Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
virtue_n	diligence_n	kindness_n	temperance_n	1,331	5	11.3678	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63684	Christ's yoke an easy yoke, and yet the gate to heaven a strait gate in two excellent sermons, well worthy the serious perusal of the strictest professors / by a learned and reverend divine.	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.; Hove, Frederick Hendrick van, 1628?-1698.	1675 (1675)	Wing T295; ESTC R38275	26,780	106

comprehensions of the whole Duty of Man that may be excellent guides to us in this particular Heb. 12.1 Let us lay aside every weight and the Sin that doth so easily beset us For he that contendeth for Mastery is temperate in all things saith St. Paul There is first an obligation of all Sin whatsoever every weight every Sin every hindrance abstaining from all things whatsoever that are impediments And we do not strive to do this unless we use all the means we can to learn what is our Duty and what infinite variety of Sins there are that so easily beset us And let me desire you to observe one thing make a tryal in any one Sin that is or hath been most pleasing to any of you and according to your Duty set upon its mortification heartily and throughly and try whether it will not be a hard strife with flesh and blood and a great contention to kill that one crime I mean in the midst of your temptations to it and opportunities of acting it and by this you may make a short conjecture at the greatness of this Duty And this is but the one half For the extirpation of Vices is not always the introduction of Virtues For there are some Men that have ceased from an act of Sin that still retain the affection and there are others who have quitted their affection to Sin who yet are not reconciled to the difficulty and pains of acquiring Vertues I thank God I am no Extortioner no Adulterer not as this Publican saith the Pharisee So far many go and then they think themselves fairly assoiled who are only like misguided Travellers that upon discovery of their error cease to wander further but are not yet returned nor have made any progress in the true way Some Men cease to oppress their Neighbours and will do so no more but they think not of making restitution of what wrongs have been done by them long since Some Men will leave off from Drunkenness but they think not of fasting and enduring Hunger and Thirst and Pains to punish their past Intemperance There is a further striving or we shall not enter into the narrow Gate St. Peter gives an excellent account of it 2 Pet. 1.4 Having escaped the corruption that is in the World through Lust that 's one half but he adds And besides this giving all diligence add to your Faith Vertue and to Vertue Knowledge to Knowledg Temperance to Temperance Patience to Patience Godliness to Godliness Brotherly kindness to Brotherly kindness Charity these things must be in you and abound saith St. Peter and therefore as himself prefaces you had need give all diligence and strive earnestly to all these purposes In the mean time I pray remember that this is not to strive when we only do perform those Offices of Religion which Custom or the Laws of a Church enjoyn us to nor this when our Religion is cheap and easy when we use arts to satisfie our Conscience and heap up Teachers of our own to that purpose that by a stratagem they and we may bend the Duty to our Conscience not measure our Conscience by our Duty when we call security a just peace want of understanding a sufficient warrant for quietness the not-committing of deformed and scandalous Sins a pious Life this is far from striving here is no striving in this but how to cozen and abuse our selves If the affairs of the World I do not say take up not only most of our time but most of our affections if the returns of Sin be frequent and of Religion be seldom and unpleasant If any Vice hath got possession of us or that we have not got possession of all those Virtues we have use of we have not striven Lawfully Shall I tell you how St. Paul did strive that thence we a so may have a fair patern and president to imitate 2 Cor. 6. you have his course of Life largely described Giving no offence in any thing but approving our selves in much Patience in Afflictions in Labours in Watchings in fast●ngs by Pureness by Knowledge by Long-suffering by kindness by the Holy Ghost by Love unfeigned by the Word of Truth by the Power of God by the Armour of Righteousness and by an evenness of Temper in the midst of an uneven unquiet and contradictory condition this was his course of Life thus did he labour Mortifying his Soul heightening his Devotion bringing his Body under and advancing the interests of the Gospel lest by any means he had run or should run in vain I speak not these things to discourage you but to provoke you to good Works and a Holy Life For if you ask who does all this or indeed who is able I answer it is no good argument of an affection to God when we make such scrupulous questions concerning his Injunctions He that loves God does all this Love is the fulfilling of the Commandments Love hopeth all things endureth all things thinketh nothing impossible attempteth those things as most easie which to natural Reason seem impossible For consider that as without God's Grace we can do nothing so by his Grace strengthening us we can do any thing Faith works Miracles and Charity does more Through Christ that strengthens me I can do all things saith St. Paul and Christ's Grace is sufficient for me sufficient to all God's purposes and to all mine For it is not commanded to us to remove Mountains from their places which we never plac'd there but to remove our Sins which we our selves have made We are not commanded to do things which are not in our Power but such things which God enables us to and to which we disable our selves by cowardice intimidating our own Spirits by despairing of God's Grace by refusing to labour by deferring our endeavours till the weight of our sin grows great and our strength grows less till our iniquities are many and our days are few and then indeed we have some reason to say we cannot strive in such measure as the greatness of these Duties does require And yet remember 't is but striving that is doing the utmost of our endeavour the best Man in the World can do no more than use all his endeavour and he that is weakest can do so much that is he can do his endeavour And although a Boy cannot strike so great a stroke as a strong Man yet he can put forth all his strength and the just and merciful Lawgiver never requires more of us than all we have upon the stock of Nature and all he hath given us in the Banks of Grace So that the Duty we are here engaged upon is but an earnest endeavour to do our best and all we can and every Man can do that But because they will not because Men have habitual aversations from the practices of a holy life because to do actions of severe Religion and strict Piety is troublesom to their affections because contrariant to their

Woman taken in Adltery or have been discontented at the Doctors of the Law for being strict and severe exactors of the Law of God at the people's hands or check'd them for observing the innocent customs of their Nation and Tradition of their fore-Fathers Since all these acts were Pious or Just or Charitable or Religious or Prosecutions of some part or other of their Duty The several reasons of these reprehensions our Blessed Saviour subjoyns at the end of every of them respectively They wanted a circumstance or a good manner their actions were better than their intentions and sometimes their malice was greatest in their very acts of Charity And when they gave God thanks they did despite to their Brother something or other did envenom the face of these acts of Piety Their heart was not upright or their Religion was imperfect their Piety wanted some integral part or had an evil Eye A word a thought a secret purpose a less holy intention any indirect circumstance or obliquity in an accident makes our Piety become impious and deprives us of our reward Here therefore we had need to Watch to Strive to Pray to Contend and to do all diligence that can be express'd by all the Synonyma's of care and industry 2. We had need to Strive because though Vertues be nice and curious yet vitia sunt in facili et propinquo Sin lies at the door and is thrust upon us by the violence of Adversaries or by the subtilty and insinuation of its own nature which we are to understand to the following sence For when we are born of Christian Parents we are born in puris naturalibus we have at first no more promptness to commit some sort of Sins than to commit some good acts We are as apt to learn to love God as to love our Parents if we be taught it For though Original Sin hath lost to us all those supernaural assistances which were at first put into our Nature per modum gratiae yet it is but by accident that we are more prone to Sin than we are to Virtue For after this it happened that God giving us Laws made his restraints and prohibitions in materia voluptatis sensualis he by his Laws hath enjoyn'd us to deny our natural Appetites in many things Now this being become the matter of Divine Laws that we should in many parts and degrees abstain from what pleases our sense by this supervening accident it happens that we are very hardly wean'd from Sin but most easily tempted to a Vice our Nature is not contrary to Virtue but the instances of some Vertues are made to come cross our Nature But in things intellectual and immaterial we are indeed indifferent to Virtue and Vice I say where neither one nor the other satisfies the sensual part In the Old Law when it was a duty to Swear by the God of Israel in common Causes Men were indifferent to that and to swear by the Queen of Heaven they had no more natural inclination to the one than to the other except where something sensual became the argument to determine them And in sensual things if God had commanded Polygamy or promiscuous concubinate and indifferent unlimited Lust Men had been more apt to obey that Commandment than to disobey it But then the restraint lying upon our natural appetites and we being by ill Education determin'd upon and almost engag'd to Vitious Actions we suffer under the inconveniences of idle Education and in the mean time rail upon Adam and Original Sin It is indifferent to us to love our Fathers and to love strangers And if from our Infancy we be told concerning a stranger that he is our Father we frame our affections to Nature and our Nature to Custom and Education and are as apt to love him who is not and yet is said to be as him who is said not to be and yet indeed is our natural Father The purpose of this Discourse is this that we may consider how Sin creeps upon us in our Education so tacitely and undiscernably that we mistake the cause of it and yet so effectually and prevalently that we guess it to be our very Nature and charge it upon Adam when every one of us is the Adam the Man of Sin and the Parent of our own Iniquities We are taught to be revengeful even in our Cradles and taught to strike our neighbours as a means to still our frowardness and satisfie our wranglings Our Nurses teach us to know the greatness of our birth or the riches of our inheritance or they learn us to be proud or to be impatient before we learn to know God or to say our Prayers After we are grown up to more years we have Tutors of impiety that are stronger to perswade and more diligent to insinuate and we are more receptive of every vicious impression And not to reckon all the inconveniencies of evil company indulgence of Parents publick and authoriz'd customs of Sin and all the mischiefs and dangers of publick Society and private retirements when we have learn'd to discern good from evil and when we are prompted to do a good or engaged to it by some happy circumstance or occasion our good is so seldom and so little and there are so many ways of spoyling it that there are not more ways to make an Army miscarry in a Battle than there are to make us perish even in our good actions Every Enemy that is without every weakness and imperfection we have within every temptation every vitious circumstance every action of our life mingled with interest and design is as a particular argument to engage our earnestness and zeal in this Duty ut contendamus acriter that we strive and make it our business to enter into the Strait Gate For since the Writers of Moral Institutions and Cases of Conscience have made no such abbreviatures of the Duty of a Christian but that I think there are amongst them all without hyperbole five thousand Cases of Conscience besides the ordinary plain Duty of a Christian and there may be five thousand times five thousand and the wit of Man can no more comprize all Cases which are or may be within their Books than they can at once describe an infinity or set down the biggest number that can be it will follow that it is a nice thing to be a Christian and all the striving we can use will be little enough towards the doing of our duty And now if you enquire what is meant by striving in this place and what is the full intention of this Precept I Answer it is an infinite or indefinite term and signifies no determinate degree of labour and endeavour but even as much as we can supposing our weaknesses our hindrances and avocations that is to make it the business of our Lives the care of our Thoughts our study and the greatest imployment of the whole Man to serve God Holy Scripture gives us general notions and

to follow St. Paul as he followed Christ. But then on the other side how apt are Men when they humble themselves to do it with greater pride Est qui nequiter humiliat se there is that humbleth himself wickedly I cannot insist upon the particulars but actions Spiritual are of so nice and immaterial consideration that both not to be deceiv'd and to discover it when we are deceived are matters of no small difficulty You may see in little that a Man may go a great way in Piety and yet not enter into Heaven What then shall we think of such persons whose Piety hath no more age than a Fly no more labour in it than walking in a shadow no more expence than in the farthing-alms of the street or high-way no more Devotion than going to Church on Sundays no more Justice than in preserving the rules of Civil Society and obeying the compulsion of Laws no more Mortification than fasting upon a Friday without denying one Lust and the importunity of sinful Desires These certainly are far from entring into the Gate because they are far from striving to enter And yet there want not some Men will not do a quarter of this and yet would spit in your face if you should put them in doubt or question their Salvation Some Men are so fond as to think Heaven is intail'd upon a Sect or an Opinion and then nothing is wanting to them when they once have entred their name into that perswasion Some are confident they shall be saved because of their good meaning and they think they mean well because they understand nothing and in the mean time refuse not any opportunity to an evil Alas they cannot help it Flesh and Blood is frail for who can forgive him that hath undone me and my Family 'T is true indeed I should if you speak like a Divine but we have Flesh and Blood about us Alas I hate Drunkenness and I am never intemperate for love of the Drink but when a Man is in company he cannot do as he would do And yet these Men will think to go to Heaven and yet will not do so much for it as either decline the company and opportunity of it or the inconveniences of it Flesh and Blood is the excuse and yet we remember not that Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God but we by m●king it to be our excuse hope to enter the rather for it Remember those great words and terrible spoken by an Oracle by the Blessed St. Peter If the Righteous scarcely be saved where shall the wicked and Sinner appear If after much striving many fall short and the Best is to work out his Salvation with fear and trembling What confidence can they have that are indifferent in their Religion that have no engagement to it but custom no monitors but Sermons and the checks of a drowsy Conscience no fruits of it but not to be accounted a Man without a Religion But as for a holy life they are as far from it as from doing Miracles and he that is so and remains so no Miracle will save him These are the Men that when the Eternal scrutiny shall come then they shall seek for they never seek till then to enter and then it is as fruitless as it is late as ineffectual as unreasonable Christ is the Way and the Truth and the Light and he that openeth only the way for us to go in there whither himself is entred before if we strive according to his holy Injunctions we shall certainly enter according to his holy Promises but else upon no Condition FINIS A TABLE OF THE CONTENTS CHrist's Yoke though easie quits us not of Duty Page 2 Christian Duties carry along with them a Reward so great as to wake the Considerate willing to do violence to all their passions Page 4 Vertue hath more pleasure in it than Sin Page 5 Every degree of love makes Duty delectable Page 8 There is even in our very nature a principle as strong to restrain from Vice as disposition to invite thereto Page 9 10 Our Vertues are difficult because we at first get ill habits Page 13 In the strict observance of the Law of Christianity there is less trouble than in the habitual courses of Sin Page 14 The ways of Vertue are much upon the defensive part Page 15 There is more pain in Sin than in the strictness of holy and severe Temperance Page 18 19 The ways of Vertue are strait but not crooked narrow but not unpleasant Page 21 Peaceless spirits give an Alarm to all about them Page 28 If we would live according to the discipline of Christian Religion one of the great plagues that vex the world would be no more Page 31 A Prison is but a retirement to a person of a peaceable spirit Page 32 All Content consists in the proportion of the object to the appetite Page 34 Impatience makes an Ague become a Fever and a Fever a Calenture Page 35 He only wants that is not satisfied Page 36 Humility the ready way to Honour Page 42 The Gate to Heaven a strait Gate and cvlls for a continual striving Page 45 Good Ends are the Crown of good Actions Page 48 49 We are apt to learn to love God as to learn to love our Parents if we be taught it Page 52 54 All striving in Christianity is little enough towards doing our Duty Page 57 58. A man may cease from the act of Sin and yet retain the Affection Page 59 60 A bad sign when returns of Sin is frequent and of Religion seldom and unpleasant Page 62 Faith works Miracles but Charity works more Page 64 God requires no more than he gives us Nature and Grace to perform Page 65 Many Vertues and Vices are so alike that it 's often difficult to distinguish them exactly Page 67 68 Sometimes Vertue and Vice differ but in one degree Page 69 There is a right hand and a left in the paths of our Life and if we decline to either we are undon Page 71 There 's an hundred ways to wander in but one only way to Life and Immortality Page 73 God's Counsels are secret but they are ever just Page 78 A thought a minute may destroy all our hopes of a blissful lmmortality which twenty or forty years have been with great labour in erecting Page 79 Spiritual Vices are most dangerous and yet most apt to insinuate themselves in the actions of greatest perfections Page 82 A Man may go a great way in Piety and not enter into Heaven Page 83 If after much striving many fall short and the best is to work out his Salvation with fear and trembling what confidence can they have that are indifferent in their Religion Page 86 FINIS