A65276:237
The Art of Divine Contentment
Autarkeia, or, The art of divine contentment by Thomas Watson.
London: printed by T.M. for Ralph Smith, 1654
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.
Answ. Be sure it be so; do not prevaricate with God and thy own soul, in true mourning for sin, when the present suffering is removed, yet the sorrow is not removed; but suppose the Apology be real, and sin is the ground of your discontent▪ Yet I answer, a mans disquiet about sin, may be beyond its bounds in these three cases.
Answ. Be sure it be so; doe not prevaricate with God and thy own soule, in true mourning for sinne, when the present suffering is removed, yet the sorrow is not removed; but suppose the Apology be real, and sin is the ground of your discontent▪ Yet I answer, a mans disquiet about sin, may be beyond its bounds in these three cases.
1. When it is disheartening, 1that is, when it sets up sin above mercy. If Israel had only pored upon their sting,2 and not looked up to the ⟨p. 115⟩brazen Serpent, they had never been •ealed. That sorrow for sin which •rives us away from God, is not without sin, for there is more despair in it then remorse; The soul •ath so many tears in its eyes, that it cannot see Christ. Sorrow as sorrow •oth not save (that were to make a Christ of our tears,) but is useful as •t is preparatory in the soul, making sin vile, and Christ precious. Oh •ook up to the Brazen Serpent, the Lord Jesus; a sight of his blood will revive, the medicine of his merits […] broader then our sore.