A25294:448
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.
The fifteenth Lords day.
1 Pet. 3. 18. For Christ also hath once suffered for sinners; the just for the unjust; that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.
AN argument is brought in these words, whereby all Christians may be persuaded, that undeserved afflictions are patiently to be born. The argument is taken from the greater to the less, in which also is contained the force and nature of a simile, or example, and also of some dissimilitude. For such Logical assertions are oft joined together in the same thing, as they make to the same purpose. The argument is this; If Christ that was just, ⟨p. 104⟩hath suffered for sins, and for unjust men, then much more ought we to suffer afflictions imposed upon us; but the first is true, and therefore the latter also. Christ considered in himself is the greater, and his sufferings are the greater; and so the argument is from the greater. But considered as our head, and Saviour, he hath the place and nature of a simile or example to be imitated by us in tolerating afflictions, so it is an argument from a like, or from an example. Lastly, considered as just, suffering for the sins of others that are unjust, he is altogether unlike unto us; and so also some force and emphaticalness of this argument is from the unlikeness. They are ordered in this enunciation, in which as the assumption of the Syllogism, the cause is contained with the effect; to wit, Christ with his suffering. For though suffering of its own nature be an adjunct of the sufferer; yet as it's voluntarily admitted and undertaken it is an effect. Yet these arguments are so ordered, that they have mixed with them the affection or property of the argument so called, from diversit. For Christ and his passions of their own nature are dissentaneous; When therefore it is said, Christ suffered, it is as if he had said, Though Christ were the Son of God, yet was he not fre from […]. That this may be the better understood, it is to be known, that suffering in this place, and in such others, is attributed to Christ by the […] of Synecdoche of the more general for the special; and that it signifies the special suffering of a grievous evil: Then are these two very dissentaneous between themselves, that Christ should suffer a great evil: Now that he is said to have suffered for sins, and for the unjust; the particle for designs