A28620:2338
The dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in several treatisesThe dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in severall treatises
The dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in several treatises ... : never before published / by Samuel Bolton ...The dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in severall treatises ... : never before published / by Samuel Bolton ...
London: printed by Robert Ibbitson for Thomas Parkhurst, 1657
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.
A weak Faith if it want feeling, it is gone, but the strong Faith will — Hope against Hope; Believe against Sense, Reason, and present Evidence, and can say, God is mine; though it want the present Sense and Evidence of it. It will trust in God a Father, when his dealings seem to argue him an Enemy. Faith will read Love in his angry looks; and look through the mist of Desertion, and see the affections of a Father, under the expressions of an Enemy. Thus did Job by Faith — Though thou kill me: yet will I trust in thee. Full well it knows, Though God hide his face, yet he cannot deny himself.
A weak Faith if it want feeling, it is gone, but the strong Faith will — Hope against Hope; Beleeve against Sense, Reason, and present Evidence, and can say, God is mine; though it want the present Sense and Evidence of it. It will trust in God a Father, when his dealings seem to argue him an Enemy. Faith will read Love in his angry looks; and look through the mist of Desertion, and see the affections of a Father, under the expressions of an Enemy. Thus did Job by Faith — Though thou kill mee: yet will I trust in thee. Full well it knows, Though God hide his face, yet hee cannot deny himself.
2. Say he takes an argument from Gods outward dealings in chastising and afflicting of us, and say; If God loved thee, he would not so afflict thee: If God were thy Father, he would not so chastise thee. However the weak Faith may be born down with such a temptation as this; yet the strong Faith is not moved with such a ⟨p. 156⟩temptation: it is able to retort on Satan; because God loves me, therefore he scourgeth me, that I might not be condemned with the World. That I might not love the World, therefore he suffers the World to frown on me. That I might be crucified to the World; therefore he suffers me to be crucified in the World. Because I am a Child, therefore he afflicts me. — He scourgeth every Son, whom he receiveth, Rom. 12.6, 7, 8.9, &c.