A85953:424
Gospel-revelation in three treatises, viz, 1 The nature of God. 2 The excellencies of…
Gospel-revelation in three treatises, viz, 1 The nature of God. 2 The excellencies of Christ. And, 3 The Excellency of mans immortal soul. By Jeremiah Burroughs, late preacher of the gospel at Stepney, and Giles-Cripple-gate, London. Published by William Greenhill. William Bridge. Philip Nigh. John Yates. Matthew Mead. William Adderly.Gospel-revelation in three treatises, viz, 1 The nature of God. 2 The excellencies of Christ. And, 3 The Excellency of mans immortal soul. By Jeremiah Burroughs, late preacher of the gospel at Stepney, and Giles-Cripple-gate, London. Published by William Greenhill. William Bridge. Philip Nye. John Yates. Matthew Mead. William Adderly.
London: printed for Nath. Brook, 1660
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Treatise 3 › Sermon 1: The First SERMON ON The Excellency of the Soul.
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.
Neither do you think that you have provided well for your children, when you have provided an estate, an inheritance, somewhat to leave them, know, that there is another substance in your children, besides that outward bodily substance you look upon. Do you see a fine feature, comely parts, comely countenance, and your children finely clothed? I but know there is a spirit in that child besides that bodily substance that you are to look to: Certainly man is very far fallen from God, that none scarce takes notice of his own spirit: We do not only naturally live without a God in the world, so as to know little of that infinite divine Spirit that is the first being of all things; but we live without the knowledge of our own spirits, of our own souls: Truly few men there are that know their own souls. As a man by his eye sees things that are without him, but he doth not see his own eye; so by the soul we come to understand many things without us, but yet how little do we understand of our own souls? well might the Psalmist therefore complain, and say, in Psal. 49.20. Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish. God did indeed make man at first in honour, but now he is become like the very beasts, he doth mind little or nothing more than the very beasts themselves, he blesses himself if he hath but content for the body for a while, as if there were nothing else concerned him; I appeal unto your consciences in this thing, whether the uttermost sphere of your thoughts have been any further than merely within the compass of bodily content: If you should come to a beast, and talk to it about Trades and titles of honour, and Arts and Sciences, and such kind of things, why what is all this to a beast? Give a beast hay or corn, and such kind of things that are suitable to it, and it minds that more than it ⟨p. 207⟩doth any high notions that you are able to tell it; and truly thus it is with sensual men, even as the Atheist who saith in his heart, That there is no God; so a kind of Atheism there is in their hearts to say they have no souls, that there is no difference between them and the brute-beasts; hence it is that they savour spiritual things so little.
Neither do you think that you have provided well for your children, when you have provided an estate, an inheritance, somewhat to leave them, know, that there is another substance in your children, besides that outward bodily substance you look upon. Do you see a fine feature, comely parts, comely countenance, and your children finely cloathed? I but know there is a spirit in that childe besides that bodily substance that you are to look to: Certainly man is very far fallen from God, that none scarce takes notice of his own spirit: We do not only naturally live without a God in the world, so as to know little of that infinite divine Spirit that is the first being of all things; but wee live without the knowledge of our own spirits, of our own souls: Truly few men there are that know their own souls. As a man by his eye sees things that are without him, but he doth not see his own eye; so by the soul wee come to understand many things without us, but yet how little do wee understand of our own souls? well might the Psalmist therefore complain, and say, in