A94156:482
The Christian-man's calling: or, A treatise of making religion ones business. Wherein the nature…
The Christian-man's calling: or, A treatise of making religion ones business. Wherein the nature and necessity of it is discovered. : As also the Christian directed how he may perform it in [brace] religious duties, natural actions, his particular vocation, his family directions, and his own recreations. / By George Swinnock ...
London: printed for T.P., 1662
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.
O consider what love the Saints of God have ever had to his Law. Luther said, That he hated the Books he made, and could wish them all burnt, lest the time spent in reading them, might hinder the reading of the Scriptures. O how love I thy Law! saith David. The godly have meditated therein day and night; they have esteemed it above the sweetest honey, and the finest gold; the Martyrs in England have given much of their Estates for a few leaves of it, ⟨p. 203⟩and they laid down their lives, before they would lose the precious fruit in it. The French Protestants (saith their Historian) burnt in zeal to the Word, whilst the bloody Papists burnt them for the Word. Scipio Africanus was applauded, for having usually in his hands the books of Xenophons Institutions of Cyrus: O let this Book of books be often before thee, and always in thee, let it be thy mediation all the day. One would think, that he who knoweth and believeth the contents of the Word, should hardly ever let a Bible be out of his hand, at least, he will lay it up (as the two Tables in the Ark) in his heart. 1One of the Fathers calls it, The heart and soul of God. Indeed as a man by his word discovereth his mind and will; so God by the Gospel, which is his Word, revealeth his eternal good will to men: It is the Copy of his everlasting love, of which his Decree is the Original, containing all his precious thoughts (before the foundation of the World) of redeeming miserable man with the blood of his Son, and making him an heir of the eternal weight of glory. Those gracious and mysterious purposes of his, which were hid in the night of many ages, when the Sun of Righteousness once appeared in the Horizon of the Gospel, were visible and legible to every eye: He hath brought Life and Immortality to light by the Gospel, 2 Tim. 1.10.
O consider what love the Saints of God have ever had to his Law. Luther said, That he hated the Books he made, and could wish them all burnt, lest the time spent in reading them, might hinder the reading of the Scriptures. O how love I thy Law! saith David. The godly have meditated therein day and night; they have esteemed it above the sweetest honey, and the finest gold; the Martyrs in England have given much of their Estates for a few leaves of it, ⟨p. 203⟩