A44342:1417
The application of redemption
The application of redemption by the effectual work of the word, and spirit of Christ, for the bringing home of lost sinners to God ... by that faithful and known servant of Christ, Mr. Thomas Hooker ...
London: printed by Peter Cole, 1656
The Application of Redemption, by the effectual work of the Word an… › Book 10: The Tenth Book.
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.
Let me open both these in a few words.
Thy inordinate thoughts takes thee off from yielding §1attendance to the Lord, that thou fallest off from him, and the guidance of his wisdom in the Rule, before thou fallest into any sin: Here came in the first breach between God and the soul, and by this the breach is continued and increased daily in our departings from him. This I know (saith the wise man) that God made man right, but he sought out many inventions, or findings, Eccles. 7. last. He was made for God, and should have eyed him directly, and kept himself under the operative dispensation of his spiritual Government, in which he would not have been awanting to him, but he ⟨p. 157⟩would have carried him to his end, and kept him so in happiness, that is, carried him to himself, and kept him with himself for ever. But he found out findings; so the words. When he should have looked to the will of God as the Compass only appointed to stir his course by, he should have looked to the Law which the Lord had found out as the line and level of his life, which would not have failed to have led him to his Duty, and quickened him in it. He was not content with the Rule and way that God had found out, but he finds out an Invention out of the vanity of his mutable mind, looks to that, and is wholly led aside by that from the Lord. So that when he should go from Rule to Rule, for the guidance of […] daily course, he goes from one vanity to another, from one vain thought to another, from one device to another; as they said, let us devise Devices. As in a well ordered Army, break the Rank in one place, and ye bring ruin and confusion upon the whole: Here was the right order in which we were made, and we should have kept Rank and File; the mind and judgment should only have attended God; the Will attend our Judgment, the Affections wait on the Will, the Actions issue as the execution of all. Here Satan routed Adam, brake this Rank upon the first […], takes off the Mind from attending the Covenant, Command, and Direction of the Lord, The day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die, and listens to the […] and forgery of Satan, Ye shall not die at all; and so falls into the commission of the sin, which brought condemnation upon him and his whole posterity; and […] the […] came in thus between God and the soul, so it's daily made greater by this means.