A96093:1647
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.
2. A man may have bodily diseases, yet God may love him. Asa was diseased in his feet, 2 Kings 15.23. He had the Gout, yet a Favourite with God. Gods hand may go out against a man, yet his heart may be towards him; diseases are the Arrows which God shoots; pestilence is called Gods Arrow, Psal. 91.5. This Arrow (as Gregory Nazianzene saith) may be shot from the hand of an indulgent father: But soul-diseases are symptoms of Gods anger; as he is an holy God, he cannot but hate sin, he beholds the proud afar off, Psal. ⟨p. 476⟩138.6. God hates a sinner for his plague-sores: Zach. 11.8. My soul loathed them.
3. Sickness (at worst) doth but separate from the society of friends; but this disease of sin, if not cured, separates from the society of God and Angels. The Leper was to be shut out of the Camp; this leprosy of sin without the interposition of mercy, shuts men out of the Camp of heaven, Rev. 21.8. This is the misery of them that dye in their sins, they are allowed neither friend nor Physician to come at them, they are excluded Gods presence for ever, in whose presence is fullness of joy.
3. Sickness (at worst) doth but separate from the society of friends; but this disease of sin, if not cured, separates from the society of God and Angels. The Leper was to be shut out of the Camp; this leprosie of sin without the interposition of mercy, shuts men out of the Camp of heaven,