A25241:1074
Looking unto Jesus a view of the everlasting gospel, or, the souls eying of…
Looking unto Jesus a view of the everlasting gospel, or, the souls eying of Jesus as carrying on the great work of mans salvation from first to last / by Isaac Ambrose ...
London: printed for Richard Chiswel, 1680
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.
1. Christian Religion is most rational. If we should look into the best laws that the wisest men in the World ever agreed upon, we shall find that Christ adopted the quintessence of them all into this one Law; the highest pitch of reason is but as a spark, a taper, a lesser light, which is involved and swallowed up in the Body of this great light, that is made up by the Son of Righteousness. Some observe that Christ's discipline is the Breviary of all the wisdom of the Best men, and a fair copy and transcript of his Fathers wisdom; there is nothing in the laws of Christian Religion, but what is the perfective of our Spirits, rare expedient of obeying God, and of doing duty and benefit to all capacities and orders of men. Indeed the Greeks, whom the World admired for their humane wisdom, accounted the Preaching of the Gospel foolishness, and thereupon God blasted their wisdom, as it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the Prudent, 1 Cor. 1.19.1 the Gospel may be as foolishness unto some, but unto them which are called—Christ the Power of God, 2and the wisdom of God.
2. Christian Religion hath less trouble and slavery in it than sin, or any thing that is contrary to it; as for instance; he that propounds to himself to live a low, a pious, an humble and retired life, his main employment is nothing but sitting Religiously quiet, and undisturbed with variety of impertinent affairs; but he that loves the world entertains a thousand businesses, and every business hath a world of employments: how easy a thing is it to restore a pledge? but if a man means to defeat, or to cozen him that trusts him, what a world of arts must he use to make pretences? as first to delay, then to excuse, then to object, then to intricate the business, then to quarrel; and all the way to palliate the crime, and to represent himself an honest man: the ways of sin are crooked, desert, rocky, and uneven ways: the Apocryphal Book of Solomon brings in such men, as if in hell they were speaking this language, We wearied our selves in the way of wickedness,