A81235:65
Correction, instruction or, a treatise of afflictions
Correction, instruction or, a treatise of afflictions: first conceived by way of private meditations: afterward digested into certain sermons, preached at Aldermanbury. And now published for the help and comfort of humble suffering Christians. By Tho. Case, M.A. sometimes student of Ch. Ch. Oxon. now preacher of the Gospel in London.Correction, instruction or, a treatise of afflictions: first conceived by way of private meditations: afterward digested into certain sermons, preach'd at Aldermanbury. And now published for the help and comfort of humble suffering Christians. By Tho. Case, M.A. sometimes student of Ch. Ch. Oxon. now preacher of the Gospel in London.
London: printed by J.M. for Luke Fawn, 1652London: printed by J.M. for Luke Favvn, 1652
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.
Seventhly, 1By correction God brings the Children of promise into more acquaintance with the Word. He teacheth them out of his Law. As here: It is good for me that I ⟨p. 35⟩have been afflicted, that I might learn thy Statutes. God sent David into the School of affliction, there to learn the Statutes of God. By Correction the people of God learn, 1. To converse with the Word of God more abundantly. 2. To understand it more clearly. 3. To relish it more sweetly.
- 17 Lesson, Acquaintance with •he word.
First, By affliction they come to converse with it more abundantly. It is their duty a all time to study the Word: 1To let it dwell richly in them in all wisdom: Job esteemed the words of Gods mouth more then his necessary food. And it is their happiness as well as their duty. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law doth he meditate day and night. 2But what through distraction without, and distemper within, the children of God many times grow strangers to their Bibles, they suffer diversions to interpose ⟨p. 36⟩between the word and their hearts, and as they pray arbitrarily, so they read arbitrarily, and suffer their Bibles to lie by the walls while they are taken up with other entertainments in the world; and therefore God is forced to deal with them as we do with our children, to whip them to their books by the rod of correction: It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes. When they are cast out by the world, then they can run to the World.