A29368:378
The freeness of the grace and love of God to believers discovered in reference…
The freeness of the grace and love of God to believers discovered in reference to 1. their services and suffering, 2. their consolations, and 3. their salvation and eternal glory : together with the excellency of the fear of God, the goodness and pleasantness of brotherly love, the wisdom of hearing the voice of the rod, repentance the only way to prevent judgements / delivered in several sermons by the late reverend and faithful minister of Christ, Mr. William Bridge ...The freeness of the grace and love of God to believers discovered in reference to 1. their services and suffering, 2. their consolations, and 3. their salvation and eternal glory : together with the excellency of the fear of God, the goodness and pleasantness of brotherly love, the wisdom of hearing the voice of the rod, repentance the only way to prevent judgements / delivered in several sermons by the late reverend and faithful minister of Christ, Mr. William Bridg ...
London: printed for Nath. Crouch, 1671
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.
Secondly, When God smites his own people he deals with them in the way of the Rod, though he punish others with Scorpions, yet saith he, for you that are in Covenant with me, if you sin I will visit your transgressions with a Rod: look what worldly Afflictions come upon the Saints they are struck with the Rod; what greater afflictions do you read of, than what fell upon Job, why yet it was the stroke of the Rod, Job 9.34. Let him take away his Rod from me; when God deals with his people I say, he deals with them in the way of the Rod, and if you ask the reason, why God uses the rod with his own people, I answer,
Secondly, When God smites his own people he deals with them in the way of the Rod, though he punish others with Scorpious, yet saith he, for you that are in Covenant with me, if you sin I will visit your trangressions with a Rod: look what worldly Afflictions come upon the Saints they are struck with the Rod; what greater afflictions do you read of, than what fell upon Job, why yet it was the stroke of the Rod, Job 9.34. Let him take away his Rod from me; when God deals with his people I say, he deals with them in the way of the Rod, and if you ask the reason, why God uses the rod with his own people, I answer,
First, Because they are his own Children, Heb. 12.7, 8. If you endure chastisement God deals with you as with children, if you be without chastisement you are bastards and not Sons. I know no better Argument against the Church of Rome saith Luther, than this, that she reigns without the Cross. ⟨p. 134⟩If two children are fighting together, and a man comes and parts them, and strikes one of them, and not the other, you will presently imagine that the Child which he strikes is his own; and so if you ask why God useth the rod to his people, I answer, because they are his own Children. And