A96093:1447
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.
3. God sometimes permits scandals to fall out in the Church out of a design.
1. As a just judgment upon Hypocrites; these squint-eyed devotionists who serve God for their own ends, the Lord in justice suffers them to fall into horrid debauched practices that he may lay open their baseness to the world, and that all may see they were but pie-bald Christians, ⟨p. 416⟩painted Devils. Judas, first a sly Hypocrite, afterwards a visible Traitor.
1. As a just judgment upon Hypocrites; these squintey'd devotionists who serve God for their own ends, the Lord in justice suffers them to fall into horrid debauched practices that he may lay open their baseness to the world, and that all may see they were but py-bald Christians, ⟨p. 416⟩painted Divels. Judas, first a sly Hypocrite, afterwards a visible Traytor.
2. Scandals are for hardening of the profane; some desperate sinners who would never give God a good word, they would not be won by Religion, they shall be wounded by it. God lets scandals be to be a breakneck to men, and to engulf them more in sin. Jesus Christ (God blessed for ever) is to some a Rock of offence, Rom. 9.33. His blood which is to some balm, is to others poison; if the beauty of Religion doth not allure, the scandals of some of its followers shall precipitate men to hell.