N04855:59
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 1: CASE I. Of ordering the Thoughts in Civil Employments.
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.
But yet it seems your thoughts are so far from being subservient the one to the other, that you are distracted and molested, and your piece interrupted, and your Christian course made troublesome, and an heavy burden; which surely cannot be by the yoke of Jesus Christ: therefore you must first bring your troubles in this particular to this issue; either you may follow your Civil affairs, and nourish these thoughts as helps to maintain your peace, and make you heavenly minded in them, (and if they serve sufficiently to such an end, why are you troubled with them?) or else you cannot follow God comfortably in civil actions, unless you banish from your thoughts which do so miserably distract you; and then why do you fear you shall grieve God's spirit, if at the same time you do not give entertainment to them, the unseasonableness of which, speaks plainly they came not from the spirit's suggestions; besides their hindrance of comfortably walking with God, which the Employments themselves can never hinder.
But yet it seems your thoughts are so far from being subservient the one to the other, that you are distracted and molested, and your piece interrupted, and your Christian course made troublesome, and an heavy burthen; which surely cannot be by the yoke of Jesus Christ: therefore you must first bring your troubles in this particular to this issue; either you may follow your Civil affairs, and nourish these thoughts as helps to maintain your peace, and make you heavenly minded in them, (and if they serve sufficiently to such an end, why are you troubled with them?) or else you cannot follow God comfortably in civil actions, unless you banish from your thoughts which do so miserably distract you; and then why do you fear you shall grieve God's spirit, if at the same time you do not give entertainment to them, the unseasonableness of which, speaks plainly they came not from the spirit's suggestions; besides their hindrance of comfortably walking with God, which the Employments themselves can never hinder.
But you will say, when is the season of nourishing such thoughts?