A02178:1599
The works of the reverend and faithful servant of Jesus Christ M. Richard Greenham,…The workes of the reuerend and faithfull seruant af Iesus Christ M. Richard Greenham,…
The works of the reverend and faithful servant of Jesus Christ M. Richard Greenham, minister and preacher of the Word of God collected into one volume: revised, corrected, and published, for the further building of all such as love the truth, and desire to know the power of godliness. By H.H.The workes of the reuerend and faithfull seruant af Iesus Christ M. Richard Greenham, minister and preacher of the Word of God collected into one volume: reuised, corrected, and published, for the further building of all such as loue the truth, and desire to know the power of godlinesse. By H.H.
London: printed by Thomas Snodham and Thomas Creede for William Welby, 1612London: printed by Thomas Snodham and Thomas Creede for VVilliam VVelby, 1612
Part 2 › Treatise 2: THE SECOND TREATISE, BELONGING TO THE COMFORT OF AN AFFLICTED CONSCIENCE.
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.
And surely though1 the wisdom of the flesh persuadeth us that nothing is better than to be spared, and not to be espied when the Lord calleth us to reckoning; yet the spirit showing our desperate estate, without the sieve of affliction, and bolter of adversity, teacheth us that we cannot of all the blessings of God sufficiently esteem this, being the mother of humility, and nurse of true repentance. Again, the Lord often by inward temptations and outward crosses, draweth us from the stake of security and untowardness to good works; least in time we should loose the experience of our knowledge and faith in Christ, and seek some easier kind of life for flesh and blood. Neither can we truly repent, until by some cross we know this world to be a place of sorrow, and not of mirth and delight. For so long as we make our prosperity a bulwark to beat down all harms,2 we are to look for adversity to beat down the high sail of our proud hearts, whereby we gad after our own lusts, and leave the anchor of peace, which is our trust in God. Let us learn then, when the world beginneth to favour us, and we have as it were an hundred thousand soldiers, to bear us up, not to be secure; for there is nothing more easy for a man, than for to make himself believe that he shall always continue in happy3 estate, and think he shall die in the nest. But we must be as birds on a bough, to remove at Gods pleasure, and that without resistance when the Lord shall visit us. And because we are given too much to think that we have the things in our own right, which we hold of the free goodness of God: we are taught in affliction how heinous unthankfulness it were to bind the Lord continually to entertain us in this life at so full charge and cost, without respect of his free and undeserved gifts: or to hold plea against, and sue him, as it were, by an obligation, at whose hands we ought to beg daily; and at whose gate we receive all our maintenance: or to make a rent charge of all that which he giveth of his free liberality. Thus in the end we challenge Gods gifts as our own, and make account to have their company to the grave, whereby we provoke the Lord often to prove to our faces, that all that we have is but lent and borrowed.
And surely though