A81220:94
A sermon pressing to, and directing in, that great duty of praising God. Preached…
A sermon pressing to, and directing in, that great duty of praising God. Preached to the Parliament at Westminster, Octob: 8. 1656. Being the day of their solemn thanksgiving to God for that late success given to some part of the fleet of this Common-wealth against the Spanish fleet in its return from the West Indies. / By Joseph Caryl, minister of the Gospel at Magnus near London Bridge.A sermon pressing to, and directing in, that great duty of praising God. Preached to the Parliament at Westminster, Octob: 8. 1656. Being the day of their solemn thanksgiving to God for that late successe given to some part of the fleet of this Common-wealth against the Spanish fleet in its return from the West Indies. / By Joseph Caryl, minister of the Gospel at Magnus near London Bridge.
London: printed by M. Simmons, 1657
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. As it is a return of prayer. David in that other Psalm, where he puts the question to himself, What shall I render unto the Lord, for all his benefits unto me? (Psal. 116. 12.) had said (v. 1, 2.) I Love the Lord because he hath heard my voice & my supplications, because he hath inclined his ear unto me. We never take so much spiritual pleasure in any of the providential works of God, as in those, which (with humble submission to his own good pleasure) we have wrought him to by prayer.
1. As it is a returne of prayer. David in that other Psalme, where he puts the question to himself, What shall I render unto the Lord, for all his benifits unto me? (Psal. 116. 12.) had said (v. 1, 2.) I Love the Lord because he hath heard my voyce & my supplications, because he hath enclined his eare unto me. We never take so much spirituall pleasure in any of the providentiall works of God, as in those, which (with humble submission to his own good pleasure) we have wrought him to by prayer.
2. The pleasure which we should take in the works of God, ought to arise from those more eminent evidences of the power and goodness or any other manifestations of God in them. And indeed, we should take pleasure in nothing but as somewhat of God appears in it. As God is himself the chiefest good, so the more of God is seen in handing our mercies to us, the better they are. And therefore we should be more affected with, and take more pleasure in the appearances of God in our mercies, then with our ⟨p. 31⟩own advantages & advancements by them. We take pleasure as beasts only, if we take pleasure in what they are for us, and not in what of God is in them. As a believers hope, and trust, and confidence, is in God alone for what he would have wrought, so he hath greater joy, and content, and complacency in God himself then in any of his works.