A49244:493
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 12: XII. Sermon At Lawrence Jury, London. April 20, 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.
The second Position is this,1 that diversity of gifts is not to be ascribed to mans industry, diligence or education, but to the free pleasure and dispensation of God. It is true, much may be ascribed to study, and industry, and diligence in a way of gifts, which was the ground of the Apostles exhortation, Give attendance to reading, 2to exhortation, to doctrine, &c. and meditate on these things, give thy self wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all. The Apostle speaks there of profiting in ministerial gifts: which gifts, diligence and study do much advantage and promote: yet though we were all equal in study and diligence, there would be a diversity in our gifts, lest men should vaunt of their industry in acquiring gifts, and thereby ⟨p. 144⟩exclude Gods bounty in bestowing them, Psal. 127. 1. Except the Lord build the house, 3they labour in vain that build it. (saith Hildersa••) Suppose that two men were to read the same books, and to study the same matter every day, yet the one may be a dun•e, and a man of low gifts, and the other may have rare parts and excellent endowments; this is to show who we are beholding to, that is God, whose dispensation of gifts are many and variously bestowed. Hence it is the Apostle telleth us, That all these gifts worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will; 4so that though one man differ from another in gifts, yet it is God that maketh him to differ.
The second Position is this,1 that diversity of gifts is not to be ascribed to mans industry, diligence or education, but to the free pleasure and dispensation of God. It is true, much may be ascribed to study, and industry, and diligence in a way of gifts, which was the ground of the Apostles exhortation, Give attendance to reading,