A64642:246
Eighteen sermons preached in Oxford 1640 of conversion, unto God. Of redemption, & justification,…
Eighteen sermons preached in Oxford 1640 of conversion, unto God. Of redemption, & justification, by Christ. By the Right Reverend James Usher, late Arch-bishop of Armagh in Ireland. Published by Jos: Crab. Will: Ball. Tho: Lye. ministers of the Gospel, who writ them from his mouth, and compared their copies together. With a preface concerning the life of the pious author, by the Reverend Stanley Gower, sometime chaplain to the said bishop.Eighteen sermons preached in Oxford 1640 of conversion, unto God. Of redemption, & justification, by Christ. By the Right Reverend James Usher, late Arch-bishop of Armagh in Ireland. Published by Jos: Crabb. Will: Ball. Tho: Lye. ministers of the Gospel, who writ them from his mouth, and compared their copies together. With a preface concerning the life of the pious author, by the Reverend Stanly Gower, sometime chaplain to the said bishop.
London: printed by S. Griffin for Will, 1660
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. When thou hast made thy self such a black soul, such a dunghill, such a sty, then God must be gone, he cannot endure to dwell there: It stands not with his honour, and with the purity ⟨p. 105⟩of his nature to dwell in such a polluted heart, there must now be a divorce: Holiness becomes his house for ever. His delight is in the Saints. He is King of the Saints, he will not be in a sty: When thou hast thus polluted and defiled thy soul, God and thee must presently part: God puts thee off, and thou puttest God off too. We read in that place before alleged, Eph. 2 12· that before they knew Christ, they were without God in the world, &c. Atheists, [Greek or Hebrew]. And in cap. 4. v. 18. Having your understanding darkened, and being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them. The presence of God is the life of our souls; and we having through sin and ignorance banished God, we become strangers until the time of our ingrafting into Christ; we are aliens to the life of God: whereupon comes a mutual kind of abhorring one another. God abhors us, and we vile and filthy wretches abhor God again. There is enmity betwixt God and us, and between all that belongs to God, and all that belongs to us. There's an enmity betwixt God and us, and observe the expression of it, Levit. 26.15. If you shall despise my statutes, or if your souls shall abhor my judgments, so that you will not do my commandments, &c. See here how we begin to abhor God, and then for judgment on such persons, v. 30. My soul shall abhor you. We are not behind hand with God in this abhorring, Zach. 11.8. My soul loathed them, and their soul abhorred me. When we begin to abhor God, Gods soul also abhors us. When a man hath such a ⟨p. 106⟩polluted soul, he becomes [Greek or Hebrew], a hater of God, and hated of him. When thou hast such a stinking soul, God must needs loath it, as a most loathsome thing; and so thou art not behind God neither. Thy filthiness makes God abhor thee, and thou abhorrest him. And this is thy case, by hating, thou art hated of God.