Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	work_n	work_v	yield_v	41	3	7.0704	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39926	A sermon of catechizing thought fit for affinity of subject to be annexed to this treatise of the (Practicall use of infant-baptisme) / by the same authour.	Ford, Simon, 1619?-1699.	1655 (1655)	Wing F1501; ESTC R209608	27,115	58

renders the whole Church and themselves principally as Officers thereof indebted to them for their education Men Fathers and Brethren I beseech you bear with a few affectionate expostulations with you on the behalf of the most innocent most hopeful most teachable part of your Congregations those I mean of the yonger sort It may be they are yet for the most part dis-engaged in their affections Did they understand grace and Christ and Religion these might prepossesse them and gain their first love You may preach out your lungs and heart to them when they are set upon their sinful way and marching furiously in it like so many Jehu's or settled upon their lees When their lusts have gotten the protection of a rivetted ignorance and it may be possessed them with a desire of continuing in it Surely me thinks you should leave your young candidates of holinesse whom you have washed in Baptismall water pleading with you thus Sirs by your Ministery we are devoted to the service of one God in a glorious Trinity of persons How shall we serve him whom we know not Think you we can ever own it for a mercy or a priviledge to be admitted into a Covenant which we understand not And will it not be the greatest temptation to us to renounce that Ordinance because we cannot tell what good it doth to us Our present Age renders us waxy and ductile easily moulded into any form Why do you not forestall the market of Satan and Seducers by prepossessing us for God Why are we dedicated to God in our Infant-age if not to engage us to be his betime And how can we be so except we give our selves a sacrifice voluntarily as once we were offered by our parents And how can we offer our selves a sacrifice but in a reasonable service Rom. 12. 1 Did you then only admit us to the empty name of Christians and Church-members that we might afterwards for want of knowledge of our duty live and dye the veryer Heathens You preach truth and we hear it but our bottles are too narrow mouth'd to take in so much at once nay so great a stream striving for admission at once causeth all to run beside You preach to work upon our Consciences but work upon our understandings first and deal with us according to our capacities Give us milk as babes and that will strengthen our stomachs to digest stronger meat in time Our parents many of them most of them are ignorant or careless of the performance of so necessary a duty We are therefore devolved upon you as our spiritual Fathers Let it not seem much to you to descend beneath your selves the heights of your learned Nations high speculations to lisp principles a little with your babes in Christ The great Apostle did so and was never the lesse for it And it will be no whit to your discomfort at the last day that you have denyed your greatest excellency which makes you taller by the head and shoulders then other men for the glory of Christ and the salvation of souls by becoming all things to all persons and ages that you might win some Dear and honoured Sirs what shall any of us reply to so rational a plea Yea how much shall we come short of our duty if we do not grant it and act accordingly If we be Shepherds like Christ the great Shepherd we must carry the Lambs in our bosome as well as drive the elder sheep before us If we be Fathers indeed we must teach our children to goe by the formes and walls and goe-cart who cannot goe alone till they gather skill and strength enough to dee so For my part I had not made so bold with you but upon a principle I hope of self-denial chusing rather to adventure the censure of my reverend Fathers and elder brethren then to suffer the sonls of so many of my younger brethren and sisters in the Lord as are daily born into the Church by Baptisme to be starved at nurse for want of milk As for the means of redressing these sad mischiefs I know none like the conscionable practise of Catechizing fortified with the Magistrates concurrence to command both the Ministry to do their duty therein and all Parents and Masters to present their children and servants under some severe penalty thereunto For truly the Ministers are not altogether to blame in this thing Many of them would do more in it could they prevail with their people to put to their helping hands but this is many times the lot of industrious Ministers they would Catechize willingly but that they can prevail with very few to be milling to be Catechized Is there no balm in Gilead no power in the Magistrates hand to heal this evil disease of spiritual sloth and carelesnesse of attending upon publick Ordinances Honourable Patriots we desire not you should for the consciences of any to consent to what it sees not ground for from the Scriptures but we desire you should bring them where they may be informed and then let God work We would teach them their duty to you together with their duty to God as well and I hope better then those private Teachers whom they have yet by a publick allowance liberty to follow we act in the face of the Sun we infuse no principles in corners but what we preach publickly you know our doctrine and our conversation Do the levelling Anti-Magistratical doctrines that fly all abroad about the Land flow from our Congregations or theirs Is it not safer to have children principled by us in a publick way by Catechismes appointed by Authority then by others in private who some of them teach either the Raccovian or the Munsterian principles or which are worse then both the horrid Gallimaufrey of Errours and Heresies raked up out of all the kennels and dunghils of the former and present Ages lately penned and Printed by John Bidle For my part I think publick Catechizing yields the greatest security to the Magistrate that can be of his subjects especially the very prime and cream of them the youth who if they be poisoned by such principles as dare not abide the light may create unknown dangers to him when he thinks himself most secure And I think that was the Politique ground of that project some years since of taking the children of Papists out of their hands and giving them Protestant education The Lord in his time convince us all of our duty and quicken us to it that we may by laying the sound grounds of Religion in the youth of these Nations provide for the maintenance of Truth and Holinesse in succeeding generations Mean while I have done my endeavour to the furtherance of this work and I hope removed all rational impediments thereunto in the following Sermon which I leave in thy hands Christian Reader wishing it may work upon thee whoever thou art in thy capacity to yield a ready assistance to the furtherance of so eminently useful