A49244:376
Grace: the truth and growth and different degrees thereof. The sum and substance of…Grace: the truth and growth and different degrees thereof. The summe and substance of…
Grace: the truth and growth and different degrees thereof. The sum and substance of XV. sermons. Preached by that faithful and painful servant of Jesus Christ, Mr. Christopher Love, late minister of Lawrence Jury, London. They being his last sermons. To which is added a funeral sermon, being the very last sermon he ever preached.Grace: the truth and growth and different degrees thereof. The summe and substance of XV. sermons. Preached by that faithful and painful servant of Jesus Christ, Mr. Christopher Love, late minister of Lawrence Jury, London. They being his last sermons. To which is added a funerall sermon, being the very last sermon he ever preached.
London: printed by E.G. for J. Rothwell, 1652
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Sermon 9: IX. Sermon at Lawrence Jury London. April 6. 1651.
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.
3. Hereby the peace and purity of conscience is violated; the devil will play at small game rather then at no game: and if he cannot prevail to damn thy soul, yet he will endeavour to disquiet thy conscience.
3. What are those great corruptions and sins unto which strong believers are incident?1
- 1Quest. 3.
1. To lose those strong affections which they had at their first Conversion.1 Holy Greenham complained, that it was very difficult to keep together his old discretion and young zeal.—Young Christians (as hath been already observed) have strong affections, and but weak judgements. Their heat is more then their light. Their present apprehension and sense is great and high, their experience little and low; And so also strong Christians, who may have much grace, yet the flood and flush of affections may be much abated, and it is the fault of old professors, ⟨p. 107⟩that they do not labour to maintain the primitive vigour and vivacity of their first affections;2 they are too apt to leave their first love, yet we must know they do not decay so as to be bankrupts, in grace. In the godly the decay and declining, though it may be great, yet it is neither total nor final; though he may fail, yet he is not a bankrupt, he hath still a stock remaining which can never be quite spent, a fountain which can never be quite dry.