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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	gospel_n	hear_v	word_n	3,919	5	4.5807	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91743	Joy in the Lord opened in a sermon preached at Pauls, May 6. / By Edward Reynolds, D.D.	Reynolds, Edward, 1599-1676.	1655 (1655)	Wing R1261; Thomason E844_1; ESTC R203409	25,402	48

To reprove the sin and folly of all those who seek for joy out of the broken Cisterns of the Creatures which can hold none and leave that living fountain out of which it naturally floweth Some seek it in secular wealth and greatness others in sensual pleasures feasting gaming luxury excess some in Titles of Honor others in variety of knowledge some in stately Structures magnificent retinue goodly provisions others in low sordid and bruitish lusts Unto all whom we may say as the Angel unto the women Luke 24. 5. Why seek ye the living amongst the dead or as Samuel did unto Saul Set not thy mind upon the Asses there are nobler things to fix thy desires upon Solomon had more variety this way and more wisdom to improve it then any now have and he made it his business critically and curiously to examin all the creatures and to find out all the good which was under the Sun And the product and result of all his enquiries amounted at last to a total made up all of Cyphers of meer wind and emptiness Vanity of vanities vanity of vanities all is vanity So he begins his book and to shew that he was not mistaken so he concludes it Eccles. 1. 12. Every particular vanity alone and all in a mass and collection vanity together enough to vex the soul enough to weary it but never enough to fill it or to suffice it Many of them sinfull delights poisoned cordialls killing cursing damning joies dropping as an honey-comb smooth as oyle but going down to death and taking hold of hel Prov. 5. 35. All of them empty delights in their matter and expectation earthly in their acqnisition painful in their fruition nauseous and cloying in their duration dying and perishing in their operation hardning effeminating levening puffing up estranging the heart from God in their consequences seconded with anxiety solicitude fear sorrow despair disappointment in their measure shorter then that a man can stretch himself on narrower then that a man can wrap himself in every way defective and d●sproportionable to the vast and spatious capacity of the soul as unable to fill that as the light of a candle to give day to the world What ever delights men take pleasure in leaving Christ out are but as the wine of a condemned man as the feast of him who sate under a naked sword hanging over him by a slender thread as Adams forbidden fruit seconded by a flaming sword as Belshazars dainties with an hand-writing against the wall In the midst of all such joy the heart is sorrowful and the end of that mirth is heaviniss Prov. 14. 12. Like a flame of stubble or a flash of gun-powder Claro strepitu largo fulgore cito incremento sed enim materia levi caduco incendio nullis reliquiis A sodain and flaming blaze which endeth in smoak and stink The triumphing of the wicked is short and the joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment Iob. 20. 5. Like the Roman Saturnalia wherein the servants feasted for two or three daies and then returned to their low condition again 2. This discovereth the great sin and folly of those who take offence at Christ and when others entertain him with Hosanna and acclamations are displeased at him as the Scribes Mat. 21. 15. and with the yong man in the Gospel go away sorrowful from him Mark 10. 22. Our Saviour pronounceth them blessed who are not offended with him Mat. 11. 6. thereby intimating the misery of those who stumbling at him as a rock of offence are thereupon disobedient unto his word Christ doth not give any just cause of offence unto any but there are many things belonging unto Christ which the proud and corrupt hearts of men do turn into matter of grief and offence unto themselves 1. Some are offended at his Person in whom the Godhead and Manhood are united as the Jews John 1. ● 33. the Samosatenians Photinians and Neophotinians since who though the Lord in his Word call him the Miphty God Isa. 9. 6. tell us that the Word was God John 1. 1. God blessed for ever Rom 9. 5. Equal with God Phil. 2. 6. The true God 1 John 5. 20. The Great God Tit. 2. 13. a God whose Throne is for ever and ever Heb. 1. 8. The Lord who in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth v. 10. Iehovah our righteousness Jer. 23. 6. yet will not endure to have him any more then a meer man without any personality or real subsistence till he was born into the world of the Virgin Mary It would be tedious to trouble you with the manifold offence which ancient and modern Hereticks have taken at the Person Nature and Hypostatical union in Christ The a Sabellians acknowledging three names of Father Son and Holy Ghost but onely one Hpostasis The b Arians affirming him to have been of like essence with the Father but not co-essential nor coeternal but a meer creature The c Manichees denying the truth of his humane nature The d Apollinarians the integrity of it The e Valentines and Mareionites the original of it from the blessed Virgin The Nestorians affirming a plurality of persons as well as of natures The f Euthychians a confusion of natures in one person So mightily hath Satan bestirred himself by many and quite contrary instruments to plunder the Church if it had been possible of the Lord their Righteousness 2. Others are offended at his Cross both Iews and Greeks 1 Cor. 1. 23. Those pitching in their expectations upon a glorious Prince who should free them from the Roman yoke could not endure to be so disappointed as in the stead thereof to have a crucified man one in the form of a servant to be their Messiah and therefore whosoever rule over them he shall not Luke 19. 4. These judging it a foolish thing to expect life from a dead man glory and blessedness from one who did not keep himself from shame and curse hearing doctrines wholly dissonant and inconsistent with the principles they had been prepossessed withal did thereupon refuse to submit to Christ who notwithstanding to them which are called was the power of God and the wisdom of God had more power then that which the Jews require more wisdom then that which the Greeks sought after The Cross of Christ likewise to be taken up by his Disciples and followers is matter of offence unto many others called the offence of the Cross Gal. 5. 11. When they hear that they must suffer with him if they will reign with him that through many tribulations they must enter into the Kingdom of God that affliction is an appendix to the Gospel and find the truth of it by experience persecution arising because of the word then presently they are offended Matth. 13. 21. 3. Others are offended at the Free-grace of Christ cannot endure to be shut out from all share and causality towards their

Joy in the Lord Opened in a SERMON Preached at Pauls May 6. DVM PREMOR ATTOLLO● London Printed by Tho Newcomb for Robert Bostock and are to be sold at his shop at the sign of the Kings-Head in St Pauls Church-yard 1655. To the Right Honorable Christopher Pack Lord Major of the City of London and the Honorable Court of Aldermen there Right Honorable IN Conformity to your desires signified by your Order unto me I here humbly present you a second time with that plain but wholsome Doctrine which you were lately pleased to receive with all ready attention And indeed the argument is such as the Apostle thought need ful to inculcate once and again And therefore if the Tongue and the Pen the Pulpit and the Press do a first and a second time invite you unto the same duty the Apostles example will both commend your zeal in desiring it and excuse my obedience in conforming to so just a desire Self-sufficiency is Gods peculiar honor one of those Regalia which belong unto him alone All creatures must go out of themselves both for the continuance of that Being which they have and for the Acquisition of such further good as they stand in need of And since they are all thus defective in them selves they must needs be unable to complete the perfections of one another much less of man who is one of the principal and most excellent of them That good therefore the want whereof doth kindle desire the fruition whereof doth produce delight must be sought above the world in him who as he is sufficient to himself so is he alone All-sufficient unto his Creatures And because there is no approach for sinful men unto God without a Mediator the Father hath set up his eternal son as that middle person in whom we may have communion with him and access unto him Justly therefore was the Lord Christ before his coming stiled The Desire of all Nations as justly is he after his coming their everlasting Delight since in and by him alone the Lord is pleased to be at peace with us and out of his fulness to communicate all good unto us To set forth this Preciousness of Christ unto his people and to quicken their joy in him was the end of this Sermon and is indeed the end of all other We live in changeable and uncomposed times we see distempers at home we hear of distresses abroad the Lord is shaking heaven and earth Churches and States our eyes and our experience tell us how mutable are the wills how inconstant the Judgements how fickle the favors how sudden the frowns of men how vain the hopes how unstable the delights which are drawn out of broken Cisterns how full of dross and dregs the most refined contents of the world are God alone is true and every man a lyar either by falseness deluding or by weakness disappointing those that depended on them Since therefore the life of man doth hardly deserve the name of life without some solid comfort to support it and neither men nor Angels much less honors or pleasures plenty or abundance can supply us with that Comfort what remains but that we betake our selves unto that Fountain of living water whence alone it is to be had that we secure our interest in the Lord Christ who is faithful and cannot fail powerful and will not forsake nor expose those that come unto God by him that so being upon the Rock which is higher then our selves we may be able amidst all the tempests and shakings the delusions and disappointments below to Rejoyce in him with a fixed and inconcussible delight who can bring joy out of sorrow light out of darkness and turn all confusions into order and beauty This that you and all Gods people in City and Countrey may every where do is the prayer of Your Honors most humble servant in the work of the Lord Edward Reynolds From my study Iune 2. 1655. Joy in the Lord Opened in a Sermon Preached at PAVLS May 6. PHIL. 4. 4. Rejoice in the Lord alway and again I say rejoice THere is nothing which the hearts of Believers doe either more willingly hear or more difficultly observe then those precepts which invite them unto joy and gladness they being on the one hand so suitable to the natural desires and yet withall on the other so dissonant to the miserable condition of sinful man Had our Apostle called on the blessed Angels to rejoice who have neither sin nor sorrow nor fear nor sufferings nor enemies to annoy them it might have seemed far more congruous But what is it less then a Paradox to perswade poor creatures loaded with guilt defiled with corruption cloathed with infirmities assaulted with temptations hated persecuted afflicted by Satan and the world compassed about with dangers and sorrows born to trouble as the sparks fly upward that notwithstanding all this they may rejoice and rejoice alway But we have a double corrective to all these doubts in the Text one in the Object another in the Preacher of this Joy The object of it is Christ the Lord as appears by the same thing twice before mentioned cap. 3. 1. 3 The Lord that pardoneth our guilt subdueth our lusts healeth our infirmities rebuketh our temptations vanquisheth our enemies sweetneth our sufferings heightneth our consolations above our afflictions and at last wipeth all tears from our eyes Here is matter of great joy may we be satisfied in the truth of it And for that we have the word of an Apostle who gives assurance of it by Divine Revelation and by personal experience He who next to the Lord himself was of all his servants a man of sorrow in afflictions in necessities in distresses in stripes in imprisonments in tumults in labours in perils in deaths in weariness in watchings in hunger in thirst in cold in nakedness beaten with rods stoned with stones shipwrackt at Sea beset at Land he who in the prison the inner prison a the stocks a kind of case of prisons one within another did yet b rejoice and sing Psalms unto God Acts 16. 24 25. He it is who from the Lord calleth upon Believers to rejoice alway Instead then of a Paradox you have here a Paradice a Tree of life as joy is called Prov. 13. 12. And the servants of God may securely notwithstanding their sorrow for sin their sense of sufferings their certainty of temptations their conflicts with enemies their sympathy with brethren may yet I say securely rejoice and rejoice alway they have the Lord to warrant it they have his Apostle to witness it Let worldlings delight in sensual pleasures Let false Apostles delight in carnal worship and ceremonial priviledges but you my brethren have another kind of object to fix your joies upon Rejoice in the Lord and again rejoice and rejoice alway and that upon the word and credit of an Apostle I say it and I say it again There are many