Selected quad for the lemma: evil_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
evil_n	darkness_n	good_a	sweet_a	3,257	5	8.2420	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85887	A treatise of prayer and of divine providence as relating to it. With an application of the general doctrine thereof unto the present time, and state of things in the land, so far as prayer is concerned in them. Written for the instruction, admonition, and comfort of those that give themselves unto prayer, and stand in need of it in the said respects. By Edvvard Gee, minister of the gospel at Eccleston in Lancashire.	Gee, Edward, 1613-1660.	1653 (1653)	Wing G451; Thomason E1430_1; ESTC R209520	284,427	526

sins that are before the face of God and set in the light of his countenance as a vail of separation shutting out our prayers from him we put behind our backs or with Achan hide in the bottom of our Tent and some of them are justified and entitled to divine approbation and patronage Evil is called good and darkness light Isai 5.20 and bitter sweet We pray yet the heart is unhumbled All the weight of sins the woes of wrath and judgment the want of our desires and prayers break not the heart After the threefold captivity of Judah by the Babylonian Jer. 44.10 the Lord complains of those that were left They are not humbled even to this day After the treble Civil War which this Land within these few years hath been enflamed with it is in like manner with us We are not humbled even to this day nay we are more unhumbled and hardened at this day then at the first We pray but our devotion is formal and remiss We have prayed and fasted as we think long but how so long indeed that we appear tired out with it The longer we have continued the fainter and colder we have been about it until at last we have given it over in regard of constancy in publique and that pretendingly upon this very ground of weariness and formality as if that were a just reason to desist which is our sin and as if discontinuance were not as great a sin or greater and as much or more impedimental of prayer as remissness and formality and as if constancy and assiduity in prayer were the cause per se and justly chargeable with that slackness or the regular way to cure the ill habit and bad consequents of Customariness in a necessary duty were disuse Job 17.10 Job saith Will the Hypocrite always call upon God We say constancy in fasting and prayer is the breeder of Hypocrisie and unconstancy the remedy We pray but it may be feared we seek our selves in it and not God our ends are carnal and not spiritual James 4 3 Hos 7.14 we ask for our lusts not for our Souls we assemble for corn and wine not for the glory and service of God If our ayms in prayer may be judged by our other endevors we minde not the Kingdom of God or the advancement of Religion in the first or in any place for what do we act for them Our own wills our own interests our own quarrels are the attractive of our eyes We look at our own things and it is well if not with Jezebel in her Fast at Naboths Vineyard We pray but is it in mutual charity and forgiveness or in contention and strife We pray in relation one to another but is it for or against one another If irremission of quarrels and wrongs do lock up the gates of Heaven against prayers who can wonder that the prayers of England stand without doors Here are contentions numberless endless irreligious unpolitique irrational bloody fundamental and ruining and without all doubt as the subjects of these contentions are the subject of mens prayers so the affections that stir up and carry on those quarrels do move and act in their prayers There is scarce any union or agreement among us in any thing positive that which is betwixt any party seems rather to consist in a joynt-differing from and opposing others which is the union of Hell then in a conjunction or concu●rence in any positive truth or practice and though some mens judgments and ends do meet in some things yet the variance that is betwixt them in other things or the quarrel they are together engaged in against a third party deprives them of or disturbeth that sweet union and complacency which they should have in their concurrent practice and fruition of that wherein they agree Well it is Isai 58.4 if men do not now fast for strife and debate and to smite with the fist of wickedness For my part I will here deal plainly I admire that the subject of publique Fasts should constantly be matter of civil interest and such things as they that do most attend fasting and prayer do mainly differ in and that the not publishing of those Fasts should be matter of snare and penalty to Ministers and they that will not come publickly to hear the Word to worship or call upon God either on those or the Lords own days should be left free And is it now come to this That whereas ere-while coercive proceedings might be only in civil matters and in things of conscience as they speak or of Religion there might be no compulsion now what man commands in point of Religion the indicting or proclaiming of a Fast to be kept on such a day may be under a pain but what God himself commands to wit the actions themselves of fasting prayer preaching and hearing must be arbitrary * If it be said the publication of a fast is no act of Religion but a civil action only introductory thereto it is of the same nature with that of a mans travelling from his home unto the publique Assembly and his placing himself and continuing there during the publique worship these actions are but introductory to performances why may not then these be commanded under a pain as well as that or both be left free We pray but we reform not The gap lies down the hedg lies open betwixt divine wrath and us while we continue irreformed Prayers and tears alone will never make up that breach It is to trust in lying words for men to enter in at the gates of the Lords house Jer. 7.2 c. there to worship sacrifice fast and pray and to say The Temple of the Lord the Temple of the Lord without through amendment of their ways and doings It is to make God a Patron of Thieves Murderers Adulterers Perjurers and Idolaters and his House a den of such Reformation beginneth at the House of God so hath it been proceeded in by all the eminent and exemplary Reformers that ever have been Our Saviour Christ whose coming and publishing the Gospel was the time of Reformation the first thing we find enterprised by him at his first entrance into Jerusalem Heb. 9.10 Joh. 2.14 c. was his driving out of the Temple with a scourge the Profaners of it and purging his Fathers house Let persons in Authority suffer in the house of God emptiness separation disorder error and profanation and it shall be bootless for them to set upon life-reformation in so proceeding as they are preposterous in the undertaking so they will prove unprosperous in the effecting of a Reformation The Lord saith to Israel Hos 4.13 14 because they went a whoring from their God by Irreligion and Idolatry Therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom and your spouses shall commit adultery I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom nor your spouses when they commit adultery * I