A96093:736
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.
Reasons for 1. Purity. 2. Heart-purity.
1The Reasons for Purity are, 1. Purity is a thing called for in Scripture, 1 Pet. 1.16. Be ye holy, for I am holy. It is not only the Minister bids you be holy, but God himself calls for it; what should the holy God do with unholy servants? 2. Because of that filthy and cursed condition we are in before purity be wrought in us; we are a lump of clay and sin mingled together; sin doth not only blind us, but defile us; it is called [Greek or Hebrew], filthiness, James 1.21. And to show how befilthying a thing it is, 'tis compared to a plague-soar, 1 Kings 8.38. To spots, Deut. 32.5. To a vomit, 2 Pet. 2.22. To the infants tumbling in blood, Ezek. 16.6. To a menstruous cloth, Isa. 30.22. which (as Hierom saith) was the most defiling thing under the Law. All the legal washings which God ⟨p. 225⟩appointed, were but to put men in mind of their loathsomeness before they were washed in the blood of Christ. If all the evils in the world were put together, and their quintessence strained out, they could not make a thing so black and polluted as sin doth; a sinner is a Devil in mans shape. When Moses his Rod was turned into a Serpent, he fled from it; would God open mens eyes, and show them their deformities, and damnable spots, they would be afraid, and fly from themselves as Serpents! This shows what need we have of Purity. When grace comes it washeth off this hellish filth, of Ethiopians, it makes us Israelites; it turns Ravens into Swans; it makes them who are as black as hell, to become white as snow.