Selected quad for the lemma: love_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
love_n	lord_n	love_v	saint_n	5,636	5	6.4232	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27065	The vain religion of the formal hypocrite, and the mischief of an unbridled tongue (as against religion, rulers, or dissenters) described, in several sermons, preached at the Abby in Westminster, before many members of the Honourable House of Commons, 1660 ; and The fools prosperity, the occasion of his destruction : a sermon preached at Covent-Garden / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Fools prosperity.	1660 (1660)	Wing B1448; ESTC R13757	102,825	412

think you will not If you are such as you profess you are all Saints and shall be saved If any of your be not such they can be nothing else but Hypocrites Seeing therefore that you are all either Saints or Hypocrites come now to the bar and refuse not a tryal that may prevent the errors of another kind of tryal that you cannot refuse And here let me set before you your Profession and then try your selves Whether you are such as you profess your selves to be or not And I think I may take it for granted that the Articles of the Creed and the B●ptismal Covenant is the least that every one of you do profess and that the desires implyed in the Petitions of the Lords Prayer you all profess to be your own desires and that you take the 〈◊〉 Command●ments for part of the rule of your obedience Let us peruse them briefly in the several parts 1. Do you not all say that you Believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and earth and that you will have no other gods but him and are you not accordingly engaged in Covenant with him you will not deny it And what is the meaning of this much of your profession It is no less then to take God for the only infinite good to be loved with the chiefest love and to take him for your absolute Lord and Governour the Owner of you and all you have to whom you owe universal absolute obedience and that you are truly willing to love him above all and fear him and trust him and obey him accordingly though your flesh and all the world should be against it He that meaneth not all this doth dissemble or lye when he saith he taketh God to be his God For to be God is to be this much to us And really is it thus with you as you profess speak but as men that dare not lye before the Lord that knows your hearts Do you indeed Love God as God with your superlative love Are your hearts set upon him Do you make it your principal care to please him Is it your delight to do his will Is it sweeter to you to think and speak of him then of the world Doth it grieve you most to offend him In a word you are not such strangers to Nature but you know what love is And you are not such strangers to your own hearts but you know what it is to love your pleasure your profit your honour and your friend can conscience say before the Lord that you love him better then all these if not more passionately yet more deeply effectually and resolvedly with a love that will cause you to deny and part with all for him If you thus truly love him as God and above all how comes it to pass that you seek the world more carefully and eagerly then him and that you are more pleased with worldly thoughts and speeches and employments then with divine were not the Hypocrite justly blinded and a willfull stranger to himself he could not but know that he loveth not God as God and above all And to love him in subordination to your flesh and its contents is not at all to love him as God As it is no degree of conjugal love to love a wife but as a servant nor no degree of the love due to your Soveraign to love him as an equal or as a slave And if really you take God for your absolute Lord and Governour why is it then that you take no pleasure in his Laws but count them too strict and had rather be at your own dispose why is it that you obey your fleshly desires before and against the God whom you acknowledge why will you not be perswaded to that holiness justice and charity which you know his Law commandeth you why do you willfully continue in those sins which conscience tells you God forbids will you live in willfull disobedience and love your sins and loath your duty and obstinately continue thus and yet profess that you take God for your God and consequently for your Lord and Governour and yet will you not confess that you are dissembling Hypocrites 2. Do you not all profess that you believe in Jesus Christ and have you not in Covenant taken him for your Saviour and Lord And do you so indeed or do you not play the Hypocrites If you believe in Christ and take him for your Saviour you then take your sins for the disease and misery of your souls and you are so grieved for them and weary of them and humbled in the apprehension of your lost estate that you fly to Christ as your only refuge from the wrath and curse of the offended Majesty and value his justifying and healing grace before all the riches of the world and you are willing to take his bitterest medicines and use the means appointed by him for the destruction of your sin and the perfecting of his graces And is it thus with you that have unhumbled hearts that never felt the need of Christ as condemned miserable men must do and that love the sin that he would cure and are unwilling to be mortified and sanctified by his grace Unless a carkass be a man such Hypocrites as these are no true Christians and have but a seeing self-deceiving faith 3. Do you not all profess to believe in the Holy Ghost and are you not engaged to him in Covenant as your Sanctifier And do you not grosly play the Hypocrites here If not how comes it to pass that you stick in your natural state as if you had no need of sanctification and live as quietly without any acquaintance with true Regeneration and the Spirit to dwell and rule within you as it you needed no such change Or else that you take up with a Formal an affected or a forced kind of Religion in stead of Sanctification and spiritual devotion And how comes it to pass that you distaste the highest degrees of holiness and that you will not be brought to the mortification self-denyal and unreserved obedience which are the essence of sanctification As for the more deboist prophane sort of Hypocrites that make a common mock of godliness and scorn at the very name of Holiness and Sanctification and deride at all that pretend to have the Spirit I had rather tremble at the thought of their misery then now stand to reprove that notorious hypocrisie which professeth to believe in the Holy Spirit which they deride and Covenanteth with the Sanctifier while they hate and mock or at least do obstinately refuse sanctification When God himself tells us Rom. 8. 9. That if any man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his And therefore to deride a man for professing that he hath the Spirit is to deride him for professing to be a Christian 4. Do you not all profess to Believe the Holy Catholick Church that is that Christ hath a people dispersed through the

the Chappel of a Saint in Pilgrimage in carrying about them a bone or some other supposed relict of a supposed Saint In confessing their sins so often to a Priest and doing penance if he impose it on them And so while they live in whoredom or drunkenness or swearing or lying or all these and many other such it is but confessing and doing penance and to it again on which account whatever some of them say for the necessity of contrition it is usual with them to venture upon the sins of whoredom drunkenness and the rest because they have so easie and cheap a remedy at hand And therefore I wonder not that among Infidels who after Baptism Apostatize to deny the holy Scriptures and the immortality of the soul and the life to come and among common swearers and cursers and whoremongers and drunkards the Papists find their labours most successeful and that no fish will so easily take their bait Nor do I wonder that it is a point of the Popish faith that none but the Children of the Devil that are void of the love of God and are unjustified can possibly turn Papists For they tell us that all are such till they are Papists saving that they are many of them for the salvation of heathens A poor wretch that is captivated to his odious lusts and goes under a galled accusing conscience will be content to take a Popish cure and quiet his soul with a few complements and formalities But to bring one of these men to a through conversion to a true humiliation to a deep hatred of all sin and a love of holiness to close with Christ as his only refuge from the wrath of God and to give up himself without any reservation and all that he hath to the will and service of the Lord to love God as his portion and the infinite transcendent good to take all the honour and riches of the world as loss and dung and use all in due subserviency to everlasting happiness to crucifie the flesh and mortifie all his earthly inclinations and live a life of self-denyal and to walk with God and serve him as a Spirit in spirit and in truth and to keep a watch over thoughts affections words and deeds to live by faith upon a world and happiness that is to us unseen and to live in preparation for their death and wait in hope to live with Christ this is Christianity and true Religion and this is it that they will not so easily be brought to It s easier to make an hundred Papists then one true regenerate Christian Children can make them a baby of clouts And the statuary can make a man of Alabaster or stone But none can give life which is essential to a man indeed but God There needeth the Spirit of the living God by a supernatural operation and a kind of new creation to make a man a real holy Christian But to bring a man to make such a congee or wear such a vesture or say such and such words and make to himself a mimical Religion this may be done without any such supernatural work O therefore take heed of cheating your souls by hypocritical formalities instead of the life and power of Religion Vse 2. ANd now O that the Lord of life would help me so to apply this truth and help you so to apply it to your selves that it might be as a light set up in the Assembly and in all your consciences to undeceive the miserable self-deceivers and to bring poor Hypocrites into some better acquaintance with themselves and to turn their seeming Vain Religion into that which is real and serious and saving And now I am to search and convince the Hypocrite I could almost wish that all the upright tender souls that are causelesly in doubt of their own sincerity were out of the congregation lest they should misapply the Hypocrites portion to themselves and think it is their case that I am describing as it is usual with ignorant patients especially if they be a little melancholy when they hear or read the description of many dangerous diseases to think that all or some of them are theirs because they have some symptomes very like to some of those which they hear or read of Or lest their fearful souls should be too much terrified by hearing of the misery of the Hypocrite as a fearful child that 's innocent will cry when he sees another whipt that 's faulty But if thou wilt stay and hear the Hypocrites examination I charge thee poor humbled drooping soul that thou do not misunderstand me nor think that I am speaking those things to thee that are meant to the falshearted enemies of the Lord and do not imagine that thou art condemned in his condemnation nor put not thy self under the stroaks that are given him but rejoyce that thou art saved from this state of self-deceit and misery And that thou mayst have some shelter for thy conscience against the storm that must fall on others look back on the foregoing description of the Hypocrite and thou mayst find that thou hast the saving graces which I there discovered him to want Let these at present be before thine eyes and tell thee Thou art not the person that I mean 1. Thou art humbled to a loathing of thy self for thy transgressions 2. Thou art willing to give up thy self to Christ without reserve that as thy Saviour he may cure thy miserable soul upon his own terms 3. The favour of God is dearer to thee then the favour of the world or the pleasures and prosperity of sinners and thou longest more to love him better and to feel his love then for any of the honours or advancements that flesh and blood desire 4. It is the life to come that thou takest for thy portion and preferest before the matters of this transitory life 5. Thy Religion employeth thee about thy heart as much as about the out side and appearing part It is heart-sins that thou observest and lamentest and a better heart that thou daily longest and prayest and labourest for 6. Thou livest not in any gross and deadly sin and thou hast no infirmity but what thou longest and labourest to be rid of and goest on in the use of Christs holy means and remedies for a cure 7. Thou dislikest not the highest degree of holiness but lovest it and longest after it and hadst rather be more holy then be more honourable or more rich 8. Thou unfeignedly lovest the image of Christ on the souls of all his servants where thou canst discern it and seest a special excellency in a poor humble heavenly Christian though never so low or despicable in the world above all the pompe and splendor of the earth and thou lovest them with a special love and the holier they are the better dost thou love them 9. Thou lovest the most convincing searching Sermons and wouldest fain have help to know the worst that is in thy

at as the only dissemblers of the world You must not only be honest but patiently expect to be accounted dishonest you must not only bewise and sober but patiently expect to be accounted fools and mad men You must not only be liberal charitable and contemners of the world but patiently expect to be called covetous even though you give away all that you have You must not only be chaste and temperate but also patiently expect to be defamed as incontinent and licentious and as Christ was called a wine-bibber a friend of Publicans and sinners A Minister must not only lay out himself wholly for the saving of mens souls and spend himself and all that he hath on his Masters work but also patiently expect to be accounted unfaithful cove●ous and negligent and murmured at by almost all whose unreasonable desires he doth not answer and be censured by almost all whose wills and humours he doth not fulfill and that is most that have a self that ruleth at home and therefore they think should be the Idol of others as it is their own and that are but unacquainted with the reasons of those things that do displease them It s little comfort to us to do good if we cannot bear the estimation of doing evil and cannot lose all the observation acknowledgement and applause of man as if we had never done the good at all It is far from Christian perfection to be honest and godly and sincere if we must needs be accounted to be as we are and cannot patiently be esteemed dishonest ungodly and hypocritical and be judged worst when we are best what have the servants of Christ lost their lives for in flames and by other sorts of torments but for the best of their service and greatest of their piety and fidelity When dogs bark at passengers commonly it signifieth but two things viz. that they are persons that they know not or that they hate but it is no sign that the persons are bad or poor or sick For be they never so bad and miserable if they know them and love them the dogs will not bark at them See that thou be not an Hypocrite and then it must be accounted a small matter by thee to be called an Hypocrite yea if persons that fear God themselves shall so esteem thee it is no other affliction but what thou must be armed for and patiently undergo Even from the godly through mistake we oft suffer most for our greatest duties and are censured most for that which God and conscience most approve us for and lose our reputations for that which God would be greatly offended with us if we did otherwise As ever then you would not prove your selves Hypocrites see that you look not for the Hypocrites reward as Christ calls it Matth. 6. 2. which is to be approved of men be they good or bad men their overvalued applause may be but the Hypocrites reward To be content and patient in doing well and being judged to do ill and in being good and being judged to be bad is the property of him that is sincere indeed therefore to be unthankfully requited and reviled and spit upon and buffeted and shamefully used and put to death even by those whose lives and souls he had with greatest care and condescension pittied this was the pattern of love and self-denyal that was set us by our Lord. And though we cannot reach his measure and distempered Christians find much strugling before they can bring themselves to patience under such ingratitude and unworthy usage from the world especially from their mistaken froward brethren yet in some prevailing measure it must be done For he that cannot serve God without the Hypocrites reward is but an Hypocrite If he will not be a Christian obedient charitable diligent faithful for heaven and the pleasing of God alone he is not a Christian indeed And alas what a pittiful reward is it to be thought well of and applauded by the tongues of mortal men How few were ever the more holy by applause but thousands have been hurt if not undone by it Thou givest all thou hast to the poor thou spendest thy self wholly and all that thou hast for the service of God and the good of others Its well it must be so But after all thou art censured slandered vilified and unthankfully and unmannerly used And what of that what harm dost thou fear by it what advantage thy pride and selfishness might have taken even by due applause and thankfulness its easie to perceive But now the temptation is taken out of thy way thou art secluded from all creature-comforts and so art directed and almost forced to look up to the love of God alone Now thou hast no other reward before thee it s easier to look singly on the Saints reward When God hath no competitour to whom else then canst thou turn thy thoughts when all others abuse thee it is easiest to have recourse to him When earth will scarce afford thee any quiet habitation thou 'lt surely look to heaven for rest Thus much I thought meet to interpose here for the confirmation of the sincere on occasion of the worlds unjust accusations and so to perswade them to be satisfied in the portion of the sincere I now return again to the self-deceiver ANd here I shall conclude all with these two requests to you which as one that foreseeth the approaching misery of self-deceivers I earnestly intreat you for the sake of your immortal souls that you will not deny me The first is that you will be now but as willing to try your selves as I have been to help you and as diligent and faithful when you are alone in calling your own hearts to a close examination as I have been to hold the light here to you O refuse not delay not to withdraw your selves sometimes from the world and set your selves as before the eye of God and there bethink your selves whether you have been what you have vowed and profest to be and whether that God hath been dearest to your hearts and obeyed in your lives and desired as your happiness who hath been confessed and honoured with your lips Consider there that God judgeth not as man nor will he think ever the better of you for thinking well of your selves and that there must go more to prove your approbation with God then commonly goes to keep up your reputation in the world The Religion that serveth to honour you before men and to deceive your selves will never serve to please the Lord and save your souls And the day is at hand when nothing but God can give you comfort and when self-deceivers will become everlastingly self-tormentors O therefore go willingly and presently to the Word to your lives and hearts and consciences and try your selves and try again and that with moderate suspicion that in so great a business you may not be deceived and be self-deceivers 2. My second request is that if you do

texts before cited and abundance such Christ will be a Saviour but he is the Saviour of his body and not of the affixed hypocrites Eph. 5. 23. And his body is the Church which is subject to him ver 24. He will save to the utmost but whom even all that come to God by him Heb. 7. 25. but not those that make the world their God and would put God off with a few running heartless words and duties It is the living fruitful branches that he will save but the withered branches he casteth forth to be burned in the fire Joh. 15. 2 6 7. No man can serve God and Mammon nor live both to the Spirit and the flesh he that hath two hearts hath none that 's acceptable unto God he that hath two faces a face of devotion in his formal customary services and a face that smiles on the world and fleshly pleasures when he hath done hath none that God will ever smile upon The leaves of the barren fig-tree saved it not from the curse of Christ Matth. 21. 18 19. Hew it down and cast it into the fire shall be the sentence of the most flourishing tree that 's fruitless Luk. 13. 7. The earth that drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed receiveth blessing from God but that which beareth thorns and bryers is rejected and is nigh to cursing whose end is to be burned Heb. 6. 7 8. So that if thy Religion be vain the blood of Christ and all the treasures of his grace will be vain to thee that are saving unto others An Infidel may then as well expect to be saved by the Christ whom he rejected as thou Nay it is Christ himself that will condemn thee It is his own mouth that will say to such as thee Depart from me ye that work iniquity And though thou couldest say Lord Lord I have Prophesied or cast out devils or done many wonderful works in thy Name he will profess to thee that he never knew thee or owned thee Matth. 7. 22 23. If crying would then serve I know thou wouldst not spare thy cryes But he must so pray as to be accepted and heard on earth that looks to be accepted and regarded then when the miserable soul with endless horrours in its eye is looking round about for help and findeth none when all the creatures say We cannot and he that can shall say I will not who can apprehend the calamity of such a soul What soul so sleepy and regardless now that will not then cry Lord Lord open to us when the door is shut and it is too late Matth. 25. 10 11 12. Then if thou roar in the anguish of thy soul and cry out to him that saveth others Condemn me not O Lord but save me also Now Lord have mercy on a miserable sinner save me or I am lost for ever save me or I must burn in yonder flames Turn not thy heart against an undone perishing soul If thou cast me off I have no hope A thousand such cryes would be in vain because thou hadst but a vain Religion Prov. 1. 24 c. Because I have called and ye refused I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded but ye have set at nought all my counsel and would none of my reproof I also will laugh at your calamity I will mock when yonr fear cometh when your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind when distress and anguish cometh upon you Then shall they call upon me but I will not answer they shall seek me early but they shall not find me Therefore they shall eat of their own way and be filled with their own devices saith the Lord. And when hell hath once taken thee into its possession if thou cry and roar there ten thousand millions of ages it will be all in Vain Thy strongest and thy longest cryes cannot procure thee a drop of water to cool thy tongue tormented in those flames Luke 16. 24 25 26. In a word if thy Religion be Vain all 's Vain to thee Thy life it self is Vain Eccles 6. 12. thou walkest in a Vain shew Psal 39. 6. Thou disquietest thy self in Vain in all thy labours Psal 39 6. and 127. 1 2. and vanity and vexation is all that thou shalt possess Eccles 1. 2 14. Prov. 22. 8. And if conscience when thy day of grace is past shall force thee upon the review to say My piety was but seeming and self-deceit and all my Religion was Vain it will be the voice of utter desperation and will stab the heart of all thy hopes This and no better being the self-deceivers case is not conscience now at work within you and asking as each of the Disciples did Mat. 26. 24 25. Is it I If thou have a heart within thee beseeming a reasonable creature by this time thou art afraid of self-deceit and willing to be searched and to know thy hypocrisie while it may be cured For my part I shall pronounce no one of you personally to be an hypocrite as knowing that hypocrisie is a sin of the heart which in it self is seen by none but God and him that hath it But my business is only to help such to know and judge themselves Could I name the man to you in the Congregation that had none but a seeming vain Religion I am perswaded you would all look upon him as a most unhappy deplorable wretch Alas sirs Hypocrites are not so rare among us as some imagine There are few or none but Saints and Hypocrites in this Assembly or in most of the Assemblies in the land I think here are none that make not a profession of the Christian faith and of love to God All therefore that have not this faith and love must needs be Hypocrites as professing to be what they are not In your baptism you engaged and profest your selves the Disciples of Christ and gave up your selves in solemn Covenant to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost This Covenant you will say you stand to yet none of you will be known to have renounced your Christianity As Christians you use to come to these Assemblies and here to attend God in the use of his Ordinances and some of you to renew your Covenant with him in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper I meet with none that will say I am no Christian nor a servant of the God of Heaven I am an Infidel and Rebell against the Lord. I think there is none of you but would take it ill if I should call you such or should deny you to be Christians and men fearing God If therefore you are not such indeed you must needs be Hypocrites What say you Is there any of you that profess your selves to be ungodly unbelievers and servants of the Devil and will take this as your current title disclaiming the love and service of the Lord I