A94157:253
The door of salvation opened by the key of regeneration
The door of salvation opened by the key of regeneration: or A treatise containing the nature, necessity, marks and means of regeneration; as also the duty of the regenerate. / By George Swinnocke, M.A. and pastor of Rickmersworth in Hertfordshire.
London: printed by John Best for Tho. Parkhurst, 1661
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.
First, The mere civil moral man; This man, Narcissus like, dotes on himself, and thereby is hardly brought to deny himself; the more the tooth is fastened to the gum, the harder it is to part them; the more the man like a tree is rooted in the earth of self, the more difficult to stock him up. The civil man looks on himself in the glass of scandalous sinners lives, and finding his face so clean and fair in comparison of theirs, he falls extraordinarily in love with himself, which many times proves his destruction: He takes his civility for sanctity, that which is less then the shadow for the substance; and without question, 'tis not easy to make him eager after godliness, when he is confident he hath it already; a profane person is (not seldom) sooner convinced and converted then this conceited civilian: for that man will sooner acknowledge himself sick; but this Patient, though sick unto death, looks on himself as whole, and so to have no need of a Physician. In this sense, I suppose, the words of our Lord are spoken, That ⟨p. 119⟩Publicans and Harlots go into the Kingdom of God before Scribes and Pharisees, Matth. 21.31.
First, The meer civil moral man; This man, Narcissus like, dotes on himself, and thereby is hardly brought to deny himself; the more the tooth is fast'ned to the gum, the harder it is to part them; the more the man like a tree is rooted in the earth of self, the more difficult to stock him up. The civil man looks on himself in the glass of scandalous sinners lives, and finding his face so clean and fair in comparison of theirs, he falls extraordinarily in love with himself, which many times proves his destruction: He takes his civility for sanctity, that which is less then the shadow for the substance; and without question, 'tis not easie to make him eager after godliness, when he is confident he hath it already; a profane person is (not seldom) sooner convinced and converted then this conceited civilian: for that man will sooner acknowledge himself sick; but this Patient, though sick unto death, looks on himself as whole, and so to have no need of a Physician. In this sense, I suppose, the words of our Lord are spoken, That ⟨p. 119⟩Publicans and Harlots go into the Kingdom of God before Scribes and Pharisees,