A59693:359
Theses Sabbaticæ, or, The doctrine of the Sabbath wherein the Sabbaths I. Morality, II.…
Theses Sabbaticæ, or, The doctrine of the Sabbath wherein the Sabbaths I. Morality, II. Change, III. Beginning. IV. Sanctification, are clearly discussed, which were first handled more largely in sundry sermons in Cambridge in New-England in opening of the Fourth Commandment : in unfolding whereof many scriptures are cleared, divers cases of conscience resolved, and the moral law as a rule of life to a believer, occasionally and distinctly handled / by Thomas Shepard ...Theses Sabbaticæ, or, The doctrine of the Sabbath wherein the Sabbaths I. Morality, II. Change, III. Beginning. IV. Sanctification, are clearly discussed, which were first handled more largely in sundry sermons in Cambridge in New-England in opening of the Fourth COmmandment : in unfolding whereof many scriptures are cleared, divers cases of conscience resolved, and the morall law as a rule of life to a believer, occasionally and distinctly handled / by Thomas Shepard ...
London: printed by T.R. and E.M. for John Rothwell, 1650
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.
Thesis 118.
The second thing remains to be cleared, whether sanctification may not be a first evidence and therefore more then a carnal inferior and last evidence, as Mr Saltmarsh calls it: For if it be (not a doubtful) but a clear and certain evidence in it self (as hath been proved) why may it not be a first evidence? why may not the Spirit of God who works it in a person justified, first reveal it as an evidence that he is justified? What mortal man can limit the Spirit of God, to what evidence he shall first bring in to the conscience of a justified estate? For let sanctification be taken in the largest sense, for any work of saving grace wrought in the Elect (whether in vocation to faith, or in sanctification which (strictly taken) follows our justification by faith) and take evidence not for evidence of the object (for Christ Jesus in his free-grace must be seen first as the ground on which faith rests) but for evidence of testimony to the subject, and then I thus argue, that this first evidence of special actual love in beholding Gods free-grace to a sinner, it is either 1. Without the being of faith and other graces. Or 2. Without the seeing of them only, the eye looking up only to Christ and free-grace.
The second thing remains to be cleared, whether sanctification may not be a first evidence and therefore more then a carnall inferiour and last evidence, as Mr Saltmarsh cals it: For if it be (not a doubtfull) but a clear and certain evidence in it self (as hath been proved) why may it not be a first evidence? why may not the Spirit of God who works it in a person justified, first reveal it as an evidence that he is justified? What mortall man can limit the Spirit of God, to what evidence he shall first bring in to the conscience of a justified estate? For let sanctification be taken in the largest sense, for any work of saving grace wrought in the Elect (whether in vocation to faith, or in sanctification which (strictly taken) followes our justification by faith) and take evidence not for evidence of the object (for Christ Jesus in his free-grace must be seen first as the ground on which faith rests) but for evidence of testimony to the subject, and then I thus argue, that this first evidence of speciall actuall love in beholding Gods free-grace to a sinner, it is either 1. Without the being of faith and other graces. Or 2. Without the seeing of them only, the eye looking up only to Christ and free-grace.