A37046:1138
The law unsealed
The law unsealed: or, A practical exposition of the Ten Commandments With a resolution of several momentous questions and cases of conscience. By the learned, laborious, faithful servant of Jesus Christ, Mr. James Durham, late minister of the Gospel at Glasgow.
Glasgow: printed by Robert Sanders, 1676
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.
2. This Humility is not opposite to magnanimity, boldness and zeal, but is well consistent with these, as is clear in Christ, the Apostles and others of the Saints; for boldness and magnanimity is an adventuring in Christs strength upon what one is called to according to warrantable grounds; and humility, although it leadeth us to entertain due thoughts of our own infirmities, yet it moderateth us in that also according to right reason, so that the exercise of both being to be ordered according to this rule of reason, as the call, occasion, object, and particular circumstances shall require; It is evident that there is no inconsistency betwixt the two, but that they may very well be in one and the same person and at one and the same time.
2. This Humility is not opposite to magnanimity, boldness and zeal, but is well consistent with these, as is clear in Christ, the Apostles and others of the Saints; for boldness and magnanimity is an adventuring in Christs strength upon what one is called to according to warrantable grounds; and humility, although it leadeth us to entertain due thoughts of our own infirmities, yet it moderateth us in that also according to right reason, so that the exercise of both being to be ordered according to this rule of reason, as the call, occasion, object, and particular circumstances shall require; It is evident that there is no inconsistencie betwixt the two, but that they may very well be in one and the same person and at one and the same time.
3. From this we may see, That Humility differeth from, as is somewhat else then fainting and despondency of spirit or pensive pusillanimity, in not daring to follow a call in reference to some seemingly difficult action; now humility being the virtue acting according to reason, this is the excess without and against reason; and therefore as humility and zeal are commended, so this want of valiantness for truth, when called for, or baseness of spirit, is complained of as a sin, Jer. 9. 3. and Moses,