A17286:442
The excellency of a gracious spirit Delivered in a treatise upon the 14. of…The excellency of a gracious spirit Deliuered in a treatise upon the 14. of…
The excellency of a gracious spirit Delivered in a treatise upon the 14. of Numbers, verse 24. By Jer. Burroughs minister of Gods Word.The excellency of a gracious spirit Deliuered in a treatise upon the 14. of Numbers, verse 24. By Ier. Burroughes minister of Gods Word.
London: printed by Miles for R. Dawlman, 1639
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.
A fourth thing that hinders men 1in following God fully, it is, going out in the strength of their own resolutions, not in any strength that they receive out of the fullness of Jesus Christ; they trust more to their own promises, than to Gods. Luther reports of Staupicius a Germane Divine, that he acknowledged of himself, that before he came to understand aright the free and powerful grace of Jesus Christ, that he vowed & resolved an hundred times against some particular sin, and never could get power over it; at last he saw the reason to be, the trusting to his own resolutions.
A fourth thing that hinders men 1in following God fully, it is, going out in the strength of their owne resolutions, not in any strength that they receive out of the fulnesse of Jesus Christ; they trust more to their owne promises, than to Gods. Luther reports of Staupicius a Germane Divine, that hee acknowledged of himselfe, that before he came to understand aright the free and powerful grace of Jesus Christ, that he vowed & resolved an hundred times against some particular sin, and never could get power over it; at last he saw the reason to be, the trusting to his own resolutions.
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A fifth cause, is the meeting with ⟨p. 400⟩1more difficulties in Gods ways than we made account of: when Christians think only of the good and sweet that they shall meet with in Gods ways; but they do not cast in their thoughts, what the troubles are like to be, that they shall find in them; like Joseph, who dreamed of his preferment and honour that he should have above his brethren, but dreamt not of his selling into Egypt, nor of his imprisonment there: Christians should at the first entrance into Gods ways, expect the utmost difficulties; they should enter upon those terms, to encounter with great troubles, if they mean to follow God fully in them. It is a shame for any Christian to account any trouble that he meets withal in Gods ways, to be as a strange thing unto him. Because the Lord had taken S. Paul as a chosen vessel unto himself, and purposed to draw his heart fully after him; observe how God deals with him in his first entrance into his way,