Selected quad for the lemma: work_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
work_n	effect_n	faith_n	justify_v	6,955	5	8.9340	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25247	Prima the first things, in reference to the middle and last things: or, the doctrine of regeneration, the new birth, the very beginning of a godly life. Delivered by Isaac Ambrose, minister of the Gospel at Preston in Amounderness in Lancashire.; Prima, media, & ultima. Prima.	Ambrose, Isaac, 1604-1664.	1650 (1650)	Wing A2964; ESTC R213988	65,629	80

nature in diverse respects to their several causalities Thus a man must have repentance before he have saving and justifying faith and yet a man must have faith before the work of repentance be perfect in the soul As we maintain repentance to be a precedent work so we deny it not to be a subsequent effect Sorrow is before the birth too as the Apostle intimates 2 Cor. 2 Cor. 7.10 7.10 Godly sorrow works repentance that is sorrow prepares a man for repentance it goes afore it and prepares for it And now it is that Gods spirit begins to renew his heart as God himself proclaimeth I will put a new spirit within them and I will take the stony heart out of their bodies and will give them an heart of flesh Ezek. 11.19 Ezek. 11.19 his heart that before was hard as flint now begins to relent and soften and break in pieces Acts 2.37 How so it is Gods Spirit that pricks the heart and this pricking softens it Dum pungit ungit saith Jorom Hieronym Compunction softens and supples the heart so that be it never so stony presently it becomes an heart of flesh you know those that are apt to weep or yern or sorrow we call them tender-hearted you may be sure then he that is prickt till his heart bleed inwardly he that weeps blood which every heart doth that is prickt on this maner sure his heart is tender indeed I say tender for as the very word imports 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his heart weeps why his heart is broken David joyns these together A broken and a contrite heart O God thou wilt not despise Psalm 51.17 Psal 51.17 And no wonder if an heart that is broken and rent and wounded and prickt falls a weeping blood well might David say when he was broken Psal 38.8 I have wept Psal 38.8 nay more I have roared for the very grief or disquietness of my heart and again My soul or my heart melteth or droppeth for very heaviness Not that his heart dropt indeed Psal 119.28 but because the tears which he shed were not drops of water running onely from his eyes an onion may cause so much but issuing from his heart which heart being grieved and sore grieved it is said to be wounded and so his tears coming from it they may be called no less then very blood drops of blood issuing from a wounded heart Thus it is with the man now laboring in his new birth his heart grieves his eye weeps whence the Proverb The way to heaven is by weeping cross the way to Gods kingdom is to cry like children coming into the world the way to be new born is to feel throws as a woman laboring of childe and so is Christ formed in us Can a man be born again without bitterness of soul no if ever he come to a sight of sin and that Gods sanctifying Spirit work in him sorrow for sin his soul will mourn till he may say with Jeremy Mine eye droppeth without stay mine eye breaketh my heart because of all the daughters of my City because of all the sins of my soul Lament 3.51 True it is Lam. 3.49 51. as some infants are born with more pain to the mother and some with less so may the new man be regenerated in some with more in some with less anxiety of travel but more or less it cannot be so little but the man that labors in these pangs shall mourn and mourn There shall be a great mourning as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon Zach. 12.11 What else Zach. 12.11 He cannot look on a Saint that sailed not first through the Ocean of tears and therefore he falls on his face with Abraham Gen. 17.17 Gen. 32.24 Iob 3. 1 Sam. 1.15 Psal 119.136 Isa 38.14 he wrestles with God like Jacob he roars out his grief with Job he pours out his soul with Hanna he weeps rivers of tears with David he mourns as a dove with Hezekiah yea like a crane or a swallow so doth he chatter Isa 38.14 O the bitter pangs and sore travel of a man when he must be born again The fourth step is Seeking rightly for comfort He runs not to the world or flesh or Divel miserable comforters all but to Scripture to Prayer or to the Ministery of Gods word if he finde comfort in Scriptures he meets with it in the * Lex ostendit peccatum at Solum Evangelium peccati remedium Aug. tract 17. in Joh. Gospel not the Law but the Gospel saith the Apostle is the power of God to salvation to every one that believeth Rom. 1.16 The Law is indeed the ministery of death and damnation 2 Cor. 3.7 but the Gospel is the glad tidings of salvation Luk. 2.10 The Law shews a man his wretched estate but shews him no remedy and yet we abolish not the Law in ascribing this comfort to the Gospel onely Rom. 1.16 2 Cor. 3.7 Luk. 2.10 though it be no cause of it yet is it the occasion of it those doleful terrors and fears of conscience begotten by the Law may be in their own nature the very gates and downfal to the pit of hell yet I cannot deny but they are certain occasions of receiving grace and if it please God that the man now laboring in his pangs of the new birth do but rightly settle his thoughts on the Gospel of Christ no doubt but thence he may suck the sweetest comforts and delights that ever were revealed to man Or if he finde comfort in prayer to which he ever and anon repairs in every of these steps then is it by Christ in whose name onely he approacheth to that heavenly throne of grace no sooner had the King of Niniveh humbled himself but his proclamation runs Ionah 3.8 9. Let man and beast be covered with sack cloth and cry mightily unto God Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not and thus the man now wrestling with the grievous afflictions and terrors of his conscience Who can tell saith he if God will turn away his fierce anger let me then cry mightily unto the Lord of heaven let me cry and continue crying until the Lord of mercy do in mercy look upon me and if for all this God give him a repulse for reasons best known to himself if at the first second third fourth or at many more times he seem to have cryed in vain at last he flyes to the ministery of the Word and if he may have his will he would hit upon the most skilful experienced searching and sound-dealing man amongst all Gods Messengers thus was it with Peters hearers whose hearts being pricked and rent with legal terrors then could they begin to cry it out Men and brethren what shall we do Act. 2.37 Act. 2.37 Thus was it with the Jaylor who after his trembling and falling down to

read in his conscience But above all his darling-delight his beloved sin is writ in greatest characters this he findes to have bewitched him most and to have domineered above all the rest in his wasted conscience this sin in some is worldliness wantonness usury pride revenge or the like in others it is drunkenness gluttony gaming scurril jesting symony or the like whatsoever it is the conscience tells him of it again and again where that he may read it together with his other sins the Spirit of God now opens the eyes of his minde and lets him see the very mud and filth of his soul that lay at the bottom before unseen and undiscerned Thus is the first working of the new life to wit a feeling of the old death of his soul in sins and trespasses and here the axiome is true no generation without corruption a man must first feel this death before he is born again The second step is Sense of divine wrath which begets in him fear Rom. 8.15 so the Apostle The spirit of bondage begets fear Rom. 8.15 and thus it works no sooner hath the man a sight and feeling of his sin but then Gods Spirit now called the spirit of bondage presents to him the armory of Gods flaming wrath and fiery indignation this makes him to feel as if he were pricked with the stroak of an arrow or point of a sword or sting of an Adder that he is a most cursed and damnable creature justly deserving all the miseries of this life and all the fiery torments of hell in that life to come yea this makes him tremble and stand and look as if he were throughly frighted with the angry countenance of God Almighty Would you view him in this case his conscience hath now awaked him out of his dead sensual sleep by the Trumpet of the Law his heart is now scorched with the secret sense of Gods angry face his soul is now full sorely crushed under the most grievous burthen of innumerable sins his thoughts are now full of fear and astonishment as if no less then very hell and horror were ready to seize upon his body and soul I say not what measure of this wrath is poured on all men in their conversion for I suppose some feel more and some have less of it but I verily believe some there are that in these pangs of the new birth have been scorched as it were with the very flames of hell insomuch that they might truly say with David Gods wrath lieth hard upon me Psal 88.7 and he hath afflicted me with all his waves Psal 88.7 And no wonder for this is the time of fear now it is that Satan strives busily to stifle the new man in the womb and therefore he that before diminished his sins and made them appear little or nothing in his eyes when he once sees the man smitten down into the place of dragons and covered with the shadow of death Psal 44.19 then he puts into his minde his innumerable sins and that which immediately follows the curse of the Law and the wrath of God which he yet makes more grisly and fierce with a purpose to plunge him into the bottomless pit of horror and despair By this means he perswaded Cain to cry out when he was in this case My punishment is greater then I can bear or Gen. 4.13 as others translate Mine iniquity is greater then can be forgiven Gen. 4.13 And therefore thus far the unregenerate goes with the man born again both have a sight of sin and sense of wrath but here they part for the man unregenerate either sinks under it or labors to allay it with worldly comforts or some counterfeit calm but the man born again is onely humbled by it and seeks the right way to cure it and at last by the help of Gods Spirit he passeth quite through it I mean through this hell upon earth into the spiritual pleasures of the Kingdom of grace which is to be born again The third step is Sorrow for sin and this is more peculiar to Gods childe there is a sorrow which is a common work of grace which an hypocrite may have and there is a sorrow which is a work of special grace and this likewise precedes the exercise of faith But some object Christ must work this sorrow or it is good for nothing now if Christ be in the soul working sorrow then there is faith therefore faith must go before sorrow I answer although it is true that Christ cannot be in the soul but in the same instant there is the habit of faith yet it follows not that faith is before sorrow for the habits of these graces are both together and at once in the soul or howsoever it follows not that the soul is inabled by an act of faith to apply Christ to it self as soon as Christ is in the soul or as soon as the habit of faith is infused into the soul The question is whether the soul in respect of us who can onely judge of the habit by the act cannot be said to have sorrow or repentance before faith the question is not which the soul hath first in respect of Gods gift but which it acts first for our apprehension Surely to us it first sorrows for sin and then it acts or exerciseth faith by coming to Christ and relying upon Christ for Salvation c. he grieves not onely because he fears he must be damned so Cain and Judas might but because he knows he hath deserved to be damned this is the more especial object of his sorrow in that he is so wicked so sinful so rebellious so contrary to God this sin I say is it wherein he was conceived and born wherein he hath lived and continued that makes him sob and sigh and sorrow and mourn and yet this sorrow is sometimes taken largely for the whole work of conversion sometimes strictly for conviction contrition and humiliation in like maner repentance is taken sometimes largely and sometimes strictly By this distinction it may easily appear how sorrow goes before repentance and how repentance goes before faith Indeed for the latter is the great controversie but some reconcile it thus Repentance hath two parts the aversion of the soul from Sin and the conversion of the soul to God the latter part of it is onely an effect of faith the former part of it viz. the turning of the soul from Sin is also an effect but not onely an effect for it is begun before faith though it be not ended till our life end Some object that God works repentance and faith together But we dispute not how God works them but how the soul acts them not which is in the soul first but which appears out of the soul first neither is it any new thing in Philosophy to say Those causes which produce an effect though they be in time together yet are mutually before one another in order of