Selected quad for the lemma: work_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
work_n	faith_n	follow_v	justification_n	7,990	5	9.4298	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65564	Two discourses for the furtherance of Christian piety and devotion the former asserting the necessity and reasonableness of a positive worship, and particularly of the Christian : the later considering the common hinderances of devotion and the divine worship, with their respective remedies / by the author of The method of private devotion.	Wettenhall, Edward, 1636-1713.	1671 (1671)	Wing W1522; ESTC R38254	87,149	410

observations we are Christians still and in a secure condition Nay in this reformed Age do not they who pretend to the purest reformation of doctrine teach we are justified by Faith alone without works and good works are only necessary as tokens of gratitude and not as having any influence no not as a condition to our justification before God And thus long if we may have Heaven and so much of the pleasures and licentious converse of this World too why should we abridge our selves of either All this is certainly a diabolical Stratagem the old trick again practised and a fine plausible giving God the Lye as at first to our Mother Eve Yea hath God said ye shall not eat of every Tree of the Garden Is any pleasant liberty or latitude of life forbidden you Ye shall not surely dye For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil That is in words more apposite to our age and purpose affecting and practising the more unconcerned and aery Religion you shall be Christians of a freer and more generous strain than the narrow-sould Orthodox or Devotes Sect. 5 Now for the preventing or dispossessing this wicked conceit it will be necessary First That I do what I can for the rational satisfying my self of the truth of Scripture and the indispensable necessity which lies on us who have Scripture to conform our lives to the commands and rules thereof Somewhat hath been spoken to this purpose in the discourse before of which the sum is that supposing the providence and justice of God it is necessary that he have revealed his will to Mankind and especially for their direction by what acts and how he will be worshiped that the holy Scripture pretends to have given us direction in this case and that it is most reasonable to admit what it to this purpose prescribes For we find it in possession of an infallible authority in matters of Religion We find it ever hath been so since known to be extant This Authority it hath gained not only by the sublinity of its matter and style from its harmony and particularly the concord of events with the predictions of them but especially from its Authours who were known in their generations for inspired men most of them by the miracles done by them who themselves saw what they related or received in command from God what they prescribed This the Christian Church in those daies who saw the miracles and had opportunity to search into the truth of every circumstance receiving and delivering down to us and in many especially more primitives ages sealing the truth of what they saw and delivered with their own bloud nothing of what Scripture in such Cases propounds to us ought in reason and equity any more to be doubted by us than if we our selves had seen these very miracles done or heard these commands promulg'd from Heaven And as to all objections which diabolical Agents have brought in against Divine Oracles we find the Devil hath thereby only destroyed his own work they ly strong against the old Heathenish Oracles and the way of their delivery against Mahumetan and such like impostures but holy Scripture either they cannot assail at all or if they do their assault only bespeaks first its Authours malice and then impotence Further as to the indispensableness of obedience to Scripture can I think that my Creatour in whose hands I am as Clay in the hands of a Potter hath made a Law and signified nay and justified it too to the World from Heaven by Miracles and that I poor trifle may safely choose whether I will take notice of it or no and when I have notice of it possibly whether I will or no may securely pick and choose out of it obey it only in what I please or perhaps at pleasure disobey and neglect the whole These are extravagancies which will find no Harbour or reception in my serious thoughts If this remedy seem needless because the poison hath not yet so prevail'd as that the Antidote needs to be taken in so deep then secondly Let me from holy Scripture satisfy my self of the undoubted necessity of good works in order to my acceptance before God and future bliss and that that Faith which justifies is not such a trust which regards not but includes the endeavour of impartial obedience as a formal and essential part of it that is that if this endeavour be not in the Faith which I have is no longer a justifying Faith And particularly under obedience let me consider how undispensably due unto God is a daily homage from me which is directly contrary to what the Devil by this suggestion would possess me of And for the See Method of Pr. Devot Part. II. Ch. 1 2. enforceing these truths upon me it is very probable I am not or need not be destitute of means proper and particular enough if I will be at pains to use them It may be proper thirdly for any whom this suggestion attempts to consider how far the present age comes short either of the Primitive or middle Christian Ages in the matter of Devotion How much time and pains have ancient Christians spent in Prayer and self-denial and mortification in comparison of what we do And should Devotion but so decrease proportionably in a future Age or to as it hath done of late into what a nothing would it dwindle Nay let us but at present look over Sea and be taught our interest even from our enemy What watchings what fastings what prayers what mortifying discipline in the Roman Church Many walking Skeletons almost instead of men amongst them Certainly diligence is not Popery too and as our Saviour forbids not the Pharisees Righteousness when he condemns their ostentation and superstitious will-worship so neither if the Roman-Catholicks are more severe to their flesh than needs can we seriously view their conscientious observance and constancy in their Devotion but it will truly upbraid the laxness and negligence of most of our people Let us blush therefore that having a purer Faith and Order of Worship than they we should be so far the worse observers of it Lastly It may not be improper to oppose also to this suggestion our thoughts when we are in our gravest most impartial and clear state of mind And do we at such times imagine our selves guilty of over-doing our Duty in point of Devotion When we have considered how many years we have spent without any serious Devotions or thoughts of God how many and grievous interruptions our present course suffers how difficult it is by all to keep our selves but in tolerable temper Do we think we have taken upon our selves too hard tasks of Prayer and penitence and such performances Alas we think the contrary And are we not then wont to accuse our selves of vile Unchristian sloth worldlyness vanity and manifold vitiousnesses of mind

moving glories distinguishing most exactly times and seasons and by their influence on Earth causing Spring and Summer Autumn and Winter I could contemplate all these as one while bright and open-faced so at other times veild by Clouds the sweat of that mass which they surround which Clouds when fully mature I could conceive certainly directed by so uncertain a Convoy as the Winds to discharge themselves sometimes of an happy and impregnating burden on the thirstier and more parched places of the Globe from whence they ascended where they fall as a wellcome blessing sometimes as a dreadful and vindictive load on more guilty coasts and persons whom yet not seldom they only threaten and diverted spend themselves on Rocks Seas or Deserts to the warning and joy of their trembling Spectatours All this and much more while mine Eye and mind run over it would be hard for me not to think with my self of all this vast and wondrous Fabrick and of me who contemplate and in a great measure enjoy it there must certainly be some other end than that I and a Company like my self should come into this so glorious Theatre to eat and drink and sleep and play some other odd pranks for threescore years and ten and then go out in darkness and uncertainty leaving our room to such succeeding trifles as our selves Some other end sure there must be of us than that this noble intelligent reasoning part of us which we call a Soul should after experiment and judgment of some sensations upon which it hath built so great variety of Sciences and conjectures only set in nothing and our so curiously wrought and Organized Bodies meerly become meat for the Worms which they breed and those Worms presently dying in dust the Ashes of all be but the sport of the next Wind before which they happen to be driven Some other end of Heaven and Heavenly bodies of Earth and Sea and all their motions and influences than to be only spectatours or contributaries to such pitiful events as these And yet no other end is there except there be a God and Virtue and Immortality Again That glorious Man by a blind lucky hit of rambling dusts should come to be and by the same all this goodly provision for his accommodation when I who am an intelligent being and all the wisest studied persons of the greatest insight into Nature and the differences of Bodies are not able by all contrived or as far as I can yet see contriveable mixtures of matter to produce one blade of grass will not cannot enter into my head And yet all this must be true except there be a God Though haply every one is not able thus to express or set down his reasoning yet few or none I say apt to be infested with this suggestion who are not able to think the substance of this and much more to the same purpose and after all to return home again with all their Atheistical ratiocinations baffled and non-plust themselves wrapt into admiration of the incomprehensible Creatour of all and his almost alike incomprehensible works which temper if it be attain'd for this time the temptation is dasht and devotion is likely to proceed If this remedy seem above the reach of any who is infested with the evil we design to cure let him consider his own thoughts of such suggestions as these when he is in his most serious and sedate temper and so a more competent judge of such matters than at other times Is he not then as really perswaded of the being of a God and a World to come and his concernment touching such things as touching his own being Doth he make any more doubt to repent and pray and use all holy means to secure to himself a portion in that future immortal bliss than he doth at other times to eat and sleep for the maintenance of this present life Nay is he not ready to account the present life and all accidents and circumstances of it Dreams scarce realities at all in comparison of that to come and its weightier concernments And doth he not almost with amazement wonder at those men if any such he know who through their oppressions of Conscience and Gods just permission and judgment have arrived at that unnatural state that they perceive and as they pretend at least seem to put no difference at all between good and evil Virtue and Villany What have those men done with their reason thinks he and common sense What hellish black Arts have they found out and used to metamorphose reasonable Souls into such Monsters Devils nay into worse than Devils For Devils have some remorse of evil though fruitless and possibly only penal whereas these men avow themselves even beyond that Besides are not these his most constant as well as his most serious sentiments Whereas the contrary ramble into his mind as strangers upon some strange occurrence or disastrous temper of mind the other dwell there as Natives and sway not only his Soul but as is professed at least in a manner Mankind In sum then If in our best hours and temper we are so deeply convinc't in our own brests of the reality of Religion that we are amazed any should be void of the sense of it which we both have and cannot but judge natural to all men as hath by experience of all ages been found and therefore stands as ever a concluded Maxim If this I say we cannot but find by consulting our own mind and reflecting upon its better and more constant state shall we suffer our selves to be led away or debauch't with that suggestion which we shall instantly wonder that either our selves or any of mankind could make a shift to be so contradictious to themselves and nature as to admit Shall we not rout and conjure away the fiend upon its first appearance and so much more vehemently pursue our course of Piety and Devotion by how much more monstrous the diversion of it was which Satan attempted upon us We have then thus a double remedy and both rational both effectual if applied home to this first evil Sect. 4 To this possession of the nullity of Religion a kin is that of the needlessness of so much Religion Supposing Religion a reality yet general virtue that is to be fair and honest men is as much as God requires of mankind or men need concern themselves to perform and as to the Scriptures requiring more those Books may either not be what they pretend the word of God but only the Advices of some good old men and so will not enforce the necessity of so laborious a Religion Or if all Scripture should be true yet we see several Doctors of several professions in all ages differently interpreting it Many of the stricter passages which seem precepts may be only counsels and belonging to some in an higher degree which if we follow we may be eminenter Christians but if we do not provided we keep to some easier