A26695:123
A sure guide to heaven, or, An earnest invitation to sinners to turn to…
A sure guide to heaven, or, An earnest invitation to sinners to turn to God in order to their eternal salvation showing the thoughtful sinner what he must do to be saved / by Joseph Alleine.A sure guide to heaven, or, An earnest invitation to sinners to turn to God in order to their eternal salvation shewing the thoughtful sinner what he must do to be saved / by Joseph Alleine.
London: printed for Tho. Parkhurst, 1688
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. Throughout the Mind. It makes an universal change within. First, it turns the balance of the judgment, so that God and his Glory do weigh down all carnal and worldly interest, Acts 20. 24. Phil. 1. 20. Psal. 73. 25. It opens the eye of the mind, and makes the Scales of its Native Ignorance ⟨p. 23⟩to fall off, and turns men from darkness to light, Acts 26. 18. Eph. 5. 8. 1 Pet. 2. 9. The man that before saw no danger in his condition, now concludes himself lost and for ever undone, Acts 2. 37. except renewed by the power of Grace. He that formerly thought there was little hurt in sin, now comes to see it to be the chief of evils; he sees the unreasonableness, unrighteousness, the deformity and filthiness that is in sin, so that he is affrighted with it, loathes it, dreads it, flies it, and even abhors himself for it, Rom. 7. 15. Job 42. 6. Ezek. 36. 31. He that could see little sin in himself, and could find no matter for confession (as it was said of that learned Ignoramus Bellarmine, who it seems while he knew so much abroad, was a miserable stranger to himself) that when he was to be confessed by the Priest, could not remember any thing to confess; but was fain to run back to the sins of his youth: I say he that could not find matter for confession, unless it were some few gross and staring evils, now sin reviveth with him, Rom. 7. 9. he sees the rottenness of his heart, and desperate and deep pollution of his whole nature: he cries, unclean, unclean,