A76991:835
The True Bounds of Christian Freedom
The true bounds of Christian freedom or a treatise wherein the rights of the law are vindicated, the liberties of grace maintained, and the several late opinions against the law are examined and confuted. Whereunto is annexed a discourse of the learned John Cameron's, touching the threefold covenant of God with man, / faithfully translated, by Samuel Bolton minister of the word of God at Saviours-Southwark.The true bounds of Christian freedome or a treatise wherein the rights of the law are vindicated, the liberties of grace maintained, and the severall late opinions against the law are examined and confuted. Whereunto is annexed a discourse of the learned Iohn Camerons, touching the threefold covenant of God with man, / faithfully translated, by Samuel Bolton minister of the word of God at Saviours-Southwark.
London: printed by J.L. for Philemon Stephens, 1645
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.
1. It is a soul slavery. The condition of the Israelites under Pharaoh, and those who are now under the Turkish Galleys, is very sad, but that is but the bondage of the body; but this is a soul slavery, the bondage of the soul. What is it to ⟨p. 330⟩have our bodies vassaled, 1our estates enslaved, in comparison of our souls? Better to be under the tyranny of the most imperious man, then under the vassalage and slavery of sin and our own corruption. This is the utmost, the finishing concluding stroke of God to give a man up to his sins; to say, You that are filthy, be filthy still; and therefore the worst of judgements.
1. It is a soule slavery. The condition of the Israelites under Pharaoh, and those who are now under the Turkish Gallyes, is very sad, but that is but the bondage of the body; but this is a soule slavery, the bondage of the soule. What is it to ⟨p. 330⟩have our bodies vassal'd, 1our estates inslaved, in comparison of our soules? Better to be under the tyranny of the most imperious man, then under the vassalage and slavery of sinne and our own corruption. This is the utmost, the finishing concluding stroke of God to give a man up to his sinnes; to say, You that are filthy, be filthy still; and therefore the worst of judgements.
- 1A meipso me libera Domine, Aug.
2. It is a senseless slavery; a slavery that we were not sensible of: we say in nature, that those diseases are most mortal, that deprive us of sense: now this is a senseless slavery, we are in chains and feel it not, we are under the weights of sin and are not sensible of it; God doth often bring us in bondage by sin, he claps us under the fears and terrors of a self-condemning conscience, and all this that he might deliver us out of the bondage to sin. We say a burning Fever is more hopeful then a Lethargy;