A96093:1258
The beatitudes
The beatitudes: or A discourse upon part of Christs famous Sermon on the Mount. Whereunto is added Christs various fullness. The preciousness of the soul. The souls malady and cure. The beauty of grace. The spiritual watch. The heavenly race. The sacred anchor. The trees of righteousness. The perfume of love. The good practitioner. By Thomas Watson, minister of the word at Stephens Walbrook in the city of London.The beatitudes: or A discourse upon part of Christs famous Sermon on the Mount. Wherunto is added Christs various fulnesse. The preciousnesse of the soul. The souls malady and cure. The beauty of grace. The spiritual watch. The heavenly race. The sacred anchor. The trees of righteousnesse. The perfume of love. The good practitioner. By Thomas Watson, minister of the word at Stephens Walbrook in the city of London.
London: printed for Ralph Smith, 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. When we suffer with patience. Jam. 5.10. Take my Brethren the Prophets for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. A Christian must not repine, but say, Shall I not drink the cup of Martyrdom which my Father hath given me? There should be such a spirit of meekness in a Christians suffering, that it should be hard to say which is greater, his persecution or his patience. When Job had lost all, he kept the breast-plate of innocency, and the shield of patience; an impatient Martyr is a Solecism.
2. To suffer as Christians, is, when we suffer with courage. Courage is a Christians Armour of proof, it steels and animates him. The three children (or rather the three Champions) were of brave heroic spirits; they ⟨p. 361⟩do not say to the King we ought not serve thy gods, but we will not: Dan. 3.18. Neither Nebuchadnezzars Music, nor his Furnace could alter their resolution. Tertullian was called an Adamant for his invincible courage: Holy courage makes us (as one of the Fathers saith) edomita fronte ad Crucis opprobrium, have such faces of brass, that we are not ashamed of the Cross; this is to suffer as Christians, when we are meek, yet resolute. The more the fire is blown, the more it flames; so it is with a brave-spirited Christian; the more opposition he meets with the more his zeal and courage flames forth: What a spirit of gallantry was in Luther, who writing to Melanchthon, If saith he it be not the cause of God, we are embarked in, let us desert it; if it be his cause, and will bear us out, why do we not stand to it*?
2. To suffer as Christians, is, when we suffer with courage. Courage is a Christians Armour of proof, it steels and animates him. The three children (or rather the three Champions) were of brave heroick spirits; they