Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A90367
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A practical discourse concerning the redeeming of time by Edward Pelling, D.D. chaplain in ordinary to Their Majesties, and rector of Petworth in Sussex.
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Pelling, Edward, d. 1718.
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1695
(1695)
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Wing P1085; ESTC R42376
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51,075
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127
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actually fix'd upon them already imployed and Engaged in those Exercises which are the Life of Angels and of the Spirits of Just Men made Perfect To admire and adore and love and praise God is the everlasting business of the Blessed above And this we do here below though not in that intense Degree when we worship him in Truth and in the Beauty of Holiness when we prostrate our selves before him under a profound and awful Sense of his super-excellent Majesty when our Minds are fix'd upon him as the Glorious and Ravishing Object of our Contemplations when the Faculties of our Souls are acting vigorously upon him when we Exalt and Magnifie him in our Hearts when our Desires stream out after him as the only Good we long for when our Thoughts are full of rapturous Idea's of his Perfections when we celebrate and set him forth as the greatest wisest and best of all Beings when our Hearts are inflamed with the Love of him and when we offer up our Prayers and Praises to him with Affections as high as Heaven and as large as the Universe And can any time be better or so well spent as that which is thus employed This is to Redeem ones Time to the best purpose and in some Sense to live it over again by following the great Work of ones whole life close and so by living much in a little And the design of this Consideration is to stir you up to the Love and Practice of Devotion as a proper way of making your Life up wherein soever you may have been hitherto defective To recover what hath been mis-spent and to fit your self for God and Heaven without frequent Acts of Piety is impossible Rather it is a way to lose on and spend amiss still and to make your Condition every day worse and worse And this is one great Reason that there are so many Evil People in the World because they neglect a Course of Devotion which if diligently and rightly followed could not chuse but make them better I do not mean that every one is a Saint that resorts to the Church or that the repeating of so many good Prayers is enough to dispose and qualifie People for Eternal Happiness No there are some that content themselves with the bare performance of the outward Work and there are others that go to the Temple rather in compliance with a Custom or out of Compliment and Civility to the Laws than for Conscience sake towards God But this is my meaning that when Men apply their Souls to the use of God's Ordinances as a necessary Duty and seriously intend to do themselves good by the use of them and go about it with Sincerity of Mind and Exercise themselves in it with attentive Zeal and with Humble Fervent and Devout Spirits when their Hearts are thus Honestly dispos'd they take such a ready Course to fit themselves for Heaven as God will be sure to Bless and Prosper with success if they persevere unto the end in so doing They are then in God's way and in the way of the Holy Spirit to enlighten their Understandings to guide them into the Truth to renew their Minds to sanctifie their Affections to direct their Wills to improve and perfect their Natures and to assist and strengthen them unto every good work And by this means as they obtain pardon for their past Miscarriages so they gradually retrieve their former Losses and make the time past their own again by their extraordinary Husbandry of the remainder and by filling up an Hiatus with a proportionable Supplement 2. Secondly As the diligent attendance upon God's Ordinances helps us to redeem the time that is Gone so it serves to keep us from Losing more for the Future We may reckon that time to be Lost which is spent either after a Wicked or after a Vain manner That is when the Conscience contracteth some great Guilt in the spending of it or when the Man gets no solid Benefit or Satisfaction by it though strictly speaking we cannot affirm it is sinned away and in both these respects we shall see that a course of Devotion secures us from being any considerable Losers 1. First That time is to be accounted Lost which is spent in Wickedness When Vice takes it up so much of our Life is gone to our eternal Prejudice and Hurt unless the Wickedness be retracted by timely Repentance And when it is retracted a Man doth what he can to undo his Actions and to unlive his former Life and so begins as it were his days again To be sure he himself reckons so much of his time quite thrown oway is willing to rase it out of his own Memory and heartily wisheth that the just Judge of all the Earth would forget it too and never impute or account it unto him Now People that are ever mindful of their Devotions are not in danger of losing their time This way because they are assured that if they regard Iniquity in their Hearts the Lord will not hear them Psal 66. 18. Nay that their Sacrifice will be an Abomination Prov. 15. 8. Upon which account 't is morally impossible for them to Sin and Pray too lest instead of Mercies they should draw down a Thunderbolt and instead of Bread should receive a Stone or a Scorpion They who have a sense of God must needs be shie of offering up such Prayers as are enough to put them out of Countenance and out of Hope too such Prayers as they know will Recoil upon them and not only fly in their faces but terrifie and gall their very Consciences also But in truth we cannot suppose Men of Pious Minds to spend their precious Time to such bad purposes as these because the Notions they have of God's Majesty of his Omnipresence and Omniscience of his Justice Holiness and the like are a continual check upon them to govern their natural Inclinations and to restrain them from those evil Courses into which others run without Fear or Wit as the Horse rusheth into the Battel as the Prophet speaks Jer. 8. 6. Besides as they have not the Heart or Face to Sin so neither have they those Temptations and Opportunities which the Devil Ministreth daily to those who are such Strangers to the Throne of Grace as if they lived Without God in the World Such Men are never out of the Devil's road and therefore it is no wonder if Vice be the trade they bestow their Time upon no wonder if a Luxurious Table or a Dalilah's Lap or a Drunken Society or Prophane Discourse or the study of Mischief or the Drudgery of Covetousness or the Pride of Life taketh up those Hours which God hath a right to Ungodly Principles and Contempt of things Sacred do always betray Men to some wickedness or other nor cannot be but Irreligion and Vice must go together so that ' mongst other Arguments that might be heaped up to encourage us to a life of Devotion this is one that
to keep it self from being Captivated Upon which account it must needs require Time to recover that Dominion which is its Right and Prerogative And though Grace comes in to its assistance yet considering that the Spirit of God worketh in a moral way by exciting moving and perswading but not constraining the Conquest cannot be present and instantaneous For as long as Nature is at the bottom it will appear and that with Vigour when it hath the aid and help of Sense and when custom hath given it a kind of Title to the Mastery This shews what great Necessity there is for a Man to bestow pains upon himself Daily because it is this which will give him a gradual Victory He is continually doing something Towards it Here he gaineth one Point and there another and so in time he finds certain and kindly success by thus taming his Nature and bringing it to a ductile manageable Temper by degrees All this while I suppose him not to have arrived to the pitch of an over-grown Sinner but to be come to the ordinary Age of Manhood when ones Lusts though they are strong and impetuous yet are not so Fixt Obstinate and Refractory as crooked Old Age is apt to make them Such an Experienced Wretch whom the Pleasure and perhaps the Profit likewise of so many Years hath confirm'd in Wickedness comes at last to be so hardned that all Reasonings Admonitions Counsels and Prayers are thrown away upon him and make as little effectual impression upon his perverse Mind as they would upon a Rock or Adamant The danger of coming to this sad pass is a stronger Argument still of the Necessity there is to redeem ones time by doing something Daily in order to Eternity that is to mortifie some Lust or other every day and every day to live more and more unto God For when Lust hath conceived it bringeth forth Sin Jam. 1. 15. and Sin is finish'd by degrees by growing and gathering strength daily And by this means the Devil insensibly prepares a way to that sad State which Divines call Final Impenitence meaning such a Numbness Stupidity and Deadness of Heart as doth utterly indispose it for a true Godly Repentance 'T is to be fear'd that Men often come to this wretched State by the just Judgment of God upon them for their irreligious lives and for their obstinately putting off the Reformation of them from Day to Day The truth is it naturally followeth such a wicked Course For Use and Custom do naturally serve to harden the Heart as was observed before So that when the Hoary Head comes it is as hard a matter to renew that old wicked Mind in it as it is to renew ones Age. Nature is of it self inclined to Evil and when a long trade of Wickedness hath brought the Mind to be in love with it to be devoted to it to be bent set and fixt upon it it must needs be morally impossible to pluck up those Men's Habits quite by the Roots which have been so many Years a contracting and which have grown so strong and deep into the very Heart So that though we should suppose an old Villain to have the same means and measures of Grace which are afforded the Vain Youth that perhaps is guilty of the same Sins too yet the case of the former would be far more desperate than the condition of the latter were there nothing else to be considered but this because the one hath been much more Used and Accustomed to Wickedness than the other But besides this it must be said that the Hopes concerning both are not the same For the more time Men waste in an Evil Course the less they have of God's Spirit and by this means also the stiffer and harder are their Hearts and the more they Sin away their day of Grace Without Christ we can do nothing Jo. 15. 5. For it is God which worketh in us both to will and to do of his good Pleasure Phil. 2. 13. The Strength we have is from above the Power which serves to prepare and assist our Souls and which doth every way enable us to work out our Salvation it is freely given by the Father of Spirits Now though God giveth freely unto all and to every Man such a portion of his Grace as is necessary and suitable yet they that are negligent and ill Husbands of their Talents do impair their Stock daily By resisting the Holy Ghost they take a Course to grieve him and by continuing to grieve they proceed at length to quench him Where God's Grace is abus'd or slighted there he withdraws it in Vengeance for that Wilfulness and Hardness which was antecedent And then is God said to give People up unto their own Hearts Lusts to let them walk in their own Counsels Psal 81. 12. to send them strong Delusions so that they believe a Lie 2 Thess 2. 11. to give them up to vile Affections and to give them over to a reprobate Mind Rom. 1. 26 28. The Meaning of these Expressions is That God doth sometimes take away from Men the Grace they had that he quite leaves them to themselves and delivers them up to the saddest state of Mind thereby punishing them most justly for the long Incorrigibleness of their Temper By this means 't is possible for them to play and sin away all the accepted Time before they are aware and to bring themselves under an irreversible Sentence of Damnation in this their Life-time It is possible I say and 't is to be fear'd many actually do so by persisting and going on in a Trade of Wickedness from Year to Year I answer 't is a just Provocation for God to deal by them as he did by Pharaob whom he gave utterly over to an obdurate state for his Stubbornness and Obstinacy especially after the Sixth Plague And though he did not presently cut him off but suffer'd him to live still some time longer yet this was not in expectation of Repentance from him being now brought by his own Wilfulness to a deserted Condition but it was to this end that he might be made at last a signal and astonising Example of Divine Vengeance From which Instance it is clear that a Man may sin away his Time and the Grace of God till he comes to an Incapacity of repenting in good earnest and that he may do this before he dies And this is one Reason why the best Divines are so severe against that which they call a Late Repentance meaning Remorse of Conscience and Sorrow for Sin which is not begun till old Age or Sickness comes and the Terrors of Death with it For though it be granted that God pardons every True Penitent whenever he turns to God with all his Heart and Soul Yet the great Question is Whether a late Repentance be True Right and such as the Gospel requires that is Whether it be indeed a True Change and Renovation of the Mind For there may be a Sorrow