A36315:285
Captives bound in chains made free
Captives bound in chains made free by Christ their surety, or, The misery of graceless sinners and their recovery by Christ their saviour by T. Doolittle.
London: printed by A.H. for Tho. Parkhurst, 1674
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.
3. Christ hath not freed us from the service of God, but rather doth engage us to it. Wicked men judg this to be liberty to live as they list, and to walk and act as they please, in gratifying their lusts and pleasing of the flesh. This is not liberty but licentiousness; this indeed is the bondage that Christ came to deliver us from. Oh how is the blind world mistaken, when they take their very bondage for their liberty! The strictest Service of God is the greatest Liberty, Psal. 119. 45. It is not a liberty from duty, but from sin and misery, that Christ came to purchase and proclaim, Luke 1. 74, 75. 1 Pet. 2. 16. Rom. 6. 18. The most under the very Gospel do live in the constant omission of duty, and commission of sin, as if Christ came to give them liberty so to do: which yet they might have done if Christ had never come.
4. This spiritual freedom by Christ doth not exempt us nor excuse us from the service we owe to men in the places and relations wh[…] God hath set us. Indeed the Lords […] must not be the servants of men, so as •o […]e men in that in which they will displease God, 1 Cor. 7. 23. but yet one that is the Lords free man, might be in the place of a servant to man, and ought to follow his calling and mind his Masters business, and that with greater care and conscience than others do, even to such Masters as be the servants of sin, Ephes. 6. 5, 6. 1 Pet. 2. 18.