Selected quad for the lemma: world_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
world_n	pomp_n	renounce_v	vanity_n	3,174	5	10.1762	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65555	A practical and plain discourse of the form of godliness, visible in the present age and of the power of godliness: how and when it obtains; how denied or oppressed; and how to be instated or recovered. With some advices to all that pretend to the power of godliness. By Edward Lord Bishop of Cork and Rosse.	Wettenhall, Edward, 1636-1713.	1683 (1683)	Wing W1512; ESTC R222295	59,356	200

in Name Form and Reality We have spoken hitherto only of the two later and taking them both as part of one aggregate and blended body we have found upon due consideration those whom we call Christians in Name and Form that is such who have a Form of Godliness but deny the Power to be so far the greater number that we have in comparison of the other as I apprehend justly stiled them the Generality so ample a majority God knows do they appear to be Now though it may be judged we cannot with the strictpropriety say those who have only the Name of Christians which are the first of the three sorts have a Form of Godliness yet we may safely avow they do deny the Power of Godliness If then we add this number to that former Generality we found guilty How great amongst us will be the total of those who deny the Power of Godliness § 6. Those who think this too severe I desire with me seriously and ingenuously without any thing of partiality on the one hand or of ill-natur'd rigour on the other to consider a little the publick manners And we 'll begin with the publick Devotions Such who are most serious in the Worship of God full well know that for the main they appear outwardly therein rather better than what they are That is the wild extravagant thoughts the Dulness and other disorders which to their great grief infest their Hearts are not visible in their Mein and Faces And proportionably to themselves they may conclude generally few or none appear there worse than they are Now particularly let us reflect upon or set before our eyes a while the common Behaviour of people in many of those which are or should be our most solemn Assemblies How different is it from what it should be how unbecoming and therefore unbespeaking a sense of Godliness This those who make it most their business to observe nothing there but God and their own Duty cannot often whether they will or no but have taken notice of and let it be reputed but an honest and well-meaning freedom to represent it throughout Our Service for which all our people generally pretend great Reverence and it were to be wish'd they would all judiciously pay it consists of divers excellent and admirably contrived pieces Now first as to that part of it which is properly and strictly Prayers this indeed perhaps the generality shall repeat too often heedlesly mutter over after the Minister with what understanding appears commonly by their repeating what they should not the Ministers part Absolutions c. as well as what they should I will not speak of their idle gazings and other vain actions too plainly uttering the abundance of their Hearts while their Lips are going Then the Lessons serve for intervals of whispering or observing Strangers or their Neighbours Habits passing Complements c. The Hymns and Anthems too generally are attended to meerly for the Musick and afterwards somewhile the business is admiring and extolling the Composition or passing sentence on the Performers Organ or the like Then for the Sermon it is scarce well begun before some have plainly and designedly composed themselves to sleep Another sort are employed in censuring and haply ridiculing the Preacher in idle Discourses mutual Caresses not refraining sometimes Laughter and Sports not to say downright Buffonry Let none here misconstrue me I censure nothing of the Order or constituted course of our Church Service which I still stand to to be very heavenly transcendent and have elsewhere vindicated both it through its several parts and the appointed usage of it I only here reprove and for amendment expose mens lewd abuse In plain terms I beseech some sorts of people even for Gods sake that they will make a difference betwixt a Church a Playhouse betwixt Gods Worship an Opera If Religion prevail not hereto methinks good Manners should Were a person delivering an Errand nay it may be but telling a set story to a private number of men it would be look'd upon as an affront should here two or three or there as many be whispering laughing or otherwise entertaining of themselves than by attention Certainly he who reads the Scripture he who preaches it comes to the World upon the most solemn errand in the world Pardon therefore the Language Let men be Civil to God Almighty I may not here conceal that it is very suspicious a multitude come to Church with no other ends than those of Vanity and Divertisement if not worse Their strange Dresses their garish Attire fitter for persons whom I will not name than such as come to a Christian Assembly in a word the whole Garniture and all Accoutrements they come with many I mean even of both Sexes are such as bespeak them still to study not to have renounced the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked world Would a modest Heathen go more lightly arrayed to their Shews and Games than many people do as they pretend to the Worship of God and Christ These things I would not have taxed thus plainly were there hopes by any other way either of redressing them or not being at least through connivance and a kind of base silence guilty and a partizan in them And if this be the state of things at present in too many of our most solemn Assemblies for Divine Worship which consisting of more choice and cull'd people must needs have ever in them some numbers who are grave serious judiciously and no doubt piously intent who therefore cannot but by this their demeanour conciliate somewhat of Reverence to the publick Actions and keep up therein a face of Religion What then may we expect to find in the Streets and places of common congress for the ordinary business of Life for dealing buying selling and such like Treaties What in our Houses at our Tables and Entertainments What at Meetings designed meerly for Pleasure and Jollity Alas here not so much as a face of Religion very often appears But on the contrary Good God! what Swearing Damning most dismal and newly invented Execrations as if men were afraid they could not bring themselves and others to Hell soon enough Again What Rioting Excess of Drinking what Chambering Wantoness glorying in Sin making provision for it What trepanning Innocents into Sin reproaching Sanctity scoffing at all Religion and Religious These things are too grosly observable amongst some Amongst others what sly Falsness what studied Dissimulation Malice Treachery Slanders and where Slanders will hardly stick Calumnious censures and jealous suspicions dropt On most hands God knows here is so much denying the Power of Godliness that to good eyes there is little visible which will well pass for a Form I have thus now viewed and not unjustly represented the publick manners for much more might have been said with truth both in sacred and common transactions All being put together and weighed and it being also considered that without Reformation whatsoever

man designing such life resolve never to trouble their heads with the understanding or comprehending such Doctrines which so much disturb them and as they will tell you embroil the world These men study Ignorance for the sake of a stupid Quiet and designedly abandon and defie all means of Religious Knowledge A desperate sort of blind men indeed Now there is no doubt but both and all these our Church ignorants and our Outlying-ignorants and that whether through supine negligence and sloth or through resolute design and obstinacy all of them I say Deny the Power of Godliness whatsoever they may have or retain of the Form For they stop the very first passage by which Godliness can come at their hearts or ever have any power over them namely they suffer it not to enter into their Vnderstandings 2. Men obstruct and so deny the Power of Godliness by voluntary Vnbelief And I must here say the same of the Vnbelief of this Age which I did just now of its Ignorance There is speaking only of such who have their Senses little or no grose Vnbelief to be found amongst us which is not voluntary it being generally matter of mens choice either in it self directly or indirectly in its causes If men affect Ignorance and so believe not either because they understand not the Doctrines to be believed or see not the Evidences which perswade them who shall say that Unbelief is not chosen when the Ignorance whence it derives is apparently such But if any who both understand the Christian Doctrine and are acquainted with the Evidences upon which it is pretended to be believed do yet withstand and cavil at those Evidences endeavouring to find or make flaws in them whereas in truth there are none and then dispute touching their insufficiency exposing them and demanding Evidences either impossible that is such which the nature of the Cause admits not or unreasonable if I say any men in these circumstances and thus acting believe not it is plain such mens Vnbelief is matter of Industry Endeavour and Design and so not only of deliberate but obstinate choice Now such perverse spirits may be found now adays too rife as well as those more lazy Vnbelievers before mentioned And both sorts undoubtedly deny the Power of Godliness for both obstruct the perswasion of its reality in their hearts without which persuasion it is plain Religion must be but an insignificant pretence of no prevalence or force Lastly men may hinder and so deny the Power of Godliness by a voluntary Heedlesness It will look somewhat hard perhaps in the judgment of most to call all the Inadvertencies and Incogitancies which in common conversation betray men into sin voluntary ones inasmuch as many seem meerly casual others after a sort necessary and natural Infirmities And again on the other side men ordinarily give themselves so great a loose and even the best so much remit that holy Sollicitude and Watch which they ought constantly to maintain over themselves that it will be difficult most times to say touching this or that particular inadvertent fit it is not at all voluntary I would be understood to speak of men awake and in their Senses Health and the like that is as in the former cases neither chosen in its self nor cause In plain terms we so far abandon our Minds and Hearts to the World and Vanity or we indulge our Pleasures and Appetites so much that these draw and strangely detain or enslave our Thoughts And while we so intently and constantly pursue such Objects if unawares and inadvertently we are surprised with sinful concernments passions and engagements about them who can avow that inadvertency no whit voluntary when the indulgence which drew it on was plainly so But this may seem less culpable in these our days and perhaps to some very venial and excusable For alas how few are there who in this particular are not guilty more or less of denying the Power of Godliness As therefore we complained before of a designed Ignorance and Unbelief so must we here of such a thoughtless unconcerned temper which is matter of some mens study and endeavour To be ever Airy and free from any intent thought void of all sollicitudes and what they call easie to a mans self but especially to be above all religious apprehensions and concernments that is in plain English to put little or no difference between what we call moral good or evil some men look upon as a great pitch of happiness Whereas therefore thoughtfulness does breed concernment and bring men to put a difference betwixt Actions they endeavour by all means they well can to hinder the Entrance of thought into them They take care not to be alone nor in serious thoughtful company They divert themselves to other business or rather possibly to Jollity or Madness they say to Conscience when about to dictate to them Duty or forbid them Sin as Felix to St. Paul Act. xxiv 25. Go thy way for this time when I have a convenient season I will call for thee This is indeed an heinous sort of obstructing the Power of Godliness Such resolute heedlesness as this may seem rather a suppressing the Power of Godliness already partly in possession than an obstructing the passages by which it is to enter But let it be stiled how or ranked under what ever head it shall it is surely a practice very common and a dangerous well nigh desperate method of denying the Power of Godliness § 3. But there is yet another kind more dreadful and which exceeds all the former as well in Guilt as in audacious or daring Violence namely when men though they have not been able to keep out of their minds all notices and belief of Religion nor it may be are able though they do endeavour as those before to suppress exterminate or banish the frequent recurring dictates of awakened Conscience this possible so haunting them that they hear its voice whether they will or no shall yet notwithstanding all for the love of some longcourted Pleasure or Profit control all these Dictates and in a resolved course of sin overbear all opposition from them They stand in their own hearts convinced haply both of the nature and obligation of their Duty so as to have nothing of sound Reason to object against it They want not Arguments or Motives to recommend their Duty or dissuade their beloved Sin but the plain Truth is they are unwilling to part with their Sin and so no Argument will move them For they have long heard of the Wrath of God revealed and to be revealed from Heaven against all Vngodliness and Vnrighteousness of men who hold the Truth in Vnrighteousness Rom. 1. 18. which means has been effectual to assert Godliness into its due power in others and even these men themselves whether they will or no cannot very oft but give credit to these Doctrines yea they run in their minds more than they desire they should Yet