Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	believe_v	spirit_n	truth_n	2,756	5	5.4846	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44431	The almost Christian discovered, in some sermons on Acts 26, 28 with a blow at profaneness / by the R.R. Ezekiel Hopkins, late Lord Bishop of London-Derry ; to which is added the upright Christian discovered, gathered out of the judicious treatises of William Bates, D.D.	Hopkins, Ezekiel, 1634-1690.; Bates, William, 1625-1699.	1693 (1693)	Wing H2728; ESTC R13653	54,869	143

a little longer give some space try us yet once more and O Lord we will reform we will amend our sinful Lives we will perform neglected Duties and never more again return to folly Are not these Resolutions an evident Conviction Certainly you thought you had a power so to do and therefore if you do not endeavour to perform you are altogether inexcusable Secondly Did you never in your whole Lives perform a Duty unto God Did you never pray Is there any here so desperately prophane so lost to all shew of goodness that hath not done this And to what end have you prayed For what did you perform your Duty Was it not for Salvation And did you work for Salvation and yet think you had no power to work for it It is impossible Mens very Works do plainly shew that they do think that they have a power something still must be done though it be but formally slightly and coldly a mere Lord have mercy upon me a customary Lord forgive me yet something Conscience will require which men reckon upon and make account to be working out their Salvation Thirdly Wherefore is it that you trust unto and relie upon your good Works if you think you have no power to work out your Salvation Would it be so hard and difficult a matter to take men off from leaning so much upon their Works if they did not think that they had power to work out their own Salvation Men do apprehend a worth and sufficiency in what themselves do in order to Eternity and bid them forgo their Works and renounce their own Righteousness and this is a hard Saying you may almost perswade them assoon to renounce all their hopes of Heaven This is an evident Conviction whatever Notions men may entertain to stop the mouth of a clamorous Conscience when it calls on them for working and labouring yet they do not believe what they themselves speak concerning their Impotence Fourthly Did you never when the Spirit of God was dealing with your Hearts perswading you to enter upon a course of Duty and Obedience Did you never procrastinate and use delays Did you never stifle the Breathings nor quench the Motions of the Holy Spirit by thinking it was time enough to do it hereafter What need I begin so soon or vex my flesh or deny my self the Joys and Pleasures of this Life even as soon as I am come to relish them When Sickness or grey Hairs admonish me and tell me I am near unto Eternity when old Age promiseth me that the Severities of Religion shall be no long trouble then will I look after the Concernments of my Soul then it will be time enough then I will repent believe obey and work out that Salvation that will be then hastening upon me Tell me truly Have not these been the foolish Reasonings of your Hearts Have you not thus often promised God and your own Consciences And doth not this plainly imply you thought you had power to do it Wherefore thou art inexcusable O Man whoever thou art it is in vain to plead want of Power God will confute thee by thy very thoughts Hadst thou no Power Although thou hadst not yet thou thoughtest thou hadst yet wouldest not endeavour to work therefore thy Ruine is as wilful and thy Condemnation as just as if thou hadst a power and wouldst not work for thou perishest merely thro' the default of thine own Will Answ 3. Whether wicked men have this power or no to work out their own Salvation I shall not now stand to enquire but if they had it yet they would not work with it and therefore it is a most vain and insufficient Plea to pretend they wanted power Now this appears evidently because there is no wicked man that ever did so much as he was able to do by the mere strength of Nature without the assistance of supernatural Grace and therefore it is not their Inability but their wilfull Sloth that doth destroy them Do but answer your own Consciences Was there not one Duty more which you could have performed nor one Temptation nor one Corruption more which you could have resisted Could not you have prayed read or meditated upon heavenly things then when your Hearts and Thoughts have been vain worldly and sinful and devilish Might not that Time have been spent in holy Converse which you trifled away in idle impertinent Discourse or in doing nothing or that which was much worse than nothing What force what constraint is laid upon you Can you think And if you can Cannot you think of God as well as of the World as well concerning fulfilling God's Will and working out your Salvation as fulfilling your Lusts Can you not speak And if you can Can you not speak to God in holy Prayer and of the things of God in holy Discourse as well as of your Trades and Bargains those low and trivial Matters that are not worthy of Men much less of Christians What force is there upon you Doth the Devil screw open the Drunkard's Mouth and poure down his excessive and intemperate Cups whether he will or no Doth the Devil violently move the Tongue of the Swearer and Blasphemer to revile the holy and reverend Name of God Doth he strike men dumb when they should pray or deaf when they should hear or senseless when they should understand Is there any such force or constraint laid upon you May you not avoid the one and do the other if you your selves please Yes you can but you will not therefore neither would you work out your own Salvation if you could Is there any hope that you that will not do the less that God requires from you that you should ever be induced to perform the greater Let your Weakness and Impotence be what it will yet your Condemnation will lie upon you so long as your Wilfulness is much greater than your Weakness No Sinners your precious and immortal Souls will eternally perish now for want of Will to save them Pity your selves will you lose your selves for ever only out of Sloth Will you sleep your selves into Hell and go drowzily into destruction Shall one end of your Souls lie already burning as a Brand of Hell-fire and you not put forth a hand to snatch it out Is it more painful to work the Works of God than it is to perish for ever under insupportable Torments Therefore do you what you possibly can labour and sweat at Salvation rather than fail of it Let this never grate nor fret your Consciences in Hell that they lie there burning for ever merely for your wilfull Neglects SERMON VI. VVHen a man is gone far towards Christianity there are several things that make him neglect a further progress As First His groundless fancying of Difficulties and hard Encounters in the Ways of God Oh were it but as easie to be holy as sinful he were wretched that would refuse to be a Christian or were Christianity but one

advantages that things have to commend themselves to their judgments and to their hearts First Sometimes the very novelty and the strangeness of them may affect them Novelty usually breeds delight which longer custom and acquaintance doth abate and this may be given as a reason why soon after conversion the new Converts affections are drawn forth more strongly in the ways of God more than afterwards when they grow settled and stable Christians the reason is because of the very novelty of that course and way they have now entered into which affects them with delight besides the real desirableness which is in those ways themselves the very novelty doth affect them and this too may satisfie us that though many are turned aside from the truth as it is in Jesus Christ and from the way of Worship which God hath appointed us that have boasted that they have found more comfort and more sweet affections than ever in those new ways after which they have gone yet it is not because those ways have any thing in them that might yield them more comfort and delight but only because they are new ways and all new things will for the present stir up the affections but after some continuance in those ways they find their joy and their delight to slag then they seek out other new ways and commend them as much and no wonder for new ways will stir up new affections that may be one Reason why affections may be stirred up even in the unregenerate and meer carnal Men as to the things of God even from the meer novelty of them Secondly Good affections may be stirred up in Men from the very affecting nature of spiritual Objects themselves for spiritual Objects may affect us in this natural way Who can read the History of Christ's Passion without being affected with sorrow for all the sorrow he underwent he hath a heart harder than Rocks that can hear of the Agonies and Scourges and cruel Indignities offered to so innocent and excellent a Person as Christ was that suffered even for Sinners and not be moved thereby to grief and compassion and yet possibly these affections may be no other than such as would be excited from us at the reading of some Tragedy in a Romance or feigned Story Thirdly Affections may be moved by the Artificial Rhetorick of others by the great abilities of the Ministers whom we hear God tells the Prophet Ezekiel Cap. 33.32 Thou art to them as a very lovely song they may sometimes have their judgments pleased with the Learning shewn in a Sermon and their affections excited by the Oratory and powerful utterance of it but these though they are very good helps to excite our affections yet they are not true tests of spiritual affections in us Fourthly Pride and self-seeking may in the performance of duties excite our affections Men may be much deceived in this particular for instance in Prayer they may think they are affected with the things they pray for when possibly their affections may be moved only with the words themselves speak with the copious free and admirable inventive way that they pray in Whereas the contrite broken Spirit who is only moved with truly spiritual affections may not be so large and so copious in his expressions of them A true Christian may groan out a Prayer that cannot compose and make a Prayer that hath a sententious Coherence one part with another As the Ground that is fullest of precious Mines hath least grass growing upon it so sometimes in holy Duties when the heart is most full of Grace there may be least flourishing of expressions You cannot gather the truth of saving Grace from strong workings of the affections which may sometimes upon these accounts be deceitful and wicked and unregenerate Men may have Affections stirred up in them upon these grounds but then they are always vanishing and fleeting and are only permanent while the violence of some external cause doth excite them and they are always unfruitful though their affections may stir within them yet they are not efficacious to put them upon a holy Life and Conversation SERMON III. 4. EVery change that is wrought upon the Will is no certain evidence of the truth of Grace a Man may fall short of true saving Grace when there is yet a great change wrought upon the Will it is true it is the through change of the Will wherein Grace doth principally consist this is the first principal Act from the Spirit of Life without which whatsoever other change is wrought upon us it is no more than to set the hand of the Watch to the right hour when the Spring is broken The Philosophers call the Will the commanding swaying faculty of the Soul that controuls all the Inferior faculties and makes them obey its inclinations so that such as the Will is such is the whole Man And therefore the Scripture in setting forth the two-fold State of Men doth it by shewing the temper of their Wills unregenerate Men are described by their willfulness Ye will not come to me that ye might have Life 2 John 4. The People of God are described by their willingness Psal 116.3 They shall be a willing People in the Day of thy Power And here I shall endeavour two things First To shew you after what manner the Spirit of God doth work this renewing change upon the Will Secondly What other change is wrought upon it which falls short of true Grace though oftentimes it is taken for it For the first We must know that there are two ways whereby God doth effectually change the Heart and Will of a Sinner And these are Moral Swasions and Physical Determinations which is nothing else but God's All powerful Grace whereby he doth immediately turn the bent and inclination of the Will towards himself and both these do always concurr and accrue to this great change He doth first convince a Sinner and perswade him of the rationality of the ways of God of the vileness and emptiness of those vain things which his desires so eagerly pursue And on the other hand he clearly represents the Glory and Excellency of himself and his ways that he is the greatest good that we can enjoy and yet there is no other way to enjoy him but by loving and serving of him To do this he makes use of moral Swasions and works upon our reason by cogent and prevailing Arguments which at last diffuseth such Heavenly sweetness through the heart of a Christian which makes him disrelish those fulsome delights of sin that separate from that infinite Good with which it holds comparison so that he finds more true delight in God and his ways and more alluring and charming joy in them than ever he did before in sensual pleasure more are thereby carryed forth unto them by an infallible yet altogether free voluntary and amorous motion and this is done by the real efficiency likewise of the Spirit of God upon the Will and

Ghost and yet 〈◊〉 this amendment there may be no work of Regeneration for men may gather up their loose and dissolute Lives within some compass of Civility and Morality and yet be utterly strangers to this Work Much of this may be ascribed partly to convictions of God's Spirit awakening natural Conscience to see the horrour and danger of such daring and outrageous sins and partly too from Prudence gotten from frequent experience of manifold inconveniences that they brought upon themselves by such sins and both these Convictions and moral Prudence are Principles that fall very far short of true Christianity Usually all the specious Reformation and Amendment of these mens Lives is in effect either a changing of the Sin or a tiring out the Sinner First The Life may seem to be reformed when men exchange their rude and boisterous sins for such as are more demure and sober from riotous they grow worldly from prophane and irreligious they grow superstitious and hypocritical from Atheists they grow Hereticks from sins of Practice to sins of Contemplation They are apt to think certainly this change must needs be the change of their Nature when indeed it is but the change of their sins and usually it is such a change too though it render the Life more inoffensive yet it makes the Soul more incurable Austin in his 29th Epistle tells us That Vices may give place when Vert●e or Grace do not take it Secondly The Life may seem to be reformed when men are only tired out when they have out-grown their sins There are sins which are proper and peculiar to such a state and season of a man's Life upon the alteration of which they vanish and disappear Sins of Youth drop off from declining Age as misbecoming them Now this deceives men when they look 〈◊〉 to the Vanities which they have for●aken how deadned are they to those sinful ways which before they much delighted in They conclude certainly this great change must needs proceed from true Grace when they do not leave their sins so much as their sins leave them and drop off from them as rotten fruit from a Tree the faculties of their minds and members of their bodies which before were Instruments of sin and unrighteousness are now become Instruments of Morality and seeming Vertues this sets them not free from the service of sin but only restrains them from breaking out into notorious and scandalous Vices Thirdly A Civil and harmless demeanour doth not render a man altogether a Christian there be many ingenuous spirits who lived blamelesly in the world their good Natures nearly resembling Grace and such was Paul's before his conversion For he tells us As touching the Law he was blameless So the young man that came to Christ to know what Lesson he had further to take out This only argues a sweet Disposition but not a gracious Heart Thus you see how dissolute men may mistake themselves in this Work upon which their e●ernal happiness depends It is to be seared that many may rest upon these and think the great discriminating change to be wrought only because they are morally honest or gained over to a profession of Truth or to such a Party or Sect of Professors when indeed true Christianity consists not in these things This shall suffice for the first General propounded What Change may be wrought upon a man so as to bring him almost to Christianity and yet leave him short of being a Christian I shall close up this Branch with some Practical Considerations Vse 1. What then shall become of such as fall short of those that fall short of Grace that arenot so much as Almost Christians What will become of carnal loose and prophane Sinners If those that have been gazed at and admired for burning and shining Lights yet have fallen into the blackness of darkness even into the Dungeon of eternal darkness were we but serious in this Reflection it would make all our faces gather blackness and fill all our hearts with astonishment to consider that we are not gone so far in Christianity as those may go who yet fall short of Heaven Have we all been enlightened Have we all tasted of the heavenly gift and of the powers of the world to come Have we all been made partakers of the Holy Ghost Are there not many among us possibly whose hearts have never yet been touched with the sense of sin never affected with any of the ways of God that give themselves up to all wickedness with greediness who never have given so much as one serious wish towards Holiness when those that seemed to shine as Stars in Heaven shall be at last found burning in Hell Oh in what a dismall case shall these Firebrands be Vse 2. Hence likewise see what a difficult thing it is to be a true Christian May a natural Man attain to all this that I have spoken of before We may then take up that same Question which the Disciples asked Christ when he had told them that it was as case for a Camel to go through a needles Eye as for a Rich Man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Lord who then shall be saved What may those whose profession hath been eminent who have been Sainted in every Man's Kalender may they at last miscarry and perish Who then shall be saved If such be not Christians Christianity seems to be rather some fansied notion than any thing real and attainable To this we may make the same answer that Christ gave to the Disciples With Men indeed these things are impossible but with God all things are possible It is impossible for Men by their own strength and natural ability to become Christians but it is possible for God to make them Christians It is possible as Miracles themselves are possible only possible to the Almighty Power of God There is not any Soul can be perswaded to be a Christian but he hath a Miracle wrought upon him and he himself must do that which is little less than a Miracle he must act beyond the power of nature and do more than a mere Man can do therefore well may you suspect your Christianity who find it so easie a matter to be a Christian Even natural Men find it a difficult task to attain to that height and pitch where they shine in moral vertues though far short of Heaven and it is easie for you to mount far higher than they far beyond them indeed it is an easie matter for any to make a slight formal profession to run in a round of Hypocritical Duties and live a moral civil Life this is easie there is nothing miraculous in this But is it casie to pluck out the right Eye and to cut off the right Hand It is not easie to cruci●ie a darling Lust to cut off the right hand when it lifts up it self to plead for mercy and to be spared a little longer to pluck out the right eye when it drops tears to