Selected quad for the lemma: world_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
world_n	deny_v	grace_n	ungodliness_n	2,056	5	11.5473	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58810	A sermon preached before the Honourable Military Company at St. Clements-Danes, July 25 by John Scott ...	Scott, John, 1639-1695.	1673 (1673)	Wing S2064; ESTC R38223	15,491	32

conform all their actions to the new Rule of Christian purity In the words thus explained you have first something implied which is that the Christian Religion is armour of defence unto the Souls of men Secondly something expressed that if we mean it should arm and defend us we must believe and practise it First that the Christian Religion is armour of defence unto the Souls of men that is it is of the same use to mens Souls as Armour is to their Bodies for as the end of armour is to defend mens bodies and secure them against the weapons of their Enemies so the great end and design of the Christian Religion is to defend mens Souls from whatsoever is hurtful and injurious to them Now there are but two sorts of evils in the world both which are injurious to the Souls of men The first is the evil of sin and the second is the evil of misery and against both these Christianity doth strongly arm us First for the evil of sin which upon several accounts is injurious to mens Souls it overthroweth the Order and Oeconomy of their natures inslaving their Reason to their Passions and Appetites as it discomposeth the tranquility of their minds by inspiring them with wild and inconsistent passions and it disturbeth the peace of their Consciences by suggesting black thoughts and horrible reflections to them these and several other ways is Vice injurious to our Souls And therefore 't is the design of Christianity to arm us against this great evil to secure and defend us against all the Weapons of unrighteousness Hence the Apostle telleth us that the Grace of God that is the Gospel was revealed from Heaven for this very end to teach us to deny all ungodliness and worldly lust and to live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world Tit. 2. 11. and St. John telleth us That for this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy tha works of the Devil 1 John 3. 8. this was the errant of the Son of God into the world and the design of that incomparable Religion he taught to destroy the works of the Devil And indeed if we consider what an effectual course Christianity taketh to defend us against sin we must confess it to be the most excellent armour in the world for 1. First It restraineth us from it by the purest Laws the Laws of Christian Religion have made so great a gulph between our sins and separated us from them by such an infinite distance that it is impossible for them to come at us or for us to go to them whilst we persevere in our obedience to them for they do not only forbid us that which is really evil but do also command us to abstain from all appearances of evil and do remove us so far out of the territories of sin that they will not permit us to approach the borders of it and lest we might unhappily go farther than we should they forbid us to go as far as we may and will not allow us so much as to come within the skirts and suburbs of iniquity For in moral actions the distance is frequently so small between the utmost of what is lawful and the nearmost of what is sinful that there are very few men in the world can set a rule to themselves hitherto may I go and no farther and therefore without an infallible guide to point out to them the just and particular limits of lawful and unlawful men can hardly be secure whilst they dwell upon upon the frontiers and neighbourhood of sin and therefore the Gospel commands us at least to endeavour to keep at distance from sinning and not come near the pitch lest we be defiled by it neither doth it only restrain us from outward acts but also from inward inclinations to evil we must be so far from murdering our Brother that we must not hate or wish ill to him so far from practising rapine and oppression that we must not so much as covet our neighbours Possessions so far from acting adultery that we must not look upon a woman to lust after her thus the Laws of our Religion you see do strike at the very root of sin and choak the very springs from whence those bitter streams derive and do not like other Laws meerly restrain our outward practice but also lay reins upon our desires and extend their Empire to our free-born thoughts In this respect therefore Christianity doth most effectually arm us against sin as it restraineth us from it by the purest Laws that ever were Secondly By disswading us from it with the most prevailing Arguments There is no Article of the Christian faith but is a copious Topick of motives to Virtue and if men would but take the pains to extract from each their proper and just inferences and to ponder those great obligations to gratitude and duty which the several Articles of their Religion do devolve upon them Christianity must necessarily do wonders in the world and work strange alterations in the lives and manners of Christians for there is no stone that it leaveth unturned nothing within us that is capable of perswasion but it addresseth to to win upon our hope it proposeth to us a happiness so extensive that we can neither desire nor imagine beyond it a happiness that is equal to the utmost capacities of our natures and parrallel to the longest duration of our beings that hath not the least tang of misery in it no bitter farewel nor appendant sting to it but is all quintessence composed of the purest extracts of joy and pleasure what greater motive can be urged to disswade us from sinning than the hope of such a happiness as doth so infinitely out-bid all that vice can proffer us and is weighty enough to preponderate all its temptations though all the world were in the counterballance but if we are so wedded to our lusts that no hope of advantage will disingage us from them Christianity thunders against them all the dreadful threats that are capable of scaring us into sober purposes it denounceth unquenchable fire and eternal vengeance against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men and allarms our fears with all the inconceivable horrors that an everlasting hel menaceth and that this may not scare us only from open prophaness into close and secret hypocrisie it assureth us that there will be a day of fearful account and wherein all that we acted behind the Curtain shall be brought into publike view upon an open Theater and proclaimed to all the world by the Trumpet of God and the voice of an Archangel and that we may be assured that these terrors of the Lord are not meer bugs and scare crows it giveth us a fearful example of Gods severity against sin in the death and sufferings of his own Son wherein he hath proclaimed himself an implacable enemy to vice in that he would not pardon it without the blood of the most