A92145:122
A sermon preached before the Right Honourable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church…A sermon preached before the Right Honorable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church…
A sermon preached before the Right Honourable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church at Westminster, Wednesday the 25. day of June, 1645. Being the day appointed for a solemn and public humiliation. / By Samuel Rutherfurd Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews.A sermon preached before the Right Honorable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church at Westminster, Wednesday the 25. day of Iune, 1645. Being the day appointed for a solemne and publique humiliation. / By Samuel Rutherfurd Professor of Divinitie at St. Andrews.
London: printed by R.C. for Andrew Crook, 1645
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.
The acting of •d unbelief in a Saint is like a business in a court hardly […] hotly debated, and the matter is carried by one voice only, or as in weighing of things in a balance one scruple may cast the seal, and where there is but one grain of saving grace, the work may be swayed by it, if the flesh act by prevalency, it goes wrong, but in the wicked, where there is no prevalency of saving grace, nor any such principle, the sin is not a sin of infirmity. Christ hath not one voice in the court, if reason speak against some crying sins, that is something of God the Creator, but nothing of Christ, it is not from a saving principle, or the right end the honour of God, and so it is not a voice in the court for Christ, but for nature and carnal ends. Paul hath another word, Rom. 7. 23. I find another Law in my mind, [Greek or Hebrew], leading me captive to the Law of sin; the word signifieth one taken with the point of a Spear, or Sword, or with a bloody weapon, so is the word,1 Luke 21. 24. They shall fall by the edge of the Sword, [Greek or Hebrew], and shall be led captive unto all nations, Rom. 16. 17. Salute Andronicus and Junia my kinsmen, [Greek or Hebrew] and fellow prisoners. Now in a taken captive there be two things expressing the nature of infirmities, and so of a weak faith in the Saints. First, ere the captive be taken in war he resisteth, and sheddeth blood, and therefore by paction they promise him quarters. Secondly, it is major vis, a greater power that doth it, so it is against his will that he is taken, and only for want of strength and power to fight he is taken; so he that falls of infirmity or sins of weakness, if he had more strength of grace, he would not yield, and therefore he resisteth and accepteth not of quarters from the flesh without stroke of Sword, and the spirit doth not consent to the ill he doth, as it is, Rom. 7. 15. For that which I do, I allow not, for what I would, that I do not: but what I hate that I do: So the believer is like a sick man walking up a mount, his will and desire is quicker in climbing up to be at the top of the mount, then his legs are.