A42757:1064
Aaron's rod blossoming, or, The divine ordinance of church-government vindicated so as the present…Aarons rod blossoming, or, The divine ordinance of church-government vindicated so as the present…
Aaron's rod blossoming, or, The divine ordinance of church-government vindicated so as the present Erastian controversy concerning the distinction of civill and ecclesiastical government, excommunication, and suspension, is fully debated and discussed, from the holy scripture, from the Jewish and Christian antiquities, from the consent of latter writers, from the true nature and rights of magistracy, and from the groundlessness of the chief objections made against the Presbyterial government in point of a domineering arbitrary unlimited power / by George Gillespie ...Aarons rod blossoming, or, The divine ordinance of church-government vindicated so as the present Erastian controversie concerning the distinction of civill and ecclesiasticall government, excommunication, and suspension, is fully debated and discussed, from the holy scripture, from the Jewish and Christian antiquities, from the consent of latter writers, from the true nature and rights of magistracy, and from the groundlesnesse of the chief objections made against the Presbyteriall government in point of a domineering arbitrary unlimited power / by George Gillespie ...
London: printed by E.G. for Richard Whitaker, 1646
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. We must distinguish between the Sacrament it self, and those things that do accompany the Sacrament, powerful preaching, exhortation, prayer, or the like before or after the Sacrament. Put case a sinner be effectually converted by a Sermon or a prayer, which he heareth at the Ordination of a Minister, will any man therefore say that Ordination is a converting Ordinance? So if by most serious powerful exhortations, convictions, promises, threatenings, by prayer, by Christian conference by reading or meditation before or after the Sacrament, the Lord be pleased to touch the Conscience and convert the soul of an impenitent profane wicked liver, nothing of this kind can make the Sacrament a converting Ordinance.
2. We must distinguish between the Sacrament it self, and those things that do accompany the Sacrament, powerful preaching, exhortation, prayer, or the like before or after the Sacrament. Put case a sinner be effectually converted by a Sermon or a prayer, which he heareth at the Ordination of a Minister, will any man therefore say that Ordination is a converting Ordinance? So if by most serious powerful exhortations, convictions, promises, threatnings, by prayer, by Christian conference by reading or meditation before or after the Sacrament, the Lord be pleased to touch the Conscience and convert the soul of an impenitent prophane wicked liver, nothing of this kind can make the Sacrament a converting Ordinance.
3. We must distinguish even in conversion between gratia praeveniens & subs•quens, operans & co-operans, excitans & adjuvans, or rather, between habitual and actual conversion. Habitual conversion I call the first infusion of the life and habits of grace; actual conversion is the souls beginning to act from that life and from those habits. The first or habitual conversion in which the sinner is passive, and not at all active, it being wholly the work of preventing, exciting, quickening grace, is that which never is to be looked for in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper, which is enough to overthrow that opinion, that scandalous impenitent sinners (having an external formal profession, but known by a wicked abominable conversation to be dead in sins and trespasses, in whom the holy Ghost hath never yet breathed the first breath of the life of grace) may be admitted to the Lords Supper (if they desire it, not being excommunicated) upon hopes, that it may prove a converting Ordinance to them. As for gratia subsequens co-operans & adjuvans, by which the sinner (having now a spiritual life created in him and supernatural habits infused in his soul) is said actually to convert, repent, and believe. I consider even in this actual conversion, repenting, believing, these two things. 1. The inchoation. 2. The progress of the work. Where the work is begun, if it were but faith like a grain of mustard seed, and where there is any thing of conversion which is true and sound; the Sacrament is a blessed powerful