N04855:88
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.
Your fourth trouble is your aptness to go to God immediately, especially when his graces are most striving in his ordinances, contrary to that of Christ, Ye believe in God believe also in me.
Answ. So indeed it is usual for religious nature often to out-run and get the start of grace; ⟨p. 23⟩as it appears in many other, so in this case you put. Look as it is with every man when God awakens him effectually, he first seeks to his kitchen physic to save himself by his duties, praying, mourning, reforming, endeavouring, repenting, working, before he will seek out to the Physician, and to Christ to save him: Because it was natural to Adam to seek to live by his working, it is natural to every Son and branch of that root, to seek to save himself by doing as well as he can, or as God gives him the strength and grace: So it is here. It was natural to Adam to depend upon, and go to God immediately, as a creature to a Creator, as a Son to go nakedly to God as a Father: Christ was not then known nor seen: so it is natural to every man when rectified Nature is stirred up, to go immediately to God. It is grace in the second Covenant that reveals and draws to Jesus Christ, and to God by Christ, Heb. 7.25.
Answ. So indeed it is usual for religious nature often to out-run and get the start of grace; ⟨p. 23⟩as it appears in many other, so in this case you put. Look as it is with every man when God awakens him effectually, he first seeks to his kitchin physick to save himself by his duties, praying, mourning, reforming, endeavouring, repenting, working, before he will seek out to the Physician, and to Christ to save him: Because it was natural to Adam to seek to live by his working, it is natural to every Son and branch of that root, to seek to save himself by doing as well as he can, or as God gives him the strength and grace: So it is here. It was natural to Adam to depend upon, and go to God immediately, as a creature to a Creator, as a Son to go nakedly to God as a Father: Christ was not then known nor seen: so it is natural to every man when rectified Nature is stirred up, to go immediately to God. It is grace in the second Covenant that reveals and draws to Jesus Christ, and to God by Christ,