A02178:1730
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
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.
But to discern aright what these means be, wherewith the Lord will be served, and what this time is which the Lord will have for his honour, the Heathen were so far off, that how many nations so many heads, how many heads so many kinds of religion. The Gentiles, whose vain traditions were but disordered imitations of Moses laws, which they had heard of, had indeed their holy ⟨p. 155⟩days, which not being used in faith by reason of their ignorance of the word, could nothing please God. Yea we may read how strictly and superstitiously the Gentiles kept their holy days: so that with all other they agreed after a sort in this general point, that there should be both appointed means, and certain set times for the worship of God. Again, it is like that the Gentiles were not ignorant of the law of fasting, as may appear by the Ninevites: but how to order it a right to the glory of God, they were altogether ignorant,1 because they wanted the word. Wherefore herein we count the true glory of Christians to consist that the Lord hath given us the truth, and hath not left us to our own inventions in the means of Gods worship: and herein is Christian dignity, that as we have the manner of our religion prescribed of God himself; so we have also the time, which he for that purpose hath himself sanctified. It followeth not then, because the Sabbath is not ingrasfed in mans nature, therefore the Sabbath is not moral, because in trueth neither were the laws of the means of Gods worship, nor of fasting so ingrafted, although in some manner they were. Their reasons by consequence are either from the old Testament,2 or from the new. Their argument from the old Testament is this: We read not, the law of the Sabbath was put in practise before the law was promulgated in mount Sinai: therefore it is not moral but ceremonial▪ This is no good reason, we find it not written, therefore3 it was not. For so they may argue against •asting, and many other things which were used, and yet the practise of them not left in writing Who can disallow of marriage and of spousals? do not the Gentiles, the laws civill, and the Roman law approve them? and yet what record have we left concerning these things in writing before the law?