Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	apostle_n	great_a	holy_a	2,630	5	4.2392	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62277	Concio ad clerum a sermon preach'd to the clergy at the arch-deacon's visitation, held at Huntington, May 19, 1696 ... : to which is added a preface to the clergy / by Sam. Satwell ...	Saywell, Samuel, 1651 or 2-1709.	1696 (1696)	Wing S799; ESTC R23166	26,607	48

in us as the Apostle speaks And therefore 't is no wonder if the work of a Christian be represented in holy Scripture as a hard and difficult work and that we are therein commanded and exhorted to watch to run to fight to strive to give all diligence to contend earnestly to use violence to take diligent heed to walk circumspectly to do all that in us lies to take to our selves the whole Armour of God that we may stand to and acquit our selves like Men in the great work we took upon us at our Baptism And Men have ever found That the slipping into any sinful or evil habit is easy and natural to them 't is like sliding down the Hill and swimming with the stream But the attaining any new degree of Grace and the encreasing in any habit of Piety doth require our special care pains and watchfullness Now hence we may all be sensible of the difficulty of duly and constantly minding the things of Jesus Christ and that 't is no strange thing to see good men to fail and to come short of their best purposes and resolutions Because 't is hard for them to attend stedfastly at all times to such things as are irksom and opposite to their strongest natural inclinations For Men must have something or other to please and delight themselves in or else they cannot be easy or happy in any measure Therefore till persons can arrive to such a pitch of Religion and Piety as to take delight and pleasure in the Exercises of it it must needs be difficult to them and they will so long be in immediate danger of degenerating from their holy Calling and Profession Nay of falling into grievous Sins and carelessness of living Therefore till our hearts be loosen'd and pretty well weaned from all the things that can be enjoyed in this life and until we have escaped the corruption that is in the World through the lust after worldly things as St. Peter hath it and till we are delivered from the inordinate love of whatsoever is in the World as St. John expresseth it and till with St. Paul we can count all things here as dung that we may win Christ we shall not be able so duly and stedfastly to mind and seek the things of Jesus Christ as we ought to do 2. Considering this exceeding great difficulty of always preserving so exact an innocency so fervent a zeal and so prudent a deportment in all respects as could be wished for in every Minister of Christ and remembring that there were great failings and defects amongst the Clergy even in the Primitive Times of all The World should learn to make allowances unto them and to overlook their failings as they do those of other men For they are made up of the same flesh and blood and are Men of like Passions with others They have the same lusts and corruptions to fight against that other Men have and therefore it must not be thought strange if they are Conquered sometimes though their business be to lead and teach others how to fight For you know the Commanders and Captains are often Conquer'd and slain as well as the Souldiers of common rank The Priesthood was never exempted from the fatal disasters that befal men in the spiritual Warfare nor was it ever able to preserve those that bore it from every moral blemish Though no one of the Seed of Aaron who had any obvious defect or blemish in his body was capable of the exercise of it under the Law Lev. 21. We all know what that Law aimed at and what it was to signifie to us But however in the event it was but like the rest of God's most perfect Laws rather shewing men what they ought to be than what they really are or ever have generally been And seeing by the experience of all Ages it cannot be hoped that any order or small Society of Men will continue long in this World without their remarkable defects and failings it is therefore great injustice to bespatter and deride whole Orders and Bodies of Men on the account of the personal miscarriages of some particular Members and from the faults of some Ministers and Instruments of Religion to argue against and condemn Religion it self But they are commonly bad Logicians and worse Moralists that make use of this and such like Arguments against our holy Profession And it should especially be remembred that the circumstances of the Clergy in our days are vastly different from theirs in the Primitive Times For they were to travel from place to place and we are fixed to our stations They had their maintenance provided for them quietly by the Charitable Care and Piety of the Church whereas we have to do with many untoward and unreasonable Men for the procuring of ours The very first Preachers had not Families about them to burthen and distract them as they more generally have had who have lived in the setled times of the Church They had to do with those that dreaded their spiritual Authority and highly reverenced and valued their sacred Functions we have to deal with many such as little regard the holyness of our Office or the infinite benefits that may accrew unto them by our Ministry or the dreadful Censures which Christ hath empowred his Deputies on Earth on good occasion to denounce against them They had their Divine Wisdom and Knowledge in the Mysteries of the Gospel immediately taught them by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and we gain ours only by the ordinary blessing of God upon our hard studies Prayers and tedious Meditations In their days the zeal of the Church was fresh fervent and burning whereas we live in the latter and perillous times wherein the love of many is waxen luke-warm and cold and when Men are become lovers of themselves more than lovers of God In those days both Pastours and People did generally profess the Christian Religion out of Choice love to God and Principles of Conscience but now 't is to be feared too many may do it out of Custom and Interest and meerly in complyance with the fashions of the World Then the Pastours and Ministers of the Church were chosen for their extraordinary gifts and zeal above others Now through the Corruptions that creep into the Church by little and little they are too frequently put in not for their worth but according to the Interest and Friends they can make amongst the great Men of the World be they better or worse They were to deal with a select Company of Persons who were nearly and deeply concerned for the honour of their Lord and the success of his Ministers labours But now we since the World is come into the Church especially in the loose state of affairs that we are at present in have to deal with a multitude of formal Professors of the Christian Faith whereof few have a sincere Zeal for the thriving of it and many are secret Enemies to the Establishing of it

more which occasioned that sharp contention and division which happened betwixt St. Barnabas and him that we read of Act. 15.39 and Demas quite forsook his Ministry for the love of this present World 2 Tim 4.10 we read also that there were some defects in most of the seven Angels i. e. the seven Bishops of the seven Churches in Asia Rev. Chap. 2.3 and very gross failings in those two of Sardis and Laodicea But that which is most strange of all is That this very Timothy whom St. Paul makes his special exception in this place is generally supposed to be the person whom Christ himself writes to and reproves by St. John for having forsaken his first love Rev. 2.1 for the Historians do mostly agree and 't is highly probable that he was Bishop of Ephesus at that time and when he is censured for forsaking his first love the meaning is not that he had quite lost his Charity and love to Christ but that he had abated of his first Zeal for his honour through the manifold temptations great difficulties and dangers he met with in the discharge of his office which is not a thing unlikely to happen to a person of so great virtue and holyness as he was But now if this were so as we have great reason to believe it should be a matter of special consideration and admonition to all the Bishops and Pastours of Christs Church throughout all Generations for then it will follow that this very holy Timothy himself whom St. Paul here so highly commends and distinguisheth did afterward in some measure fall under the same censure with the rest and that he did more than was fitting seek his own not the things of Jesus Christ And if together with the subtlety of our spiritual Enemies we consider the strange moveableness deceitfulness and inconstancy of Mans nature and the many unexpected difficulties surprizing accidents and temptations he is continually subject to while he is in this World and that our most natural inclinations are Enemies to us when we are in the greatest danger It will not be thought extreamly marvellous if the best and holyest of men should degenerate by degrees or fall suddenly from a state of some eminency and perfection in holyness But then it must be remembred that such as these are in a greater likely-hood than others to repent and recover themselves again upon some special admonition or other and therefore we have no reason to question but that Bishop Timothy did return to his former love and zeal for Christ upon the reproof that was given him 'T would be too tedious to mention the many Complaints that are made by God himself and the great failings that are recorded in his word of the Priests under the law and 't would be endless and nauseous to reckon up the defects and miscarriages of the Bishops and Governours of the Church that are to be found in the Ecclesiastical Historians Grievous likewise are the complaints that are made of the Clergy of their own times by such holy men as St. Chrysostom S. Salvian Gregory the Great St. Bernard Petrarch and many others And there is nothing more remarkable of this kind than what we meet with in the little work of our own Countryman Gildas for 't is a most dismal account that he gives of the Corruption of the British Clergy a little before this Island was over run and destroyed by the Saxons But I shall wave all these and such like ungrateful matters and proceed to make but two Observations from what hath been already said on this second general 1. We may hence observe how very apt Mans Nature is to degenerate and swerve from the ways of God and how difficult a matter 't is for us constantly and duly to attend to spiritual things i. e. to the things of Jesus Christ And if there were no other Arguments to prove the corruption of humane nature yet the very observing how constantly all Orders and Societies of Men are apt to fall away from the wise and pious Laws and strict Rules given them by their first Formers and Founders is enough to convince us of it and the Bodies of Men are scarce more apt to corrupt and turn noy some after their Souls are departed from them than their minds are to alter and be corrupted if they are not carefully watched and continually seasoned with God's grace But the grace of God is not to be obtained but by the use of such means as are proper to cultivate our Souls and to preserve and renew the spirit of God in them Hence appears the necessity of reading hearing meditating and taking an account of our own actions inward as well as outward the frequent and serious confession of our Sins constant Prayers and the often renewing of our Covenant with God in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper For by the frequent and due use of such holy Exercises as these the Souls of Men are season'd with God's Spirit as all the Sacrifices were to be seasoned with Salt under the Law Lev. 2.13 and by the due use of these means we shall always have spiritual Salt in our selves as Christ admonisheth us of the Clergy especially to have Mar. 9.50 and we shall be able to present our Souls and Bodies as sound and living Sacrifices which are the reasonable services which God now requires of us under the Gospel Rom. 12.1 and all our actions and speeches will become sound and savoury according to the Apostles advice Col. 4.6 and Tit. 2.8 But if these Exercises be performed after a dead careless and lifeless manner they will be but like dead salt neither that hath lost its saltness and they will not afford Virtue enough to season our selves and our own services much less will they fit us to season others Therefore it should ever be remembred that we are every way and on all accounts so lyable to degenerate and to be corrupted without a continual and strict watch over our selves that even those which should be our best and choicest services may be so far from being acceptable to God that they may become offensive and loathsome to him And we must ever take it for an undoubted truth that the graces of God's holy Spirit such as Faith Hope and Charity do not naturally breed in or grow up out of the hearts of men but that the seeds of them must first be sown by God's Husbandry and that they must be continually cherished and watered by Man's Care and Industry together with the continued influence of God's Spirit which he is always ready to give to such as rightly use the means that he hath appointed and made proper to those purposes Nay the mind of Man is not only born a stranger to all spiritual objects and divine Revelations but there is also in us by nature a great averseness to all such holy dispositions from whence the habits of Christian Graces are to arise and by which Christ is to be formed