A29369:293
Bridge's remains, being VIII sermons
Bridge's remains, being VIII sermons ... by that learned and judicious divine, Mr. William Bridge ...
London : Printed and are to be sold by John Hancock Senior and Junior ..., 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Sermons › Sermon 4: OF GOOD AND BAD COMPANY, How to avoid the one, and improve the other.
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.
Answ. First, You must be humbled for all the mispence of your time with good company. The way to improve a mercy, is to be humbled for our not improvement of it.
Secondly, If you would improve your good company, Then lay your right ends together when you meet; you see how it is with a fire that is half burned, if you would mend it, you take the sticks and lay them together; but then you do not lay the cold ends together, but the hot ends together. Now there is no company so good, but hath its cold ends, and its warm ends; if you lay your cold ends together when ye meet, what heat, what warmth, what good or improvement can you expect? Therefore lay your warm ends together when you meet together.
Thirdly, Observe what that grace is wherein your companions doth excel, and labour more and more for to draw that forth; every Saint and Godly man doth not excel in every grace. Non omnis fert omnia tellus, Every ground will not bear Wheat or Rye, but some one Grain, and some another; so every Christian doth not excel in every grace, some in one grace, and some in another: It may be he hath life, and you have light; or it may be he hath light, and you have life: And why hath God given this to one, and that to another? But that they may be beholding one to another, and have communion one with another. Would ye therefore improve your communion and good company, Then observe what that grace is wherein he doth most excel, and labour more and more to draw out the same.
Thirdly, Observe what that grace is wherein your companions doth excell, and labour more and more for to draw that forth; every Saint and Godly man doth not excell in every grace. Non omnis fert omnia tellus, Every ground will not bear Wheat or Rye, but some one Grain, and some another; so every Christian doth not excell in every grace, some in one grace, and some in another: It may be he hath life, and you have light; or it may be he hath light, and you have life: And why hath God given this to one, and that to another? But that they may be beholding one to another, and have communion one with another. Would ye therefore improve your communion and good company, Then observe what that grace is wherein he doth most excell, and labour more and more to draw out the same.