A49244:453
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 11: XI. Sermon at Lawrence Jury London. April 13. 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. God in the dispensation both of grace and comfort, shows himself a free and gracious Agent; and all our graces which God works in us, are merely from Gods grace to us. He will give comfort when and to whom he pleaseth, but still as a reward of his own free grace, the comfort of a pardon. The comfortable knowledge of our pardon is as well from Gods free grace as the pardon it self; and therefore God suspends the comfort of grace to make us look up to him for it. When thou repentest, God gives a pardon, but therein he rewards his own work in thee. To give a pardon or sense of a pardon is an act of mere liberality in God.
3. God in the dispensation both of grace and comfort, shews himself a free and gracious Agent; and all our graces which God works in us, are meerly from Gods grace to us. He will give comfort when and to whom he pleaseth, but still as a reward of his own free grace, the comfort of a pardon. The comfortable knowledge of our pardon is as well from Gods free grace as the pardon it self; and therefore God suspends the comfort of grace to make us looke up to him for it. When thou repentest, God gives a pardon, but therein he rewards his owne work in thee. To give a pardon or sense of a pardon is an act of meer liberality in God.
4. God doth this to put a difference between heaven and earth. Heaven is a place for comfort, earth for duty: earth is for the getting of grace, heaven for the rewarding of grace. Our Lord Jesus Christ, like the good Master of the Feast, reserves the best for last. The sons of Nobles, when they travel into foreign parts, have no more allowances then what will accommodate their travels, the inheritance is reserved for them, when they come to their fathers house: So believers, who are strangers and pilgrims here, they have so much grace and comfort as befits their passage to heaven; but they have an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away, but is reserved in the ⟨p. 133⟩heavens. God thinks it not sit to give constant comforts in an inconstant world, nor full comforts in an empty world, nor lasting comforts in a transitory world.