A29703:645
The privy key of heaven, or, Twenty arguments for closet-prayer in a select discourse…The privie key of heaven, or, Twenty arguments for closet-prayer in a select discourse…
The privy key of heaven, or, Twenty arguments for closet-prayer in a select discourse on that subject with the resolution of several considerable questions : the main objections also against closet-prayer are here answered ... with twenty special lessons ... that we are to learn by that severe rod, the pestilence that now rageth in the midst of us / by Thomas Brooks.The privie key of heaven, or, Twenty arguments for closet-prayer in a select discourse on that subject with the resolution of several considerable questions : the main objections also against closet-prayer are here answered ... with twenty special lessons ... that we are to learn by that severe rod, the pestilence that now rageth in the midst of us / by Thomas Brooks.
London : Printed for and are to be sold by John Hancock, 1665
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.
And thus I have done with the Answers to that noble and necessary ⟨p. 384⟩Question, that was last proposed.
My Ninth Advice and Counsel is this, In all your Closet-Duties look that your ends be right, look 1that the Glory of God be your ultimate end, the mark, the white, that you have in your eye. There is a great truth in that old saying, (Quod non actibus, sed finibus pensantur officia) That duties are esteemed not by their acts, but by their ends. Look as the shining Sun puts out the light of the fire; so the glory of God must consume all other ends. There may be malum opus in bona materia, as in Jehu's zeal. Two things make a good Christian, good actions, and good aims. And though a good aim doth not make a bad action good (as in Uzzah) yet a bad aim makes a good action bad (as in Jehu) whose Justice was approved, but his Policy punished. God writes a nothing upon all those services, wherein mens ends are not right, Jer. 32. 23. They obeyed not thy voice, neither walked in ⟨p. 385⟩thy Law, they have done nothing of all that thou hast commanded them to do. So Dan. 9. 13. All this evil is come upon us, yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God. The Jews were very much in religious Duties and Services; witness Isa. 1. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Isa. 58. 1, 2, 3. Zech. 7. 5, 6. I might produce a hundred more witnesses to confirm it, were it necessary; but because they did not aim at the Glory of God in what they did, therefore the Lord writes a nothing upon all their Duties and Services. It was Ephraims folly, that he brought forth fruit unto himself.