A93085:91
Subjection to Christ in all his ordinances, and appointments, the best means to preserve…
Subjection to Christ in all his ordinances, and appointments, the best means to preserve our liberty. Together with a treatise of ineffectual hearing the word; how we may know whether we have heard the same effectually: and by what means it may be come effectual unto us. With some remarkable passages of his life. By Tho. Shepherd, late pastor of the Church of Christ in Cambridge in New-England. Now published by Mr. Jonathan Michel pastor of the said church in New England.Subjection to Christ in all his ordinances, and appointments, the best means to preserve our liberty. Together with a treatise of ineffectual hearing the word; how we may know whether we have heard the same effectually: and by what means it may be come effectual unto us. With some remarkable passages of his life. By Tho. Shephard, late pastor of the Church of Christ in Cambridge in New-England. Now published by Mr. Jonathan Michell pastor of the said church in New England.
London: printed for John Rothwell, 1652
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.
4. If they have any resolution to come out, and think it must not be thus, and purpose never to live thus again; yet notwithstanding all their purposes and resolutions they fall again, and never get any real conquest, their untamed hearts & wills are never a whit more subdued. Isaiah 63.7, 8. For he said, Surely they are my people, children that will not lie. So he was their Saviour, but they soon rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit: their wills were never subdued. But now the Saints either the Lord preserves them from such falls and apostasies: Or if they do depart from the Lord by reason of the prevailing power of any temptation, they ever get real conquest by their fall, their ⟨p. 29⟩sinful corruption thereby gets its deadly wound. Rom. 11.10. Their backs are not always bowed down, but the Lord raiseth their bowed down spirits, Psalm 145.14. and upholdeth their spirits for them when they think they shall one day fall by the hand of such Saul-like sins and distempers. A carnal heart may carry a fair profession, and be in subjection to Christ for a time, but his back stands always bowed down under his profession, it is his burden, and hence at last he casts it off as a man doth his wearisome burden: but on the contrary, child of God being indeed weary of his sin, and carrying that up and down with him as his burden, with his soul bowed down in the sense of his own vileness, by this means through the help of Christ, at last he comes to get real conquest over his sin, and cast it off.
4. If they have any resolution to come out, and think it must not be thus, and purpose never to live thus again; yet notwithstanding all their purposes and resolutions they fall again, and never get any real conquest, their untamed hearts & wils are never a whit more subdued. Isaiah 63.7, 8. For he said, Surely they are my people, children that will not lie. So he was their Saviour, but they soone rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit: their wills were never subdued. But now the Saints either the Lord preserves them from such falls and apostasies: Or if they do depart from the Lord by reason of the prevailing power of any temptation, they ever get real conquest by their fall, their