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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 7: SERMON, VII. at Stepney. Sept. 7. 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.
7. The relation that you stand in to the Saints, you are of the same body with them, they and you make up but one mystical body ⟨p. 128⟩with Jesus Christ, and if they be happy you must needs be happy; On how beneath a Christian is a Murmuring spirit if he considers his relations in which he stands.
Secondly, A Christian should consider, That murmuring and discontentedness is below the high dignities that God hath put upon him: Do but consider the high dignity that God hath put upon thee; the meanest Christian in the world is a Lord of Heaven and Earth; he hath made us Kings unto himself, Kings unto God, not Kings unto men to rule over them, and yet I say every Christian is a Lord of Heaven and Earth, yea of life and death. That is, As Christ he is a Lord of all, so he hath made those that are his Members to be Lords of all, All are yours saith the Apostle, even life and death, every thing is yours. Its a very strange expression that death should be theirs, Death is yours, that is, you are as it were Lords over it, you have that that shall make death to be your servant, your slave, even death it self, your greatest enemies are turned to be your slaves. Faith makes a Christian to be as Lord over all, to be lifted up in excellency above all creatures that ever God made, except the Angels, yea and in some respect above them, I say the poorest Christian that lives is raised to an estate above all the Creatures in the world, except Angels, yea, and above them in divers respect, too, and yet discontented, that thou who wert as a firebrand of Hell, and might have been scorching and yelling and roaring there to all eternity, yet that God should raise thee to have a higher excellency in thee than there is in all the works of Creation that ever he made, except Angels, and other Christians that are in thy condition, yea and thou art nearer the Divine Nature than the Angels, because thy nature is joined in an hypostatical union to the Divine Nature, and in that respect thy nature is more honoured than the nature of the Angels. And the death of Christ is thine, he died for thee, and not for the Angels, and therefore thou art like to be raised above the Angels in divers respects: yea, thou art in such an estate as this is, thou that art set apart to the end that God might man fest to all eternity what the infinite power of a Deity is able to raise a creature to; for that's the condition of a Saint, a Believer, his condition is such as he is set apart to the