Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	holy_a	spirit_n	worship_v	3,077	5	9.0447	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A92204	The fiery change: or, Almighty God, his melting and refining of his people, purging out their drosse and drossy metals, making them like unto himself and to his Son who is the pure Word. Wherein is discovered, by the comparison of metals, how the visible church is corrupted, consisting of men of all degrees and conditions and how God hath begun to refine them: which have past in the world a long time for good metal: but now is discovering by fire. / By Robert Read.	Read, Robert, fl. 1653-1656.	1656 (1656)	Wing R440; Thomason E899_3; ESTC R206741	92,260	122

life Many will say What shall we we not pray when they neither know what God is nor what themselves are such as presume to pray without knowledge do break the command of God in taking his Name in vaine when the heart is not according to the tongue and sound yea when their Company or their Congregation agreeth not for there is the hater and the hated the oppressour and the oppressed the rich that cares not for the poor and the poor that curseth the rich What congregall prayer can there be in this mixture when mens hearts are one aginst the other The rich and the poor goes together but the Lord is the maker of them both he knows their hearts their ends in comming to publike places every sound noise is not a prayer then the Pharisee had been commended for his long one but it is the inward and deep sighings of the heart in the singlenesse thereof and being fervent We are commanded to pray continually and they that make long prayers are condemned being in ostentation as in publike congregations once or twice in a week and have little converse with God all the rest of the week be not deceived God is not mocked Whatsoever ye sow that shall ye reap Decipies alios verbis vultuque benigno Sed mihi jam notus dissimulator eris Be ashamed and stand amazed all ye that are under the great Light that God hath caused to shine forth in this Nation You will say that you are the people of God and that you know him but it appears by your actions that you know him not for a man to know a thing is to know the condition of it as to know a peece of coine To know God is another manner of businesse than the world makes it to know God is to have experience of him and of all his Attributes his Mercy his Love his Goodnesse his long suffering c. To know God in Christ is the true knowledge of him to be in Union and Communion with him to obey him love him and fear him to honour him and glorifie him this the world knoweth not for the world seeks its own Therefore many that do professe that they know God and in their works do deny him are not onely Heathens but they are worse then the heathens Cato for they say If there be a God he ought to be worshipped with a pure minde miserable is the condition of many that think it sufficient to have the bare name of a Christian and say Christ died for me and rose again for me and never felt the power of Christs death killing sin in them nor the vertue of his Resurrrection quickening and raising them to a new life that cannot witnesse a new birth a separation But live in the old nature and the old man of sin remaining still Deale plainely with your selves ye sons of men for the case doth require it do not lose your precious time here and say I hope to go to Heaven whereas you know not what heaven is neither are you fit for it for heaven is a Condition rather then a Local place and the heavenly condition stands not in outward things as to satisfie the flesh neither is it found any otherwise then in the Crosse here in this World but it doth appear in us by Peace of conscience and joying in the Holy Spirit of God being perfectly assured and having a firme testimony of our Resurrection being Adopted and made the Sons of God 1 John 1.3 and having fellowship with the Father and the Son Deceive not your selves but strive to enter in at the strait gate Go not the broad way of the Worlds profession but the strait and narrow way of the Crosse Deny your selves your own works your own righteousnesse and whatsoever pleaseth and agreeth with your own wills and wait at Wisdoms gate examining your selves whether you be not that that cleaves to the pure Metall and makes it the worse whether you are not the corrupt matter of Silver and not Silver it self if you be the corrupt matter if you be the drosse you must be purged out you must be spewed out if you come to the porch onely and go no further if you come not to the Holy of Holies you were better not come neer at all Psal 119.119 for the Lord will take away the wicked like drosse The Lord will not have to do with such corrupt impure and unclean matter Prov. 25.4 Take the drosse from the silver and there will proceed a vessell fit for the refiner when the Almighty God hath purged and purified the silver and ejected and cast out the drosse then there is a vessell for himself a temple for himself to dwell in for the Lords delight is in his Saints and among them and silver is as his Word is when it is refined Meddle not nor have to do with the most Holy and pure God upon any account living in your own wisdome wills and lust for it had been better for Cain that he had offered no Sacrifice then to account the best too good for God and to offer the worst better not to come to any Table then to the Table of the Devils the end of all Religion is to bring soules to God not to make a greater separation by it from God You were once a far off but now ye are made nigh by the Blood of Christ that onely brings us neer to God draw neer through his Blood and he will draw neer to us look to your hearts and to the issues of all exercises not what the exercise is but to what it tendeth for it is either life or death If you serve God in the flesh you shall have corruption and death for your reward if you live to the flesh you shall die but if through the Spirit you mortifie the deeds of the flesh you shall live God accepteth no sacrifice done in the flesh but as he is a Spirit most holy so he must be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth which was the Legacy Christ Jesus left with his Disciples when he left them We cannot come to the Lord with anything of our own to be acceped of him but what we come to him with must be his he heareth nothing but his own Spirit and that he wil not deny What saith Christ In vain do they worship me c. The Lord Esay 1. saith What have I to do with your Sacrifices and in the same first of Esaiah I hate your new Moons and your appointed feasts they are a burden unto me I am weary to bear them All the devices of men all their art all their invention proceeding onely from them in drawing neer to to God is nothing worth for it cannot but differ from the will of God in Gods worship the more of mans wisdom the lesse of Gods respect the more plainer and simplier we worship him the more hope of acceptance The ordinances of man or of any Churches

I will pardon all The same that Israel was in her time the same is the Church now scattered upon the face of the whole earth the Gentiles being succedaneous to Israel whereof England is a particular How hath God dealt with this Nation from time to time delivered it out of the hands of the Romish power Antichristian heresies and worship and from all the tyrannicall government and lords over our consciences Heavie things were upon us and some of us not sensible of it the innovations bowings and cringings at the name of Jesus and to the Altar Jure divino like to be long lived reformation feared as much as vassallage yet Almighty God with his own arm saved us and snatched us as brands out of the fire from the violence that was lately and delivered us from our enemies and hath wrought some reformation for us he lookt upon us as a people that were drosse and hath begun to refine But we like the Egyptians love the garlick and onions of our Countrey that that hath been vomited out would we willingly take up again And these few yeers wherein God hath shewed us much mercy and love both to our spirituall and temporall beings in much tranquillity and peace we have abused to our own lusts and have not followed that light which God hath sent amongst us but the dark and foggie mists of our own carnall hearts despising and persecuting the same so that we have given the Lord just occasion to complain of us that we we the church of England is drosse as the house of Israel was yet neverthelesse take comfort thy God wilt melt thee and thou shalt be as the word pure silver Secondly The house of Israel is drosse to me saith God as drosse and the drosse of silver Almighty God is a pure a holy and a good God there is nothing can remain or dwell with God but holinesse and purity holinesse becomes his habitation Hag. 2.9 the gold and the silver are his the drosse and drossie metals are ours By gold is understood the gifts and graces of Gods holy Spirit and by silver the word of truth the word of God yea the word God There can be no union between gold and silver and drosse for drosse is that imperfect matter which doth accompany metals and is to be severed from them at the first rise of them out of the earth and taken from the metall as the scum and film of the metall by a refining and a purging fire Drosse likewise is found among metals subject to rust and apt to receive into it self corruption being in vessels and this likewise by melting and refining is cleansed and made clear Drosse of it self is worth nothing yet it fixeth and abideth in metals and may be by the skilfull refiner brought to something being washed and purified Is England drosse see are they not like the house of Israel that were Idolaters and other kindes of sinners what sin is there that is not committed in England Hath not God lately and now at present made triall of us Mark 12.1 ● as the Husbandman did of those that kept his Vineyard he hath sent his servants to see what fruit we have for him and we yeeld him none at all but beat revile reproach and persecute his servants That light that he hath sent amongst us our fathers scarce heard of it but never saw it that discovers Antichrist the Beast and the Whore Antichrist to be man exalted in the flesh man the righteousnesse of man in us the Beast to be the man of sin that is man deceiving himself Gal. 6.3 thinking to be something when he is nothing for man of himself is nothing without God but as a beast and the Whore to be man that seems to live with God in the outward appearance or Church and lives on the traditions and inventions of men cleaving onely to the wisdom and fashions of men and not desiring God to be all in all Do we not hate the messengers of truth and sin with an high hand against the bounty and love of God falling to spirituall whoredoms and fornications like the Concubines and Harlots having a seeming heart for God but wholly yeelding of it up to the service of the Devil the world and the flesh hating those that tremble at the word of God casting them out for his names sake and say Esa 66.5 Let the Lord be glorified but mark the end the one shall have the appearance of God to their joy and they the others shall be ashamed What is the demeanour of the people of England in their profession Is it not meerly outside The more mercy and love God doth bestow on us the more we lift up our heels against him when we should live and praise him in the admiration of his bounty beholding our great dignity in and through Christ he hath called us to be his sons heirs of a Kingdom that cannot be shaken and fellow-heirs with Christ in that Kingdom he calleth us unto a union with himself my Tabernacle shall be among men Ephes 1. ult Col. 2.19 as he hath said We are his portion and he is our portion we are his fulnes having the increases of God yet notwithstanding all this we are wedded to fleshly services and forms and content our selves with the bare names of Christians denying the life and power of Christianity and do hate those that live in that power Our services and worship of God are as dead things not being done by our selves but by an Attourney we do not call on God by a dead Saint but by a living man who may be as dead having not the life of God in him neither hath attained to the first resurrection a poor service that is not in our own persons with our own hearts Many there are that neither call on God themselves neither do assent to the prayer of another but custom and fashion causes them to bring their bodies to a publike place where the poor blinde heart cannot tell what he comes for neither is he carefull being benummed what the issues of his sencelesse comming will be Is this the coming to Christ for life Is this the way to get acquaintance with God No this is that drosse and more there is like to it that doth accompany the good metall but it shall in time be cast out and then we shall learn of Christ for he is meek and not learn of those that are proud boasters haters of God inventers of evil things and despisers of the pure light and truth O that the Lord would shew men the deceitfulnesse of their own hearts that can be content with the husk and shell of Religion be ful of glorying in that Righteousnesse which they have gotten by outward meanes in their own wisdoms and imaginations and utterly neglect refuse and abhor the inward binding of their souls up in union by Christ with the Father in the free Covenant of Grace and