N03796:172
An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: showing I. What conversion is…An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: shewing I. What conversion is…
An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: showing I. What conversion is not, and correcting some mistakes about it. II. What conversion is, and wherein it consisteth. III. The necessity of conversion. IV. The marks of the unconverted. V. The miseries of the unconverted. VI. Directions for conversion. VII. Motions [i.e., Motives] to conversion. : Whereunto are annexed Divers practical cases of conscience judiciously resolved. / By Joseph Alleine, late Minister of the Gospel at Taunton, in Somersetshire.An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: shewing I. What conversion is not, and correcting some mistakes about it. II. What conversion is, and wherein it consisteth. III. The necessity of conversion. IV. The marks of the unconverted. V. The miseries of the unconverted. VI. Directions for conversion. VII. Motions [i.e., Motives] to conversion. : Whereunto are annexed Divers practical cases of conscience judiciously resolv'd. / By Joseph Alleine, late Minister of the Gospel at Taunton, in Somersetshire.
Philadelphia: printed by B. Franklin, 1741
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Fourthly, Your own Righteousness: Before Conversion, Man seeks to cover himself with his own Fig-leaves, Phil, 3.6 7. and to lick himself whole with his own Duties, Micah 6 6, 7. He is apt to trust in himself, Luke 16.15. & 18.9. and s•• up his own Righteousness, and to reckon his Counters for Gold, and not submit to the Righteousness of God, Rom. 10.3. But Conversion changes his Mind; now he casts away his filthy Rags, and counts his own Righteousness but a menstruous Cloth? He casts it ⟨p. 35⟩off, as a Man would the verminous tatters of a nasty Beggar, Isa 64.7. Now he is brought to Poverty of Spirit, Matth. 5.3. complains of, and condemns himself, Rom. 7. and all his Inventory is, Poor, and miserable, and wretched and blind, and naked, Rev. 3.17, He sees a World of Iniquity in his holy things and calls his once idolized Righteousness but Flesh, and Loss, and Dogs Meat, and would not for a thousand Worlds be found in himself, Philip. 3.4, 7, 8, 9. His Finger is even upon his Sores, Psalm 51.3. his, Sins, his Wants. Now he begins to set a high Price upon Christ's Righteousness; he sees the Need of a Christ in every Duty, to justify his Person, and justify his Performances; he cannot live without him, he cannot pray without him. Christ must go with him, or else he cannot come into the Presence of God; he leans upon the Hand of Christ, and so he bows himself in the House of his God; he sets himself down for a lost, undone Man, without him: His Life is hid in Christ, as the Life of a Man in the Heart; he is fixed in Christ, as the Roots of the Tree spread in the Earth, for Stability and Nutriment. Before, the News of a Christ was a stale and sapless thing; but no how sweet is a Christ; Augustine could not relish his before so much admired Cicero, because he could not find the Name of Christ, how pathetically cries he, Dulcissime, amantis. benignis. caris. &c. quando te videbo? quando satiabo de pulchritudine tua? Medit. c. 37. O most sweet, most loving, most kind, most dear, most precious, most desired, most lovely most fair, &c. all in a Breath, when he speaks of, and to his Christ: In a Word, the Voice of the Convert, is with the Martyr, None but Christ.