A25470:519
The Morning exercise [at] Cri[ppleg]ate, or, Several cases of conscience practically resolved
The Morning exercise [at] Cri[ppleg]ate, or, Several cases of conscience practically resolved by sundry ministers, September 1661.
London: printed for Joshua Kirton and Nathaniel Webb, 1661
Sermon 6: How Ministers or Christian Friends may, and ought to apply themselves to Sick Persons,…
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. Insensibleness of their danger, whereas the first step to a cure is ⟨p. 117⟩to know ones malady. It is a dreadful thing to see poor ignorant & unconverted sinners, at the very brink of the pit, ready to drop into hell, and not at all affected with it, &c. If ever you mean to do them any good, you must awaken them out of that mortal sleep or lethargy lighten their eyes with a conviction of their danger, lest they sleep the sleep of death.
1. Insensibleness of their danger, whereas the first step to a cure is ⟨p. 117⟩to know ones malady. It is a dreadfull thing to see poor ignorant & unconverted sinners, at the very brink of the pit, ready to drop into hell, and not at all affected with it, &c. If ever you mean to do them any good, you must awaken them out of that mortall sleep or lethargy lighten their eyes with a conviction of their danger, lest they sleep the sleep of death.
2. Willingness to be deluded. You may know it thus: If a daubing Minister, or friend offers comfort, how greedily they catch it: They will receive comfort upon any grounds, nay upon no grounds, but upon the bare words, it may be of a time-serving and man-pleasing Minister. But let a serious and faithful Minister come to them, and show them their sad, and sinful, and hazardous condition, and demonstrate it by irrefragable arguments, they will not yield to it. But as St. Peter speaks, 2 Pet. 3.5. [Greek or Hebrew], this they willingly are ignorant of. You must possess them with the folly of such a temper, the unavoidable misery of self-deluding persons, &c. and the dread of disappointment when too late.
2. Willingness to be deluded. You may know it thus: If a dawbing Minister, or friend offers comfort, how greedily they catch it: They will receive comfort upon any grounds, nay upon no grounds, but upon the bare words, it may be of a time-serving and man-pleasing Minister. But let a serious and faithfull Minister come to them, and shew them their sad, and sinfull, and hazardous condition, and demonstrate it by irrefragable arguments, they will not yield to it. But as St. Peter speaks,