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	lust_n	ungodliness_n	2,308	5	11.2023	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33212	Eleven sermons preached upon several occasions and a paraphrase and notes upon the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh and eighth chapters of St. John : with a discourse of church-unity ... / by William Clagett.	Clagett, William, 1646-1688.	1699 (1699)	Wing C4386; ESTC R24832	142,011	306

or wishing and proposing to be better nor of external Penances fruitless Ceremonies vain Commutations purchasing Dispensations and buying Indulgencies not one or all of these put together is repentance Any man that hath his eyes in his head may plainly perceive that the Repentance to which pardon is promised in the Gospel is altogether as broad and as long as to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly righteously and godly in this present world So that God Almighty hath not issued out his pardon to any one Sinner in absolute and irrespective terms and then left it to his good nature whether he will thank him for it or no whether he will be kind and leave his sins or ungrateful and continue in them And they are very foolish who fancy themselves such Darlings of Heaven that for their sakes God had no respect to the holiness of his own Nature the honour of his Laws and the wisdom of his Government in determining to pardon them and receive them into his grace and favour Now to prevent all such presumtion and fond conceit it is as plainly revealed to us in the Gospel that God will not lose his right to our obedience as that he will forbear to use his right to punish us and that he will forbear that no longer when he sees his goodness doth not lead us to repentance The same Divine Revelation which assureth us God is so good that he will pardon a Sinner doth likewise assure us he is so just and wise as to pardon him only upon his repentance And indeed to pardon the incorrigible is not mercy but weakness he only is in a compassionable condition that is sorry for his sins and sins no more Seeing then Repentance consisteth in the practice of Religion and Virtue and that is the indispensable condition of our pardon and that out Pardon is infallibly secure upon that Condition From the belief of all this there ariseth a most pregnant and forcible engagement to the greatest care we can exert of living in the love and fear of God and keeping his Commandments 2. The second Principle of Revealed Religion the belief whereof is necessary to excite us to the practice of Godliness and Virtue is this That God is ready to accept of sincere obedience This likewise is only to be known by Revelation seeing if God had pleased he might have left us to the rigour of that original Law of Righteousness which required unsinning duty and according to which no Sinner can be justified i.e. he might have measured our Repentance the Condition of our Pardon by our amendment according to the strictness of that Law without making any abatements for Human Frailty for invincible Ignorance for surprize and those unduenesses of passion and those inadvertencies which are things of daily incursion But had it been thus little comfort could we have had from the belief that God will pardon us upon our repentance and obedience for the future if he would accept of nothing for that repentance and obedience which was short of that absolute perfection which 'tis morally impossible for any man in this state of imperfection to arrive unto For he that proffers a benefit upon terms impossible to the Receiver does but disquiet him the more taking away with the one hand what he giveth with the other Therefore Almighty God further to encourage us to repentance and the practice of Religion and Virtue hath not only promised to pardon our former sins upon that condition but he hath so described to us in the Gospel what that life is which for the future he will accept and be pleased withal that we have no reason to be deterred from attempting his Service by any jealousies of his austerity and rigour towards us That which he requires of us is to love him with all our hearts from whence it follows That the service and duty he expects from us is no other than what is a natural emanation from and a real expression of such a love to him which is to do what we are able that we may serve him in holiness and righteousness all the days of our life Now to love God with all our hearts i. e. to love him above all things is a very possible and the most reasonable thing in the World That obedience therefore must be so too which is the natural effect of such a love to God That obedience which is the effect of due love to God is consistent with sins of mere frailty of unaffected ignorance of unavoidable surprise because these sins neither proceed from an evil will nor are wholly vincible in our present state but that obedience which is the effect of due love to God cannot consist with deliberate much less with presumptuous sins It cannot consist with wilful much less with customary transgressions of known and open Laws it cannot consist with sins proceeding from affected ignorance much less with sins against knowledge which 't is in a man's power to avoid It cannot consist with these kind of sins because 't is clear that the reason why men commit them is not because they cannot but because they will not forbear them But he that loves God with all his heart will do what he can to please him and he that doth so is accepted by Almighty God i. e. he is reckon'd by him a righteous man and according to the moderation and gentleness of the Christian Law not accounted a Sinner in which sense we are to understand those words of the Apostle St. John He that is born of God sinneth not So that as for sins of infirmity which do indeed stand as much condemned and will as as certainly exclude us from the favour of God according to the terms of the Original Law or the first Covenant if God should deal with us by those measures for those sins I say they are consistent with the favour of God to us according to the terms of the Christian Law or the Second Covenant because we have an advocate with the father Jesus Christ the righteous who is our High-Priest and is touched with the feeling of our infirmities through whose intercession they are remitted upon our keeping from all wilful sins and our endeavour after perfection But if we sin wilfully there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin i. e. the Sacrifice offered for us will not avail to make such sins consistent with a justifiable state No they must be actually repented of and forsaken 't is only upon those terms that our Sacrifice remaineth in force and power to obtain our reconciliation to God Here I confess I have just occasion to proceed upon a Discourse concerning the difference between sins of weakness and sins of wilfulness to shew as exactly as the case will bear wherein lies that sincerity of obedience which God is ready to accept and which he will be pleased with us for But this would be to slide into an Argument that belongs not to the general

and therefore to be sure when it brings little or none at all And upon this account it had doubtless been a true saying if it had been said Notevery one that in other things doth the Will of my Father shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he that also saith unto me Lord Lord i. e. who doth moreover make an outward profession of being my Disciple This I say had been true but then it had not been so instructing and useful an Admonition as it is in the Text because it is incomparably more certain that he who doth the Will of God in all other things will out wardly profess the truth of the Gospel than that every one who doth profess it will live according to it And therefore our Saviour laid his Caution where the danger was and so I come to the 2d Point That an outward profession of Christianity is not of it self sufficient in order to our Salvation inasmuch as it is moreover necessary that we should do the Will of God i. e. that we should do his Will in all other things and in general that our Affections and Practices should be answerable to the truth we profess which is a thing so plain if we once come seriously to consider it that there is as little need of proof to make it out as one would think there was of this Caution of our Saviour not to trust in outward profession when our hearts and lives are contrary to what we profess What is a professed Christian but one that declares himself to believe That the unrighteous the unmerciful the unclean the ungodly shall never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven one that declares to the World that his chief business is to be saved and that without holiness no man shall see the Lord And therefore whilst himself lives in ungodliness and is led away by worldly Lusts he is the most absurd person in the World and so much more ridiculous than a man that has skill in any thing but the proper business of his Calling by which he must live as the Concerns of another World are above all our Interests in this For such a man to maintain the hope of Everlasting Life is a contradiction to his own Faith and Profession such a contradiction to his Profession that he exposes himself to have the lie given him by the World such a contradiction to his Faith that his own Conscience one would think should give him the lie too But yet as plain a case as it is that meer profession without doing the Will of God is not enough to save us our Saviour nevertheless thought fit here and elsewhere plainly to admonish us of it that we might not deceive our selves And the Apostle foretold there would be men having a form of godliness and denying the power thereof and therefore it should seem that how plain soever the mistake is of trusting to profession without a practice answerable to it yet men would be very apt to fall into that mistake There are these two things which I shall hereupon take occasion to speak to 1. That Experience has proved the proneness of Mankind to this folly of presuming upon mere profession that God is pleased with them 2. What are the causes and occasions of so wretched a conceit so void of all shadow or pretence to reason 1. As to the proof of it that it has been so I shall need to insist but little upon it because alas the thing is too apparent in our own days and every man that is guilty has a testimony of it from his own Conscience if he will hearken to it too plain to be denied Our Blessed Saviour himself found a great deal of this folly and madness among the Jews especially amongst the Scribes and Pharisees when he came into the World Their Fathers had for 400 years been cured of Idolatry and the fondness of the gods of their Neighbours round about them they had smarted too severely for that ever to return to it again But they soon fell to make the Profession and Worship of God according to the Law a dispensation for Luxury and Injustice and Unmercifulness and wicked living instead of a restraint from it plainly shewing thereby that their Fathers did not like the True Religion because it was too good for them since their Posterity not daring to revolt from the outward profession of it yet soon learned to reconcile it with a licentious practice Nay if we will take St. Paul's word who did not use to reprove without cause they thought that the same sins which they were guilty of with the Gentiles would not have so bad a construction made of them nor be so displeasing to God as they were in the Gentiles For as it appears from Rom. 2. they judged the Gentiles for doing evil things and did them themselves thinking all the while to escape the righteous judgment of God And what was the reason of all this They had the Temple of God amongst them the Promises made to Abraham and to his Posterity God's Service according to the Law of Moses Sacrifices according to the Law and Washings and divers Ordinances in the observation of which they put their trust and believed that no Israelite should go without his portion of happiness in the life to come In this state our Saviour found them they trusted in Moses and said we have Abraham to our Father they built and garnished the Tombs of the Prophets those very Prophets that had been so ill entertained by their Forefathers for declaring against their sins and because they did this external honour to the Monuments of those good men they excused themselves from following their Instructions being full of hypocrisy and iniquity and all uncleanness Now this being so notorious in our Saviour's time and having been so for some Ages before it seemed needful that his Disciples should be warned against the like fatal mistakes into which there was no little reason to be jealous they would fall For by how much a greater Person Jesus was than Moses and his Sacrifice more excellent than the Sacrifices of the Law and his Religion a more rational and perfect Religion than any that had been before so much greater danger there might be least men should trust to their relation to Christ and to the Sacrifice of Christ and to the profession of the Faith of Christ without an holy heart and life If the Jews could say We have Abraham to our Father and this were enough to quiet their guilty fears it was to be feared Christians would say We have Christ Jesus our Lord and Master our Deliverer and Saviour and make the same use of it If they trusted in Moses there was some reason to suspect that others would hereafter lay hold upon Christ and think themselves safe enough by making their boast of him no less than the Jews had done before of Moses and consequently great reason for this earnest admonition Not every one