A81239:117
Deliverance-obstruction
Deliverance-obstruction: or, The set-backs of reformation. Discovered in a sermon before the Right Honourable the House of Peers, in Parliament now assembled. Upon the monthly fast, March 25. 1646. / By Tho. Case, preacher in Milkstreet London, and one of the Assembly of Divines.
London: printed by Ruth Raworth for Luke Fawne, 1646
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.
1Seventhly, Preposterous methods have been mighty Set-backs to Reformation: when Reformers begin at the wrong end. As long as they cried,2 The time is not come, the time that the Lords House should be built is not yet come, and began with their own houses, the work stuck, they made no earnings of it; they put their wages into a broken bag: 3you cry, saith the Prophet, It is not time, it is not time: the truth is, saith he, if you had not wanted hearts more then time, the work had been done before now: half so much time and cost on Gods house, as on your own; on the Church-affairs, as you have spent on State-businesses, might have done the deed.4 Up to the mountains, fall a building Gods house that lies waste, and do it in good earnest, if you mean to prosper. That is the sum of the Prophets speech. And therefore it was the singular wisdom and piety of Hezekiah (recorded to his everlasting honour) that in the first year of his reign, 5in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord, and repaired them, and brought in the Priests, &c. He made Church-Reformation his first work.
1Seventhly, Preposterous methods have been mighty Set-backs to Reformation: when Reformers begin at the wrong end. As long as they cried,2 The time is not come, the time that the Lords House should be built is not yet come, and began with their own houses, the work stuck, they made no earnings of it; they put their wages into a broken bag: 3you cry, saith the Prophet, It is not time, it is not time: the truth is, saith he, if you had not wanted hearts more then time, the work had been done before now: half so much time and cost on Gods house, as on your own; on the Church-affairs, as you have spent on State-businesses, might have done the deed.