A09965:241
Four godly and learned treatises Entitled, I. A remedy against covetousness. II. An elegant…Foure godly and learned treatises Intituled, I. A remedy against covetousnesse. II. An elegant…
Four godly and learned treatises Entitled, I. A remedy against covetousness. II. An elegant and lively description of spiritual death and life. III. The doctrine of self-denial. IV. Upon the sacrament of the Lords Supper. Delivered in sundry sermons, by that late famous preacher, and worthy instrument of Gods glory, John Preston, Doctor of Divinity, chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty; master of Emanuel College, and sometime preacher of Lincolns Inn.Foure godly and learned treatises Intituled, I. A remedy against covetousnesse. II. An elegant and lively description of spirituall death and life. III. The doctrine of selfe-deniall. IV. Vpon the sacrament of the Lords Supper. Delivered in sundry sermons, by that late famous preacher, and worthy instrument of Gods glory, Iohn Preston, Doctor of Divinitie, chaplaine in ordinarie to his Majestie; master of Emanuel Colledge, and sometime preacher of Lincolnes Inne.
London: printed by Thomas for Michael Sparke, 1633
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.
2. If every man out of Christ be in an estate of death, let us not defer repentance,1 but do it whilst we may. Repentance makes a dead man to be a living man: What is it that makes you defer repentance? Ye think ye can change your courses, and sorrow when you list, therefore ye defer it. If men be dead, and repentance puts as it were a new soul into them, makes them to pass from death to life, then it is not so easy a thing. Suppose ye had Hezekiah's warning, 2is it in your power to make your selves live? No, it is beyond your power; God only can do it. Every man lies before God, as that clod of earth, out of which Adam was made. God must breathe life into him, else he continues dead. God doth not breathe life into all, He quickens whom he will. 3It is your wisdom therefore to wait on him in his Ordinances: if ye have good motions ⟨p. 84⟩begun in you, press them forwards, they are offsprings of life. Think seriously, am I dead or alive? If dead, why then say, its not in my power to quicken me, its only in God to do it, and he doth this but in few, those whom he quickeneth are but as grapes after the Vintage, 4or as the Olives after the beating; how then shall I be in the number? Give your selves no rest; know that it is God that breatheth, and then depend on him. Make that use of the doctrine of election, with care and more solicitude to look to your selves. God works both the will and the deed of his good pleasure, 5work out therefore your salvation with fear and trembling. If repentance be a passage from death to life, if it be such a change, then labour for to get it. The Spirit doth not always strive with men;6 ye are not always the same, ye will stick in the sand, grow worse and worse, if ye grow not better and better. No more power have you to change your selves, than the Blackmore hath to change his skin,