N04855:126
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
Case 6: CASE VI. Of Unwillingness to and Weariness in solemn Services.
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.
3. Those means which may help you to be freed from them (a little at least) are these among many.
1. Be but truly and really, not by fits and darkly, sensible of them: men in deep miseries, are not unwilling to be helped out.
2. Judge ye not rigorously of God, as though he were a bloody austere God; as he did of his master, whose talent he had, and hence never improved it: but look upon God as having a Father's heart and affection towards you in the meanest and greatest performances; which is double, either to give you strength to do what you cannot, (I can do all things through Christ;) or having come to him for it, to accept of what you would do for him, as if it were done: And this will make you joy in the poorest performance, that though it be never so full of vileness, yet the Lord out of his fatherly love, accepts of it as glorious.
3. Renew morning and evening by sad and solemn meditation, the sense of God's love to you in Christ, and in every duty that he sets you about; and love will love and like the yoke, and make the commandments that they shall not be grievous to you.