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	profess_v	visible_a	1,998	5	9.1242	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A87158	The weary traveller his eternal rest being a discourse of that blessed rest here, which leads to endless rest hereafter. By H. H. D. D. Rector of Snaylwell, and Canon of Ely.	Harrison, Henry, 1610 or 11-1690.	1681 (1681)	Wing H893A; ESTC R215784	80,142	276

what and why they believe then they are clearlier convinced and condemned by their own conscience for not persevering and increasing that faith by living sincerely according to it but contradicting their very faith as well as profession untill the custom of sin hath darkned if not extinguisht their former evidences is it not high time then for any that finde it thus with them to cast away all longer delays of self abhorrence and repentance to return to God and their own hearts with shame and grief for their former backslidings and for ever from henceforth to be the more humble for what is past watchful and zealous for the future in reviewing their faith and living by it in Holiness and Righteousness Purity and Peaceableness Obedience and Patience lest that faith which hath been deadned and contradicted so long and often turn to a total and final apostacy in the end There 's nothing more clear in Holy Scripture than that they whom God vouchsafes to call by his loudest voice and powerfullest means to Repentance and Faith and Obedience are rendred thereby so much the more hainously guilty of willful ingratitude unbelief and disobedience and therefore liable to so much the sorer Condemnation unless they repent believe and obey according to that light and grace which was afforded them You have I known of all Nations therefore you will I punish the sooner and more severely This is the condemnation that light is come into the World and ye have loved darkness rather than light Woe unto thee Corazin woe unto thee Bethsaida for if the mighty works c. they had repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes How shall we of all others escape if we neglect so great salvation It is indeed a great favour and mercy of God to send us his Gospel to prevent us with all the means of grace but favours and mercies abused and perverted increase the guilt of those that receive them but would not use them to God's glory and their own Salvation And yet what more common and general for Men and Women of all sorts to suppose themselves safe enough and entituled sufficiently to God's Rest because they are of the visible Church professing that Truth which should purify and sanctify them but doth not because it is not aright considered and laid to heart in its grounds and reasons terms and conditions as well as its promises The greatest part of the Jews you see though brought out of Egypt with many Miracles made the peculiar People of God the lively Oracles committed to them and what not that could be desired to make them holy or happy yet for want of considering and believing the word of God forfeited and lost their Title to Canaan And the greatest part I fear of Christians yea of the purest professors of Christianity will forfeit and lose their Title to Heaven unless they consider believe and obey the Gospel of Christ more sincerely impartially constantly than hitherto they seem to have done And if they miss of Gods Rest for want of considering and performing its conditions their anguish and pain will be so much the heavier to all eternity They that have the Oracles of God the word and Sacraments Pastors and Teachers granted to them and yet are never the better and holier are so much worse because they disgrace and bring a reproach on the greatest and weightiest Truth in the World as if it had no evidence or power in it The Israelites once were like Gideons Fleece full of heavenly Dew in a drought endued with those high and happy priviledges of which we read Rom. 2.3 and Rom. 9.4 But yet because they lived not answerably to their vocation but made their privileges occasions of Pride and vain presumption of Gods favour till at last they rejected their very Messias of whom they boasted as their peculiar they are at this day like the Mountains of Gilboa barren and dry while the Dew of Heaven hath fallen abundantly upon the Nations The favours shewn to the Christian Church are greater than theirs because the Truth is clearlier revealed the means of grace more powerfull and less burthensom But yet these favours if trusted to and yet neglected will prove aggravations of God's displeasure To be surrounded with such helps of God from above of Men below ready to further us towards Heaven of precepts to guide promises to encourage us and yet to fall short of Gods Rest is a double and treble shame and sorrow Wherefore if not in gratitude to God for all his mercies yet for fear lest these mercies prove by our own willful neglect and contempt of them the aggravations of our misery let us while it is called to day excite our selves and exhort one another to repentance and faith holiness and righteousness obedience and patience against whatever temptations arise We have a promise infallibly sure incomparably pretious of entring Gods Rest his word to quicken us his Sacraments to confirm us his Grace to prevent assist and follow us If we hearken to his word and resist not his grace neither Prophane nor Idolize his Sacraments but receive them with faith and reverence as they were instituted in love If we hear the Church and watch over our selves and one another Sin shall have no dominion over us we shall be built up from one degree of faith and holiness to another until we enter Gods Rest without any fear or possibility of falling from it But if we neglect the conditions of it and trust to the promise as if it were absolute to the means of grace as if they were even grace it self our sloth and confidence will end in despair and find for ever so much the greater trouble and anguish for having missed of God's Rest offered unto us on such conditions Let us awake then and excite our selves and one another by all the arguments of hope and fear love and gratitude that so God may have the honour of all his favours bestowed upon us and we the everlasting comfort of being thankful and hearing that beatifical voice Well done good and faithful Servant enter thy Masters Joy and Rest Now this Rest of Gods is not the Rest of the Sabboth or Canaan in this life but that eternal Rest with God in Heaven implied indeed and preparation made for it by the Sabboth Typified by Canaan begun here by believers to be injoy'd in its first fruits through faith and hope but not to be had in its full harvest its perfect peace and joy in God 'till we come to Heaven We which have believed saith Saint Paul do enter into Rest that is shall if we persevere in faith and holiness enter into it perfectly without possibility of forfeiting or losing it do enter into it now by faith and hope in God's promises by love and obedience of his precepts which gives us a real Title to it yea a true though initial imperfect defeasible admission into it by that Rest from the guilt of Sin which

'till his abominable wickedness be found out and 'till in the same Net that he laid for others is his foot taken and 'till his own demerits and the justice of the laws halter him into a shamefull death and swing him into another World there to have his portion with the first and greatest of rebels the Devil and his Angels and unless prevented by a timely repentance to remain in flames that burn to all eternity Another sort of Rebels there are more noble though not less bloudy than the former of an higher and more honourable extraction yet such as move in the same Sphere who hide their heads aloft in the Clouds who also think that none shall see them but he that is higher than the highest laughs them to scorn and lets them drop into the same pit which they made for others 'till the Sanction of the Laws strikes the Coronet from off their Heads their Heads from their Bodies and lays the Ax to the root of that Tree which brought not forth good fruit and is therefore hewn down rieven out as it were and cleaved for the fire Were Religion as much in these Mens hearts as it hath been in their pretences that Religion I mean which is first pure then peaceable they might have been gathered to their Fathers in peace and not have pulled upon themselves a speedier and a sadder mortality than that which God and Nature had first appointed for them Next The Zealous Schismatick thinks he is making sure of this eternal Rest for himself and also for his followers who runs before he is called and intrudes himself into that holy function of which we read Heb. 5.4 No Man taketh that honour unto himself but he that is called of God as was Aaron That is no good or holy Man must or ought or doth take this honour upon himself but he that is truly called of God Such as Corah have too often and too presumptuously taken it upon them without being called appointed or ordained by lawful authority But how hainous a sin it is so to do may appear by the dreadful punishment thereof the Earth opened and swallowed him and his up in a moment Uzza may not touch the Ark the Bethshemites may not so much as gaze into it And though now no such punishment be inflicted any more nor such a death as St. Peter inflicted on Ananias befall Sacrilege for Miracles are ceased and such Examples at the first were inflicted on purpose to signify the guilt of that sin and so to terrify from it for ever yet God and his law is the same for ever and they who prophane his holy orders and institutions by bold obtruding themselves upon them will find a punishment meet for their sin here or hereafter What more prophanes holy things than that which makes them common to all who have but the forehead to claim and take them But since the acceptance of the office and its work on Gods part is all in all as that which can bring a blessing on Priest or People it highly concerns us both in wisdom to our selves and in duty to God and in Charity to others neither to take that honourable office to our selves nor give admittance or countenance to those that do so since it is indeed no honour nor office unless as it is derived from him and is more likely if not more certain to bring a curse and not a blessing on such invaders of the Priesthood and their followers If God will be Sanctified by them that draw near unto him then surely most by them that draw nearest by having the office of being his mouth unto the People and theirs unto him And sure it were a great dishonour unto Religion that all great and publick things nay every profitable Science and Art should in all societies be distinguisht by their proper professors Ministers or Artists and only Religion should be in common exposed to be bruised by the hard hands of any Mechanicks and sullied by the rude touch of undiscerning undistinguisht unconsecrated Persons In reason the means should hold some proportion with their end and therefore the end of this holy office being divine and supernatural 't is reasonable Persons which enter into it should be able to shew their vocation mission and ordination for that the very design of Religion forces us to a distinction of Persons and solemn call and ordination in order to the office and work And because every one is not fit to approach to God in the publick addresses of his Church there must in reason be a solemn separation and ordination made of those Persons whose calling peculiarly is holy and they thereby taught and obliged to be so That such Persons being made higher than the People by their calling though our Brethren in nature may be the instruments of conveying the Peoples Prayers unto God and Gods blessings unto the People Thus it was throughout the World Jew and Gentile before Christ's time either pretendedly or really and if Christian Religion allow otherwise we must in effect confess that we have the worst Religion which is blasphemous dishonour to Christianity and as false as its greatest infernal enemy Or that we are the worst of Men which is intolerable shame to our selves and therefore to be disowned and detested in heart and deed Let any favourer of these intruders name if they can but one true and sound Doctrine which any one party dissenting from the Church of England hath recommended to the World which was not before sufficiently and solidly taught and proved by lawful Pastors But who can number the dangerous errors which have been multiplied and spread abroad by these dissenters Heresies and Schismes abroad and at home have invaded the vnity peace and prosperity of almost all the reformed Churches to the extream hazard of the Christian Faith to the introducing Sedition in State Schisme in Church darkness and confusion in both While many pretend to strive for the Truth how do they darken their own understandings as well as others with tumult and clamor wrath and bitterness amongst which truth is lost on both sides as well as Charity They write and fight as they say for the Truth but Truth and Love are slain in the quarrel and prest to death is it were in a throng whilst they that stand by as neuters laugh at both What good Christian can remember without sorrow and detestation the horrid confusions and dismal effects in Church and Kingdom which they have introduced and maintained The like whereof if not greater threatens us daily if God in his mercy overcome not our evil with his goodness As to their several pretences to piety and holiness what hinder'd or yet hinders them from living as godlily and as holily with thankfulness and honour within the Church to its preservation as without it and against it they pretend to do to its disturbance and destruction A Surplice and Hood a signing the Child with the Cross at Baptisme