A64642:537
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.
There is another thing called conception, and that is, certain dispositions to a birth that come not to full perfection. True, a child that is borne and liveth, is as perfectly alive as he that liveth an hundred years: yet I say, there are conceptions that come not to a birth. Now, the faith that justifies, is a living faith: there is a certain kind of dead faith; this is a feigned, that an unfeigned faith; The life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God. Dost thou think a dead faith can make a living soul? It's against reason. A man cannot live by a dead thing, not by a dead faith. Now a dead faith there is. A faith that doth not work is a dead faith, Jam. 2.22. Seest thou how faith wrought with his works and by his works was faith made perfect? for verse 26. As the body without the spirit is dead, (or without breath is dead) so faith without works is dead also. See how the Apostle compares it, as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. The Apostle makes not faith the form of works, as the soul is the form of ⟨p. 386⟩the man: but as the body without the spirit is dead, so that faith that worketh not, that hath no tokens of life, is dead; but then doth not the other word strike home? Faith wrought with his works. It seems here is not as the Papists say, fides informis, and works make it up as the [Greek or Hebrew] of it. Compare this with the other places of the Scripture, 2 Cor. 12.9. where the Apostle prayed to God that the messenger of Satan might be removed from him; and he said unto him, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. What? does our weakness make Gods strength more perfect, to which nothing can be added? No, it is, My strength and the perfection of it, is made known in the weakness of the means that I made use of for the delivery of mans soul from death. So here the excellency and perfection of our faith is made known by works; when I see that it is not an idle but a working faith, then I say it is made perfect by the work: when it is a dead faith, that puts not a man on work, never believe that will make a living soul. In St. Judes Epistle, ver. 20. it hath another Epithet, viz. the most holy faith: not holy only, but most holy. That faith which must bring a man to God the holy of holies, must be most holy.