A37046:443
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.
Thirdly. We sin after fasting. 1. Soon returning to other thoughts. 2. Letting any frame we had attained, slack and wear out. 3. Forgetting our Confessions and Engagements, and falling to former Sins, and neglecting these Duties to which we have engaged, 4. Being rigid with others, we have to do with. 5. Not insisting in Prayer, for those things we aimed at in fasting. 6. Not trying and observing if any thing we prayed for hath been obtained. 7. Not Reflecting upon our carriage in it, that we may know how it was discharged. 8. Not humbled under our many short-comings, and failings in it. 9. Glad when it was done, because that Restraint is taken off our carnal Humours. 10. Sitting down and resting on that we have done, as if all were done. 11. Thinking our selves something better, by our outward performance. 12. Being vain of it, if it be well to our Sense. 13. Being unwatchful after it, and not studying suitableness in our following carriage, so that it i• but the hanging down of the Head •or a day.
These Particulars applied to our own Hearts, may be useful for our Conviction, and Humiliation. Ah! Who can say, I am clean? All of us are guilty, either by neglecting such Duties, or by thus and thus going about them unsuitably: from these Sins, we may read also the contrary Duties, or Qualifications, that are required for the right discharge of these Duties. The preventing of these Sins, will bring in the Duties called for, and the right manner of going about them. Otherwise, the going about these Duties, without the manner requisite, is but as it were the making of some Image, for our selves in the Lords worship, which he has not commanded, and so he may say▪ Is it such a Fast that I have chosen? Isai. 58. 5. or, Is it such a Prayer I called for; and, Who hath required these things at your hands? Isai. 1. 12. These Questions, which the Lord putteth to our Conscience, will make many Prayers, and Praises, and much worship, that now seemeth to be in great Bings or Heaps, come down to a small bulk, when they are thus fanned, ifted, and searched by this Sieve; and all those things cast, which are found to be Breaches of this Command.