A30241:405
CXLV expository sermons upon the whole 17th chapter of the Gospel according to St.…
CXLV expository sermons upon the whole 17th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, or, Christs prayer before his passion explicated, and both practically and polemically improved by Anthony Burgess ...
London: printed by Abraham Miller for Thomas Underhill, 1656
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.
4. Where there is a saving knowledge of God there is a good and holy use made of all afflictions and miseries that fall upon them. They know they are strokes from God, and they come because of sin, that their end is to humble •s and debase us under the hand of God; and thus all the godly have done: They have looked up to God and considered not so much the blow, as the hand that gave it: so Job, The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, Job 1.21. not the Sabeans, not the devil, but the Lord: but men that are ignorant of God, they discover it in nothing more then in their afflictions; they look only at second causes, they mind only the help of inferior instruments, they fret, they rage, they are discontented, and thus they think not of God nor their sins that have procured these. Consider thy self therefore under any exercises and afflictions, Is thy heart presently thinking of God? dost thou search and enquire into the cause, what sins of mine have thus offended God? have deprived me of my good things I enjoyed? this is in a saving way to know him. Woe be to that man who like Ezekiel's pot hath boiled in the fire of affliction, but his scum hath not gone off.
4. Where there is a saving knowledge of God there is a good and holy use made of all afflictions and miseries that fall upon them. They know they are strokes from God, and they come because of sinne, that their end is to humble •s and debase us under the hand of God; and thus all the godly have done: They have looked up to God and considered not so much the blow, as the hand that gave it: so Job, The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, Job 1.21. not the Sabeans, not the devil, but the Lord: but men that are ignorant of God, they discover it in nothing more then in their afflictions; they look only at second causes, they minde only the help of inferiour instruments, they fret, they rage, they are discontented, and thus they think not of God nor their sinnes that have procured these. Consider thy self therefore under any exercises and afflictions, Is thy heart presently thinking of God? dost thou search and enquire into the cause, what sinnes of mine have thus offended God? have deprived me of my good things I enjoyed? this is in a saving way to know him. Wo be to that man who like Ezechiel's pot hath boiled in the fire of affliction, but his scum hath not gone off.