A91746:78
The means and method of healing in the Church. Set forth in a sermon.…The meanes and method of healing in the Church. Set forth in a sermon.…
The means and method of healing in the Church. Set forth in a sermon. Preached before the Right Honourable the House of Peers in Westminster Abby, April 30. 1660. being a day of solemn humiliation to seek God for his blessing on the counsels of the Parliament. By Edward Reynolds, D.D. and Dean of Christ-Church.The meanes and method of healing in the Church. Set forth in a sermon. Preached before the Right Honourable the House of Peers in Westminster Abby, April 30. 1660. being a day of solemn humiliation to seek God for his blessing on the counsels of the Parliament. By Edward Reynolds, D.D. and Dean of Christ-Church.
London: printed by Tho. Ratcliffe for George Thomason, 1660
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. A Godly sorrow, so called by the Apostle, because it sets the soul God-ward. Cain, Judas, Felix sorrowed, but they ran from God. But Godly sorrow carries the soul closer unto God. As a ship in a tempest ventures not to any shore, but gets further into the Sea; so the soul when it is humbled by God, betakes not it self unto any carnal shore, but still runs closer into him.
2. A Justifying of God, ascribing to him the glory of his Righteousness, if he should condemn us; and of his Mercy, that he doth absolve us, Psalm 51. 4. Daniel 9. 7, 8, 9.
3. A self-judging and subscribing to our Condemnation, saying Amen unto the curse, ⟨p. 34⟩Deut. 27. 15. If I judge my self, God can reverse my Judgement, as the Superior Judicatory can the Act of the Inferior: But if I stay till God judge me, all the world1 cannot null or avoid his. As St. Austin saith of the poor Publican, Ipse sibi judex erat, ut Deus liberaret; ipse accusabat, ut ille defenderet. He judged and accused himself, that God might deliver and defend him.2 Bonum Judicium, saith Bernard, quod me illo districto divinoque judicio subducit & abscondit: Volo vultui irae judicatus praesentari non judicandus. This is a good Judgement indeed which withdraws and hides me from the severe Judgement of God. I tremble to fall into the hands of the living God, Let me be presented before his wrath as judged already, not as to be judged by him.