A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many useful questions and cases of conscience are…A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many usefull questions and cases of conscience are…

Let us now, 1: Examine our selves, whether there be so much tenderness of conscience in us, as to close with those Scripture Truths, or whether we are still in a way of consulting with flesh and blood. 2. Be humbled for former miscarriages, and failings in the particulars, and for not walking accurately, according to these Scripture rules. 3. Beware for the future: remember and apply these rules, when we have to do with the practise of them: And that I may drive home ⟨p. 184⟩this nail to the head: I add, (beside what was said before) these Reasons and Motives. First, 'tis a great judgement when God mingleth a perverse Spirit in the midst of a people, Isay 19. 14. shall we then make that a voluntary act of our own, which the Word mentioneth as a dreadful judgement? With this spiritual judgement, is oftentimes joined a temporal judgement, as 2 Chron: 16. 9: and 20. 37. and 28▪ 22. so Hos: 5. 13. 7, 8. compared with Hos: 8. 8, 9. Where their judgement, soundeth forth their sin as by an Echo: The Chaldee paraphrase in the place last cited, saith, The house of Israel is delivered into the hands of the people whom they loved. Secondly, remember what followed upon Gods peoples mingling themselves with the heathen, Psal. 106. 35. They were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works, Hos: 7. 8. Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people, that is, by making confederacies with the heathen, (as Luther expounds the place) and by seeking their help and assistance, Hos: 5. 13. But what follows, Ephraim is a cake not turned, hot and overbaken in the nether side, but cold and raw in the upper side. This will prove the fruit of such confederacies and associations, to make us zealous for some earthly or humane thing, but remiss and cold in the things of Christ; to be too hot on our nether side, and too raw on the upper side. Whereas, not mingling our selves with the wicked: we shall through Gods mercy be like a cake turned, that heat and zeal which was before downward, shall now be upward, Heavenward, Godward, let it also be remembered, how both Ahaz, 2. Kings 16. 10. and Asa himself, 2 Chron: 16. 10. (though a good man) were drawn into other great sins, upon occasion of these associations, with the enemies of God and his people: this sin will certainly ensnare men in other sins. 'Tis well said by Calvin upon Ezek: 16. 26.