A20559:498
The bright star which leadeth wise men to our Lord Jesus Christ, or, A…
The bright star which leadeth wise men to our Lord Jesus Christ, or, A familiar and learned exposition on the ten commandments gathered from the mouth of a faithful pastor by a gracious young man, sometime scholar in Cambridge.The bright star which leadeth wise men to our Lord Jesus Christ, or, A familiar and learned exposition on the ten commandements gathered from the mouth of a faithfull pastor by a gracious young man, sometime scholler in Cambridge.
London: printed by John Harison for Thomas Man, 1603London: printed by Iohn Harison for Thomas Man, 1603
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
The first thing of commission that is forbidden here is inward, and that is hasty and unadvised anger, rash wrath and unjust, as Math. 5. 22. Who ever (saith Christ) is angry with his brother unadvisedly, is culpable of judgement. Guilty of vengeance and wrath of God. Now not all anger but inconsiderate and hasty anger doth offend in this place. Now that is unadvised and sinful anger which either hindereth one from doing good to the person with whom he is angry, by praying for him, or kind admonishing him, or else when it is conceived without sufficient cause, or exceeding either in the time or the measure. As Paul, Let not the Sun go down upon your wrath, nor give place to the devil. That which was for the sudden and present passion is natural, but if it lie soaking and lingering, and sink in deeper into the heart, it grows then to be devilish; and so if ones anger be above that, that the quality of the fault requires, this is rash and comes not through the folly of the party with whom he is angry, but through his folly that is angry. Therefore we must look that we be never angry without a just cause. And then that we proportion our anger to the sin committed against God, not to the injury done to us; for that proceeds from pride, and is no better then revenge, and therefore must more be grieved at ⟨image 138⟩things breaking the first then the second table, and always that that doth most displease God, and is most odious to him must do the like to us. And yet let not the sun go down upon it neither, but let it quicken us to prayer for the person, and with a zeal of Gods glory. Now the means to keep us from this foolish passion of rash anger are these; first, often to meditate upon our own sin and vileness. As Titus 3. 2. he saith, Show all meekness to all men. I but might some say, I am of a very choleric and hot nature, that I cannot but be angry with them. But you your self were in times past disobedient. As if he had said, think of this a little, and consider how bad your self both have been, and are still, and that will cool your choler and make you more meek to others that offend, so that he that oftenest remembers his own sin will be most patient to an other, and none are more eager and passionate against the slips of others, then those that are most slack and negligent to examine their own great sins.