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A38163 Great salvation by Jesus Christ tenderd to the greatest of sinners and in particular to such as have been refusers of it, if God shall now at last make them willing to receive it / by Richard Eedes ... Eedes, Richard, d. 1686. 1659 (1659) Wing E243; ESTC R17583 114,819 292

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and rendered it more obscure to such whose eyes the God of this world hath blinded that the light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ should not shine unto them To conclude the point it is in the dispensation of the Gospel that the Lord Christ doth excercise all his offices Propheticall and Kingly as well as Priestly and those that are Refusers of the Gospel are such as slight Christ in all 2 Reason proving the sin of setting light by the Gospel to be great sin is Because it is an aggravated sin That is a sin monstrously great further greatned and made notoriously sinfull by circumstances It s enquired which sinns are most sinfull those that are committed against the first table or the second and it s agreed that sinns against the first are if other circumstances of weight concurre not to make the other the heaviest Scale But this sin of Gospel-refusing is greater than all because the administration of the Gospel doth excell in glory that of the Law as farr as Christ doth excell Moses I might here enumerate a multitude of circumstances to aggravate the guilt of this sin but because I intend as much brevity as a subject so momentous will well allow of I shall satisfy my selfe to enlarge a little upon three Circumstances The circumstances 1 Of Person 2. Of Time 3. Of Place 1. The Circumstance of the Person adds sinfullness to the sin otherwise Nathan had been deceived in pleading the greatness of Davids sin by the eminency of his person and Gods munificence towards him 2. Sam. 12.7 8 9. Thus saith the Lord God of Jsrael I anointed thee King over Jsrael and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul and I gave thee thy Masters house and thy Masters wives into thy bosome and gave thee the house of Jsrael and Judah and if that had been too little I would moreover have given thee such and such things Wherefore hast thou despised the commandement of the Lord to do evill in his sight Much like that of David to his false freind had it been mine Adversary that had magnified himselfe against me perhaps I could have borne it but it was thou my Companion and mine own familiar freind Joseph interposes this consideration betwixt him and sin Quomodo ego how can I do this great wickedness and sin against God Gen. 39.9 And religious Nehemiah fortified himselfe against flying when Tobia and Sandballat were plotting his discouragment with the very like argument should such a man as I fly I will not go into the temple to save my life Nehem 6.11 Oh let the covenant-servants of the Lord and such as retaine to his Family consider this that those dishonours wound him most which he receives from his favorites and pretended freinds And as the abusers of grace given do sin with an high hand so the refusers of grace offered do sin with a hard heart and their sinns are also aggravated by the circumstance of the person None are capable of being guilty of this sin but such as live in the sound and sunshine of the Gospel those whom the day star from one high hath visited and to whom Christ is tendered in all his fullness The rebellious Jewes were guilty of it for it s said that Christ came to his own and his own received him not Iohn 1.11 And the Gentiles to whom the Gospel was sent upon their refusall they that receive it not are guilty of refusing it but Heathens and Infidels to whom the word of God is a stranger they cannot be guilty of this sin though sinning without Law they shall perish without Law Rom. 2.12 Yet sinning without Gospel they cannot be judged for contemning the Gospel Those Nations and people to whom the sound of the Gospel is gone out as it was into Jsrael of whom David said In Jury is God known his name is great in Jsrael c. He hath not dealt so with any Nation neither have the heathen such knowledge of his wayes and concerning whom Moses makes enquiry What Nation is so great to have the Lord nigh unto them as the Lord our God is nigh unto us in all that we call upon him for and the like may be said of England that it is a Land like Canaan the glory of all Lands a Land flowing not only with milk and hony but with better mercies the bread and water of life the wine and milk of consolation where the King that hath made a marriage for his Son keepes open house and the Lord of hoasts hath made for the faithfull of the Land a feast of fat things and wine upon the lees of fat things full of marrow and wines upon the lees well refined For such to be found here that shall undervalue the Lords bounty and run after their Oxen and Farmes and wives their profits and pleasures and lusts when they should thankfully embrace and rejoyce in the riches of Gods mercy and be meditating and studying some suitable returnes when they should be coveting better profits and solacing themselves with better pleasures and their hearts should be set upon better honours than the world can afford them what unthankfullness can be comparable to this what sinns or sinners can be more notorious 2. The circumstance of the time also doth aggravate the sin Paul said to the Athenians that were exceeding superstitious and given to idolatry Acts 17.30 The times of former ignorance God winked at but now saith he he commandeth all men every where to repent God did not require much from the darke times of heathenish superstitions nor so much from the duske glimmering or star-light of legall dispensations as he doth from us under the clear sunshine of the Gospel now life immortality is brought to light and brought neerer and made clearer than ever before Had we lived in the time of the old world neer unto the deluge when the world was overwhelm'd first with ignorance and licentiousness and then with water They were eating and drinking marrying and giving in marryage i.e. Wallowing in drunkenness and gluttony and lust making provisions for the flesh to fullfill the lusts of it so that Noah the preacher of righteousness could not be heard Or if we had lived in the time of that great revolt of the old Israelites when the Prophet complained and I only am left and they seek my life to take it away 1. Kings 19.10 Or had we lived near unto the time of Christs coming in the flesh when the Gentiles were no people Or in the rise and reign of Antichrist that grand Apostacy of the Gentiles then there might have been some excuse and we had had somewhat to say for our selves But to live in the last age of the World when the Lord is a destroying that man of sin with the breath of his mouth and the brightness of his coming when the fullness of the Gentiles is to come in and the Jewes to be reduc'd unto Christs fold I mean when these
will repudiate you and give you a bill of divorce and because you were no more faithfull in keeping the Oracles of God your Candlestick shall be removed and you shall be left in darkness and that Land of yours which is the glory of all Lands shall be like a desolated Desert and a forsaken Wildernes what is it that hath made such havock of late years in Germany that hath destroyed so many Towns and made such depopulations as our ears have heard of was it not the Lords Covenant-quarrel What was it that opened such bloudy sluces in England Scotland and Ireland and the Netherlands without all peradventure this sin of Gospel-refusing hath stricken the deadlyest stroakes in all our Wars and we may say to this sin as once Zippora said to Moses thou hast been a bloudy sin to us and if we shall go on to dishonour God and slight his Gospel and notwithstanding the loud out-cries of his Word and Sword we shall nourish that viper in our bosoms and shall foment those blasphemies and heresies that strike at the foundation and shall help on those divisions that threaten to deprive us of Verity and Purity as well as Unity we may take up a lamentation when it is too late and Sword Pestilence and Famine may be sent upon that errand to bring our sins to our remembrance which the Gospel in the mid'st of peace health and plenty could not fasten upon us It should be written with a pen of iron in every thankfull heart what wonderfull deliverances the Lord hath wrought for us especially those of the Spanish Invasion and the Powder-plot of which we may say in Davids words if the Lord himself had not been on our side may England now say if the Lord himself had not been on our side when men rose up against us they had swallowed us up quik when they were so wrathfully displeased at us but blessed be the Lord that hath not given us over as a prey unto their teeth Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the Fowler the snare is broken we are delivered And shall we after all this betray our native Land into the cruel hands of our religious adversaries that would borrow all the politicks of Julian or Machiavill and make use of all the Stratagems and strength of the Devils heads and borns to deprive us of the Gospel Surely we cannot take a likelier course to effect all this than by going on to neglect this great Salvation which if this Gospel-glutted Land shall persist in doing notwithstanding the warnings of all Gods Watchmen when the Sword of the Lord shall devour greedily your flesh and his arrows shall make themselves drunk with your bloud when your sins have made this populous and plentifull Land a place of sculls and a field of bloud when the hornet of your conscience shall sting you like the pangs of death and say unto you as Nathan to David you are the men that have done this you will then know that you are Traitors to the State who have betrayed your Country into the Enemies hand We read that the Cananites dwelled in garrisons walled up to Heaven and yet their sinns delivered them up into the hands of spoilers and though our fenced Cities had walls as high and thick as the walls of Babylon yet the sin that is within would let in the enemy Though our Armies were never so mighty and numerous Our Counsellors and Statesmen the very Oracles of the time Yet they are the faithfull Ministers and people that are the Charets of Israel and horsemen of it And our greatest security under Heaven lies in such as teach and live the Gospel such as know and do and declare the will of God and indeavour to keep a conscience voyd of offence towards God and man and order their whole conversation as it becometh the Gospel of Jesus Christ 4 Reason of the greatness of this sin is because it is a Church-confounding sin There hath been a great crying down of Churches in our dayes by giddy sectaries but this is a short cut to destroy all and to turne the Lords vineyard into a howling wilderness All the secret underminings of schismes within and the malignant batteries of persecutors without can do but little hurt so long as he is our keeper that never slumbers nor sleepes and is able to make his Church bear up against the gates of Hell but when by setting light by the Gospel we do put God from us open a wide dore to our own overthrow then the wild bore and beasts may make havoek the adversaries may fall on and cry downe with it downe with it even to the ground and the Churches Enemies may say as Davids enemies did of him God hath forsaken him persecute and take him for there is none to deliver him What it was that made the Lord God of Israel to forsake his tabernacle in Shilo and utterly to forsake the Jewes you hard in the last reason for it was their setting light by Christ that did overthrow their State and Church too What was it that made Babylon the great to fall and Rome to be unchurched whose fame and faith made the world to ring but because of Christian they became Antichristian and from Apostolicall did turne retrograde and became Antipostolicall and of a Church of the living God a pillar and ground of the truth they became an Hydra of Heresy and Synagogue of Satan What removed the Candlesticks from the seven famous Churches of Asia and fills their eares with the forgeries of Mahomet where the sound of the Gospel was wont to ring read the Prophesies that went of them in the second and third Chapters of the Revelation and you will find it was for turning their backs upon the Gospel and entertaining falshood insteed of truth And what hath made the Lord to stand so often upon the threshold amongst us as if he were ready to take his leave though like a long suffering God and he yet plaies ●oath to part If we do but take these following causes among many into close consideration we may easily informe our selves 1 How many in this Goshen and Land of light do stand in open opposition to the Gospel and as it were bid defiance to God and Christ How have sectaries swarmed of late and such as openly oppose the truths of God yea the very fundamentalls opening their black mouthes wide against God and Christ and the Spirit and the Word and Seales and Sabboth and Ministry some denying the immortality of the Soul and perswading men that they are without Law and that there is neither Heaven nor Hell And besides these how many dissolute and profane Spirits abound in all places even under searching and powerfull Ministries that in words profess Christ but in workes deny him 2 How few do close with the Covenant of God so visibly that they may pass for beleiver in a large sence and be conversed with