to complain of their own Times most and to prefer the former Ages before that in which they live Upon this consideration I shall not be forward to draw a comparison between the former times and ours in order to the shewing how much greater our sins are than of those that went before us and consequently how much riper we are now for Judgment Most certain it is That God as he has done to the Sea so has he to every Nation set its bounds of wickedness beyond which they shall not pass and when their iniquities are at full he will not fail to repay vengeance into their Bosom The Canaanites the Jews and many other Nations I might name have been said instances of this kind of proceeding But when a Nation is come to that Fatal Period none knows but God and whether we are not already very near it we cannot tell but we ought infinitely to fear Too evident it is that things are in a very bad posture among us and our sins are grown to that height that it is a Miracle of the Divine patience and long-suffering that we are not already consumed Let us be more particular If the prevailing of Atheism in a Land and the contempt of God and Religion If open Lewdness and Debauchery and Immorality of all kinds If the turning Religion into a mere piece of Formality and outward profession If Schisms and Divisions and Factions in a Church And lastly if our general Unthankfulness for and Unprofitableness under the means of Grace and the many mercies and privileges that have been vouchsafed us If any or all of these sins can provoke God to forsake a Nation and give it up to ruin and yet these sins are both in the Scripture and by the ordinary course of Gods providence especially markt out for such then are we of this Nation at this time in a very deplorable condition and are to expect Judgment without Mercy unless it be prevented by a speedy Reformation For first of all was there ever more Atheism and Irreligion in a Christian Nation at least in a Protestant Christian Nation or more countenance given to such Doctrines and Opinions as directly tend thereto than now among us There are not many perhaps that dare in express terms affirm That there is no God because they know it is not safe so to do But many affirm it by consequence by asserting such Principles from whence it must necessarily be concluded For what is the consequence of such Doctrines as these That there is nothing but Body in the world and that the very Notion of a Spiritual Incorporeal Being implies a contradiction That there is nothing Just or Unjust Virtuous or Vitious in itself but as it is made so by the Laws of the Kingdom That all things come to pass by a Fatal Necessity and that no man is so free and Agent as to be capable of Rewards and Punishments for his Actions What is the result of these Doctrines but the necessary introducing of Atheism and the banishing Religion from among men It being upon these Principles not only a needless impetinent but an absurd contradictious thing And yet are not these the avowed Principles of too many among us and those too that are the great pretenders to Reason and Philosophy But what has been the effect of such Philosophy Why suitable enough to the Notions of it You may meet with those that make no scruple to scoff at God and every thing that relates to the other world and to turn into Ridicule every thing that is Sacred And he is accounted the Great Spirit that thinks freely and dares speak boldly what he thinks And if a man will set up for a Wit he cannot take a more effectual course to gain him that Reputation in many Companies than to be confident and peremptory in contradicting the common Sentiments of men as to Religion To be able to Burlesque the Scriptures humorously To be dexterous in imploying Religious Phrases to Scurrilous Purposes and to Baffle and Droll out of countenance those that stand up for the Reputation of Sacred things As the world goes it is a piece of virtue to believe a God and Providence and future Rewards and Punishments with the other Principles of Natural Religion They do very well that go thus far But as for Instituted Reveald Religion for instance Christianity How many are there that think themselves no way concerned in it but hold it in the same rank with Judaism and Mahometanism And if they profess that rather than either of these it is only because they were born and bred up in it It is the Religion of the Country