A09977:615
Life eternalLife eternall
Life eternal or, A treatise of the knowledge of the divine essence and attributes Delivered in XVIII. sermons. By the late faithful and worthy minister of Jesus Christ, John Preston, D. in Divinity, chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty, master of Emmanuel College in Cambridge, and sometimes preacher of Lincolns Inn.Life eternall or, A treatise of the knowledge of the divine essence and attributes Delivered in XVIII. sermons. By the late faithfull and worthy minister of Iesus Christ, Iohn Preston, D. in Divinity, chaplaine in ordinary to his Majestie, master of Emmanuel Colledge in Cambridge, and sometimes preacher of Lincolns Inne.
London: printed by Richard, 1631
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.
If God be immutable, then thou knowest whither to go to get this constancy,1 to make thy ⟨p. 114⟩self unchangeable, and immutable and constant in well-doing. For, for what end hath he revealed to us that he is unchangeable? is it not for our use? Sure it is, even to teach us, that when we find our selves subject to mutability, we should go to God, and beseech him to establish our hearts. No creature is able to do it. Every creature is mutable, only so far unchangeable, as he maketh it to be so; he only is originally unchangeable; all friends and all other things in the world are no further unchangeable than he communicates it to them, (as was said before:) and the same is true of thine own heart, and of thy purposes. Therefore thou must think with thy self, and make this use of the unchangeableness of God, that he only can make thee unchangeable. Therefore when a man wants direction, he must go to GOD: Jam. 1.5. he is only wise, and can show a man what to do, when he is in a strait. And upon the same ground when thou seest that thou art unconstant, go to him that is unchangeable, that can make thee constant; and desire him to fix thy quick-silver, to balance thy lightness, and that he would settle and fill that vain and empty heart of thine with something that may stay and establish it. There is no other way: all the means that can be used, all the motives that can be put upon a man, all the reasons that can be brought, are not able to make us constant, till GOD work it in us, and for us. Therefore the only way is to give GOD the glory of his ⟨p. 115⟩immutability, to go to him in a sense of thine own unconstancy, and say so; Lord, thou hast revealed thy self to be unchangeable, that we may seek it of thee, and find it in thee, thou alone art originally and essentially so: no creature is any further than thou doest communicate it to it. Therefore do thou, LORD, make me stable and constant in well-doing. Grace it self of it self is not immutable, for it is subject to ebbing and flowing: and the reason why we do not quite lose it, is not from the nature of grace, as if it were immutable, but because it comes from and sticks close to Christ. Therefore go to him; he is the root that communicates sap and life to thee, because thou abidest ingrafted in him.