A30582:58
Gospel remission, or, A treatise showing that true blessedness consists in pardon of sin…Gospel remission, or, A treatise shewing that true blessedness consists in pardon of sin…
Gospel remission, or, A treatise showing that true blessedness consists in pardon of sin wherein is discovered the many Gospel mysteries therein contained, the glorious effects proceeding from it, the great mistakes made about it, the true signs and symptoms of it, the way and means to obtain it / by Jeremiah Burroughs ; being several sermons preached immediately after those of The evil of sin by the same author, and now published by Philip Nye ... [et al.]Gospel remission, or, A treatise shewing that true blessedness consists in pardon of sin wherein is discovered the many Gospel mysteries therein contained, the glorious effects proceeding from it, the great mistakes made about it, the true signs and symptomes of it, the way and means to obtain it / by Jeremiah Burroughs ; being several sermons preached immediately after those of The evil of sin by the same author, and now published by Philip Nye ... [et al.]
London: printed for Dor. Newman, 1668
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.
Of the seventh Mystery, It is by Faith, yet boasting excluded.
7. It must be by Faith, and that is the most glorious work that ever God enabled a poor creature to do, yet boasting must be excluded, the Scripture excludes boasting from both, not only from the Law of works, but the Law of faith; but you may say, How can both be excluded both the law of works and the law of faith? for works they may be excluded say some, because works are our own, but faith is the gift of God; God enables us to believe, therefore there can be no boasting of faith because it is the gift of God, but works are our own; this answer is but a fiction, for if we be enabled for the performance of any work, that is of God too; the work of any grace is the gift of God as really and truly as faith is the gift of God, all gracious works are performed by the grace and gift of God. Adam could not do what he did in Innocency, […] by the gift of God; and therefore to say boasting is excluded by faith, because faith is the gift of God, will not serve the turn; therefore the mystery of Justification is a great mystery, that notwithstanding faith is such a glorious work, as it is one of the gloriousest works that ever any creature did, yet that this should be excluded, by this I cannot but be persuaded, that there is more in the work of Faith than in any thing Adam ever had; and that faith the power of believing was not in Adam in the state ⟨p. 17⟩of Innocency: Why? Because it is now made such a grace as excludes all kind of boasting: For were it but the stirring up of any power we had in Adam, it would no more exclude boasting, than if God stirred up any other grace; as Love, Hope, Fear, and the like: But that it excludes boasting, this may be the most satisfactory answer; Works they could not exclude boasting? Why, though they were from the grace and gift of God, yet they belonged to mans nature; for if God will make a rational creature, he must give it those perfections that are due to that nature: Now the Image of God was in some regard due to such a nature. But now, God when he comes to give faith, he gives a higher thing than ever was due to the nature of man; hence there is a greater mystery in faith than in any other grace; and therefore it is a great mystery that God should justify a man by faith, and yet this excludes boasting more than any other thing.