Selected quad for the lemma: work_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
work_n	call_v	faith_n	justification_n	5,686	5	9.0220	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29333	Faith in the just victorious over the world a sermon preached at the Savoy in the French Church, on Sunday Octob. 10, 1669 / by D. Brevall ... ; translated into English by Dr. Du-Moulin ...; Foy victorieuse du monde dans les justes. English	Bréval, Monsieur de (François Durant), d. 1707.; Du Moulin, Peter, 1601-1684.	1670 (1670)	Wing B4402; ESTC R2130	23,314	40

perswades us to the contrary but when we have triumphed over these three passions which are properly that which St Paul 1 Cor. 2.12 calleth The Spirit of the World and St. John in our Text the World it self then whatever God commands is so far from painful that we find pleasure in it and the reason of this relish and this easiness is no other but what we say as our Apostle doth so evidently justifie when after he had said The Commandments of God are easie he presently brings the proof For saith he all that is born of God overcometh the World letting us see manifestly that there is nothing but the World that is its Spirit and its Maxims that makes our obedience uneasie and the infallible mark of overcoming the World is the easiness we find in obeying the Commandments of God But alas how few then are there that have overcome the World since there are so few that do not find the Commandments of God grievous it seems to them an insupportable yoke even so much that sometimes they will say that Gods Commandments are of an impossible performance You have not then overcome the World you who yet complain of their difficulty who groan under the weight of the yoke and express so much grief to submit your selves to the orders and commands that he gives you No no you have not yet triumphed over the World you that are yet Slaves to your Pleasures to your Interest and your Pride since it is that which is properly call'd the World this illustrious Victory belongs to none but the children of God whom he hath as it were transformed into himself by a resemblance of holiness of spirit and life hope not then for the glory of this triumph without being first entred into this noble Alliance with God but as soon as you are become his children by a mending of your courses and by a new birth of piety and grace be you assured that you shall triumph over the World because the Oracle of Divine Truth hath said it that all which is born of God overcometh the World And since it is by Faith that we get this Victory as the Text tells us let us examine in the last Part of this Discourse what that Faith is The Third Part. IT is with the spiritual Combats much as with the temporal it doth not suffice in ordinary Combats to be strong and to be valiant to overcome all the World knows that besides that one must have Arms and make use of them Likewise to overcome the World it is not enough to be born of God Lib. 22. cap. 25. Victoria de hoc mundo non nostris viribus adscribetur we must take Arms to oppose the violence of this formidable Enemy for as St. Austin saith in his Book of the City of God The victory over the World is not attributed to our Forces it is not by them we gain it but what Arms must we make use of nothing can triumph over the World as a principal cause or as an instrument of victory which is not born of God since St. John doth not attribute this honour but to those that are so born Our Arms then ought to be some of those Vertues which they call Theological or Divine not only because God is the chief object of them but for that he is their immediate principle to distinguish them from other Vertues which they call Moral that may spring from elsewhere Yanta est charitas quae si adsit habentur omnia si desit frustra habentur caetera Aug. Then of necessity it must be either Faith or Hope or Charity that must serve us for Arms in this Combat but why rather Faith than the other two Is not Hope admirably well fitted for this great imployment since it doth promise us eternal rewards there are no temptations nor assaults that it enableth us not to overcome or at least why should it not be Charity which is the Queen and the most noble of all vertues as the Apostle assures us and whereof St. Austin sayes That having it alone one hath all and not having it it is useless to have the rest which he learned of St. Paul who saith That neither Martyrdom nor the most holy things nor even Faith it self is any thing without Charity Nevertheless we must believe our Text which saith plainly It is by Faith that we overcome the world And St. Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews agrees well with this sentiment when he saith That it is by Faith that so many just persons have done such wonders and that They have vanquished Kingdoms what Kingdoms but those of the World the Flesh and the Devil and that They have conquered Eternity Is it not of Faith that our Lord himself hath said That nothing shall be impossible to it and that there needs but little of it to work wonders even to remove Mountains But whereas there are Christians that have Faith and in the mean time are rather Slaves of the World than Masters and Conquerors of it what kind of Faith is that which may be the instrument of so glorious a victory It seems the Apostle in the Verse that follows the Text would spare us the pains of this search Who is he saith he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that JESUS is the Son of God Yet there being an infinite number of people that believe so much who notwithstanding are rather overcome by the World than Conquerors of it we are still to seek and have need to repair to Divinity and to other Texts of Scripture for the clearing of so great and so important a difficulty Divinity distinguisheth two sorts of Faith the one dead the other living The dead Faith which is otherwise called unperfect or unformed is no more than a conviction we have of a truth upon Divine testimony without any bettering of our will by that conviction of our understanding some call this Faith Speculative or Historical because it makes one believe only the fact of things without leading him to other Acts worthy of such a belief It was of this Faith that St. James spake Chap. 2.14 when he said What can it profit my Brethren though a man say I have Faith and hath not Works Can Faith save him In this sense St. Paul speaks of it 1 Cor. 13.2 If I have Faith enough to remove Mountains saith he and have not Charity I am nothing There are some also which call this Faith the Faith of Devils for an Apostle speaking to a man that had Faith without works Thou believest saith he that there is a God thou dost well to believe it but the Devils believe it too and therefore they tremble The Devils for that kind of believing are no less Devils and no less wicked This barren Faith is good for nothing unless it be to make us more guilty since having believed as we ought to believe we have no excuse why we have not lived as we

Scripture Children of God more properly then all other created things as it appeareth in Luke 20. where they are expresly called The Children of God because they are children of the Resurrection heirs and actual possessors of Glory yet our Text speaks not of them they being no more at strife with the world the clear sight of God having happily taken away their sai h. It remaineth then that it must needs be of the Just on earth that our Text speaks that is of those that God hath regenerated who resemble him in grace and holiness since there is nothing in this Text which may not and ought not rightly to be applied to them For First they are born of God I prove it by three convincing Reasons The first is that it is impossible they should be born of any other The second that he deals with them as a Father And the third that they resemble him That they cannot be born of any other but God the Scripture and the Fathers especially S. Paul and S. Augustine are altogether for it when they say so often that Justification is the work of God In effect Christians assemble all the forces of Men and Angels assemble all Prelates and all Kings assemble all Priests and all Popes 〈◊〉 they cannot make one just with all the Power of the 〈◊〉 they boast so much of I say no more then what every good Philosopher and every sound Divine ought to agree to since in the very Schools it is a common Doctrine that Creation is a work so proper to God that it is impossible for all other Powers of Heaven and Earth to create so much as one grain of Sand onely and that neither Man nor Angel can obtain of God that Authority Judge my Brethren from the more to the less what we should think of the work of Justification which is a greater benefit then the Creation of a thousand Worlds since the Creation is but a Passage from the nothing of Nature to the being of Nature and Justification is a Passage from the nothing of Grace to the being of Grace Now there is without compare a greater distance between Grace and its privation then between Nature and hers the passage then is much more difficult and the one requires more force then the other Why the whole World cost God but one word to make it but there was need of all his bloud onely to justifie men nay there was need of all his blood to justifie one Man onely for which there is no other reason but that the dignity of Grace was infinitely higher 〈◊〉 that of Nature because it is a participation of the 〈◊〉 o● God as S. Peter teacheth us whereas Nature is 〈◊〉 an effect of his Power from whence we must needs 〈…〉 if Creation can belong to none but God it is impossible that Justification should belong to any other In effect who can give a participation of the Being of God but God himself and what but an infinite Agent can be capable of an infinite production It is known that none but God is so then the just are born of God because it is impossible they should be born of any other The second reason to persuade you to this Brethren is that God takes a Fatherly care of them for where did we ever see a Father take so much care for his Children as God takes of the just He brings them up he feeds them he protects them he advanceh them the whole Scriptuto speaks unto us of no other thing almost in both Testaments You read at all times his tenderness and goodness in their education so that there is nothing wanting in order to bring them up well neither Instructions nor Promises nor Threatnings nor Recompences nor Chastisements and all for their good for he intends nothing by such different Dispensations but to make them better If they want any thing for their spiritual nourishment my Brethren he not onely imploys his graces and his Vertues but he imploys himself to nourish them with his Holy Spirit and with all that he is as well as with all that he hath in the Mysteries of our Sacrament You doubt not of his Protection since he tells us in the Scripture that he preserves them as the Apple of his eye that he covers them under the shadow of his wings that he doth compass them with a wall of fire that he watches day and night to defend them that he comforts them in their afflictions that he upholds them in their prosperities to the end they may not be cast down by the one nor puff't up by the other briefly he assists them in all their needs and declares himself an enemy to all their enemies What will he not do to advance them He makes them go up as the Psalmist speaks from vertue to vertue from knowledge to knowledge from holiness to holiness from Glory to Glory we have an admirable expression of it in one of St. Paul's Epistles where he shews that God from Eternity began the advancement of the Just and sets it forward more and more to the end of the World Whom he did foreknow saith he he also did predestinate moreover whom he did predestinate them he also called and whom he called them he also justified and whom he justified them he also glorified because of their calling he hath sanctified them and after their sanctification he hath glorified them Christians in earnest are not these the cares of a Father and of the best of all Fathers Tampius nemo tam pater nemo Tert. This was it which made Tertullian say There was no Father so good nor so much a Father as God it is then an evident demonstration that the Just are born of him since none take most care of strangers But the greatest and most sensible argument to convince that they are in effect born of God is That they resemble him For it is the doctrine of Jesus Christ in the 8th of St. John and of St. John himself in the third of his first Epistle and of St. Paul in the 9th of his Epistle to the Romans That a man is Son to him whom he resembleth and of those whose works he does if the works of Abraham he is the Son of Abraham if the works of God he is the son of God if the works of the Devil he is the son of the Devil Here you see the great characters of the filiation of the Just this is it which doth chiefly establish their right even that their conduct their life their works and all the rest is but a continual imitation of God they will nothing but what he wills they love nothing but what he loves they hate nothing but what he hates so that all the truly Just may say with St. Paul That it is God that lives in them and not they themselves that their life is hid in him and that they have no other spirit then his So high doth St. Paul raise the