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	time_n	work_n	2,608	5	5.7529	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56697	A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor and the aldermen of the City of London at Guild-Hall Chappel, Octob. 31, 1680 being the XXI Sunday after Trinity / by Symon Patrick ...	Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.	1680 (1680)	Wing P842; ESTC R13508	19,534	54

they can more easily assault us This he repeats again vers 13. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God that is because you have so many so great and dangerous Enemies to conflict withal take unto you to put it on that is that Divine Armour which God himself furnishes you withal and let no part of it be wanting but be intirely at all times covered with it that so you may be able to withstand or to resist with constancy and patience in the evil day or the time when you must indure many calamities for Christs sake And having done all to stand that is having compleated your resistance by an unyielding resolution to consent to nothing against your duty you may remain as conquerours over all those Enemies that assaulted you Stand therefore vers 14. he repeats it a third time the more to imprint their Duty in their mind and to excite and encourage them unto it He would not have them doubt of getting the better but be confident they should be able to withstand all manner of opposition provided they put on intirely that compleat Armour which he was about to recommend to them from God himself Without that their confidence even in Christ and his mighty Power would not keep them in safety but they were to trust in Him imploying those weapons which He had given them for their defence and security Let me therefore briefly explain them that you may see what you have to do if you would be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might In which it is impossible that any body should be able to direct you so well as the Apostle himself and therefore I shall seek for no other means of attaining this Divine strength but those which he hath set down in the remaining part of the Epistle for this day 1. And first you must take care to have your loyns girt about with truth vers 14. that is with a true understanding of all things that concern our duty safety and happiness Which we can receive from no place so certainly and so amply as from the Revelation our Lord hath made of the mind of God to us in his Gospel which is called the word of truth teaching us both what is true and false and what is good and evil so fully that we want no necessary Information Direction or incouragement in our Christian warfare Only we must make it our business throughly to understand the mind of God and to let it sit close to our hearts for that is to have it girt about us This will make us ready against all assaults and they will find us better prepared to receive them we shall be the more at liberty and have nothing interpose to intangle our mind and hinder us from doing our duty For that was the end of a Souldiers girding up his cloaths about his loyns that he might be the more nimble and expedite in action when he was not incumbred by his garments hanging loosely about his heels Such will the clear knowledge of things especially of the Truth as it is in Jesus render our minds Which will find themselves fit for any service and able to perform it with ease and freedom when they are delivered by this illumination from all vain opinions about those things which we call Good and Evil in this world from all false principles from causeless doubts and scruples from confusion of thoughts and uncertainty of mind which weaken and discourage the hearts of men in any incounter with their spiritual enemies Whose great advantage lyes in our ignorance and folly mistakes and false perswasions which this Divine Light shining in us will chase away and let us see through all the thin pretences whereby we are tempted to commit any Sin or to neglect our duty and make the vanity of them so transparent that we shall never be cheated by them any more For Truth is great and will prevail not indeed unless it be seated and rooted in our minds but if it have taken fast hold there it hath the Lord on its side whose mighty power resides there where his sacred Truth doth which being the sense of his own mind is something of himself residing in us There would not for instance be so many deserters and revolters from their Religion so many cowardly and timerous spirits who will do nothing for it so many cold and indifferent persons who care not what becomes of it if we understood the truth of it better and its principles did not hang loose in our minds but we had a lively sense of its excellency purity simplicity and Divine original Which would preserve us also from doing any thing unbecoming our Religion while we make profession of it and pretend to admire it and love it and to endeavour to preserve it For who could act contrary to its principles whose heart were affected deeply with this single truth that he who knows his Masters will and doth it not shall be beaten with many stripes It will go exceeding hard with that man and he will lye under the severest lashes of his own Conscience as well as under the heavy displeasure of his Lord and Master who taught him the way of God in truth if he would have taken care and set his heart to walk in it Which leads me to the next II. Unto this clear knowledg of the truth as it is in Christ we must add the Brest-plate of Righteousness Which is nothing else but integrity of heart and loyal Affection to our blessed Lord and Master Christ a sincere and unfeigned love to the business of Christianity which we understand to be the will of God For a Brest-plate you know is the defence of the region of the heart and Righteousness I take here to be as much as uprightness and sincerity in what we pretend and therefore both put together signifie the unfeigned bent of our will the cordial consent of our heart and affection to all that we know to be the mind of Christ aiming at nothing in the world but to keep a good Conscience and thereby to preserve the love of God and at last to obtain favour with Him in the day of the Lord. Which besides that it is most highly esteemed by our blessed Saviour above all knowledge and wisdom in the world and may certainly depend upon His power for the maintenance of that which is so dear unto Him hath many singular advantages in it to make us successful in our Christian warfare For a constant sense of our fidelity to our Lord naturally gives us a stronger confidence that He will be faithful unto us This makes us also as bold and fearless as Lyons when we have nothing within to dismay us but all the reason in the world to be secure and confident that we shall still attain our end which is to approve our selves to our Lord and Master whatsoever befals us And on the other side nothing more daunts all opposers

Apostles language to be able to do their duty in all relations in all times and in all conditions and circumstances of life The second supposes that their own natural courage or mere Philosophical Resolution called Fortitude would not be sufficient to carry them through all difficulties but upon some occasions their spirit would quail unless they were supported by a diviner sort of Vertue which he calls being strong in the Lord. By the Lord meaning our Blessed Saviour who bred in his Disciples souls a new kind of valour which men were not acquainted withal before or of which we read nothing in the Books of mere Philosophers For as they do say little or nothing of that trust and confidence which all good men ought to repose in God and of a vigorous application of their mind to Him for strength and resolution to be truly vertuous so they could say nothing of such devoute addresses to our Lord for it Who sending his Apostles into the world to propagate his Religion which was sure to meet with mighty opposition furnished them with a suitable courage which they indeavoured to infuse into all others who by entertaining their Doctrine might have need of the like vertue Which is this here in my text of a quite different sort from those now named For it arises not from natural heat or from the mere soundness of our natural principles of reason and the honest resolution which we have firmly built thereupon but from a far higher original the mighty invincible power of the Lord Jesus which was always in their eye and on which they stedfastly relyed As there was very great need having other kind of enemies to grapple withal than mere natural men thought of not meerly with flesh and blood as it follows after my text that is with humane powers and their savage malice and cruelty but with the Devil and his Angels who did all they could to dishearten them and hinder their spreading of this Religion For which end they instigated both the Jewi●● Rulers and Heathen Kings and Princes to persecute them with the greatest rage and the most Diabolical fury And the very same powers of Hell we have reason to think are now at work to confound us and our Religion The Reformation of which was little less wonderful in one regard than the first publication of the Gospel For it flew like lightning and on a sudden all these northern Countries purged themselves from the Romish pollutions with a marvellous consent as swiftly and in as short a space of time as the Gospel at its first Preaching ran among the Gentiles and excited them to free themselves from Pagan Idolatries And immediately the Devil set his Agents at work to disgrace and spoil the Reformation by Sects and Heresies and to deter men from embracing it by the most dreadful punishments just as when the Gospel broke out he laboured to uphold his Authority by the like arts and instruments of deceit and cruelty And now the powers of darkness seem to be making their very last attempt in these Countries to overthrow that which was so happily and by such an extraordinary hand of God established And who knows but their fury may proceed to such violence as without an extraordinary courage we shall not be able to stand fast in the Faith to quit our selves like men and to be strong as the Apostle exhorts in the 1 Cor. xvi 13 We had best therefore fortifie our selves beforehand with a good stock of this Divine Vertue which we shall have great use of upon other occasions though by the merciful Providence of God that trial of it should be prevented for which we humbly pray and hope to inable us to do as well as to suffer all things that would hinder our doing the will of God I am not able to say to which of these my Text most relates whether to the words foregoing or to those that follow But which way soever we take them there will be little or no difference and it will be best to refer them to both Because the power of Christ is as necessary for us to enable us to discharge those Christian duties before mentioned as to withstand those trials which he tells the Ephesians in the Verses following would discourage and dishearten them in their obedience Now to the end that we may be furnished with a sufficient strength for both I shall do these two things First Shew you wherein this duty consists of being strong or strengthening our selves in the Lord and in his mighty power Secondly What our work is or what we have to do that we may be indued with this mighty Vertue I. For the first of these by the LORD being meant as I said our blessed Saviour who laying down his life for us is raised again and made the Lord of all all power in Heaven and in Earth being given to him as he himself told his Apostles and afterward was proved by sensible effects to be strong in him consists in these three things 1. First To be possessed with a lively faith of the Power and Glory which our Lord now hath at Gods right hand 2. Secondly To keep this Faith alive in our hearts that it may make us on all occasions repair to Him representing Him always as actually present to us by the Power of his might to aid and succour us 3. Thirdly In this Faith to be stedfastly resolved to stick to him and not to stir from the duty He enjoins us notwithstanding any thing that may oppose us to discourage nay indanger us in the doing of it Of these we have such frequent occasion to treat at some time or other that it may be sufficient now only to repeat them 1. We must represent the Majesty and Power wherein our Lord reigns at Gods right hand so strongly to our souls that they be possessed with a pregnant and lively sense of it and be disposed thereby to depend upon him continually as an Almighty Saviour 2. And then this Faith when it is settled in our hearts we must actuate and excite that it may make us look upon Him as present with us at all times by his Almighty Power to aid and assist us to support and comfort us as well as able at last Eternally to reward us 3. And lastly This Faith must settle in us a firm resolution and purpose to adhere to his service and resist all temptations to the contrary till by his Power we overcome them and remain faithful to the very death expecting from him the Crown of Life This He expects from us and this we must charge our selves withal and be faithful to it and stedfast in it For if we doubt not of His Power why should we not depend upon it and by the force of it do that for which He communicates it unto us Hath He not made us many pretious Promises that by them we may be partakers of a Divine Nature Hath He not said He will be