A28620:307
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.
Now sin is the Greatest of Evils: How much more then should we labour and endeavour to be Rid of the Greatest of Evils?
Now sin is the Greatest of Evils: How much more then should we labour and endeavor to be Rid of the Greatest of Evils?
Alas! Alas! what are all other Evils, to the Evil of Sin? which makes our good, evil. And yet to see the vileness of mens spirits, they would fain be rid of all other evils, but not of Sin: so Pharaoh—Take away this Death, this Plague. They complain of the evil caused, but not of the evil causing—of the evil punishing but not of the evil punished—Flagella dolent: Quarè Flagellantur, non dolent, saith Augustine: They howl under the present scourges and afflictions, but never lament the sin; they would fain be rid of the Pain, but yet they would fain keep the Tooth. Whereas alas! till sin be removed, the afflictions will not be removed. If they be, yet not in mercy, but in judgement: And your Present Deliverance doth but Reserve you for a severer stroke.
Where on the contrary, If sin be removed, the affliction will be removed. They are like the Body and the Shadow; Remove the Body, and the Shadow must needs be removed. Sin is the Body; and afflictions be but the Shadow.