A29686:231
A cabinet of choice jewels, or, A box of precious ointment being a plain…A cabinet of choice jevvels, or, A box of precious ointment being a plain…
A cabinet of choice jewels, or, A box of precious ointment being a plain discovery of, or, what men are worth for eternity, and how 'tis like to go with them in another world ... / by Thomas Brooks ...A cabinet of choice jevvels, or, A box of precious ointment being a plain discovery of, or, what men are worth for eternity, and how 'tis like to go with them in another world ... / by Thomas Brooks ...
London : Printed and are to be sold by John Hancock ..., 1669
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.
The Fifteenth Maxim or Consideration.
Fifteenthly, Consider in judging of your selves, and your §15spiritual estates and conditions, you must always have an eye to your natural tempers, complexions, constitutions, and inclinations, and the sins and temptations that these do lay you most open too, and remember that as in some tempers a little grace makes a very great show; so in other tempers ⟨p. 80⟩a great deal of grace makes but a very little show.1 A little water in a long narrow mouthed glass seems to be a great deal, when ten times, yea twenty times as much in a large Cistern is hardly discernible; the application is easy. A little Sugar will serve well enough for sweet Wines, but much more is requisite to sweeten that Wine that is sharp and harsh. A little grace will make a very glorious show in such men and women whose very natural tempers are sweet, soft, gentle, meek, affable, courteous; when a great deal of Grace is hardly discernible in those men and women whose very natural tempers are cross, crooked, choleric, fierce, passionate, ruff and unhewn. As a good man said of an eminent light now in Heaven, That he had Grace enough for ten men, but scarce enough for himself, his natural temper was so bad, which he would himself often lament and bewail, saying to his friends, That he had such a cross crooked nature, that if God had not given him grace none would have been able to have lived one day quietly with him. A sincere Christian may have more roughness of nature, and more sturdiness of passions than is in many a moral man; he that hath more Christianity, may have less Morality, as there is more perfection of animal and sensitive faculties in some bruits than in some men. Tis an old experienced truth, that those sins are with the greatest pains, labour, travel and difficulty subdued and mortified, which our natural tempers, complexions and constitutions do most strongly incline and dispose us to, and were but those lusts subdued and brought under, it would be no difficult thing to bring all other sins to an under; when Goliath was slain, the Philistines fled; when a General in an Army falls,