Selected quad for the lemma: father_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
father_n	ghost_n	holy_a	scripture_n	18,784	5	6.1696	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26871	Cain and Abel malignity that is, enmity to serious godliness, that is, to an holy and heavenly state of heart and life : lamented, described, detected, and unananswerably [sic] proved to be the devilish nature, and the militia of the devil against God and Christ and the church and kingdoms, and the surest sign of a state of damnation / by Richard Baxter, or, Gildas Salvianus ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1689 (1689)	Wing B1195; ESTC R2643	73,886	164

cherish this presumption in himself and say to others Stand by I am holier than thou Or as the Pharisee I thank thee Lord that I am not as this Publican Though yet all that will be saved must greatly differ from the ungodly and must with thankfulness own Gods grace § 5. Nor 5. Do I mean any unlawful practice which on the pretence of Godliness may be done whether unjust censures backbiting unwarrantable separations from others divisions disobedience to Authority Sedition Rebellion c. These are all contrary to Godliness and true Religion Christ is the strictest condemner of them and Godliness the best cure If any Godly or Religious person be guilty of any one of these 1. It cannot be as known and in a predominant degree 2. And it is his Disease as a Leprosie to a man and not his Godliness § 6. But by GODLINESS I mean only the serious Consent to and Performance of the Covenant which we made with God in our Baptism That we seriously believe that there is One only God of most perfect Power Knowledge and Goodness our Creator Maintainer Governour and End whom we must Obey and Serve and Love above all Creatures whatsoever and that he is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him and will give everlasting blessedness to the faithful and everlastingly punish the ungodly That we seriously believe that Iesus Christ is the Redeemer and Saviour who Teacheth Ruleth Pardoneth Sanctifieth and Saveth all true penitent Believers who is our Intercessor Head and Iudge That we seriously believe that the Holy Ghost indited and sealed by his Gifts and Miracles the Doctrine and Writings of the Prophets and Apostles now recorded in the Scriptures and that he is sent from the Father and the Son to Regenerate Sanctifie Comfort and Strengthen those that shall be saved And that we seriously consent to Love and Obey God our Father Saviour and Sanctifier as his Creatures Subjects and Children in these Relations that we may be pardoned and saved by him And that we be willing to forsake the Devil and his Works and the World and Flesh so far as they would tempt us to break this Covenant against God and our Obedience and Salvation And lastly That we seriously or sincerely though not perfectly endeavour in our lives to keep this Covenant preferring God in our Love and Obedience and our Hopes of Life everlasting before all the pleasures and treasures of this World and resisting the temptations of the Devil World and Flesh which would turn us from him and from our Obedience and Hope And that we truly though not perfectly trust God and our Redeemer for the Heavenly Glory which he hath promised This is plainly distinctly and fully what I mean by Godliness or Holiness And such are the persons though all imperfect and of divers degrees which I call Saints or Godly He that feigneth me to mean any thing else doth but abuse himself and me If there be none such there are no Christians and all the Word of God is vain But every Duty commanded by God is a part of the matter of our Obedience and Religion viz. As according to the first Commandment to take God for our God to be absolutely Obeyed Loved and Trusted and to renounce all Idols and neither to Obey Love or Trust our selves or any creature before him So also according to the second Commandment to renounce all scandalous symbolizing with Idolaters in the outward worship of God in their sinful way especially by Images and other apearances of Idolatry And that we worship God according to his Word And according to the third Commandment that we avoid all Prophanation of holy things All Perjury false Vows and fathering falshoods upon God or his Words and rash Swearing and Unreverent using of Gods Name and turning his worship into a lifeless form And according to the fourth Commandment that we worship God publickly in solemn assemblies and devote the Lords day to holy exercises that we search the Scriptures pray for what God hath promised or commanded Meditate and Confer of holy things and celebrate the Sacraments in the Communion of Saints And so according to the second Table that we honour and obey our Parents and as far as their right of Government reacheth all other that God sets over us And dishonour them not nor obey Civil Ecclesiastical or Domestical Usurpers against them That we do our best to save our neighbours Life and Bodily welfare against Murderers or Usurpers and hurt no mans life or health either violently or by Iezabels pretence of Justice That we keep our Senses Thoughs Affections Passions and Actions from all unchastity and immodest lasciviousness That we wrong no man in his estate but to our power help them That we avoid all Injustice Lying false Witness false Judgment and Oppressive Unrighteous Government And promote Truth and Justice to our power And lastly that we love our Neighbour as our selves and take his welfare and his sufferings as our own and do as we would have others do by us and covet not to draw from him to our selves So that he that pretendeth to love God and Godliness and obedience to Christ and yet loveth not such a life as this he lieth or says he knows not what And he that hateth men or opposeth them for any one of all these duties for reading or hearing Gods Word for praying for things promised for holy Conference and Meditation for sanctifying the Lords day for desiring a Shepherd and not a Wolf for abhorring prophaneness and other great sins doth thereby declare that it is so much of Godliness or Obedience which he abhorreth and it is through Ignorance doubtless if he seriously love and practise the rest of Gods Commands § 7. II. By Malignant Enemies of Godliness 1. I do not mean every one that hath any backwardness to any duty which he overcometh in the practice Nor every one that is guilty of some omissions The spirit is willing and the flesh is weak § 8. 2. I mean not those that are Godly in the main so far as they can know but through education or otherwise are ignorant of some Integral Truths or Duties and have an opposing contentious Zeal against them by mistake and by factious company are taught therefore to speak evil falsly of those from whom they differ I hear some revile all even with terms of enmity and unchristian threatnings yea seeking their ruine who do not swear say and practise all that is required to English Conformity I do not conclude them therefore Malignant Enemies of Godliness if they live soberly righteously and godlily in their way and prefer God before Men Heaven before Earth the Soul before the Body and a Holy life before the pleasures and profits of the flesh If they are uncharitable against all that are not for Diocesans Lay-Chancellours Excommunications Symbolical Crossing of Children as a Covenanting sign of Christianity and all the rest I wish them more Charity but

Malignant Enmity to serious Godliness 1. TO deny that there is a God who is the Supreme Governour of Man is to be mad in despight of the whole world which proveth it And it deposeth all Kings who claim their Authority as given them by God and as his Officers for if there be no God there 's none to give them Authority And to grant that there is a God and yet deny him our love honour and obedience is to speak gross contradiction or else profess open malice against God himself If he be God he is perfectly Wise and should not perfect Wisdom govern us If he be God he is perfectly Good and mans chief Benefactor and should he not then have our chiefest Love If he be God he is of absolute Power and should he not then be obeyed If he be God he made us and still maintaineth us and we live continually by his will and have all that we have of his bounty and we and all we have are wholly his own and is not then all our thanks and service due to him If he be God he is our Judge and will be just in punishing and rewarding and should we not then serve him with the greatest fear and with the highest hopes These things are undeniable Dare any man that believeth there is a God say that man can Love him too much or too much honour him or obey him Can we return him more than his due It is therefore no less than practical Atheism or else a rebellious defiance of God to blame or hate men for loving honouring and serving him to the very utmost of their power And to deny God or defie him is a thousand fold more damnable sin and treason than to deny and defie the King or your own Parents 2. God hath himself commanded man to Love him with all his heart and soul and might and to obey him with his greatest fidelity and diligence and to fear him more than any creature and to place our chiefest hopes on his promised rewards and to seek first his Kingdom and Righteousness and not to sin wilfully to save our lives or gain all the world Deut. 6. 5 6 7. 10. 12. 11 12 13 14. Mat. 22. 37. Heb. 11. 6. 1 Cor. 15. 58. Luke 12. 4. Heb. 12. 28 29. Mat. 10. 39 42. 16. 25 26. 6. 33. Luke 14. 26 33. Mat. 5. 19 20. And the Law of Nature speaks no less And if God command it and you condemn it do you not condemn God If you command your Son or Servant or Subject any thing he that blames him for obeying you blames you more than him If it be a fault of folly to love and serve God with all our heart and mind and might the fault or folly would be Gods that requireth it and not ours And is such a blasphemer meet for humane Society who will accuse his Maker If God be blame-worthy he is not perfect And if he be not perfect he is not God And so to be against our utmost obedience doth amount to no less than Blasphemy or Atheism 3. Do you think that Man is a creature that needs to be blamed for loving or obeying God too much Do you not know that Nature is vitiated by sin and Man is now backward to God and all that 's good and holy You may as well blame a lame man for running too fast as a sinful man for obeying God too much It 's more foolish than to blame a sick man for working or eating too much that can do neither Or to hold a man in a Consumption from going up the Hill too fast Do you find your own hearts so forward to a holy life as that you need pulling back or hinderance when no exhortation or necessity will perswade you to it And if you need no such reproof or stop why should you think others need it Do you not use to say that all men are sinners And do sinners need to be blamed for obedience Do you not daily confess that you have done the things which you ought not to have done and left undone the things that you ought to have done and there is no health in you And yet will you blame men for too much Obedience It seems then that your Confessions of sin are Professions of it and while you tell what you have done you do but tell what you mean to do and what you would have all others do or else you blame your selves for sinning and hate your Neighbours for not sinning 4. If you hate men for holiness and avoiding sin you hate Jesus Christ most for he was most holy and free from all sin And you hate the Angels and all in Heaven for they are holy and void of all transgression 5. Have you any better Master to serve than God or any better work to do than he commandeth or any better thing to seek and hope for than he hath promised If not should not the best be preferred What do you love and seek your selves Is money or fleshly pleasure better than God and Heaven Is Sin and Sensuality a better employment than his Service Is your flesh and lust a better master Compare them and we are content that the best be preferred 6. Why do you take on you to believe in Christ if you be against holiness and for sin Christ came into the world to die for sin to shew Gods hatred of it And would you have us wilfully to commit it and to despise his Blood He came to destroy the works of the Devil and will you plead for them He came by his Doctrine example and grace to bring man to holy obedience And do you hate men for the same and yet call your selves Christians 7. How dangerously do you draw towards the sin against the holy-Holy-Ghost if you hate or blame men for being holy or seeking to be such when it is all the work of the holy-Holy-Ghost on mens Souls to make them holy It 's a dangerous thing to hate the work of the holy-Holy-Ghost and as it were defy him and do despite to him 8. Are you not your selves in your baptism Vowed and Devoted to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost renouncing the world the Flesh and the Devil And do you hate men for being such as you have vowed to be your selves And do you think that God will not severely reckon with you for such Perjury and base Perfidiousness 9. Do you not in your daily hypocritical devotions condemn your selves by your own tongues Do you not pray that the rest of your lives may be Pure and Holy And at the same time hate Purity and Holiness Do you not pray that Gods will may be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven And can we have a higher purer pattern Do you know any that doth Gods will better than it 's done in Heaven Or is it not damnable hypocrisy to pray for that which you hate and hate all men that desire and

endeavour it When you say or hear all the ten Commandments you pray Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this Law And do you hate men for endeavouring to keep it If you come to the Lords Table you confess your sins and bind your selves in Covenant to forsake them and to live a holy life and you take the Sacrament upon it And the Liturgy warneth you to take heed that you dissemble not nor be hinderers of Gods holy word lest the Devil enter into you as he did into Judas and fill you with all unrighteousness And if you hate or oppose that holy obedience to God which you profess after all this what must be the portion of such hypocrites And in your Creed you profess to believe in God the Father Son and holy-Holy-Ghost and to hold a Holy Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints And yet do you hate Saints that obey the Father Son and Holy-Ghost and hate their Communion 10. Hath not God printed on mans nature such a sense of the difference between Good and Evil as that all Laws and Government are founded in that sense And no man loveth to be counted or called a bad or ungodly or unconscionable man A Lyar a Knave a Perjured man or a wicked man And yet do you hate men for avoiding wickedness 11. Do not you use to accuse Religious men of some sin or other Truly or falsly and think by that to make them odious And yet do you accuse them and hate them most for not sinning To be Sober Just and Godly is but to avoid sins of Omission and Commission And do you at once accuse them as sinners and hate them for obeying God and sinning no more 12. Doth it never affright you to find the Devils nature in you as hating the Divine or holy nature which is in faithful Godly men And to think how openly you serve the Devil and do his work No man that believeth there are Devils can doubt but that the hatred of God as holy and the hatred of his holy Word and Work and Servants is the Devils malignity and the opposing of them his work If he were to write you his Commandments they would be contrary to Gods and the chief of them should be Thou shalt not Love God nor serve him with all thy Heart and Soul and Might nor Love those that do so but hate deride oppose and persecute them And is it honourable openly to serve the Devil Christ tells such men Ioh. 8. That the Devil is their Father because they have his nature and that his work they do for he was from the beginning a Lyar and a Malignant Murderer and turned man from obeying God. And can you think that he loveth you or that his Service against God is better than Gods or his reward better 13. Doth it never touch your Consciences to consider that you are the Children and followers of cursed Cain and how punctually his case against Abel and yours against Gods Servants is the same By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain by which he obtained witness that he was righteous God testifying of his Gifts and by it he being dead yet speaketh Heb. 11. 4. Cain hated him because God more accepted him and his offering 1 Ioh. 3. 10 11 12. In this the Children of God are manifest and the Children of the Devil Whoever doth not righteousness is not of God nor he that loveth not his Brother For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning that we should love one another Not as Cain who was of that wicked one and slew his Brother And wherefore slew he him because his own works were evil and his brothers righteous 14. Is it possible that any man can unfeignedly believe a Heaven as the reward of holy obedience and yet think we can do too much to obtain it or be too careful to make it sure Is not everlasting glory worth the cost of a holy life Or can it be too dearly bought 15. Or is it possible to believe Gods Judgment and Hells Punishment and yet to hate those that do their best according to Gods own Counsel to escape it 16. What monstrous cruelty is it in you to wish poor Souls to do that which God hath told us they shall be damned for God saith Without holiness none shall see God Heb. 12. 14. Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees you shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Mat. 5. 20. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God Mat. 5. If ye live after the Flesh ye shall die but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the Body ye shall live Rom. 8. 7 8. 13. What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy Conversation and Godliness 2 Pet. 3. 11. We receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved let us serve God acceptably with Reverence and Godly fear for our God is a Consuming Fire Heb. 12. 28 29. Be stedfast unmoveable always abounding in the work of the Lord for asmuch as you know that your Labour is not in vain in the Lord 1 Cor. 15. 58. This is the very tenor of the Gospel And would you wish men to damn their Souls for nothing To lose Heaven and suffer Hell for ever and all to avoid a pure and holy life What a bloody motion is this Worse than if you intreated us all to cut our own throats Let us try first whether you will do far less at our request Will you give the poor all your Lands and Estates Will you run into Fire or Water or set your own houses on fire when any will but desire it It 's like you have heard of the Woman who being tempted to adultery desired the tempter first to hold his Finger in the Fire for her Which when he refused she told him it was less reason she should burn in Hell to Satisfy his lust If you will not part with your Life or Estate when another desires you why should we part with Heaven for ever and choose Hell at your desire Yea we see that you will not leave an ill-gotten gain or a Sport or a Whore or a Drunken Cup for all the Love of God the blood of Christ and the hope of Heaven And shall we part with God and Heaven and Christ to humour you And what is it that you offer us instead of all that we must part with And to ease the pain which we must undergo Nothing or worse than nothing If we should renounce God and our hope of Heaven you cannot give us health or wealth for it Much less can you secure these or life to us till to morrow And will any thing that you can give us be better than Heaven to us Or will it make Hell tollerable Will you undertake to answer for it at the bar of God if we are charged with an ungodly fleshly life or