Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	heart_n	spirit_n	word_n	8,255	5	4.2520	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59657	Certain select cases resolved specially tending to the right ordering of the heart, that we may comfortably walk with God in our general and particular callings / by Thomas Shephard ...	Shepard, Thomas, 1605-1649.; Adderley, William.	1650 (1650)	Wing S3104; ESTC R33878	30,111	60

expresse fully my thoughts about our Spirituall union in his lib. 4. cap. 17. I answer I have forgot what he hath writ and my selfe have read long since out of him and for the present I have no bookes about me where I am and therefore cannot satisfie you in this neither know I when I shall seeke to finde out the booke and place If I have leisure I will either write to you or tell some of your friends before I am gone what he hath said or writ that way c. Againe thirdly You desire me to tell you how my selfe came to the cure of Atheisticall thoughts and whether they did weare out or whether they were rationally overthrown I answer at first they did wear out meeting with fruitlesse and dead-hearted company which was at the University 2. The Lord awakened me again● and bid me beware lest an old sore broke out again and this I found that strength of reason would commonly convince my understanding that there was a God but I felt it utterly insufficient to perswade my will of it unlesse it was by fits when as I thought Gods Spirit moved upon the Chaos of those horrible thoughts and this I thinke will be found a truth 3. I did groane under the bondage of those unbelieving thoughts looking up and sighing to the Lord that if he were as his workes and word declared him to be he would be pleased to reveale himselfe by his owne beames and perswade my heart by his owne Spirit of his Essence and being which if he would do I should account it the greatest mercy that ever he shewed me And after grievous and heavy perplexities when I was by them almost forced to make an end of my selfe and sinnefull life and to be mine owne Executioner the Lord came between the bridge and the water and set me out of anguish of spirit as she prayed for a child to pray unto him for light in the midst of so great darkenesse In which time he revealed himselfe manifested his love stilled all those raging thoughts gave returne in great measure of them so that though I could not read the Scripture without blasphemous thoughts before now I saw a glory a majesty a mistery a depth in it which fully perswaded and which light I desire to speake it to the glory of his free grace seeing you call me to it is not wholly put out but remaines while I desire to walk closely with him unto this day And thus the Lord opened mine eyes and cured me of this misery and if any such base thoughts come like beggers to my doore to my minde and put these scruples to me I use to send them away with this answer Why shall I question that Truth which I have both knowne and seen But you say this remedy is good viz. of prayer but that you cannot use it especially because you question the truth of God Yet deare Sir give not over this Trade you will doubtlesse finde it gainefull when it may be God hath laden you more with these thoughts and made you loath your selfe for them But the thing seemes strange to me if I mistake you not viz. that your heart will not be perswaded but that you must resolve your doubts concerning the perfection of Scripture not by seeking to h●rmonise those passages that seeme to crosse one another but by ascribing some humanity or error if I may interpret you to the pen-men seeing St. Paul saith We prophesy but in part and seeing one of the Evangelists leaves out the doxology in the Lords prayer Sir if you take these thoughts arising from these and the like grounds as your burden I do not blame you but pitty you in that respect but if your judgement indeed thinke so I am sorry you should harbour such thoughts one houre within doores for you know that holy men writ the Scriptures but so far they might erre but it is added as they were inspired or as the Originall hath it as they were moved or carried in the armes of the holy Ghost and so how could they erre how could God lie It is true Paul did prophesie but in part and is this an argument because he did not prophesie fully therefore in some things he did not prophesie truly I am perswaded you will say there are many things my poore thoughts have suggested to you as true and yet I am perswaded I doe in them prophesie if I may so say but in part The Spirit of God directed the foure Evangelists to write yet so as they did not all write what another writ but in great wisdome left some things doubtfull and short in one which are more cleare and full in another and hence the Doxologie is fully set downe in one and not in another and many reasons I could set you downe why but that it is needlesse I grant you ought not to put up all with a charitable opinion of Scripture but if you can by reason reading and comparing helpe your heart to a full perswasion this is Scripture but many things you cannot get satisfaction for by that way and meanes but still your Spirit will be left darke and doubtfull What course will you here take for resolution which is Scripture The Papists say it is so because the Church hath christned it for Scripture you say you will see reason for it that it is so or else you cannot be satisfied then I feare you wil never be satisfied I thinke In this case therefore these two things you are to do 1. To go to God by prayer to give you a resolution of all your doubts and by some meanes or other some light to see whether this is his word or not Secondly if this be his word that he would perswade your heart of it that it is so For the least resolution which is Scripture and which is not is made by the same perswasion and sole perswasion of the same Spirit that writ the Scripture Concerning the Angels that appeared to Mary see Gerard and he briefly I thinke will satisfie you In your answer to the particular scruples about the Scripture sense and the dissonancy of them Onely this I will adde to the last clause about these things that if the Scripture be inspired by the holy Ghost and that not in the sum and substance of it but to every word and sentence of it which I thinke you will not doubt of when you have considered it then I thinke it will undeniably follow that the same Spirit of truth is also a Spirit of order and hence the method of various penning of it is from the Spirit too which you say you sticke at Againe to your third thing concerning your spirit being burthened with involuntary infirmities as burdens but not as sinnes I say nothing now because I perceive by one part of your reply that the Lord hath done you some good by the first answer onely it is your griefe you cannot

and glad to think of their depa●tures and ends And truly it is one of the most grievous miseries that a holy heart can feel and I beseech the Lord of heaven and earth to keepe you and me and all his for ever while wee are here in our valley under the sense of such distempers as our greatest misery And therefore me thought it was a solemn sweet speech of an honest man to his friend who seeing him oppressed with such distempers as you mention and perceiving him to droop under them hee came chearefully to him and suddenly said unto him I can tell you good newes the best that ever you heard viz. Assoon as ever you are in Heaven you shall serve Christ without wearinesse Which words well thought on revived the man That which I would speak with as much tendernesse of compassion as I am able to you I refer to these things 1. That a child of God is never usually weary of the ●uty but rather of his vile heart to thinke of and to looke upon that in the duty Christs yoke is easie and his burthen light to him that takes it on his necke and puts his Soul under it The duty nakedly considered in it selfe is glorious in his eyes and sweet to his Soule and hence sometimes never well but when he considers his dead blinde barren and senselesse heart that he is to carry to the duty and that he feares and hath felt will abide with him in the duty Oh! this grieves here the Soule pincheth An Hypocrite is weary of the duty a childe of God rejoyceth in it but hee is weary of his sinne and unsavourinesse and wearinesse in the duty I perswade my selfe Sir that you may soone mistake your spirit herein you thinke you are unwilling to come to the duty and are weary of it when indeed it is your glory joy and love but it is because you feare you can doe it no better that troubles you that you have such a vile heart in it And if your trouble be from hence the good Lord increase it in you daily and withall blesse the Lord and say Lord though I am weary of my vile heart in these daies of humiliation in these Sabbaths yet I blesse thee the daies and duties themselves thou knowest are deare unto me It is not Lord because I am weary of thy word but because I can doe it no better I am weary of my selfe and this vile heart here is much love in such a spirit to the Lord And believe it Sir your love wants not its recompences and remember that the Lord respects you not according to your duties done but according to your love in them and to them And therefore those duties you are ashamed to owne the Lord will not be ashamed to crown 2. Consider you must and shall be baited with these distempers of heart sometimes more and sometimes lesse as long as you live It is part of Pauls body of death which hee must carry with him till he come to bury himselfe 3. Those means which may helpe you to be freed from them a little at least are these among many 1. Be but truly and really not by fits and darkly sensible of them men in deep miseries are not unwilling to be helped out 2. Judge ye not rigorously of God although he we●e a bloody austere God as he did of his master whose talent he had and hence never improved it but looke upon God as having a Fathers heart and affection towards you in the meanest and greatest performances which is double either to give you strength to do what you cannot I can do all things through Christ or having come to him for it to accept of what you would do for him as if it were done and this will make you joy in the poorest performance that though it be never so full of vilenesse yet the Lord out of his fatherly love accepts of it as glorious 3. Renew morning and evening by sad and solemne meditation the sense of Gods love to you in Christ and in every duty that he sets you about and love will love and like the yoke and make the commandements that they shall not be grievous to you Thus I have briefly done with your new troubles which you mention you say because you may not have the like opportunity of writing again It may be so and therefore I have desired to satisfie you which I beseech the Lord himself to do Next you come to reply to my first Letter of which I have kept no copy as I never did of any and hence may and doe forget what I writ then unto you So much light as your Letter lends me to bring things to mind I will gladly take and be more briefe in answer You finde the strength of grace to be got in you rather by argumentation then inward communication and influence arising from the union to Christ And this troubles you To which I answer these three things 1. That as the old sinnefull nature is communicated from Adam the first to us without any argumentation so the new nature which is the seed foundation and plot of all grace is diffused into us by the second Adam when we are united to him without argumentation It is onely by divine operation The Lord leave not me nor any friend I have to a naked Arminian illumination and perswasion 2. That to the increase of those habits and drawing out the acts of the new creature the Lord is pleased to use morall and rationall perswasions as in the instance you gave Christ died for us then hence the love of Christ constraines but remember withall It is not the bare meditation or strength of reason or perswasion that elicits such divine and noble acts in the heart and affection but it is the blood of Christ sprinkling these serious meditations that makes them worke such graces in the Soule which I might shew at large which blood is the salve though argumentation is the cloth or leather to which it sticks and by which it is applied but from such leather comes no vertue all of it is from the blood of christ which by argumentation heales the Soule For if it were nakedly in the argumentation to stir your heart and to worke strength of grace what should be the reason that some times you are no more moved by all your argumentations then a mountaine of brasse is by the windes why should the same truth affect you at one time and not at another when you are as fitly dispoto be affected as at the first Therefore consider it is not your reason and argumentation but Christs blood that doth all by as admirable and yet secret operation 3. Your union to Christ on your part is begun and partly wrought by the understanding and hence the good that you get by it at any time it is from your union or part of it at lest Againe you aske me whether Calvin doth not