A25467:1400
A Continuation of morning-exercise questions and cases of conscience practically resolvedA Continuation of morning-exercise questions and cases of conscience practicaly resolved
A Continuation of morning-exercise questions and cases of conscience practically resolved by sundry ministers in October, 1682.A Continuation of morning-exercise questions and cases of conscience practicaly resolved by sundry ministers in October, 1682.
London: printed by J.A. for John Dunton, 1683
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.
Why could you not patiently bear the words, the wrongs, the losses, the crosses that did befall you? Why made you so great a matter of these bodily transitory things? Is it not because you overlove them, were you not in good earnest when you called them vanity, and covenanted to leave them to the will of God? would you have God let you alone in so great a sin as the love of the world, or giving any of his due to creatures; If God should not teach you what to love and what to set light by, and cure you of so dangerous a disease as a fleshly earthly mind, he should not sanctify you and fit you for heaven, souls go not to Heaven as an arrow is shot upward, against their inclination; but as fire naturally tendeth upward and earth downward to their like, so when holy men are dead, their souls have a natural inclination upward, and it is their love that is their inclination; they love God and Heaven, and Holy company and their old godly friends, and holy works, even mutual love and the joyful praises of Jehovah: And this Spirit and Love is as a fiery nature, which carrieth them heavenward; and Angels convey them not thither by force, but conduct them as a Bride to her marriage; who is carried all the way by love.
Why could you not patiently bear the words, the wrongs, the losses, the crosses that did befal you? Why made you so great a matter of these bodily transitory things? Is it not because you overlove them, were you not in good earnest when you called them vanity, and covenanted to leave them to the will of God? would you have God let you alone in so great a sin as the love of the world, or giving any of his due to creatures; If God should not teach you what to love and what to set light by, and cure you of so dangerous a disease as a fleshly earthly mind, he should not sanctifie you and fit you for heaven, souls go not to Heaven as an arrow is shot upward, against their inclination; but as fire naturally tendeth upward and earth downward to their like, so when holy men are dead, their souls have a natural inclination upward, and it is their love that is their inclination; they love God and Heaven, and Holy company and their old godly friends, and holy works, even mutual love and the joyful praises of Jehovah: And this Spirit and Love is as a fiery nature, which carrieth them heavenward; and Angels convey them not thither by force, but conduct them as a Bride to her marriage; who is carryed all the way by love.