A90288:78
A sermon preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament assembled
A sermon preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament assembled: on January 31. A day of solemn humiliation. With a discourse about toleration, and the duty of the civill magistrate about religion, thereunto annexed. Humbly presented to them, and all peace-loving men of this nation. / By John Owen, pastor of the Church of Christ, which is at Coggeshall in Essex.A sermon preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament assembled: on January 31. A day of solemne humiliation. With a discourse about toleration, and the duty of the civill magistrate about religion, thereunto annexed. Humbly presented to them, and all peace-loving men of this nation. / By John Owen, pastor of the Church of Christ, which is at Coggeshall in Essex.
London: printed by Matthew Simmons for Henry Cripps, 1649
Title page typeset from the transcription.
A Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons, Jan. 31. 1648.
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.
1. The weakness of Faith, when the methods of God's proceedings are unfath mable to our apprehensions; while men see the paths wherein the Lord walketh, they can follow him through some difficulties; but when that is hid from them, though Providence so shut up all other ways, that it is impossible God should be in them, yet if they cannot discern (so proud ⟨p. 12⟩are they) how he goeth in that wherein he is, they are ready to faint and give over. God is pleased sometime to make darkness his pavilion and his secret place, A fire devours before him, and it is very tempestuous round about him, Psal. 50. 3. When once God is attended with fire, darkness, and tempest, because we cannot so easily see him, we are ready to leave him: Now this the Lord usually doth in the execution of his judgements, Thy righteousness is like the great Mountains, thy judgements are a great deep, Psal. 36. 6. His righteousness, his kindness is like a great Mountain, that is easy to be seen, a man cannot overlook it, unless he wilfully shut his eyes; But his Judgements are like the great Deep; Who can look into the bottom of the Sea, or know what is done in the depths thereof? Gods works in their accomplishment are oftentimes so unsuited to the reasons and apprehensions of men, that very many who have been strong in desires, and great in expectation of them, upon their bringing forth to light, have quite rejected and opposed them as none of his, because distant from what they had framed to themselves: It is evident from the Gospel, that the people of the Jews were full of expectation and longing for the great work of the coming of the Messiah, just at the season wherein he came, yet being come, because not accommodated to their prae imaginations, they rejected him, as having neither form nor comeliness in him to be desired, Isa. 53. 2. And the Prophet Amos telleth many, Who desired the day of the Lord, that, that day should be darkness to them and not light, Amos 5. 18, 20. So in every Generation many desirers of the accomplishment of Gods work, are shaken off from any share therein, by finding it unsuited to their reasons and expectations.