A01980:309
A recovery from apostasy Set out in a sermon preached in Stepney Church near…A recovery from apostacy Set out in a sermon preached in Stepny Church neere…
A recovery from apostasy Set out in a sermon preached in Stepney Church near London at the receiving of a penitent renegado into the Church, Octob. 21. 1638. By William Gouge D.D. and min. in Black-Friars London Herein is the history of the surprisal and admirable escape of the said penitent.A recovery from apostacy Set out in a sermon preached in Stepny Church neere London at the receiving of a penitent renegado into the Church, Octob. 21. 1638. By William Gouge D.D. and min. in Black-Friers London Herein is the history of the surprizall and admirable escape of the said penitent.
London: printed by George Miller for Joshua Kirton, 1639London: printed by George Miller for Ioshua Kirton, 1639
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
1. Take notice hereby of the just cause that the true Christian Catholic Church,1 and the Orthodox Fathers of that Church had,2 to detest, and abominate, as they did, the unchristian, uncharitable, and unmerciful opinion and practise of the Novations in denying repentance to such as had once denied the Christian faith: and in refusing to admit them into the Christian Church again, though with all the testimonies ⟨p. 80⟩of penitential humiliation and contrition that they could express they desired it, and made free offer of all the satisfaction that the Church should require. Most proudly and odiously they styled themselves [Greek or Hebrew] Puritans, as if they had been forsooth the purest in the world,3 yea and they only the pure ones: whereas they are of all the most impure: denying repentance whereby sins are purged away. Their extreme severity, or rather cruelty, being directly contrary to the mind of God, our gracious and merciful Father,4 manifested in his Word by his own free and rich grace offered to penitents, by the directions given to his people to receive such, and by their constant course in entertaining such, the Catholic Church adjudged Novatus to be accounted an Heretic, and put Novatians into the Catalogue of Heretics. For bowels of mercy ought no where so to be enlarged as in the Catholic Church; that as a true mother, ⟨p. 81⟩she neither proudly insults over her children that fall, nor hardly pardons them being amended.
1. Take notice hereby of the just cause that the true Christian Catholike Church,1 and the Orthodox Fathers of that Church had,2 to detest, and abhominate, as they did, the unchristian, unchartable, and unmercifull opinion and practise of the Novations in denying repentance to such as had once denied the Christian faih: and in refusing to admit them into the Christian Church againe, though with all the testimonies