Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	service_n	spirit_n	worship_v	1,834	5	8.9813	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58134	An explication of the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer with the addition of some forms of prayer / by John Rawlet ...	Rawlet, John, 1642-1686.	1672 (1672)	Wing R356; ESTC R4882	40,637	120

eat and drink and sleep nor should you any more leave it to them only to pray to God and to read and hear his word since these works of religion are for your own interest even for the health and happiness of your souls as those common actions are for the preserving of your bodily life Moreover I am fully perswaded that if you cast up your accounts right you shall never find your selves one penny the poorer at the years end for having spent every day one quarter or half an hour in prayer to God in reading and meditating on his holy word or in any other such good employment And yet more for your encouragement I dare assure you that at your lives end you shall never repent of the time thus spent no not though it had been twice as much if in all other parts of religion you shall have been equally careful Much more might be said but I shall only add to you that cry out how little time you have and therefore grudge to allow any of it for holy duties I very much suspect that you can every day spend much more than these would take up in idleness and vanity nay perhaps in the Alehouse to the great hurt of body soul and estate Bethink you then soberly when all your time comes to be reckoned for which way of spending it will be most to your comfort and now do accordingly Or if you say you have no time to throw away thus idly yet what a great matter would it be to rise one quarter of an hour sooner than usual and to spend that time in prayer you could do more than this for your own pleasure or for a small profit and shall not the love of God and your duty to him prevail as much with you Nor yet think it will be enough for your excuse to pretend that your employment is of that nature that your Family cannot come together for prayer especially not in the morning which is like to be the plea of the Husbandman rather than the Tradesman This I say will not excuse your neglect since I question not but that by appointing your time of prayer a little earlier or by a prudent contrivance of your affairs you may ordinarily avoid this difficulty This I speak upon good grounds since there are many whose business in the world is as great as yours and their callings the very same who can yet well enough keep up Family prayer without any such inconvenience as you would pretend And what pray should hinder but you may do the same if you have but the same love to God and zeal for his worship that they have But however when some of the Family are necessarily absent let as many come together as can and lay a charge upon your children or servants when at any time they cannot joyn with you in the Family that they be sure to take some time to pray to God by themselves in private for which purpose I have added two shorter Forms for those of the younger sort And indeed I would advise all beside their performance of Family-duties to set apart some little time once in a day at least for their more secret prayer to God which seems plainly enjoyned by our Saviour himself Mat. 6. 6. When thou prayest enter into thy Closet and when thou hast shut thy door pray to thy Father which is in secret and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly Nor can I well see how that man is ever like to hold on in a religious course of life who is not wont thus privately to betake himself to God there to make his particular confessions petitions and returns of praise and to ease himself of whatever burden lies on his mind which before others he cannot so freely do And in these private prayers there is not commonly so much need of a Form all our work now being to express the desires of our own souls to God only even to such a God as looks at the sincerity of the heart and not at the nimbleness or eloquence of our tongues Nor indeed is it likely any Form should fully reach to every mans particular case But your best help will be to get well acquainted with the state of your own souls to know well your sins your temptations your necessities and dangers and to get deeply affected with the sense of your spiritual and eternal concernments and then do but with uprightness and humility represent the very inward sense of your souls to God in the name of his Son Iesus and you shall never fail of acceptance through any weakness of expression Yea remember it is this inward sincerity of heart that must at all times accompany your prayers if ever you hope for acceptance And therefore before I conclude let me make it my earnest request to you that you take special heed to the frame of your hearts whenever you come before God in prayer as in all other holy duties you ought Think it not enough to speak a few good words upon your knees evening and morning with a seeming reverence whilst in the mean time your hearts are never moved or affected with what you are doing This is such a lip-service as neither will be acceptable to God nor will do any good to your selves Leave it to poor ignorant and deluded Papists to number their prayers by their beads and to think they have served God very well when they have patter'd over so many Creeds Pater-nosters and Ave-maries a devotion which a Parrot might go near to learn and sufficiently shews that Ignorance is the Mother of it but you who through the mercy of God do live in a Church where you have been better taught do you shew forth the fruit of your teaching and knowledge and that by offering up to God those services which beseem reasonable creatures and which are suited to the nature of him whom you serve who is a spirit and will be worshiped in spirit and truth who is a living God and will not be put off with a dead carkase with the bare moving of lips the noise of words or posture of the body but will have all the powers and faculties of our souls employed in the duties we perform to him This is part of that reasonable service which he now especially requires from us instead of the sacrifice of beasts and the burden of lifeless ceremonies which were used in the Iewish Church before Christs coming Rom. 12. 1. See then I beseech you that your very hearts and souls go along with your tongues in prayer and let your affections be suited to the several parts thereof This is the true praying in the Spirit whether with or without a Form Let your confession of sin be attended with a deep sorrow and humiliation for it with a bitter hatred of and strong resolutions against it Think what a frame you should be in and what earnestness you should use if begging for your life