Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
judgement_n	authority_n	church_n	person_n	1,479	5	5.0691	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26967	Now or never the holy, serious, diligent believer justified, encouraged, excited and directed, and the opposers and neglecters convinced by the light of Scripture and reason / by Richard Baxter ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1662 (1662)	Wing B1320; ESTC R11592	92,411	266

Authority the Work it self I desire you but to receive what is there delivered not by any factious persons but by the Church Do this and we are agreed and satisfied And I make it my request to the Reader to peruse both Parts of that Homily that he may know how far the Church of England is from the loose conceits of the enemies of Godliness And if also you will read over the Homilies against the peril of Idolatry you will the fuller know the Judgement of the Church about the manner of Gods worship Indeed the whole Book is such as the people should be acquainted with I Have done my part to open to you the Necessity of SERIOVS DILIGENCE and to call up the sluggish souls of sinners to mind the work of their salvation and to do it SPEEDILY and with all their MIGHT I must now leave the success to God and you What use you will make of it and what you will be and do for the time to come is a matter that more concerneth your selves then me If long speaking or multitude of words were the way to prevail with you I should willingly speak here while my strength would endure and lengthen out my exhortations yet seven-fold But that 's not the way A little wearieth you You love long feasts and long visits and plays and sports much better then long Sermons or Books or Prayers But it is no small grief to us to leave you in a case of such importance without some considerable hopes of your deliverance Sirs the matter is now laid before you and much in your own hands it will not be so long What will ye now do Have I convinced you now that God and your salvation are to be sought with all your might If I have not it is not for want of evidence in what is said but for want of willingness in your selves to know the truth I have proved to you that it is a matter out of controversie unless your lusts and passions and carnal interest will make a controversie of it I beseech you tell me if you be of any Religion at all why are you not strict serious and diligent and mortified and Heavenly in that Religion which you are of Sure you will not so far shame your own Religion whatever it be as to say that your Religion is not for mortification holinesse heavenliness self-denial or that your Religion alloweth you to be ambitious covetous gluttonous drunken to curse and swear and whore and raile and oppress the innocent It is not Religion but Diabolical serpentine malignity that is for any of this It s wonderful to think that learned men and Gentlemen and men that pretend to reason and ingenuity can quietly betray their souls to the Devil upon such silly grounds and do the evil that they have no more to say for and neglect that duty that they have no more to say against when they know they must do it NOW or NEVER That while they confesse that there is a God and a life to come a Heaven and a Hell and that this life is purposely given us for preparation for Eternity while they confess that God is most wise and holy and good and just and that sin is the greatest evil and that the Word of God is true they can yet make shift to quiet themselves in an unholy sensual careless life And that while they honour the Apostles and Martyrs and Saints that are dead and gone they hate their successors and imitators and the lives that they lived and are inclined to make more Martyrs by their malicious cruelty Alas all this comes from the want of a sound belief of the things which they never saw and the distance of those things the power of passion and sensual objects and inclinations that hurry them away after present vanities and conquer reason and rob them of their humanity and by the noise of the company of sensual sinners that harden and deaffen one another and by the just judgement of God forsaking those that would not know him and leaving them to the blindness and hardness of their hearts But is there no remedy O thou the fountain of mercy and relief vouchsafe these miserable sinners a remedy O thou the Saviour of lost mankind have mercy upon these sinners in the depth of their security presumption and misery O thou the Illuminater and Sanctifier of souls apply the remedy so dearly purchased We are constrained oft to fear lest it be much long of us that should more seriously preach the awakening truths of God unto mens hearts And verily our consciences cannot but accuse us that when we are most lively and serious alas we seem but almost to trifle considering on what a message we come and of what transcendent things we speak But Satan hath got his advantage upon our hearts that should be instrumental to kindle theirs as well as on theirs that should receive the truth O that we could thirst more after their salvation O that we could pray harder for it and entreat them more earnestly as those that were loath to take a denial from God or man I must confess to you all with shame and sorrow that I am even amazed to think of the hardness of my own heart that melteth no more in compassion to the miserable and is no more earnest and importunate with sinners when I am upon such a subject as this and am telling them that it must be NOW or NEVER and when the messengers of Death within and the fame of mens displeasure from without doth tell me how likely it is that my Time shall be but short and that if I will say any thing that may reach the hearts of sinners for ought I know it must be NOW or NEVER O what an obstinate what a lamentable disease is this insensibility and hardness of heart If I were sure this were the last Sermon that ever I should preach I find now my heart would shew its sluggishness and rob poor souls of the serious fervour which is suitable to the subject and their case and needful to the desired success But yet poor sleepy sinners hear us Though we speak not to you as men would do that had seen Heaven and Hell and were themselves in a perfectly awakned frame yet hear us while we speak to you the words of truth with some seriousness and compassionate desire of your Salvation O look up to your God! Look out unto eternity Look inwardly upon your souls Look wisely upon your short and hasty Time and then bethink you how the little remnant of your Time should be employed and what it is that most concerneth you to dispatch and secure before you die Now you have Sermons and Books and Warnings It will not be so long Preachers must have done God threatneth them and death threatneth them and men threaten them and its you it s you that are most severely threatned and that are called on by Gods warnings

for Heaven all tenderness of Conscience and fear of sinning all heavenly discourse and serious preaching reading or praying are also made odious for their sakes For hearing so ill of the persons and seeing that these are the things wherein they differ from others they reduce their judgement of their practices to their foresetled judgement of the persons When their diligence in their Families in prayer and instructions in reading and fruitful improvement of the Lords day or any other actions of strictness and holy industry are mentioned these ungodly Ministers are ready to blot them with some open calumnies or secret reproaches or words of suspicion to vindicate their own unholy lives make people believe that serious piety is faction hypocrise The black tincture of their minds and the design and drift of their preaching may be perceived in the jeers and girds and slanderous intimations against the most diligent servants of the Lord. The controverted truths that such maintain they represent as errours Their unavoidable errours they represent as heresie Their duties they represent as faults and their humane frailties as enormous crimes They feign them to be guilty of the things that never entred into their thoughts And if some that have professed godliness be guilty of greater crimes they would make men believe that the rest are such and that the family of Christ is to be judged of by a Judas and the scope is to intimate that either their Profession is culpable or needless and less commendable Regeneration they would make to be but the entrance into the Church by Baptism and any further conversion then the leaving off some gross sins and taking up some heartless forms of duty to be but a fancy or unnecessary thing And they would draw poor people to believe that if they be born again Sacramentally of water they may be saved though they be not born again by the renewing of the Holy Spirit Being strangers themselves to the mystery of Regeneration and to the life of Faith and a heavenly Conversation and to the loving and serving God with all their Soul and Might They first endeavour to quiet themselves with a belief that these are but fancies or unnecessary and then to deceive the people with that by which they have first deceived them elves And it is worthy your observation what it is in Religion that these formal Hypocrites are against There are scarce any words so sound or holy but they can bear them if they be but deprived of their Life Nor scarce any duty if it be but mortified but they can endure But it is the Spirit and Life of all Religion which they cannot bear As a Body differeth from a Carkass not by the parts but by the life so there is a certain life in preaching and prayer and all other acts of worship which is perceived by several sorts of hearers The Godly perceive it to their edification and delight For here it is that they are quickned and encouraged Life begetteth life as fire kindleth fire The ungodly often perceive it to their vexation if not to their conviction and conversion This life in preaching praying discipline reproof and conference is it which biteth and galleth and disquieteth their consciences And this they kick and rail against This is the thing that will not let them sleep quietly in their sin and misery but is calling and jogging them to awake and will not let them sin in peace but will either convert them or torment them before the time It is the Life of Religion that the hypocrite wants and the life that he is most against A painted fire burneth not A dead Lion biteth not The Carkass of an Enemy is not formidable Let the words of that Sermon that most offendeth them be separated from the life and put into a Homily and said or read in a formal drowsie or a School-boys tone and they can bear it and commend it Let the same words of prayer which now they like not be said over as a lifeless customary form and they can like it well I speak not against the use of forms but the abuse of them Not against the Body but the Carkass Let forms themselves be used by a spiritual serious man in a spiritual serious manner with the inter position of any quickening exhortations or occasional passages that tend to keep them waken and attentive and make them feel what you mean and are about and you shall see they love not such animated forms It is the living Christian and lively worship and serious spiritual Religion which they hate kill it and they can bear it Let the picture of my enemy be nearer and comelier then his person was and I can endure it in my bed-chamber better then himself in the meanest dress It is the living Christians that in all parts of the world are chiefly persecuted Let them be once dead and dead-hearted hypocrites themselves will honour them especially at a sufficient distance They will destroy the living Saints and keep Holy dayes for the dead ones Wo to you Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites because ye build the Tombs of the Prophets and garnish the Sepulchers of the Righteous and say if we had been in the days of our Fathers we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the Prophets Wherefore be ye witnesses unto your selves that ye are the children of them which killed the Prophets Fill ye up the measure of your Fathers ye serpents ye generation of vipers how can ye escape the damnation of Hell Matth. 23. 29 30 31 32 33. The dog that will not meddle with the dead creature will pursue the living and when he sees it stir no more will leave it Christianity without seriousness is not Christianity and therefore not lyable to the hatred of its enemies as such Say any thing and do any thing how strict so ever if you will but act it as a player on the stage or do it coldly slightly as if you were but in jeast you may have their approbation But it is this life and seriousness and worshipping God in Spirit and Truth that convinceth them that they themselves are lifeless and therefore troubleth their deceitful peace and therefore must not have their friendship If it were the meer bulk of duty that they are weary of how comes it to pass that a Papist at his Psalter Beads and Mass-books can spend more hours without much weariness or opposition then we can do in serious worship Turn all but into words and beads and canonical hours and dayes and shews and ceremony and you may be as religious as you will and be Righteous overmuch and few will hate or reproach or persecute you among them as too precise or strict But living Christians and worship come among them like fire that burneth them and makes them smart with a word that is quick powerful sharper then any two edged sword piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit

I might hate thee and set against thy wayes BVT saith the ungodly sensualist I will never believe that God delighteth in long and earnest prayers or that he is moved by the passions or the words of men and therefore I take this but for babling which you call the serious diligence of Believers in their serving God To this impious objection I return these several answers 1. I suppose this were true as you imagine what 's this to you that serve God no way at all with any serious diligence that live in sensuality and wilful disobedience to his Laws and do more for your bodies then for your souls and for temporal things then for eternal 2. Who do you think is likest to understand Gods mind and what is pleasing to him Himself or you Is any thing more plainly commanded in Gods Word then praying with frequency fervency and importunity Luk. 18. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. 1 Thes 5. 17. Jam 5. 16. And will you tell God that he hath but dissembled with you and told you that he is pleased with that which is not pleasing to him 3. And what is the reason of your unbelief forsooth because God is not moved with humane words or passions I grant he is not But what of that Hath prayer no other use but to move God It is enough 1. That it moveth us and fiteth us to receive his mercies 2. And that God hath made it necessary to the effect and a means or condition without which he will not give thee the blessing Do you think if you judge but by natural reason that a person is as fit for a mercy that knoweth not the want or worth of it and would not be thankful for it if he had it as one that valueth it and is disposed to thankfulness and improvement And do you not know that holy prayer is nothing but the actuating of holy desires and the exercise of all those graces which are suited to the due estimation and improvement of the mercy And is it not the way when we would draw the boat to the bank to lay hold of the bank and pull as if we would draw it to the boat If God be not moved and drawn to us it is enough that we are moved and drawn to God And with all that God may give his own blessings to whom and upon what terms he please and that he hath assured us he will give them but to those that value desire and seek them and that with faith and fervency and importunity And yet I may add that God is so far above us as that his incomprehensible essence and blessed nature is very little known to us and therefore though we know and confess that he hath no humane passions or imperfections yet if he assume to himself the title of such a thing as love desire joy or wrath we must in reason believe that though these are not in God as they are in man with any imperfection yet there is something in God that cannot fitlier be represented to man nor be understood by man then by the Images of such expressions as God himself is pleased to use 3. But I beseech you hearken to Nature it self Doth it not teach all rational creatures in necessity to pray to God A storm will teach the prophanest Sea-man to pray and that with continuance and fervency The Mariners could say to Jonah in their danger What meanest thou O sleeper arise call upon thy God if so be that God will think upon us that we perish not And they themselves cryed every man unto his God Jon. 1. 5 6. When thou comest to dye and seest there is no more delay nor any more hope from the pleasures of sin or from any of thy companions or old deceits then tell me whether nature teach thee not to cry and cry mightily for pardon and mercy and help to God Then we shall hear thee crying O Mercy mercy Lord upon a miserable sinner though now thou wilt not believe that prayer doth any good I le say no more to thee of this If Nature be not conquered and Grace have not forsaken thee thou wilt be taught at home to answer this objection Sure thou canst not easily so far conquer reason as to believe that there is no God And if thou believe that there is a God thou canst not believe that he is not to be worshipped and that with the greatest seriousness and diligence Nor that he is not the giver of all that thou dost want Or that the Governour of the world regardeth not the dispositions and actions of his subjects but will equally reward the good and bad and give to all alike and have no respect to mens preparations for his reward What Heathen that believeth that there is a God doth not believe that Prayer to him is a necessary part of his worship Obj. But is not your strict observation of the Lords day a controverted thing Answ In this also I will strip thee of this excuse 1. Spend the Lords day but according to the common principles of Christianity and reason and it shall suffice Spend it but as one that loveth God better then any thing in the world and that taketh more pleasure in his service then in sin and vanity Spend it but as the necessities of thy own soul and thy families require as one that 's glad of so honourable gainful and delightful an imployment as the publick and private worshipping of God and the serious contemplation of the life to come As one that knoweth the need and benefit of having stated times for the service of God and what would come of all Religion if the Time were left to each ones will Spend it as men that put a just difference between the common business of this world and the things that concern your endless state and that have considered the proportion of one day in seven in reference to this different consequence of the work Spend it as men that have lost as much time as you have done and have need to make the best of the little that is left and that are behind hand so far in the matters of your salvation and have need to work with all your might and should be gladder of the helps of such a day then of thousands of gold and silver Spend it as those that believe that we owe God as much service as the Jews did Spend it as the Ancient Christians spent it that were wont to stay together almost from morning till night in publick worship and Communion Spend it as the Kings Declaration requireth which saith Our purpose and resolution is and shall be to take care that the Lords day be applied to holy exercises without unnecessary divertisements 2. And if yet there be any doubt in this I refer you to the judgment of the Church of England expressed in the Homily of the Time and Place of Prayer And for the Time the Name the Antiquity the