Selected quad for the lemma: love_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
love_n	grace_n	great_a	soul_n	4,875	5	4.7291	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62601	A sermon preach'd before the King and Queen at Hampton-Court, April the 14th, 1689 by John Tillotson ...	Tillotson, John, 1630-1694.	1689 (1689)	Wing T1238; ESTC R9503	13,346	37

from the People in an unknown Tongue and this as they pretend upon a very charitable consideration onely it is to be hop'd that it is not true that the generality of Mankind are mad and have need to be kept in the dark But supposing men to be allowed those means of knowledge which God affords and hath appointed for us the great difficulty doth not commonly lye in mens Understandings but in their Wills Onely when men know these things they must attend to them and consider them that the light which is in their Understandings may warm their Hearts and have its due influence upon their Lives II. The due care of our Souls consists in the frequent Examination of our lives and actions and in a sincere Repentance for all the errours and miscarriages of them In a more particular and deep humiliation and repentance for deliberate and wilfull sins so far as we can call them to our remembrance and in a general repentance for sins of Ignorance and Infirmity and Surprize In the exercise whereof we are always to remember that the nature of true Repentance doth not consist onely in an humble confession of our sins to God and a hearty trouble and contrition for them but chiefly in the stedfast purpose and resolution of a better life and in prosecution of this resolution in actual reformation and amendment By the constant exercise hereof we are put into a safe condition provided that we persevere in this holy resolution and course But if we still retain the love and practice of any known sin or if after we have taken up these good resolutions we return again to an evil course this is a clear evidence either that our Repentance was not sincere at first or that we are relaps'd into our former state And then our Souls are still in apparent danger of being lost and will continue in that dangerous state till we have renew'd our Repentance and made it good in the following course of our lives III. The due care of our Souls consists in the constant and daily exercise of piety and devotion both in private and in publick if there be opportunity for it especially at proper times and upon more solemn occasions By servent prayer to God and by hearing and reading the Word of God with reverence and godly fear By frequenting his publick Worship and demeaning our selves in it with that solemnity and seriousness which becomes the prefence and service of the great and glorious Majesty of God who observes our behaviour and sees into our hearts And by receiving the B. Sacrament as often as we have opportunity with due preparation and devotion of mind For these are not onely outward testimonies of our inward piety but they are means likewise appointed by God to improve and confirm us in holiness and goodness And whoever neglects these Duties of Religion or performs them in a slight and superficial manner doth plainly shew that he hath neither a due sense of God nor care of himself For in vain does any man pretend that he does in good earnest design the End when he neglects the best and most proper means for the attainment of it IV. The due care of our Souls consists also in avoiding those things which are pernicious to our Salvation and whereby men do often hazard their Souls Such in general is the practice of any known Sin. By this we do as it were run upon the swords point and do endanger our Salvation as much as a deep wound in our Body would do our Life And though such a wound may perhaps be cur'd afterwards by Repentance yet no man that commits any wilfull Sin knows the dismal consequence of it and whither by degrees it may carry him at last For upon such a provocation God may leave the Sinner to himself and withdraw his grace from him and give him up to a hard and impenitent heart to proceed from evil to worse and from one wickedness to another till he be finally ruin'd So dangerous a thing is it knowingly to offend God and to commit any deliberate act of Sin. More particularly an inordinate love of the World is very pernicious to the Souls of men because it quencheth the heavenly life and fills our minds with earthly cares and designs it tempts men to forsake God and Religion when their worldly interests come in competition with them and betrays them to fraud and falsehood and all kind of injustice and many other hurtfull lusts which drown the Soul in perdition But besides these dangers which are more visible and apparent there is another which is less discernable because it hath the face of Piety and that is Faction in Religion By which I mean an unpeaceable and uncharitable zeal about things wherein Religion either doth not at all or but very little consist For besides that this temper is utterly inconsistent with several of the most eminent Christian Graces and Vertues as humility love peace meekness and forbearance towards those that differ from us it hath likewise two very great mischiefs commonly attending upon it and both of them pernicious to Religion and the Souls of men First that it takes such men off from minding the more necessary and essential parts of Religion They are so zealous about small things the tithing of mint and anise and cummin that they neglect the weightier things of the Law Faith and Mercy and Judgment and the Love of God They spend so much of their time and heat about things doubtfull that they have no leisure to mind the things that are necessary And are so concern'd about little Speculative Opinions in Religion which they always call fundamental Articles of Faith that the Practice of Religion is almost wholly neglected by them And they are so taken up in spying out and censuring Errour and Heresy in others that they never think of curing those Lusts and Vices and Passions which do so visibly reign in themselves Deluded people that do not consider that the greatest Heresy in the World is a wicked life because it is so directly and fundamentally opposite to the whole design of the Christian Faith and Religion And that do not consider that God will sooner forgive a man a hundred defects of his Understanding than one fault of his Will. Secondly another great mischief which attends this temper is that men are very apt to interpret this zeal of theirs against others to be great Piety in themselves and as much as is necessary to bring them to Heaven and to think that they are very Religious because they keep a great stir about maintaining the Out-works of Religion when it is ready to be starv'd within and that there needs no more to denominate them good Christians but to be of such a Party and to be listed of such a Church which they always take for granted to be the onely true one and then zealously to hate and uncharitably to censure all the rest of Mankind How many are

it to the end If thou dost well saith God to Cain shalt thou not be accepted And again Say ye to the righteous it shall be well with him for they shall eat the fruit of their doings Wo unto the wicked it shall be ill with him for the reward of his hands shall be given him And in the Gospel when the young man came to our Saviour to be instructed by Him what good thing he should do that he might inherit eternal life our Lord gives him this short and plain advice If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments And in the very last Chapter of the Bible we find this solemn declaration Blessed are they that do his commandments that they may have right to the Tree of Life and enter in through the Gates into the City that is into Heaven which the Apostle to the Hebrews calls the City which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. So vain and groundless is the imagination of those who trust to be saved by an idle and ineffectual Faith without holiness and obedience of life II. I proceed now in the Second place to convince us all if it may be of the necessity of minding Religion and our Souls When we call any thing necessary we mean that it is so in order to some End which cannot be attained without it We call those things the necessaries of Life without which men cannot subsist and live in a tolerable condition in this World And that is necessary to our eternal happiness without which it cannot be attain'd Now happiness being our chief End whatever is necessary to that is more necessary than any thing else and in comparison of that all other things not onely may but ought to be neglected by us Now to convince men of the necessity of Religion I shall briefly shew That it is a certain way to happiness That it is certain that there is no other way but this And that if we neglect Religion we shall certainly be extremely and for ever miserable First That Religion is a certain way to happiness And for this we have God's express Declaration and Promise the best assurance that can be He that cannot lye hath promised eternal life to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality All the happiness that we can desire and of which the nature of man is capable is promised to us upon the terms of Religion upon our denying ungodliness and worldly lusts and living soberly and righteously and godlily in this present world A mighty reward for a little service an eternity of happiness of joys unspeakable and full of glory for the diligence and industry of a few days A happiness large as our wishes and lasting as our Souls Secondly 'T is certain also that there is no other way to happiness but this He who alone can make us happy hath promised it to us upon these and no other terms He hath said That if we live after the flesh we shall die but if by the spirit we mortifie the deeds of the flesh we shall live That without holiness no man shall see the Lord And that he that lives in the habitual Practice of any Vice of Covetousness or Adultery or Malice or Revenge shall not enter into the kingdom of God And we have reason to believe Him concerning the terms of this happiness and the means of attaining it by whose favour and bounty alone we hope to be made partakers of it And if God had not said it in his Word yet the nature and reason of the thing doth plainly declare it For Religion is not only a condition of our happiness but a necessary qualification and disposition for it We must be like to God in the temper of our minds before we can find any felicity in the enjoyment of him Men must be purged from their Lusts and from those ill-natur'd and devilish Passions of Malice and Envy and Revenge before they can be fit company for their heavenly Father and meet to dwell with him who is love and dwells in love Thirdly If we neglect Religion we shall certainly be extreamly and for ever miserable The Word of Truth hath said it that indignation and wrath tribulation and anguish shall be upon every soul of man that doth evil Nay if God should hold his hand and should inflict no positive torment upon sinners yet they could not spare themselves but would be their own Executioners and Tormentors The guilt of that wicked Life which they had led in this World and the Stings of their own Consciences must necessarily make them miserable when-ever their own Thoughts are let loose upon them as they will certainly be in the other World when they shall have nothing either of pleasure or business to divert them So that if we be concern'd either to be happy hereafter or to avoid those Miseries which are great and dreadful beyond all imagination it will be necessary for us to mind Religion without which we can neither attain that Happiness nor escape those Miseries All that now remains is to perswade you and my self seriously to mind this one thing necessary And to this end I shall apply my Discourse to two sorts of Persons those who are remiss in a matter of so great concernment and those who are grosly careless and mind it not at all First To those who are remiss in a matter of such vast concernment Who mind the business of Religion in some degree but not so heartily and vigorously as a matter of such infinite consequence doth require and deserve And here I fear the very best are greatly defective and so much the more to be blamed by how much they are more convinc'd than others of the necessity of a Religious and Holy Life and that without this no man shall ever be admitted into the Mansions of the Blessed They believe likewise that according to the degrees of every mans holiness and vertue in this Life will be the degrees of his happiness in the other that he that sows sparingly shall reap sparingly and he that sows plentifully shall reap plentifully and that the measure of every man's reward shall be according to his improvement of the Talents that were committed to him But how little do men live under the power of these convictions And notwithstanding we are allur'd by the most glorious promises and hopes and aw'd by the greatest fears and urg'd by the most forcible argument in the world the evident necessity of the thing Yet how faintly do we run the Race that is set before us How frequently and how easily are we stop'd or diverted in our Christian course by very little temptations How cold and how careless and how inconstant are we in the Exercises of Piety and how defective in every part of our Duty Did we act reasonably and as Men use to do in matters of much less moment we could not be so indifferent about a