A25294:130
The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easy draught of the Christian…The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easie draught of the Christian…
The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easy draught of the Christian catechism in LII lectures on chosen texts of Scripture, for each Lords-day of the year, learnedly and perspicuously illustrated with doctrines, reasons, and uses / by that reverend and worthy labourer in the Lord's vineyard, William Ames ...The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easie draught of the Christian catechisme in LII lectures on chosen texts of Scripture, for each Lords-day of the year, learnedly and perspicuously illustrated with doctrines, reasons, and uses / by that reverend and worthy laborer in the Lord's vineyard, William Ames ...
London: printed by T. Mabb for Thomas Davies, 1659
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.
Doct. 2. Upon the children of disobedience, certainly and unevitably the horrible wrath of God comes. This is clear in the Text without any collection made from it.
That this wrath is horrible, and altogether intolerable, the Scripture every were testifies, as Heb. 10. 27. Apoc. 6. 16, 17. and elsewhere. And the thing it self doth sufficiently show it, if we consider Gods anger as to its intenseness, extensness and duration; as to its intenseness, it is called in Scripture a consuming fire, Heb. 12. 29. Now this fire of the wrath of God consumes not lightly, or light things only as in the superficies, but as it is said, Deutro. 32. 22. Gods wrath set on fire will burn down to the grave, &c. Nahum 1. 6. Where there is a most likely & pithy description. By all which descriptions is signified, that the wrath of God doth throughly pierce not only into the body, but into the soul and inward part of the spirit, for which reason in many places of Scripture, it is compared unto sharp arrows piercing into the heart its self, and consuming the spirit and life. As to the extension; this wrath of God contains in it all sort of evils, whether corporal or spiritual; whether in ⟨p. 28⟩this life, or at the end of it, and in death, or at death. •ither belong those catalogues or inventories of curses, that are found Deutr. 28. and Levit. 26. 3. As to the duration, it remaineth upon impe•ient sinners, John▪ 3. 36. not for some short space, but unto all eternity, and without end: For as that obligation, whereby we are bound to render God all obediences without end; so consequently the transgression whereby sinners break that obligation, is in a manner infinite & without end: so also the punishment, which taketh away its measure from the nature of the transgression, will be without end & infinite, and that as well in the privation of an infinite good, as in the endless duration of this privation or loss. Neither ought it to seem strange, that for a sin, which is committed in a short time, an endless punishment should be inflicted; because equity its elf requires this, that every one should be deprived of that good, of which by his own fault he hath turned from. But every inner hath turned himself away from an endless good, by a fault he can never come out of by himself, and make an end of; and therefore it is but reason, that he be endlessly deprived of that good. And moreover, because he hath disturbed that order that God set & appointed;