A87500:115
Heaven upon earth, or, The best friend in the worst of times. Delivered in…
Heaven upon earth, or, The best friend in the worst of times. Delivered in several sermons by James Janeway, Minister of the Gospel.
London: printed by T. Milbourn for D. Newman, 1671
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.
As thus, Those that are acquainted with God are brought nigh to God. Whereas sometimes there was a strangeness and remoteness, a vast separation, now the partition is taken out of the way, and I am made one in Christ. I have took God to be my portion, and my Father; I have been a Prodigal, and have departed from him, but I finding my self lost and undone, and that nothing could satisfy my soul in the world, therefore I resolved I would return to my Fathers house, and try if he would receive me again into his family; and so I have done. I have cast off my old converse with the world, and with corruption; I have broken my league with Hell, and have entered into a covenant with the Father, through his Son Jesus Christ; therefore I may comfortably conclude that I am now in a state of acquaintance with God.
As thus, Those that are acquainted with God are brought nigh to God. Whereas sometimes there was a strangeness and remoteness, a vast separation, now the partition is taken out of the way, and I am made one in Christ. I have took God to be my portion, and my Father; I have been a Prodigal, and have departed from him, but I finding my self lost and undone, and that nothing could satisfie my soul in the world, therefore I resolved I would return to my Fathers house, and try if he would receive me again into his family; and so I have done. I have cast off my old converse with the world, and with corruption; I have broken my league with Hell, and have entered into a covenant with the Father, through his Son Jesus Christ; therefore I may comfortably conclude that I am now in a state of acquaintance with God.
But if in the enquiry into my self I find not these things, if I find that now I am as in former ⟨p. 54⟩days; I have felt no such change in my self, and that all things are with me as they were of old; I never was sensible of any loss in my self; I never knew what strangeness and nighness to God meant; I never understood what union with God, and distance from God was; this signifies ill, it is a symptom of a bad state; of a state of unacquaintance with God.