N04855:109
Some select cases resolved. Specially, tending to the right ordering of the heart, that…
Some select cases resolved. Specially, tending to the right ordering of the heart, that we may comfortably walk with God in our general and particular callings: &c. In a letter to a pious friend in England. / By Thomas Shepard, M.A. Formerly of Emmanuel-College in Cambridge in England: afterward Minister of Cambridge in New-England. ; Corrected by four several editions.
Boston: printed by Rogers and Fowle, 1747
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.
Object. But here you will say is the difficulty, viz, how I should so seek for the good of absolute promises, as therein to find my self within the compass of some conditional one?
I answer, It is done chiefly by three acts.
1. By being humbly contented, that seeing the Lord has absolutely Promised, to work and do all for the Soul he intends to save, even when it can do nothing for it self, and that he has taken the work into his own hands, so that it is his promise, offer, office and honour to do all; that therefore you lie down, not sluggishly, but humbly at the feet of God, and contented to have him to be your God, and for ever to be disposed of in any thing by God, if he will fulfil his covenant in you; contented to part with any sin, if he will rend it from you; contented to know any truth, if he will reveal it to you; contented to do any duty, if he will enable you; contented to shine bright with all his glorious graces, if he will create and maintain them in you; contented to bear any evil, if he will lay his hand under your head, and thereunto strengthen you; and so seeing the Lord promised to undertake the work for some, put out the work, and put over your Soul, to him, that he would fulfil the good that his covenant promiseth in your self. Now when you do thus, which, no question, you and many a Soul doth, many times reflect upon this act, and see if you cannot or may not find your self by ⟨p. 34⟩it under the condition of some conditional promise; and if you do, then are you bound to believe all God's promises are and will be Yea and Amen unto you. Now that you do so by this act, it self speaks plainly: For how many conditional promises are made to the meek? Blessed are the meek,