Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	affection_n	good_a	spirit_n	2,849	5	4.8243	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56628	Christs counsel to his church in two sermons preached at the two last fasts : one April xi. MDCLXXX, the other December xxi. MDCLXXX / by Symon Patrick ...	Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.	1681 (1681)	Wing P770; ESTC R22417	50,470	126

reading by every Body particularly from the 27th Section to the end Where he bids those who gainsay this and make opposition to it consider how they will approve their moroseness to God For us it is sufficient that we have no such custom of contending neither the Churches of God 8. If we be really desirous then to make peace and restore unity in the Church which is now so necessary that we are undone without it this is the first thing wherein we ought all to unite in repenting of the breach which hath been made among us by slighting our Guides by casting off the Government of the Rulers of the Church and despising nay reviling their Orders I know how difficult it is to perswade men to this because they throw the guilt off from themselves and so confidently lay it all upon their Governours that it is now generally taken for granted without any doubt they are in fault not the people who ought to submit to them But a very little humility and modesty not to say common fense might teach us to make the favourable presumption on the side of Authority and dispose the people to think it is more likely that they are mistaken than their Guides Who ought indeed to have nothing so much in their thoughts as how to do service to Christ honour to his Religion good to souls by promoting sincere piety and if they have been negligent in this deeply to humble themselves before God and study to be ensamples to the Flock of serious Repentance But if they fail in this I am sure the people can never give a good account of their throwing off the yoke of obedience to them spurning at their Authority and separating from Communion with them The mischievous effects of which if nothing else one would think should be sufficient to move them to Repentance That is First To be heartily sorry for the breach they have made and reflect upon it as the original of all our miseries And then beseech God most earnestly to forgive it especially that open jesting nay scoffing which hath been so rife among us at all spiritual Authority Which in the next place let every one of us seriously acknowledge and resolve to reverence so as to be advised by them and take great heed to their Counsels and Resolutions to weigh them considerately and not lightly and hastily to depart from them much less rise up in opposition to them but when you are forced by Gods Command as you think to decline obedience in any particular injunction to be the more careful in observing the rest against which you have no exception and still to reverence their Persons and their Authority when you cannot observe their Commands to speak well of them and peaceably to dissent from them remembring that if they be liable to mistake you are much more and therefore ought not to be wise in your own conceit but to think soberly of your selves as you ought to think 9. This is the way of peace which we have received from Christ and his Apostles and I might add all succeeding Pastors in the Church of which I thought good to remember you and to call you to repentance for departing from it and to exhort all people to return into it as the only means of our preservation and of making the preaching of the Gospel if God pleases to continue it effectual for our reformation and amendment in all other things that are amiss among us For as no Kingdom can stand without Religion so no Religion can stand long no not this excellent Religion which we have received and I have briefly described without a due esteem of and regard to its Ministers In obedience to whom even they who cannot comply with all publick Orders will find more true comfort and more favour also with God and men than in any other way whatsoever But here is the mischief that it is the common errour of Mankind to seek that for off which as the Lord told his people is near at hand within them even in their heart and in their mouth if they would be but Doers of His Word and not Hearers only They hunt up and down for remedies of their Distractions but will not mind the obvious Cure which is laid before them by God himself in his holy Scriptures Where it shines clearly enough if mens passions did not eclipse it from them Which are now so great and violent that it is a singular happiness if any person in this turbulent Age can see the Divine Truth himself in Points of greatest moment But to cause others to see it is a matter of such difficulty that there is small hope of it whilst they suffer their foul affections and passions like a steam from a great many Dunghils to overcast the face of Heaven whence light should come into their souls and evaporate that inward filth which is lodged in their hearts in abusive language as it were on purpose to choke the good Spirit of God which breathes in others mouths whose breasts God hath inspired with his Grace 10. But this must not discourage Gods Ministers nor hinder them from asserting their Authority which is to rule the people and not to be ruled by them To which course if we will not submit when God himself so plainly directs to it all the ways which humane policy can invent will prove ineffectual and never make a lasting union and peace among us if they make any at all But after mens ill affections which they will not root out have been laid asleep and suppressed for a time they will awake and break out again with the greater violence and make worse disorders till with the contempt of the Ministers of Religion our Religion it self be brought into such contempt that as a punishment for our disobedience to just Authority we fall under the tyranny of those who will use no moderation That 's the heavy Judgment I told you in my last Fast-Sermon threatned before the late Wars by a great and holy Divine of this Church some of whose words I have used now and then in this Discourse for this sin of disobedience unto and contempt of all Ecclesiastical Authority And whether this sin be not encreased and grown more audacious since that time and consequently our danger greater I leave you to consider and judge Only let me tell you That they who stand divided from us complain of it as well as we finding to their shame and grief as an eminent man among them expresses it * Mr. Baxter Sacril desert p. 103. c. that we are endangered by Divisions principally because the self-conceited part of the religious people will not be ruled by their Pastors but must have their way and will needs be Rulers of the Church and them The effect of which he tells them is this You have made more Papists than ever you or we are like to recover It is you that tempt them to use Fire and

a Kingdom and to have a Wife and a Whore in one and the same Family Sometimes indeed they confess the iniquity of the times as they speak may be such that a Prince of their Religion may be forced to tolerate ours and solemnly do it by compact and agreement But then they say again That he being compelled unwillingly to fall into a guilt must not willingly fall into another by confirming what he hath done when he hath power to break the agreement And they have devised several ways to free such a Prince from his obligation when he thinks fit to null what in words he seemed to establish but I shall not trouble you with them nor should I have said any thing at all of this had it not seemed to me necessary to inform you That whatsoever they may seem to give you with one hand they have devices artificially and cunningly to take away with the other Whereby they justifie what Father Deza said in a Sermon of his in praise of their Founder Ignatius Who was the mighty Angel he told them that St John saw in the x. Rev. 1. who came down from Heaven clothed with a Cloud and a Rainbow was upon his head and his face was as the Sun c. And enquiring why he was represented as clothed with a Cloud makes this answer that it signifies that he hides and conceals his generous and sublime counsels and designs and represents also the Government of our Society which manifest their effects but hide their rules and their modes or manner of acting As of old saith he a Cloud covered the Tabernacle of the Lord and the Glory of the Lord entered into it so God who hath built this Tabernacle on Earth he means the Society of the Jesuits hath with the same wisdom ordained for the preserving the honour of so holy a thing ut ejus gubernandi ratio adeo secreta esset that the reason and manner of its Government should be so secret that no man should be able to know it Which I think you see verified to the full at this day We feel the effects of their Counsels but we see not the secret Springs by which they move They are covered with a Cloud indeed and cast a mist before peoples eyes by a number of cunning distinctions crafty evasions and secret reservations wherein they instruct their Proselytes that they may be able to do the most villainous things and yet not be seen but lye concealed from the eyes of the world even when they are caught and many evidences are produced of their wickedness O my Soul will every one here be apt to say with good old Jacob come not thou into their secret unto their Assembly my Honour be not thou united xlix Gen. 6. But it is not enough to pray against their artifices we must take a more effectual course by true repentance to engage the wisdom of Heaven on our side to defeat their most crafty and subtile contrivances Else we may be cozened and gulled out of our Religion if by outward force they cannot prevail against us and return in time to our old blind devotion according to the observation of St Stephen that when the Israelites would not obey Moses then in their hearts they turned back again into Egypt and then God turned and gave them up to worship the Host of Heaven But suppose none of these things should befal us but we should keep our Religion what shall we be the better for it if we do not repent Nay how much the worse shall we grow by the abuse of his abundant Grace and so many remarkable deliverances from our Enemies which we have received There are other spiritual evils that He hath threatned to inflict upon the impenitent and are the sorest wounds the sharpest punishments that He can give with this Sword of his mouth They are such as these the withdrawing of his Grace the taking away his holy Spirit and consequently ceasing to move their hearts unto repentance denying them the helps they have had and putting no such stops to them in their evil courses as sometimes they have found but removing those things which might excite and stir them up to amendment and on the contrary permitting such as may confirm them in their contumacy whereby they become hardened and sealed up unto condemnation to be punished with everlasting destruction when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels to take vengeance on all those that know not God and obey not the Gospel of Christ These are sad and dismal things which should stir up every one of our drowsie hearts to mark and observe and lay hold upon every good motion of God's good Spirit in our hearts unto repentance lest it depart away from us and by degrees leave us insensible utterly insensible of the things belonging to our peace Which one would think should be so dear to us though we look no further than this present World that we should readily consent to any thing that will procure it and set our selves against that which obstructs it and will finally undo us And that we all confess is our heinous sins For all the power of the Devil and of Men though never so violently bent against us cannot destroy us unless we continue still in the Plot as I may call it wherein we are engaged too deeply against our selves by our wilful persisting in prophaneness filthiness contempt of Religion and of that Authority which supports it and such like sins which have brought us into that low that weak and contemptible condition in which our enemies could never have hoped to have seen us unless they had first debauched us That hath been their great craft as it was Balaam's to whose devices my Text hath a particular respect He saw clearly there was no way to prevail against Israel but by engaging them in Idolatry and Irreligion and that there was no way to engage them in that but by inticing them to Fornication So the Samaritans excellently gloss upon his Story * Apud Hotting Smegma Orientale p. 444. who introduce Balaam telling the Princes of Midian That the holy Angels surrounded Israel and the King of Heaven and Earth was with them so that neither Magick nor any thing else could prevail against them unless they admitted some infidelity or committed some grievous sin Then said he the Creator will be angry with them so that they shall perish and not one of them remain For the accomplishment of which he advised them to send the most beautiful Women in their Country among them every one of them with the Idol which She worshipped in her hands and that She should offer her self to be theirs if they would eat of her Meat drink of her Drink and worship her God This was eating things offered to Idols mentioned before my Text whereby many of them perished and the rest were saved who severely punished these enormities and thereby shewed their