Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	day_n	good_a	lord_n	2,726	5	3.8026	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59657	Certain select cases resolved specially tending to the right ordering of the heart, that we may comfortably walk with God in our general and particular callings / by Thomas Shephard ...	Shepard, Thomas, 1605-1649.; Adderley, William.	1650 (1650)	Wing S3104; ESTC R33878	30,111	60

and glad to think of their depa●tures and ends And truly it is one of the most grievous miseries that a holy heart can feel and I beseech the Lord of heaven and earth to keepe you and me and all his for ever while wee are here in our valley under the sense of such distempers as our greatest misery And therefore me thought it was a solemn sweet speech of an honest man to his friend who seeing him oppressed with such distempers as you mention and perceiving him to droop under them hee came chearefully to him and suddenly said unto him I can tell you good newes the best that ever you heard viz. Assoon as ever you are in Heaven you shall serve Christ without wearinesse Which words well thought on revived the man That which I would speak with as much tendernesse of compassion as I am able to you I refer to these things 1. That a child of God is never usually weary of the ●uty but rather of his vile heart to thinke of and to looke upon that in the duty Christs yoke is easie and his burthen light to him that takes it on his necke and puts his Soul under it The duty nakedly considered in it selfe is glorious in his eyes and sweet to his Soule and hence sometimes never well but when he considers his dead blinde barren and senselesse heart that he is to carry to the duty and that he feares and hath felt will abide with him in the duty Oh! this grieves here the Soule pincheth An Hypocrite is weary of the duty a childe of God rejoyceth in it but hee is weary of his sinne and unsavourinesse and wearinesse in the duty I perswade my selfe Sir that you may soone mistake your spirit herein you thinke you are unwilling to come to the duty and are weary of it when indeed it is your glory joy and love but it is because you feare you can doe it no better that troubles you that you have such a vile heart in it And if your trouble be from hence the good Lord increase it in you daily and withall blesse the Lord and say Lord though I am weary of my vile heart in these daies of humiliation in these Sabbaths yet I blesse thee the daies and duties themselves thou knowest are deare unto me It is not Lord because I am weary of thy word but because I can doe it no better I am weary of my selfe and this vile heart here is much love in such a spirit to the Lord And believe it Sir your love wants not its recompences and remember that the Lord respects you not according to your duties done but according to your love in them and to them And therefore those duties you are ashamed to owne the Lord will not be ashamed to crown 2. Consider you must and shall be baited with these distempers of heart sometimes more and sometimes lesse as long as you live It is part of Pauls body of death which hee must carry with him till he come to bury himselfe 3. Those means which may helpe you to be freed from them a little at least are these among many 1. Be but truly and really not by fits and darkly sensible of them men in deep miseries are not unwilling to be helped out 2. Judge ye not rigorously of God although he we●e a bloody austere God as he did of his master whose talent he had and hence never improved it but looke upon God as having a Fathers heart and affection towards you in the meanest and greatest performances which is double either to give you strength to do what you cannot I can do all things through Christ or having come to him for it to accept of what you would do for him as if it were done and this will make you joy in the poorest performance that though it be never so full of vilenesse yet the Lord out of his fatherly love accepts of it as glorious 3. Renew morning and evening by sad and solemne meditation the sense of Gods love to you in Christ and in every duty that he sets you about and love will love and like the yoke and make the commandements that they shall not be grievous to you Thus I have briefly done with your new troubles which you mention you say because you may not have the like opportunity of writing again It may be so and therefore I have desired to satisfie you which I beseech the Lord himself to do Next you come to reply to my first Letter of which I have kept no copy as I never did of any and hence may and doe forget what I writ then unto you So much light as your Letter lends me to bring things to mind I will gladly take and be more briefe in answer You finde the strength of grace to be got in you rather by argumentation then inward communication and influence arising from the union to Christ And this troubles you To which I answer these three things 1. That as the old sinnefull nature is communicated from Adam the first to us without any argumentation so the new nature which is the seed foundation and plot of all grace is diffused into us by the second Adam when we are united to him without argumentation It is onely by divine operation The Lord leave not me nor any friend I have to a naked Arminian illumination and perswasion 2. That to the increase of those habits and drawing out the acts of the new creature the Lord is pleased to use morall and rationall perswasions as in the instance you gave Christ died for us then hence the love of Christ constraines but remember withall It is not the bare meditation or strength of reason or perswasion that elicits such divine and noble acts in the heart and affection but it is the blood of Christ sprinkling these serious meditations that makes them worke such graces in the Soule which I might shew at large which blood is the salve though argumentation is the cloth or leather to which it sticks and by which it is applied but from such leather comes no vertue all of it is from the blood of christ which by argumentation heales the Soule For if it were nakedly in the argumentation to stir your heart and to worke strength of grace what should be the reason that some times you are no more moved by all your argumentations then a mountaine of brasse is by the windes why should the same truth affect you at one time and not at another when you are as fitly dispoto be affected as at the first Therefore consider it is not your reason and argumentation but Christs blood that doth all by as admirable and yet secret operation 3. Your union to Christ on your part is begun and partly wrought by the understanding and hence the good that you get by it at any time it is from your union or part of it at lest Againe you aske me whether Calvin doth not

For as the Law begets terror so the promises beget Faith Now no conditionall promise firstly begets Faith because hee that is under any condition of the Gospel in that man there is a presupposed faith It s Gods absolute promise that firstly begets faith for faith is not assurance but the comming of the whole Soule to Christ in a promise Iohn 6. 35. And then the Soule believes in Christ when it comes to Christ now this God workes in the Gospel 1. The Soule is raised up by hope And being raised it Secondly comes to Christ which is faith by vehement unutterable desire And being come to him it 3. Embraceth Christ by love and thus the match is made and the everlasting knot is tied Now as you have heard the absolute promise workes hope of reliefe from Christ and if it workes hope it also workes a desire or comming to Christ by desire Oh! that thou Lord wouldst honour thy grace thy power thy love thy promise in helping me a poore cast-away And thus faith is created as it were by this absolute promise for it cannot but move the heart of any one that ever felt his want to cry mightily to the Lord for help if he hath any hope seeing the Lord hath promised to do it for some Oh saith the Soul that thou wouldst do it for me And surely were it not for this absolute promise of God no Soul would desire because he would have no hope to be saved or to seeke for any thing as from the hands of God And thus you see to what end God makes and to what use a Christian may put these absolu●e promises 2. For the second thing viz How and when a Christian may apply these promises I answer every Christian is either 1. Within Covenant with God and knowes it or 2. Within covenant with God and knows it not or 3. Out of covenant indeed for his present estate and condition yet he is in fieri or making towards it 1. If he be in Covenant and knowes it then you may easily perceive how and when he ought to apply promises unto himselfe for he may boldly conclude If God be his God then all the promises of God shall be made good unto him if he be a Sonne of God he may boldly challenge at all times at the hands of God nay if in some respects at the hands of Justice it selfe the fulfilling of God the Fathers will delivered in the severall Legacies of the promise bought by the blood and sealed by the same blood of Jesus Christ that they may and shall be made good unto him that is clear 2. Secondly If he be in covenant and knows it not and questions hence whether God is his or not and consequently whether the promises belong unto him then the rule is to be observed let him so sue and seeke for the good of the absolute promise untill by reflecting upon his own acts herein he perceive himselfe adorned and dignified with the qualification of some conditionall promise and then if he can finde the condition or qualification within himselfe then as you judge and write he may conclude that the conditionall promise belongs to him and if one promise then all Gods promises and therefore that absolute promises are his owne because at least one conditional promise is For no unregenerate man is within the compasse of any one conditionall promise of grace unlesse you will say he is under the everlasting love of God the promises of grace being but the mid-way between the eternall purpose and decree of love and the glorious certain execution of that love in time The promise being the breake day of Gods most glorious love which must shine out in time But here you will say is the difficulty viz. how I should to seeke for the good of absolute promises as therein to finde my self within the compasse of some conditionall one I answer It is done chiefly by three acts 1. By being humbly contented that seeing the Lord hath absolutely promised to work and doe all for the Soule he intends for to save even when it can doe nothing for it selfe and that he hath taken the worke into his owne hands so that it is his promise offer office and honour to doe all that therefore you lie downe not sluggishly but humbly at the feet of God and contented to have him to be your God and for ever to be disposed of in any thing by God if he will fulfill his covenant in you contented to part with any sinne if he will rend it from you contented to know any truth if he will reveale it to you contented to do any duty if he will enable you contented to shine bright with all his glorious graces if he will create and maintaine them in you contented to beare any evill if he will lay his hand under your head and thereunto strengthen you and so seeing the Lord promised to undertake the work for some put out the work and put over your Soule to him that he would fulfill the good that his covenant promiseth in your selfe Now when you do thus which no question you and many a Soul doth many times reflect upon this act and see if you cannot or may not finde your selfe by it under the condition of some conditionall promise and if you do then are you bound to believe all Gods promises are and will be Yea and Amen unto you Now that you do so by this act it selfe speake ●ainely for how many conditionall promises 〈◊〉 made to the meek Blessed are the meek Mat. 5. and to the hum●ble whom god will raise up For this is not saving meekenesse to be quietly contented to be or to do or to bear any thing that the Lord will have me from mine owne strength and feeling but to be to do or to bear any thing that the Lord will have me if the Lord enable me Many a stout heart would gladly have Christ but if he cannot have him in his owne termes viz. Christ and his lusts Christ and the world too or by his owne strength and power he will have none of him but desperately casts him away and saith what shall I looke after him any more I cannot pray I cannot believe I cannot breake this vile and unruly will this stony adamant heart thus the pride of a mans heart workes Now he that is truly meekned and humbled he is contented gladly to have God his God and Christ his Redeemer and that upon Jesus Christ his owne termes First on his owne covenant now what is that why it is this I will give you the good and worke in you the condition too I will give you my selfe and therefore will not sticke to give you an eye to see and a heart to receive too This is the covenant now hereupon a humbled Soul accepts of Christ according to his covenant on his owne termes thus viz. upon that condition Lord that thou wilt humble me teach me