A02178:2179
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.
In the second place we must note, that they were rightly pricked. For many oftentimes are pricked, which kick against the prick, and having their consciences galled by the word, they murmur either against the preacher of the word, or against the word it self.1 Here then is the difference between the godly and the wicked, the one is pricked, and is made more careful in a godly conscience; the other more hardened than before. But this is a godly sorrow, when we love the man that rebuketh us, and reverence the word the more being by it reproved in our conscience. Do we love him then that rebuketh us? then we hear profitably. Let us examine our selves in this sort: I see God hath wounded me by him, he is the instrument whereby God doth humble me, I will therefore love him.2 Contrarily, if we be often touched and amend not, we are in danger of Gods wrath. Many indeed are pricked with poverty, many with sickness, and some with other like afflictions, but few with their sins, which is the cause of their poverty, sickness, and other afflictions. Let us then learn a willingness to offer our selves to be taught and to be pricked for sin, as these men were. The wicked also are pricked sometimes: but it is rather for fear of punishment, than for conscience to displease God, as were Cain and Judas. Some men are3 pricked, and to put away their sorrow, they will go sleep, they will go play, they will go sport, they will get to merry company, and pass away the time, and so, as they term it, they will purge and drive away the rage of melancholy: they never go to any preacher, to ask of the Lord, or at the mouth of his spirit: they never respect prayer, nor seek any comfort in the word of God. But to put away sorrow on this sort is to call it a again, and to feel it more freshly either in the hour of death, or in hell. Contrariwise, if our sorrow doth drive us to prayer, or to the word of God, it is good. As for the wicked and profane worldlings, though (as the Wiseman saith, Ecclesiast. 11.) he spend all his days without any evil, yet his darkness will be greater than his light, his sorrow greater than his pleasure, his loss greater than his gain, his trouble greater than his vanity in hell. Let us not then so carnally shake off this godly sorrow: for the word will send us often an unquiet spirit, that we may seek to be quiet in Christ.