A59692:65
Subjection to Christ in all his ordinances and appointments the best means to preserve…
Subjection to Christ in all his ordinances and appointments the best means to preserve our liberty : together with a treatise of ineffectual hearing the word ... : with some remarkable passages of His life / by Thomas Shepard ...
London: printed by S.G. for John Rothwell, 1657
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
2. External or outward, the end and instigation of which was to set up and help forward the inward; for external Ordinances are nothing in themselves, mean things, but as they are appointed and sanctified for this end, they are most glorious: and therefore Christ threatens the Jews, Matth. 21. 43. That the Kingdom should be taken from them; what was that? Surely not inward, for that they had not, but the outward and external means called Gods kingdom; all these helps and means shall be taken from you, and all laid ruinous. Now this external kingdom of Christ is double.
2. Externall or outward, the end and instigation of which was to set up and help forward the inward; for externall Ordinances are nothing in themselves, mean things, but as they are appointed and sanctified for this end, they are most glorious: and therefore Christ threatens the Jewes, Matth. 21. 43. That the Kingdome should be taken from them; what was that? Surely not inward, for that they had not, but the outward and externall means called Gods kingdom; all these helps and means shall be taken from you, and all laid ruinous. Now this externall kingdom of Christ is double.
1. The external kingdom or government of God by his Church, in the administration an• execution, and subjection to the blessed Ordinances of God, wherein the power and Kingdom of Christ is seen, and thus, Dan. 2. 44, 45. Dan. 7. 27. It shall be given to the Saints of the most high, &c. Not to profane herds of beasts, or cages of unclean birds, but to the Saints ⟨p. 6⟩of the most high, Whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all the Princes of the world shall subject themselves to this kingdom of Christ.