Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
virtue_n	godliness_n	grace_n	kindness_n	1,199	5	9.8511	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42831	Some discourses, sermons, and remains of the Reverend Mr. Jos. Glanvil ... collected into one volume, and published by Ant. Horneck ... ; together with a sermon preached at his funeral, by Joseph Pleydell ...	Glanvill, Joseph, 1636-1680.; Horneck, Anthony, 1641-1697.; Pleydell, Josiah, d. 1707.	1681 (1681)	Wing G831; ESTC R23396	193,219	458

be a form of Godliness but 't is nothing to the life and power And where we see not this effect of Religion let the professor of it be never so high and glorious in his profession we may yet conclude that either his Religion is not good or that he only pretends and really hath it not This I take to be a consideration of great moment and great certainty viz. That Christian Religion aims at the bettering and perfecting of our natures For the things it commands relate either to worship or virtue The instances of external worship are prayer and praise both which are high acts of gratitude and justice and they fit us for divine blessings and keep us under a sense of God and prepare us for union with him which is the highest perfection of which the creature is capable Thus the outward acts of worship tend to our happiness and the inward do infinitely the same These are Faith and Love and Fear Faith in God supports and relieves us in all afflictions and distresses The love of him is a pleasure and solace to us in all losses and disappointments since he is an object most filling and satisfying and one that cannot be lost except we wilfully thrust him from us Fear of God hath no torment 'T is no slavish dread of his greatness and Power but a reverence of his perfections and a lothness to offend him and this disposeth us also for the communications of his grace and love Psal 85. 9. And this it doth by congruity and its own nature which is to be said likewise of the others So that they would make those happy that practise them whether they had been positively enjoyn'd or not And though no express rewards had been annext unto them There are other two acts of worship which Christianity requires which are instituted and positive and respect Christ our Lord They are the Sacraments Baptism and the Lords Supper both which are holy Rites of high signification and seals of an excellent Covenant between God and us assuring us of pardon of sins and all divine favours upon the conditions of our Faith and repentance and more firmly obliging us to holy obedience and dependance The only way in which we can be happy Whence we see briefly that all the parts of worship which Christianity binds upon us tend to our perfection and Felicity And all the vertues that it commands do the same both those that respect us in a personal capacity and those others that relate to us as members of Societies Thus humility recommended Mat. 5. 3. Meekness blest ver 5. purity ver 8. are vertues that accomplish our particular persons and make us happy in our selves For of Pride cometh Contention Prov. 13. 10. And a great part of our troubles arise from stomach and self-will which humility cures Meekness also takes away the occasion of the numerous mischiefs we run into through the rage and disorder of our passions and 't is in it self a great beauty and ornament since it ariseth from the due order and government of our faculties Purity which comprehends temperance of all sorts frees us from the tormenting importunity of those desires that drag us out of our selves and expose us to sin and folly and temptation and make us exceeding miserable besides which it is a perfection that renders us like unto God and the blest Spirits of the highest rank And Christian vertues do not only accomplish and make us happy in our particular persons but they do the same in our publique capacities They dispose us to a quiet obedience to our governours without murmuring and complaining and thereby the publique peace is secured and all good things else in that But there are other vertues that Christianity enjoyns which have a more direct tendency to the happiness of others as Justice Mat. 7. 12. Charity 1 Cor. 13. Loyalty Rom. 13. and all other publique vertues may I think be comprehended under these Where there is no Justice every man preys upon another and no mans property is safe Where Charity is wanting Jealousies hatreds envying back-bitings and cruelties abound which render the world deplorably unhappy Where there is not Loyalty and conscionable submission to Governours the publick is upon every occasion of commotion involv'd in infinite miseries and disasters So that all the precepts of our Religion are in their own nature proper instruments to make us happy and they had been methods of Felicity to be chosen by all reasonable creatures though they had never been required by so great and so sacred an Authority These things I have said because I could not choose but take this occasion to recommend the excellency and reasonableness of our Religion And I have done it but only in brief hints because it ariseth but upon a Corollary from my main subject and from this I infer further III. That Christianity is the height and perfection of morality They both tend to the real bettering and accomplishment of humane nature But the rules and measures of moral Philosophy were weak and imperfect till Christ Jesus came He confirmed and enforced all those precepts of vertue that were written upon our hearts and cleared them from many corruptions that were grown upon them through ignorance and vice the glosses of the Jews and false conceits of the Gentiles and he inforced them anew by his Authority and the knowledge he gave of divine aids and greater rewards and punishments than were understood before yea he enlarged them in some instances such as loving enemies and forgiving injuries Thus Christ Jesus taught morality viz. the way of living like men And the 5th Chapter of Matthew is an excellent Lecture of this kind So that to disparage morality is to disgrace Christianity it self and to vilifie one of the ends of Christs coming into the world For all Religion and all duties respect either God our neighbour or our selves and the duties that relate to these two last are acknowledg'd moral vertues The Apostle St. James counted these Moralities of visiting the Widow and Fatherless to be the pure Religion and undefiled Jam. 1. 17. and the Prophet Micah intimates that those moral vertues of Justice and mercy were some of the main things that God required of us Micah 6. 8. Our Saviour saith that the whole Law is summ'd up in these two to love God with all our souls and our neighbour as our selves Matth. 22. 13. which latter contains the duties of morality And that which the grace of God in the Gospel teacheth according to St. Paul is to live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Tit. 2. 11. There is no godliness without morality All the fruits of the Spirit reckon'd up Gal. 5. 22. are moral vertues And when we are commanded to grow in grace 2 Pet. 3. 18. vertue is partly understood For one branch of what is call'd Grace in us is moral vertue produced by divine aids Christian principles and incouragements though 't is

our Natures almost universally rise against as many Bestialities and some horrid Cruelties and all men except Monsters in Humane form are disposed to some Vertues such as Love to Children and Kindness to Friends and Benefactors All this I must confess and say because Experience constrains me and I do not know why Systematick Notions should sway more than that But notwithstanding these last concessions 't is evident enough that our Natures are much vitiated and depraved and this makes our business in the way of Religion difficult For our work is to cleanse our Natures and to destroy those Evil Inclinations to crucifie the Old Man Rom. 6. 6. and to purge out the old Leven 1 Cor. 5. 7. This is Religion and the Way of Happiness which must needs be very difficult and uneasie For the vices of Inclination are very dear and grateful to us They are our Right Hands and our Right Eyes and esteemed as our Selves So that to cut off and pluck out these and to bid defiance to and wage War against our selves to destroy the first-born of our Natures and to lop off our own Limbs This cannot but be very Irksome and Displeasant Imployment and this is one chief business and a considerable thing that makes Religion difficult II. Another Difficulty ariseth from the Influence of the Senses We are Creatures of sense and sensible things do most powerfully move us we are born Children and live at first the life of Beasts That Age receives deep Impressions and those are made by the senses whose Interest grows strong and establisht in us before we come to the use of Reason and after we have arrived to the exercise of that sensible objects still possess our Affections and sway our Wills and fill our Imaginations and influence our Understandings so that we love and hate we desire and choose we fancy and we discourse according to those Impressions and hence it is that we are enamour'd of Trifles and fly from our Happiness and pursue Vexation and embrace Misery and imagine Perversely and reason Childishly for the influence of the Body and its Senses are the chief Fountains of Sin and Folly and Temptation Upon which accounts it was that the Platonical Philosophers declaim'd so earnestly against the Body and ascrib'd all Evils and Mischief to it calling vice 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 corporeae Pestes material Evils and bodily Plagues And the Apostle that understood it better calls Sin by the name of Flesh Gal. 5. 17. Works of the Flesh Gal. 5. 19. Law of the Members Rom. 7. 23. and cries out upon the Body of this Death Rom. 7. 24. And now this is our natural Condition a state subject to the prevalent influences of Sense and by this means to Sin and Temptation and 't is our Work in Religion to mortifie the Body Rom. 8. 13. and to cease from making provision for the flesh Rom. 13. 14. and from fulfilling the Lusts thereof Gal. 5. 14. To render our selves dead to the prevalent life of Sense and Sin Rom. 6. 8. and 11. 5. and to arise to a new Life Rom. 6. 4. The Life of Righteousness and Faith Hab. 2. 4. A Life that hath other Principles and other Pleasures other Objects and other Ends and such as neither Eye hath seen nor Ear heard nor any of the Senses perceived Yea this is a Life that is exercised in contradiction to the Judgements of sense It s Joy is Tribulation Jam. 1. 2. It s Glory Reproaches 2 Pet. 4. 14. It s Height is Lowness Luke 14. 11. It s Greatness in being Meanest Matth. 20. 27. And its Riches in having Nothing 2 Cor. 6. 10. To such a Life as this Religion is to raise us and it must needs be difficult to make us who are so much Brutes to be so much Angels us who seem to live by nothing else but sense to live by nothing less This with a witness is an hard and uneasie Work and another difficulty in Religion III. A Third proceeds from the natural Disorder and Rage of our Passions Our Corrupt Natures are like the troubled Sea Isa 57. 20. And our Passions are the Waves of that Ocean that tumble and swell and keep a mighty noise they dash against the Rocks and break one against another and our Peace and Happiness is shipwrackt by them Our Passions make us miserable We are sometime stifled by their Numbers and confounded by their Disorders and torn to pieces by their Violence mounted to the Clouds by Ambition and thrown down to the deep by Despair scorcht by the flames of Lust and overwhelmed by the Waters of unstable Desire Passions fight one against another and all against reason they prevail over the Mind and have usurpt the Government of our Actions and involve us in continual Guilt and Misery This is the natural State of Man and our work in the way of Religion is to restrain this Violence and to rectifie these Disorders and to reduce those Rebellious Powers under the Empire and Government of the Mind their Sovereign And so to regain the Divine Image which consists much in the order of our Faculties and the Subjection of the Brutish to the reasonable Powers This I say Religion aims at to raise us to the perfection of our Natures by mortifying those Members Col. 3. 5. our unruly Passions and Desires and crucifying the Flesh with its Affections and Lusts Gal. 5. 24. And thereby to make us humble in Prosperity quiet in Adversity meek under Provocations steady amidst Temptations modest in our Desires temperate in our Injoyments constant to our Resolutions and contented in all Conditions Here is our great Business and our Work is this And certainly 't is no easie thing to bring order out of a Chaos and to speak a Tempest into a Calm to resist a Torrent and to stop and turn the Tyde to subdue a Rebellious Rabble and to change them from Tyrannical Masters to Modest and Obedient Servants These no doubt are works of difficulty enough and these must be our Imployment in the way of Religion and on this score also the Gate is strait IV. Our Work in Religion is yet more difficult upon the account of Custom to which we are subject and by which we are swayed much This is vulgarly said to be another Nature and the Apostle calls it by that name 1 Cor. 11. 14. Doth not Nature it self teach you that if a Man have long Hair it is a shame unto him By the word Nature the best Interpreters say only Custom is meant since long Hair is not declared shameful by the Law and Light of Nature taken in its chief and properest sense For then it had never been permitted to the Nazarites But the contrary custom in the Nations that used it not made it seem shameful and indecent There are other places in Scripture and ancient Authors wherein Nature is put for Custom But I must not insist on this the thing I am about is that Custom is very

us We may indeed be confident and we ought that he will save all those that so believe as to obey him but may not trust that he will save us except we are some of those To rely upon Christ for our Salvation must follow our sincere and obedient striving and not go before it The mistake of this is exceeding dangerous and I doubt hath been fatal to many The sum is to rely on Christ without a resolute and steady endeavour to overcome every sin and temptation will gain us nothing in the end but shame and disappointment For 't is not every one that saith unto him Lord Lord shall enter into Heaven but he that doth the will of his Father which is in Heaven Mat. 7. 21. The foolish Virgins relyed upon him and expected he should open to them Lord Lord open to us Mat. 25. 11. but he kept them out and would not know them v. 11. Thus of the First imperfect Mark of Godliness A man may upon the account of meer Nature arrive to all the mentioned degrees of Faith and yet if his endeavours in the practice of Christian vertues be not suitable he will certainly come short at last II. A man may be very devout given much to Prayer and be very frequent and earnest in it He may have the gift of expressing himself fluently without the help of Form or Meditation yea and so intent and taken up in these exercises that he may as it were be ravish't out of himself by the fervours of his Spirit so that he really kindles very high Affections as well in others as in himself And yet if he rests in this and such like things as Religion and reckons that he is accepted of God for it if he allow himself in any unmortified lusts and thinks to compound for them by his Prayers he is an evil man notwithstanding and one of those seekers that shall not be able to enter The Pharisees we know were much given to Prayer They were long in those Devotions and very earnest in them often repeating the same expressions out of vehemence Ignatius Loyola founder of the Jesuites was a man almost ecstatical in his Prayers and Hacket the Blasphemer executed in the days of Queen Elizabeth was a person of Seraphical Devotion and would pray those that heard him even into transports Basilides the cruel Duke of Mosco is said to have his hands almost continually lifted up in Prayer except when they were imployed in some barbarous and bloody Execution And we have known and felt one not much unlike him There are infinite instances in our days of this dangerous sort of evil men And we may learn hence that the greatest gift of Prayer and earnestness and frequency in it is no good mark of Godliness except it be attended with sincere constant and vertuous endeavours For some men have a natural spice of Devotion in a Religious Melancholy which is their temper and such have commonly strong Imaginations and zealous affections which when they are heated flame forth into great heights and expressions of Devotion The warm Fancy furnisheth words and matter readily and unexpectedly which many times begets in the man a conceit that he is inspired and that his Prayers are the breathings of the Holy Ghost or at least that he is extraordinarily assisted by it which belief kindles his affections yet more and he is carried beyond himself even into the third Heavens and Suburbs of Glory as he fancies and so he makes no doubt but that he is a Saint of the first rank and special favourite of Heaven when all this while he may be really a bad man full of Envy and Malice Pride and Covetousness Scorn and ill Nature contempt of his Betters and disobedience to his Governours And while it is so notwithstanding those glorious things he is no further than the Pharisee Hearty and humble desire though imperfectly exprest and without this pomp and those wonders is far more acceptable to God who delights not in the exercises of meer Nature Psal 147. 10. but is well pleased with the expressions of Grace in those that fear him So that a sincere and lowly-minded Christian that talks of no immediate incomes or communications and perhaps durst not out of reverence trust to his own present conceptions in a work so solemn but useth the help of some pious form of words sutable to his desire and wants who is duly sensible of his sins and the necessity of overcoming them and is truly and earnestly desirous of the Divine aids in order to it such a one as this prays by the Spirit and will be assisted by it while the other doth all by meer Nature and Imitation and shall not have those spiritual aids which he never heartily desires nor intends to use This I think I may truly and safely say But for the Controversie between Forms and Conceived Prayers which of them is absolutely best I determine nothing of it here And indeed I suppose that in their own nature they are alike indifferent and are more or less accepted as they partake more or less of the Spirit of Prayer viz. of Faith Humility and holy desire of the good things we pray for and a man may have these that prays by a Form and he may want them that takes the other way and thinks himself in a dispensation much above it So that my business is not to set up one of these ways of Devotion against the other but to shew that the heights and vehemencies of many warm people in their unpremeditated Prayers have nothing in them supernatural or Divine and consequently of themselves they are no marks of Godliness which I hope no one thinks I speak to discredit those pious ardours that are felt by really devout Souls when a vigorous sense of God and Divine things doth even sometimes transport them Far be it from me to design any thing so impious my aim is only to note that there are complexional heats raised many times by fancy and self-admiration that look like these in persons who really have little of God in them and we should take care that we are not deceived by them Thus far also those may go that shall not enter I add III. A man may endeavour somewhat and strive in some degree and yet his work may miscarry and himself with it 1. There is no doubt but that an evil man may be convinced of his sin and vileness and that even to anguish and torment The Gentiles saith the Apostle Rom. 2. 14. which have not the Law shew the works of the Law written in their Hearts their thoughts in the mean time accusing or excusing one another Conscience often stings and disquiets the vilest sinners and sometimes extorts from them lamentable confession of their sins and earnest declamations against them They may weep bitterly at their remembrance and be under great heaviness and dejection upon their occasion They may speak vehemently against sin themselves and

true the world is extended to those duties that relate immediately to God also By which we see how ignorantly and dangerously those people talk that disparage morality as a dull lame thing of no account or reckoning Upon this the Religion of the second Table is by too many neglected and the whole mystery of the new Godliness is lay'd in frequent hearing and devout seraphick talk luscious fancies new lights incomes manifestations in-dwellings sealings and such like Thus Antinomianism and all kinds of Fanaticism have made their way by the disparagement of morality and men have learnt to believe themselves the chosen pretious people while their hearts have been full of malice and bitterness and their hands of violence while they despised dominions and spake evil of dignities rebell'd against the Government destroyed publique peace and endeavoured to bring all into misery and confusions 'T is this diabolical project of dividing morality from Religion that hath given rise and occasion to all these villanies And while the Practisers of such things have assumed the name of the only Godly Godliness it self hath been brought into disgrace by them and Atheism incouraged to shew it self in open defiance to Religion Yea through the indiscretions and inconsiderateness of some preachers the fantastry and vain babble of others and the general disposition of the people to admire what makes a great shew and pretends to more than ordinary spirituality things are in many places come to that pass that those who teach Christian vertue and Religion in plainness and simplicity without senseless phrases and fantastick affectations shall be reckon'd for dry moralists and such as understand nothing of the life and power of Godliness Yea those people have been so long used to gibberish and canting that they cannot understand plain sense and vertue is become such a stranger to their ears that when they hear it spoken of in a Pulpit they count the preacher a broacher of new divinity and one that would teach the way to heaven by Philosophy And he escapes well if they do not say That he is an Atheist or that he would reconcile us to Gentilism and Heathen Worship The danger and vanity of which ignorant humour the contempt of morality is apparent in the whole scope of my Discourse and therefore I add no more concerning it here but proceed to another Inference which is IV. That Grace and the new nature make their way by degrees on the Soul for the difficulties will not be removed nor the corrupt nature subdued all at once Habits that grow by repeated acts time and continuance will not be expelled in a moment No man can become greatly evil or good on a sudden The Path of the just shines more and more to a perfect day Prov. 4. 18. We do not jump from darkness into full light We are not fully sanctified and converted in an instant The day begins in an insensible dawn and the Kingdom of heaven is like a grain of Mustard seed Mat. 13. 31. It doth not start up presently to the stature of a tree The Divine birth begins like the Natural in an imperfect embryo There are some seeds of Knowledge and Goodness that God hath sown in our natures these are excited by the Divine Grace and Spirit to convictions which proceed to purposes these to resolutions and thence we pass to abstinence from all gross sins and the performance of outward Duties and so at last by degrees to vigorous attempts for the destruction of evil habits and inclinations When Grace is arrived to this eminent growth 't is very visible as the Plant is when 't is above the ground But the beginnings of Conversion are not ordinarily perceived So that to catechize men about the punctual time and circumstances of their Conversion is an idle device and a great temptation to vanity and lying Who can tell the exact moment when the night ends and the dawn enters 'T is true indeed the passage from the excesses of Wickedness which begins in some extraordinary horrors and convictions is sometimes very notable but 't is not so in all or most The time of St. Paul's conversion was eminent but that change was from great contrarieties and miraculous and therefore 't is not to be drawn into instance Both the beginnings and minute progressions of Grace are usually undiscerned We cannot see the Grass just putting out of the earth or actually growing but yet we find that it doth both And Grace is better known in its fruits than in its rise By their Fruits ye shall know them saith our Saviour Mat. 12. 33. and the same way we may know our selves V. We see that there is an Animal as well as a Divine Religion A Religion that is but the effect and modification of complexion natural fear and self-love How far these will go we have seen and how short it will prove in the end The not noting this hath been the sad occasion of deceiving many Some observing great heats of zeal and devotion in the modern Pharisees take these to be the Saints and good people believing all the glorious things which they assume to themselves When others that know them to be envious and malitious unjust and covetous proud and ungovernable and cannot therefore look on them as such choice holy people are apt to affirm all to be hypocrisie and feigning In which sentences both are mistaken for want of knowing that there is a meer Animal Religion that will produce very specious and glorious effects So that though the Pharisee Prays vehemently and Fasts severely and talks much of the love of God and delights greatly in hearing and pious Discourse and will suffer all things for what he calls his Conscience yet he is not to be concluded a Saint from hence because the meer Animal Religion may put it self forth in all these expressions And though this Professor be a bad man proud and covetous malicious and censorious Sacrilegious and Rebellious yet we cannot thence be assured that he is an Hypocrite in one sense viz. such an one as feigns all that he pretends But we may believe that he is really so affected with Hearing and Praying and devout Company as he makes shew and yet for all this not alter our opinion of his being an evil man since the Animal Religion will go as far as the things in which he glories There is nothing whereby the common people are drawn more easily into the ways of Sects and Separations than by the observation of the zeal and devotion of those of the factions These they take to be Religion and the great matters of Godliness and those the religious and only godly people And so first they conceive a great opinion of them and then follow them whithersoever they lead For the generality of men are tempted into Schism and Parties not so much by the arguments of dissenters as by the opinion of their Godliness which opinion is grounded upon things which may arise from