A44697:471
A treatise of delighting in God from Psal. xxxvij. 4. Delight thy self also…
A treatise of delighting in God from Psal. xxxvij. 4. Delight thy self also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. In two parts. By John Howe, M.A. sometime fellow of Magdalen College, Oxon.
London: printed by A. Maxwell for Sa. Gellibrand, 1674
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.
1. That either Religion is in the whole nature of it such a thing to which delight must be alien, and banished from it: As if nothing did belong to, or could consist with it, but sour severities, pensiveness and sad thoughts. Or else,
1. That either Religion is in the whole nature of it such a thing to which delight must be alien, and banisht from it: As if nothing did belong to, or could consist with it, but sowre severities, pensiveness and sad thoughts. Or else,
2. That if any delight did belong to it at all, it must be found only in peculiar extraordinary assurances and persuasions of Gods love; and be the attainment consequently of none but more eminent Christians.
2. That if any delight did belong to it at all, it must be found only in peculiar extraordinary assurances and perswasions of Gods love; and be the attainment consequently of none but more eminent Christians.
That apprehension being throughly admitted, both these misapprehensions fall and vanish. And it will take place, if it be duly considered, That there is a delight that will naturally arise from the congruity and fitness of actions in themselves, and the facility of them, that they flow easily from their proper principles. Whereupon there can be no true vital act of Religion but will be delightful. And we may appeal herein to the judgments of such as shall allow themselves to consider, whether the matter do not evidently appear to be so ⟨p. 213⟩upon a serious review and revolving with themselves of the several gracious operations that proceed from the holy rectitude mentioned in the former part; as the acts of even Repentance, self-abasement, self-denial, self-devoting, (appearing to be in themselves most fit and becoming things), and readily without force proceeding (as they cannot but do) from a rectified and well-disposed heart, how can they but be pleasant? And it is much in our way to the experiencing of such delight, to be at a point with our selves, and well-resolved wherein it is to be sought and found.