Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
virtue_n	draw_v	iron_n	loadstone_n	1,525	5	13.0457	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30273	Christian commemoration, and imitation of saints departed explicated, and pressed from Heb.13.7. Occasioned by the decease of the Reverend Mr. Henry Hurst, lately minister of the gospel in London. By Daniel Burgess.	Burgess, Daniel, 1645-1713.	1691 (1691)	Wing B5698; ESTC R224015	41,115	135

same The God the Mediator and the Comforter that they chose and do chuse the same The Gospel-Covenant that they studied lived upon and by and do study and live upon the Promises and according to the Demands of the same If you exercise daily the Faith you have seen in them the Hope and the Love the Repentance the Diligence and the Patience the Humility the Justice and the Charity The holy things which ye have both Learned and Received and heard and seen in them do ye and the God of Peace shall be with ●ou After severe study of the way 〈◊〉 Heaven they neither wilfully ●andred out of it nor slothfully ●alked in it Take you their Way ●nd their Pace and hold both ●mitate you their Watchfulness over your Hearts and your Sen●es and their Resistance of both ●ssaulting Temptations and conspi●ing Corruptions They did as the Army of Israel which passing thorough a Wood abounding with Honey would not taste it because ●he King had forbad them The people feared the King's Oath 1 Sam. 14.26 They chose rather Afflictions than sinful Pleasures and Re●roaches for Christ rather than the Treasures of Aegypt Love you the World and the things of it as little is they loved them They understood the disproportion between a spiritual Nature and carnal Sensualities and looked not on Temporal things as the goods of immortal Souls Pray as hard 〈◊〉 they prayed for the Peace of Jerusalem Loving the Church as knowing they were to be judged by their Affections unto the suffering Churches Not confining God's Church unto their own Party nor making their unnecessary Opinions Articles of Faith and their unnecessary Modes of Worship Terms of Communion Let it not be said that Joshua's Resolution was theirs more than yours As they so do you resolve to serve God with your Housholds commanded so to do Educating your Children piously and prudently Loving your Servants Souls with care to save them and using them in all references as you would be used your selves if you were in their conditions Contemplate seriously and frequently as before directed the blessed state of which they are now possessed Spend not all the thoughts ●ou have to spare upon their Life Of the two bestow them most li●erally upon the Estate they entred ●nto at their Death And do not ●ndure your Living Friends to take from you the time in which you ●hould remember your Dead ones Take it for no less a duty to Commemorate the Dead than to visit the Living To Commemorate the Place where they be the Company wherewith they dwell the work wherein they are employed And stay ye sometimes in these thoughts when you form them as you use to stay in visits of your Neighbours when you make them Start not out of these useful thoughts assoon as you are got into them As tho' you dreamed that little benefit and comfort could be expected from them Rest not till you have overcome the first shyness of your minds Their strangeness unto these thoughts Yea till sensible benefit hath made them impatient of keeping long from them A little serious exercise will make them so For to say the truth which some tell me they feel and which I have felt as my great motive both to Preach and Publish this hasty discourse These thoughts are most exceeding helps to facilitate and to sweeten our thoughts of God with whom is dazling and overwhelming Majesty Mr. Baxter calls them our stepping-stones and stairs of ascent to look at God And a greater than he doth methinks direct us to eye the glorified Saints as a sweet mean to promote looking unto Jesus Christ Heb. 12.1 2. Unto Jesus Christ who is our only and perfectly sufficient Mediator His glory dare you not for your lives to give unto his most glorified Members But neither dare you to neglect such remembrance of those his Members as so makes for the honour of Him the Head As is both an Evidence of your Principle of Holiness toward Him and a Means of its Practice and Progress The promotion of which Principle Practice and Progress is the dutiful Design of every Sermon And may it be the plentiful Blessing of this Occasional one unto you Amen and Amen! Postscript THE foregoing Discourse hath pressed the Remembrance of departed Saints Glory without any thing said of departed Sinners Misery Because I had purposed to treat thereof distinctly and as fully from another Text. But opportunity being here given me I take it to say thus much Of the Means of Grace all are Excellent but none Superfluous They do all ●ualifie and Engage us unto the use of each other No one excuseth from the use of another It hath been shewn to be highly beneficial to stir up our selves by the consideration of deceased Saints Blessedness unto an imitation of their Faith and Holiness And it is as certainly profitable to urge our selves by the consideration of deceased Sinners Ruine unto an abhorrence of their Unbelief and Disobe●ience The Reasons are both obvious and numerous So are convincing Observations and Experiences He was an eminently pious Antient that thus bespake his Auditory Sirs Let us be oft going down to Hell in our contemplations while we live that our Souls may not go down into it when we die And I have heard our greatest Divines praise another who having found that exercise very helpful against his Temptations did not stick to exclaim O Lord my Soul doth bless thee for Hell It is true the Hope of Heaven is the sweetest Persuasive but it is as true that the Fear of Hell is commonly the strongest Motive to our Duty Unregenerate hearts do feel little but this latter And the most sanctified men alive will tell you that they are fain under most of their Conflicts to call in their Fear to the help of their Hope And that their Life is a Flying from the Wrath to come as well as a Laying up Treasure in Heaven To clear this let it be observed The Objects of Hope are less conceivable by our minds than those of Fear be Although Storms and Darkness be without any difficulty pictured Calms and Sun-shines cannot be drawn without exquisite Art and extreme Industry Hell's Torments be a thousand times more easily understood than Heaven's Joys and Glorys be The Imagination of a natural Man will frightfully represent the burning Fire and the gnawing Worm But the fulness of Joy in God's presence and the everlasting Pleasures at his right hand these are foolishness unto him neither can he know them No Eye but a Spiritual one and that strained hard in deep Contemplation can discern much of them Alas who is it that can say he needs not all the helps prescribed in Mr. Baxter's Saints Everlasting Rest part 4th page 219. unto page 242. I mean his Helps to conceive affectionately of the Heavenly Glories These things premised I exhort unto the Duty easily inferred Unto frequent and most serious Consideration of impenitent Sinners end as well as of penitent Believers Naturalists say that the attractive vertue of the Loadstone is less when it is single and draweth much more strongly when it is encompassed and armed with Iron You shall find I am very sure that the Hope of Heaven will much better draw you when the Fear of Hell doth conjunctly drive you Briefly Having here no more room I advise to a just meditation of these three particulars There is an Hell as sure as there is an Earth There be damned men Burning as sure as there be sinning men Breathing Yea and as many of them as have ever died in Impenitence and Unbelief and Disobedience Christians and Jews also believe this So do Turks and Pagans for the substance of it The Al●oran mentions a house of Perdition Plato speaks almost the words of Holy Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This Hell is the Center of Misery A Collection of all evils in their ●ighest degrees Passing all our pre●ent understanding forasmuch as not comprehending what an incensed God can do 't is impossible to comprehend what a Damned man doth suffer A man that eternally Dies and Lives together having a Death without End and a Life without Ease And Tortures too without and beyond all comparison This Hell or Center of Misery hath six Memorables e. gr 1. It s Scripture Names A Prison bottomless Pit second Death never dying Worm unquenchable Fire 2. Its Essentials Deprivation of all good of Drops of Water as well as Cups of Wine and Accumulation of all evils for the Vessels of Wrath are filled with it 3. Its Efficients The Place Company and enraged Conscience are grievous ones but God's own immediate hand is inconceivably the sorest and strikes the hardest blows ●ee Dr. Tho Good win hereof 4. Its Concomitants These are an Enlargement of mind and a Fixedness of it upon tormenting Objects God lets in upon the Damned a great Light to exaspe●●te their Fire There Ignorance ●ould do them a kindness so ●ould one minutes Forgetfulness But it cannot be Here they would 〈◊〉 know God there they must ●ere they would not Think of him ●ere they cannot cease one moment ●om thoughts of him And there●●re feel nothing but confounding Shame piercing Sorrow racking ●ury and Despair that is beyond 〈◊〉 Epithets 5. It s Duration And this is FOR EVER An Eternity ●●expressable as its Extremity 6. Its ●nds and Reasons Which are the ●estraining of Sin in the World ●nd the shewing forth God's Holi●●ss Righteousness and Power up●n Sinners finally incorrigible Indeed if we saw all the Blessed ●●ining in Heaven and all the ●amned burning in Hell as daily and plainly as we see any thing with our Eyes it could not make us Holy without the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit But be it considered that blessed influence of his is not to be expected without the use of his prescribed Contemplations and Practices It is by Heaven and Hell both of them in our Thoughts that he pleaseth to rectifie our Affections and Works Let us therefore neither Pray for his Grace without Meditations of both nor Meditate of both without Prayers for his Grace FINIS NB. The Marginal Note page 59● was by the Printers mistake inserted The substance of it being found page 60 and 61 in its proper place