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The rare jewel of Christian contentment Wherein is showedThe rare jewel of Christian contentment Wherein is shewed
The rare jewel of Christian contentment Wherein is showed; 1. What contentment is. 2. The holy art or mystery of it. 3. Several lessons that Christ teacheth, to work the heart to contentment. 4. The excellencies of it. 5. The evils of murmuring. 6. The aggravations of the sin of murmuring. By Jeremiah Burroughs. The first of the eleven volumes that are published by Thomas Goodwin, William Greenhil, Sydrach Simpson, Philip Nigh, William Bridge, John Yates, William Adderly.The rare jewel of Christian contentment Wherein is shewed; 1. What contentment is. 2. The holy art or mystery of it. 3. Several lessons that Christ teacheth, to work the heart to contentment. 4. The excellencies of it. 5. The evils of murmuring. 6. The aggravations of the sin of murmuring. By Jeremiah Burroughs. The first of the eleven volumes that are published by Thomas Goodwin, William Greenhil, Sydrach Sympson, Philip Nye, William Bridge, John Yates, William Adderly.
London: printed for Ben. Billingsley, 1666
THE RARE JEWEL OF CHRISTIAN CONTENTMENT. › Sermon 4: SERMON, IV. at Stepney. Aug. 17. 1645.
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.
Sixthly, We are worse than nothing, For by sin we come to be a great deal worse than nothing; sin makes us more vile than nothing, sin makes us contrary to all good: now it is a great deal worse to have a contrariety to all that is good, than merely to have an emptiness of all that is good; we are not empty pitchers in respect of good, but we are like pitchers filled with poison, and is it much for such as we are to be cut short of outward comforts?
Sixthly, We are worse than nothing, For by sin we come to be a great deal worse than nothing; sin makes us more vile than nothing, sin makes us contrary to all good: now it is a great deal worse to have a contrariety to all that is good, than meerly to have an emptiness of all that is good; we are not empty pitchers in respect of good, but we are like pitchers filled with poyson, and is it much for such as we are to be cut short of outward comforts?
In the seventh place, If we perish, there will be no loss of us. If God should annihilate me, what loss would there be of me? God can raise up another in my place, to do him other manner of service than I have done. Now put but these seven thing together and then hath Christ taught you self-denial: I may call these the several words in our lesson of self-denial, Christ reaches the soul this, so that as in the presence of God upon a real sight of it self it can say Lord I am nothing, Lord I deserve nothing, Lord I can do nothing, I can receive nothing, I can make use of nothing, I am worse than nothing, and if I come to nothing and perish, there will be no loss at all of me, and therefore what great matter is it for me to be cut short here? A man that is little in his own eyes, such a man or woman will account every affliction to be little, and every mercy to be great: Saul, There was a time (the Scripture saith) that he was little in his own eyes, and then his afflictions were but little to him, when some would not have had him to be King, but spake contemptuously of him, he held his peace, but when Saul began to be big in his own eyes, then the affliction began to be great upon him. There was never any such contented man or woman as this self-denying man or woman: There was never any denied himself so much as Jesus Christ did, he gave his cheeks to the smiters, he opened not his mouth, he was as a lamb when he was led to the slaughter, he made no noise in the street: Oh he denied himself above all, and was willing to empty himself; and so he was the most contented that ever any was in the world, and the nearer we come to learn to deny our selves as Christ did, the more contented shall we be, and by knowing much of our own vileness, we come to