A81240:144
Elijah's abatementEliah's abatement
Elijah's abatement: or, Corruption in the saints. Discovered and distinguished in a sermon, preached at Chatham in Kent, at the Funeral of that faithful minister of the Gospel, Mr. Gaulter Roswell, M.a. late preacher there. / By Tho. Case, M.A. and rector of Giles in the Fields.Eliah's abatement: or, Corruption in the saints. Discovered and distinguished in a sermon, preached at Chatham in Kent, at the Funeral of that faithful minister of the Gospel, Mr. Gaulter Roswell, M.a. late preacher there. / By Tho. Case, M.A. and rector of Giles in the Fields.
London: printed by E.T. for Luke Fawn, 1658
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.
Thus John the Baptist was the Successor of Elijah, not so much in doing miracles, as in his powerful Preaching; his Ministry was a powerful Ministry; how did he thunder against the Pharisees & Sadducees who came to his Baptism? 1O generation Vipers who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? &c. A terrible Exordium, and the whole Sermon is of the same strain, startling and convincing, full of terror: I have not time to read it, much less to run a Paraphrase upon it.
Thus John the Baptist was the Successour of Elias, not so much in doing miracles, as in his powerful Preaching; his Ministry was a powerful Ministry; how did he thunder against the Pharisees & Sadduces who came to his Baptism? 1O generation Vipers who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? &c. A terrible Exordium, and the whole Sermon is of the same strein, startling and convincing, full of terrour: I have not time to read it, much less to run a Paraphrase upon it.
This gracious servant of the Lord, (whom we have this day followed to the Sepulchre) was Successor (as I may so say) both to Elijah and John the Baptist; not (as I said) in working Miracles; but in a powerful Ministry; ⟨p. 52⟩He was a Boanerges; 1his Ministry was a thundering Ministry; And I would to God, we had more of them; there is need of them; Thunder, they say, purgeth the air; and if so; we have need of more such sons of thunder amongst us, and not such as will preach placentia unto people, sow pillows under their elbows, and sing men to hell with sweet Lullabies of peace, peace, when there is no peace. Our air is pestilentially infectious, not only in the Physicians sense, who tell us that the cause of the late mortality among us (yet not universally healed, though, blessed be the God that heareth prayers, wonderfully abated) was the infection of the air; but in the Divines sense; our spiritual Physicians, who tell us our climate is mortally infected with the Pests of Heresies and Blasphemies; and with the putrid stench of all manner of poisonous lusts: and this is the fatal source of all our