A30587:539
Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and…
Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and evils of them : with cautions that we may not be hurt by them, and endeavours to heal them / by Jeremiah Burroughs.Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and evils of them : with cautions that we may not be hurt by them, and endeavours to heal them / by Jeremiah Burroughes.
London: printed for Robert Dawlman, 1653
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.
8ly. God might have sode•'d us together by the fire of his wrath, he might have made our blood to have been our cement to have joined our stinty hearts together; but it is otherwise, God seeks to draw us to himself, and one to another by the cords of love, the allurings of his mercy.
8ly. God might have sode•'d us together by the fire of his wrath, he might have made our blood to have been our cement to have joyned our stinty hearts together; but it is otherwise, God seeks to draw us to himselfe, and one to another by the cords of love, the allurings of his mercy.
Ninthly, what can have that power to take off the sourness of mens spirits like mercy; the mercy of a God? surely if any thing possibly can sweeten them, that must needs do it. We read 1 Sam. 11. 11, 12, 13. a notable experiment of the efficacy of mercy to sweeten mens hearts. After Saul had slain the Ammonites, some of the boisterous spirits would have had him to have slain those who formerly had rejected him; but mark Sauls answer, ver. 13. There shall not a man be put to death this day: Why? For this day the Lord hath wrought salvation in Israel. Though Saul at another time was a man of a harsh and cruel spirit, yet now mercy sweetens him; that which he was one day by the sense of mercy, that should we be not only in the day of our Thanksgiving, but in the course of our lives. When salvation came to the house of Zacheus, O what a sweet temper was he in! Behold, half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have wronged any one, I restore four-fold. Salvation is this day come to the Kingdom, O that all we had hearts to say, If we have wronged any, we will restore; if we have wronged any in their names, by word, or writing, any way, we will restore: Mercy and love calls for mercy and love; if we were in a right tune, there would be a sympathy between the bowels of God and ours; as in two Lures, if the string in one be wound up to be answerable to the other, if you then strike one string, the other will move though lying at a distance: Now Gods love, Gods bowels move, let our love, our bowels move answerably.