Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	world_n	worship_n	worship_v	1,037	4	8.6505	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26939	How to do good to many, or, The publick good is the Christians life directions and motives to it, intended for an auditory of London citizens, and published for them, for want of leave to preach them / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1682 (1682)	Wing B1283; ESTC R5487	40,184	56

of publick self-defence against its publick enemies that is against any that by his Religion or his own profession bindeth himself to destroy that Nation if he can or by open arms seeketh no less than their destruction But as few calamities are worse to a Land than War so much is to be endured to prevent it It is like a red hot Iron which Fools lay hold on thinking it is cold till it fetch off skin and flesh to the bones and perhaps set the house on fire If your Cause be bad God will not be for you and he that so taketh the Sword shall perish with the Sword and if you bite and devour one another you shall be devoured one of another And alas thousands of the innocent usually perish or are ruined in the flames which furious men do kindle No doubt as suffering a Prison so venturing in War is a duty when God calls you to it But in its self a Prison is a far more desireable sort of suffering than a War Therefore between the danger of the miseries of an unlawful War and the danger of betraying our King or Kingdom for want of necessary defence how cautelous should all sober Christians be IX If you would promote the common good do your best to procure wise and faithful Rulers Quest What can private men do in this Ans 1. In Cases where they have choosing Voices they ought to prefer the best with greatest resolution and not for slothfulness to omit their part nor for worldly interest or the fear of men betray their Country as ever they would escape the punishment of the perfidious Wo to that Judas that sells his Country and Conscience for any bribe or by self-saving fear 2. In other Cases where you have no Choosing Vote with men you have a praying Voice with God Pray for Kings and all in Authority that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty God hath commanded no duty in vain Do it earnestly and constantly and hope for a good issue from God Do it not selfishly that you may have prosperity or preferment by them but sincerely for their own and the Common good God is the Fountain of power the absolute Soveraign of all the world Men are but his Provincial officers none claimeth an universal Government of the world but one that pretendeth to be Christs Vicar General and none believe his claim but blinded men There is no power but of and under God who hath made Rulers his Ministers for our good to be a praise to them that do well and a terrour to evil doers that they that will not be moved with the hopes of Gods future rewards and the fears of his punishments may be moved by that which is near them within the reach of sense And all men regard their bodies tho only believers are ruled by the everlasting interest of their Souls Therefore pray hard for Kings and Magistrates For if they be good they are exceeding great blessings to the world They will remember that their power is for God and the Common Good and that to God they must give a strict account They will take Gods Law for the only Universal Law to the world and conform their own as By-Laws to it They will take their own interest to consist in pleasing God and promoting the Gospel and Kingdom of Christ and the piety and saving of Mens Souls They will be Examples of serious Godliness of Justice and sobriety trustiness and temperance and Chastity to their subjects in their eyes a vile person will be contemned but they will honour those that fear the Lord Psal 15. 4. They will Love those most that Love Christ best and most deligently obey him and tenderly fear to sin against him Those please them best that please God best and are most useful to the common good They will set their hearts on the peoples welfare and are watching for all while all securely live under their vigilancy They will cherish all that Christ cherisheth and specially the faithful Pastors of the Churches that seek not the world but the welfare of the flocks When some are saying In this Mountain we must worship God and some at Jerusalem they will teach them all to worship God in Spirit and truth When Pastors and people grow pievish and quarrelsome for their several interests opinions and wills a Constantine will cast all their Libels into the fire and rebuke the unpeaceable and restreine the violent and teach them to forgive and love each other and will be the great Justice of Peace to all the Churches in the Land and pare their nailes that would tear and scratch their Brethren He will Countenance the sound and peaceable and tolerate all the tolerable but will tie the hands of strikers and the tongues of revilers He will contrive the healing of exasperated minds and take away the occasions of division and rebuke them that call for fire from Heaven or for the Sword to do that which belongeth to the word or to execute their pride and wrath Godliness will have all the encouragement they can giveit and innocency a full defence Malignity and Persecution and Perjury and unpeaceable revenge will be hateful where they rule and they had rather men feared sin too much than too little and would have all men prefer the Law and honour of God to theirs where the Righteous bear rule the people rejoyce The wisdom piety and impartiality of their Governours suppresseth prophaneness oppression and contention and keepeth men in the way of love and peace and as the welfare of all is the care of such a Ruler above his own pleasure wealth or will so he will have the hearts and hands and wealth of all with readiness to serve him No wonder if such are called Nursing Fathers and the light of our eyes and the breath of our Nostrils and the shaddow of a rock in a weary Land As they bear the Image of Gods Supereminency and doubly honour him they are doubly honoured by him so that the names of pious Princes shew not only the sense of Mankind but the special providence of God in making the memory of the Just to be blessed And as they could not indure to see in their days ungodliness triumph or serious godliness made a scorn or Conscience and fear of sinning made a disgrace or the Gospel hindred and faithful Ministers forbid to preach it so God will not suffer their Consciences to want the sense of his Love nor their departing Souls to fail of their everlasting hopes nor their memories to be clouded by obscurity or reproach Even among Heathens What a name have those Emperours left behind them who lived in justice charity and all virtue and wholly studied the good of all What a wonder is it that M. Antonine should be so extolled by so many Writers and not one of them all that I remember speak one word of evil of him save that a small and

Satan Teacheth them and as selfish Pride and Worldly interest incline them what wonder if such Love have murdered 30000 or 40000 at once in France and 200000 in Ireland and have filled the Christian World with Religious Blood Read but the doleful Histories of Church Contentions for 1300 years the Stories of their Wars and mutual Persecutions the Streams of Blood that have been shed in East and West the inquisitions and bloody Laws still kept up and all this as Good Works and done in Love and you would think that the Sacred Roman Hierarchy did Believe that Christ hath put down the Legal Sacrificing of Beasts that he might instead of it have the blood of men and that he who requireth his Disciples to lay down their lives for him would have a Priesthood kept up to Sacrifice their lives to him that will not wilfully break his Laws And all this is but as Christ foretold us that his Servants should be kill'd as a piece of Service to God No wonder if such men offer God a ludicrous mimical sort of Service and Worship him in vain by heartless lip-labour according to the Traditions of men when they dare Sacrifice Saints to the Lord of Saints and quiet their Consciences by calling them such as they are themselves But to the honour of Goodness and the shame of Sin to shew that they sin against the Light of Nature it self they put the Name of Evil upon Good before they dare openly oppose and persecute it and they put the Names of Good upon Evil before they dare defend and justifie it But alas it is not only the Ungodly that do mischief thinking verily that it is good How many doth the Church suffer by while they prosecute their mistakes who yet do much good in promoting the common truth which Christians are agreed in 2. He that will do Good to all or many must have an unfeigned Love to them Hatred is mischievous and neglect is unprofitable Love is the natural Fountain of Beneficence Love earnestly longeth to do good and delighteth in doing it It maketh many to be as One and to be as ready to help others as each Member of the Body is to help the rest Love maketh anothers wants sufferings and sorrows to be our own And who is not willing to help himself Love is a principle ready active ingenious and constant It studieth to do good and would still do more It is Patient with the infirmities of others which men void of love do aggravate into odiousness and make them their excuse for all their neglects and their pretence for all their Cruelties Could you make all the slanderers backbiters revilers despisers persecuters to love their Neighbours as themselves you may easily Judge what would be the effect and whether they would revile or prosecute or imprison or ruine themselves or study how to make themselves odious or suborne perjured witnesses against themselves 3. Yea he that will do good to many must Love many better than himself and preferre the Common-good much before his own and seek his own in the Common-welfare He that loveth good as good will best Love the best And an honest old Roman would have called him an unworthy beast that preferred his Estate or life before the Common welfare To be ready to do suffer or die for their Country was a vertue which all extolled A narrow-Spirited selfish man will serve others no further than it serveth himself or at least will stand with his own safety or prosperity He will turn as the Weathercock and be for them that are for his worldly interest I confess that God oft useth such for common good But it is by raising such storms as would sink them with the Ship and leaving them no great hope to escape by being false Or by Permiting such Villanies as threaten their own interest A Covetous Father may be against gaming and prodigality in his Children The men of this World are wise in their generation Many that have Abby Lands will be against Popery And even Atheists and Licentious men may be loth to be slaves to Politick Priests and to come under Confession and perhaps the Inquisition And those that have not sinned themselves into madness or gross delusions will be loth to set up a Forieign Jurisdiction and become the Subjects of an unknown Priest if they can help it God often useth vice against vice and if no worldly selfish men were the Countries or the Churches helpers it must suffer or trust to Miracles But yet there is no trust to be put in these men further than their own interest must stand or fall with the Common good If God and Heaven and Conscience be not more powerful with a man than worldly interest trust him not against the stream and tide or when he thinks he can make a better bargain for himself He that will sell Heaven and Christ for the world will sell you for it and sell his Country for it and sell Religion truth and honesty for it And if he scape here the end of Achitophel and Judas he will venture on all that 's out of sight Christ was the grand Benefactor to the world and the most excellent teacher of Love and self-denyal and contempt of the world to all that will follow him in doing good to many 4. He that will do much good must be good himself Make the tree good if you would have good fruit Operari sequitur esse A bad man is an Enemy to the greatest good that he should do Malignity abhorreth serious piety and will such promote it If Elias be a man of Miracles he shall hear Hast thou found me O my Enemy And Michaiah shall hear I hate him for he Prophesieth not good of me but evil Feed him with the Bread and Water of Affliction And a bad Man if by accident he be engaged for a good cause is still suspected by those that know him They cannot trust him as being a slave to lust and to strong Temptations and a secret Enemy to the true interest of his Country Alas the best are hardly to be trusted far as being lyable to miscarry by infirmity how little then is to be hoped for from the wicked 5. He that will do much good in the world must be furnished with considerable abilities Especially prudence and skill in knowing when and to whom and how to do it Without this he will do more harm than good Even good men when they have done much good by some one miscarriage tempted by the remnants of selfishness and Pride and by unskilful rashness have undone all the good they did and done as much hurt as wicked enemies There goeth so much to publick good and so many snares are to be avoided that rash self-conceited half-witted men do seldom do much unless under the conduct of wiser men 6. He that will be a publick blessing to the world must have a very large prospect and see the state of all the world