Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	deed_n	light_n	reprove_v	2,125	5	10.3012	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26784	The danger of prosperity discovered in several sermons upon Prov. I. 27 / by William Bates ...	Bates, William, 1625-1699.	1685 (1685)	Wing B1103; ESTC R15611	66,480	256

illuminating quickning and attractive Operations than Sensuality and nothing more heightens sensuality and increases the aversness of carnal Men to the holy Law of God and makes their Conversion more difficult than Prosperity Indeed the Spirit of God can by effectual Grace convert the most unprepared habituate Sinner the most obstinate Enemy of Holiness he can melt the most rocky stubborn Heart into a holy softness and compliance with its Duty for creating Power is of infallible Efficacy and there are some Objects and Miracles of Divine Grace that are the everlasting Monuments of its glorious Power in subduing the most fierce violence of rebellious Sinners But the Spirit of God does not work as natural Agents that are active to the extent of their Power The Winds blow with all their force and the Sun inlightens the Air with all its luster The holy Spirit is an intelligent and voluntary Agent whose Power in working is regulated by his Will and directed by his Wisdom There are some things repugnant to the Divine Attributes ' that 't is impossible God should do them the Apostle saith that God cannot lye for 't is contrary to his Truth one of his essential Perfections And 't is as impossible that he should do any thing unbecoming his Wisdom He threatned the sensual World My Spirit shall not always strive with Man for he is Flesh that is corrupt and indulgent to his fleshly Appetites and alway opposing and controuling the pure Motions of the Spirit We read that our Saviour could do no mighty Works in his own Country because of their unbelief Not as if their Infidelity abated his Divine Power but they were unprepared to receive benefit by them his Miracles would have been cast away upon such inconvincible Persons Who will sow the barren Sands or water dead Plants or give a rich Cordial to a furious Patient that will spill it on the ground And 't is an Act of Justice to deprive Sinners of those Inspirations which they have so long resisted Those who are tender and tractable and unfeignedly resign up themselves to his conduct in the Ways of Life shall receive more powerful Influences to perfect the blessed Work begun in them He will give more Grace to the humble But those who are so far from valuing his Graces and Comforts that should be received with the highest respect that they ungratefully despise them and rebel against his Motions and Counsels he righteously deserts St. Stephen in his Charge against the Jews to compleat the aggravation of their Sins reproaches them Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in Heart and Ears ye always resisted the Holy Ghost The obstinate Sinner rebels against his Authority and contemns his Mercy The Tempter with his Charms is presently entertain'd as the Devils easily enter'd into the Swine but the Holy Spirit with his gracious Offers is rejected Wretched Indignity rather to obey a Slave and an Enemy than the lawful Soveraign If the Saints grieve the Spirit of God by a wilful neglect of his assisting Grace and fall into presumptuous sins altho from the perfection of his Nature he is not capable of passionate grief yet he infinitely dislikes their sins And as grief when 't is oppressing causes the Spirits to retire to the Heart and Nature is as it were shut up in its springs and obstructed from communicating agility and vivacity in the ordinary operations of the senses thus the holy Spirit when grieved withdraws and there follows a disconsolate eclipse and interruption of his reviving quickning presence But the indulgent habituate Sinners provoke him finally to leave them to their own Lusts. 'T is true his deserting them is usually gradual as in a consumptive Person the stomach the colour the strength decline by degrees till Nature sinks irrecoverably under the Disease so the motions of the Spirit in those who have often repell'd them are not so frequent and vigorous as before his after calls are weaker wasting and dying every day till his total withdrawing from them How fearful and hopeless is the state of such a sinner This spiritual Judgment always proceeds from inexorable severity and ends in the eternal ruin of sinners For without the Spirit 's supernatural working they can never be renewed to Repentance never reconciled to God They may for a time live in a voluptuous course or follow the Business of the World and a little breath may separate between them and Hell but they shall at last die in their sins in an impardonable state for ever 'T is said of the Jews They rebell'd and vexed his Holy Spirit therefore he turned to be their Enemy and fought against them 2. The Convictions and Excitations of Conscience are prevented or made ineffectual by the prosperity of sinners Conscience is the applicative Mind that respects Practice it directs in our Duty both by inhibitions from what is evil and by instigations to what is good and by comparing our Actions with the Rule testifies our innocence or guilt and approves or condemns us This intellectual Ray was planted in us by the wise God in out Creation and extended to the Divine Law the Object and End of it to keep us to our Duty And since our revolt 't is being enlightned and sanctified the vital Principle of Conversion to God the powerful means of rescuing the lapsed Soul from its prostitution to the Flesh and recovering it to a temper of Purity becoming its Original Excellence and Relation to the Father of Spirits 'T is true the Love of God is the primary Rule of our Duty and the Holy Spirit is the Efficient of our Renovation but the inlightned Conscience is the immediate Rule and the immediate Mover of us to return to our Duty And if Conscience which is the Eye of the Soul be covered with a film of Ignorance if it be blear'd with the false glitterings of the World if it totally neglects its Office or makes but a cold application of saving Terrors that may controul the licentious Appetites if it be disregarded when it suggests and excites to our Duty the sinner is hardned and setled in his lost state Now Prosperity foments the sensual Affections that obscure the Light of Conscience that corrupt its Judgment that smother and suppress its Dictates or despise and slight them that 't is powerless tho constituted God's Deputy to order our Lives 1. Affected Ignorance is the usual Concomitant of sensual Lusts for the enlightned Conscience will convince and condemn Men for their Pollutions and force them here to feel the beginning of sorrows and thereby make them apprehensive what the issues and consummation will be hereafter and this will cast an aspersion of bitterness upon their sweet sins and lessen the full pleasure of them From hence our Saviour tells us Every one that loves to do Evil hates the Light neither cometh to the Light lest his Deeds should be reproved that is by the instructed and awakned Conscience Men love darkness

to cover their nakedness and foul deformity They are averse from knowing their Duty and will not search lest they should discover such terrible Truths that cross their sensual Humour The Apostle foretells That Scoffers should come in the last days who are willingly ignorant of the beginning and end of the World as if there were no Divine Maker of all things who has power to destroy them and consequently no Judg to whom Men must be accountable for their disobedience to his Laws they assent to the most evident Absurdity that all things were and shall continue in the same tenor and the cause of their willing ignorance is insinuated in the Character that describes them that they might walk after their own Lusts more securely freely and joyfully 2. Sensual Lusts do not only hinder Mens search after Knowledg but obscure the Light of Conscience and corrupt its Judgment There is such an intimate Communion between the Soul and the Body that interchangably they corrupt one another the sins of the Flesh sink into the Spirit and corrupt the moral Principles from whence the sensible Conscience springs of Good and Evil. And the sins of the Spirit Infidelity Incogitancy Error Security break out in the Deeds of the Body and make the Flesh more outragious in its Desires St. Paul declares that unto the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure but even their Mind and Conscience is defiled A purged Heart is requisite for a clear Mind but where Lust dwells it taints and perverts the practical Judgment from whence so many Disorders follow in the Life The natural Conscience in many Cases in its simple judgment of things sincerely declares what is to be done and what to be avoided but when compounded and stain'd with a tincture of Sensuality it judges according to the Desires The rebellious Israesites in the Wilderness are described It is a People that do err in their Hearts the Heart was the erroneous Fountain of all their Miscarriages and forty Years instruction could do them no good Those who are given up to carnal Delights and are in a confederacy with the gross Senses even their directive and judging Faculty is carnal in its apprehensions A reprobate Mind and vile Affections are naturally and judicially the Cause and Effect of one another Even natural Truths that are plain and bright as the essential distinction between moral Good and Evil between Vertue and Vice and the belief of a Judgment to come that is inseparably connext with it yet through the perversness and crookedness of Mens Hearts are strangely darkned Men wish according to their carnal Interest and what they wish they would fain believe and as when there was no King in Israel every one did what was good in his own Eyes so if there were no after-reckoning Men would without the check of Conscience follow the Wills of the Flesh therefore they are Atheists in desire and if not scared by the pangs of a throbbing Conscience will be so in their thoughts The Heathens cancell'd the Law of Nature and transgress'd all the Rules of Duty and Decorum they securely indulg'd those Lusts that are a derogation and debasement to the reasonable Creature and make Men below Men. The reason of this prodigious degeneracy was their Manners corrupted their Minds St. Paul charges the Ephesians not to walk as the other Gentiles in the vanity of their Minds having the Understanding darkned being alienated from the Life of God through the Ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their Heart who being past feeling have given themselves over to lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness A dead Conscience and a dissolute Life are inseparable And how many that are surrounded with the Celestial Beams of the Gospel are as impure and impenitent as those in the black Night of Paganism They stand at the entrance of the bottomless Pit yet do not smell the Brimstone that inrages the Fire there the flames of their Lusts have feared their Consciences to a desperate degree of hardness and insensibility Of such the Apostle speaks But these as natural brute Beasts made to be taken and destroyed speak evil of the things they understand not and shall utterly perish in their own corruption and shall receive the Reward of Unrighteousness as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time spots they are and blemishes sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you They violated all the Prescriptions and Restraints of natural Reason they had lost all the ingenuous bashfulness of the humane Nature and pleas'd themselves in their false licentious Principles whereby they endeavoured to justify their enormous Actions and set a superficial gloss upon their foul Deformities Now a seduced and seducing Mind make the conversion of a Sinner most difficult Whilst the Judgment condemns what the Affections approve Men are not so invincibly and irrecoverably lost the inlightned Conscience is an earnest of their return to their Duty But when the Spirit is deceived the flesh always prevails and Men are most dissolute corrupt and desperately wicked Our Saviour says If the Light that is in us be Darkness how great is that Darkness how disorderly and ruinous will the course be If the Salt hath lost its savour wherewith shall it be salted If the Conscience that should be as Salt to preserve the Soul from tainting Pleasures be corrupted wherewith can it be restored 3. Fleshly Lusts smother and suppress the Dictates and Testimony of the enlightned Conscience that they are not influential upon the Life The Dictates of Conscience are in a direct Line instructing and advising Men in their Duty the Testimony is by reflexion upon their Errors from the Divine Rule and condemning them for their Guilt 1. The Dictates of the inlightned Conscience are supprest 'T is the observation of the Philosopher concerning sensual Persons that they have Reason in the Faculty and Habit but not in the Use and Exercise The practical Understanding declares our Duty that 't is absolutely necessary to obey God and Men assent to it in the general but when this Principle is to be applied to Practice in Particulars that are ungrateful to the corrupt Will Lust draws a Veil over it that it may not appear to check the sensual Inclinations Whilst the Mind seduc'd by the Senses is intent upon the pleasing Object it does not actually and strongly consider the Divine Command and Conscience is brought under the controul of the impetuous Passions The Light of Reason as well as of Divine Revelation discovers that the blessed Beginning and the happy End of Man is to be like God and to enjoy his Love but when there is a competition between his Favour and the things of the World the carnal Heart suppresses the Dictates of the Mind and makes a blindfold choice of things present and sensible as if Man were all Earth and there were no spark of Heaven within