A25250:532
Ultima, = the last things in reference to the first and middle things
Ultima, = the last things in reference to the first and middle things: or certain meditations on life, death, judgement, hell, right purgatory, and heaven: delivered by Isaac Ambrose, minister of the Gospel at Preston in Amoundernes in Lancashire.
London: printed for J.A., 1650
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.
Secondly Gods Spirit breeds in the soul a Reverend love, and insatiable longing after all good means appointed and sanctified for our spiritual good: and therefore that heart which sweetly is affected and inflamed with the word and prayer, and meditation and conference, and vows, and singing of Psalms, and use of good books, we doubt not but it is breathed on by the Spirit of God; whilst others that use all these Ordinances out of custom or formality, or some other sinister end, alas, their conceit of being right, is built on the sands, and therefore down it falls at deaths flood, and is overwhelmed in destruction.
Secondly Gods Spirit breeds in the soul a Reverend love, and insatiable longing after all good means appointed and sanctified for our spiritual good: and therefore that heart which sweetly is affected and inflamed with the word and prayer, and meditation and conference, and vows, and singing of Psalms, and use of good books, we doubt not but it is breath'd on by the Spirit of God; whilst others that use all these Ordinances out of custome or formalitie, or some other sinister end, alas, their conceit of being right, is built on the sands, and therefore down it fals at deaths floud, and is overwhelmed in destruction.
Thirdly, Gods Spirit is ever attended with the spirit of Prayer, and therefore saith the Apostle, We know not how to pray, but the spirit it self, maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered, Rom. 8.26.1 O the blessed operation of this Spirit! it even warms the spirit of a man with quickening life, to pour out it self in the presence of the Lord his God, sometimes in more hearty prayers, and sometimes in more faint and cold, yet always edged with infinite desires that they were far more fervent then they are: But on the other side, every deluded Pharisee is a mere stranger to the power of Prayer, if he prays often (as I make it a question) yet never prays he from a broken heart, and this argues that all his confidence is no better then a weed which grows of its own accord, & therefore like Jonahs gourd, when affliction comes, it withers on a sudden.