A96093:613
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.
Quest. How many ways may we be unmerciful to the names of others? Quest.
Quest. How many wayes may we be unmerciful to the names of others? Quest.
Answ. Divers ways: 1. By misreporting them, a sin Answ. 1 forbidden: Exod. 23.1. Thou shalt not raise a false report. Eminency is commonly blasted by slander. Psal. 64.3. Their tongues are as arrows shot out. The tongue of a slanderer shoots out words to wound the fame of another, and make it bleed to death: The Saints of God in all Ages have met with unmerciful men, who have fathered things upon them that they have not been guilty of Surius the Jesuit reported of Luther, that he learned his Divinity of the Devil, and that he dyed drunk; but Melanchthon, who wrote his life, affirms that he dyed in a most pious, holy manner, and made a most excellent prayer before his death: It was Davids complaint, Psal. 35.11. They laid to my charge things which I knew not. The Greek word for Devil, signifies slanderer, 1 Tim. 3.11. [Greek or Hebrew], not slanderers; in the Greek it is not Devils. Some think it is no great matter to defame and traduce another; but know, this is to act the part of a Devil. O how many unmerciful men are there, who indeed ⟨p. 190⟩go for Christians, but play the Devil in venting their lies and calumnies! wicked men in Scripture are called Dogs, Psal. 22.16. Slanderers are not like those Dogs which licked Lazarus his soars to heal them; but like the Dogs which are Jezebel, they rend and tear the precious names of men. Valentinian the Emperor did decree, Capitali sententiae subjugandum, that he who was openly convicted of this crime of slander, should dye for it: And Pope Gregory did decree that such a person should be excommunicate, and not have the Communion given him; I think it was a just Decree.