A30587:717
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.
The ninth dividing practice. Because men cannot join in all things with others, they will join in nothing.
The ninth dividing practice. Because men cannot joyne in all things with others, they will joyne in nothing.
Some men are of such dividing dispositions, that if they be offended with a man in any one thing, in hearing, or otherwise, they will go away in a tetchy mood, resolving never to hear him more. You think you have liberty in any froward mood to cast off that means of good which God offers to you, to refuse to partake of such mens gifts and graces as you please; It may be your stomach is so high and great on a sudden, or your spirit is fallen into such a sullen humour, as you will not so much as go or send to him, to see if upon a serious and quiet examination of things, you may not have satisfaction in what for the present offends you. No, mens spirits are carried on with present rash heady resolutions. I believe there was never such a kind of spirit prevailing amongst such as profess godliness, since Christian Religion was in the world; never did so many withdraw from hearing even those by whom they acknowledge God hath ⟨p. 183⟩spoken to their hearts and that before they have gone to them, to impart what it is that scruples them, to try whether they may not get some satisfaction. Certainly if you have no need of the Word, the Word hath no need of you. You may easily express your discontents one to another; you may easily say you are resolved you will never hear such an one any more, but you cannot so easily answer this to Jesus Christ. When your weaknesses, the prevailing of your distempers shall grate upon your consciences, this will be a great aggravation of the evil of them, You neglected in a humorous way, and self-willed resolution, those means that might have done your soul good, even such as many hundred, if not thousands of souls bless God for all the days of their lives, yea are now blessing God in heaven for. Heretofore you would have been glad of that, which now you sleight and reject; this is not from more light or strength that you have now which you had not then, but from more vanity, pride, and wantonness.