A96093:1304
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.
4. Keep a good conscience; if there be any sin allowed §4in the soul, it will unfit for suffering: A man that hath a Bile upon his shoulders, cannot carry a heavy burden; guilt of conscience is like a Bile; he that hath this, ⟨p. 374⟩can never carry the Cross of Christ; if a Ship be sound, and well rigged, it will sail upon the water; but if it be full of holes, and leaks, it will sink in the water: If conscience be full of guilt, (which is like a leak in the Ship) it will not fall in the bloody waters of persecution. An house will not stand in a storm, the pillars of it being rotten; if a mans heart be rotten, he will never stand in a storm of tribulation; how can a guilty person suffer, when for ought he knows he is like to go from the fire at the stake to hell-fire! Let conscience be pure. 1 Tim. 3.9. Holding the mystery of faith in a pure conscience. A good conscience will abide the fiery trial; this made the Martyrs flames, beds of Roses; good conscience* is a wall of brass; with the Leviathan, it laughs at the shaking of a Spear, Job 41.29. Let one be in Prison, good conscience is a Bird can sing in this Cage; Austin calls it the Paradise of a good conscience.
- *Murus abaeneus esto, Nil conscire sibi.
5. Make the Scripture familiar to you, Psal. 119.50. The Scripture well digested by meditation will fit for suffering; The Scripture is a Christians Palladium, his Magazine and Fort-royal; it may be compared to the Tower of David, on which there hang a thousand Bucklers,