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A65533 Be ye also ready a method and order of practice to be always prepared for death and judgment, through the several stages of life / by the author of The method of private devotion. Wettenhall, Edward, 1636-1713. 1694 (1694) Wing W1488; ESTC R23957 81,107 235

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ravishing sight Besides we shall be fitted for the Conversation of pure Intelligences that is of Holy Angels and for enjoying the familiarity of all the Blessed Saints We shall be with Saints and Angels taken up in the admiration love and praises of God and Christ We shall then know too what the Holy Ghost is and be full thereof We shall understand plainly what we at present see only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 through a perspective Glass and in a Riddle how those three that bear record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost are one All the desires both of the Mind and of the Will that is all our desires after truth good and any agreeables shall be at once infinitely satisfied and yet with satisfaction Eternally flowing forth to that incomprehensible Fountain of all Truth and Good the Eternal Infinite God No Memory or Sense of any thing past or of any thing here below remaining with us any otherwise than as such reflections may heighten our present transport or ravishment And all this happiness is to be Everlasting without End without Intermission without Allay This is for the main such an account as here may suffice to be given of the Heavenly Happiness But we must remember it is infinitely short of the full real Truth For 1 Cor. 11. 9. Eye hath not seen nor Ear heard neither have entred into the heart of Man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him ●3 Now Secondly as vast and infinite as this Happiness is that it is no presumption in a faithful Soul and such certainly are all who have so as directed made their peace with God I say that it is no presumption in such a Soul to desire pray for aim at and pursue this Happiness is evident because God has offered it in the Gospel The proposal of this and of its means together with the opening our way to it was the Great Errand and business on which Christ Jesus came into the World God sent his Son into the World not to condemn the World to keep them under that Sentence of Condemnation and Death which by Sin had taken place upon them but that the World through him might be saved For God John 3. 16. so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life And accordingly our Saviour Jesus Christ hath abolished Death 2 Tim. 1. 10. and brought Life and Immortality to light through the Gospel The Gospel publishes the conditions ways or means by which it is to be had which we have seen in part and shall further see as we proceed and requires us thus to seek it under pain of everlasting misery if we do not And that Men of all sorts and tempers might be invited thereunto and prevailed with our Lord Jesus has taken care it should be proposed under such various Notions and Characters as may comply with all Mens tempers To draw in Ambitious Men it is proposed as Honour and Glory as a Crown a Throne a Kingdom c. To gain Men of pleasure it is represented as a Banquet a Supper a Marriage Feast fullness of Joy and Pleasures for evermore c. To allure Men that love Wealth it is called a Treasure a Treasure which neither Moth nor Rust can corrupt nor Thieves break through and steal the true Riches an Inheritance incorruptible c. And to be brief to take with some others it is perhaps called by other names But in a word to take with all forasmuch as all Men love Life and most people Long Life it is called what it is most truly Everlasting Life Upon the whole God is so desirous that none should neglect it that it is propounded to all I say in a way to suit each Mans Temper Humour and Inclination The commands to pursue it are so many that it is neither needful nor indeed easie to reckon them all up The Encouragements so great that it is not possible to add to them witness that one Command and Superlative Encouragement Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you Matth. 6. 33. What can be added to all things Yet the Kingdom of God and all things that is all things good for them shall they receive who seek first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness Thus then we see in some measure both what this Happiness is and that it is in Strictness our Duty to seek after it or endeavour to secure it § 4. It is now high time to enquire thirdly how or by what means we may secure it How shall we convey Treasure thither Or how is it possible there to lay up our Treasure In answer hereto the Directions shall be few and easy of which the first is Whoever would have a Happiness in Heaven must By Resolution and Prayer chuse God for his Happiness for it is the Enjoyment of him that makes both Heaven and Happiness without Him is neither possible And the Almighty God all that he is Infinite as he is is content to be the Happiness of such poor Worms as are we mortal Men. He of old said unto Abraham and in him the Father of the Faithful to every even the meanest faithful Soul Fear not I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward Gen. 15. 1. And he says the same at present to every disposed person who reads or hears this Take God then at his Word And first resolve with thy self and say inwardly in Spirit God shall be the portion of my Soul Let others please themselves in other Goods in the Encrease of Corn and Wine and Oyl in joyning House to House and Field to Field in loading themselves with thick Clay or laying up Treasure upon Earth for many years for my part I will take up with none of these the Almighty God shall be my portion Our Lord Jesus himself for of him prophetically is that Psalm to be interpreted did while in the Flesh so resolve Psal 16. 5. The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my Cup thou maintainest my lot Fear not then thou for whom Christ died to the end thou mightest come to the Father by a new and living Way through his bloud Fear not I say neither forbear thus to come thus to resolve And having thus inwardly resolved with thy self Take with thee words and apply thy self faithfully and humbly by Prayer to God telling him that thou art resolved to make the same Choice as thy Saviour not only by his Doctrine but by his Practice and Example taught thee Tell him whatever Portion of things below he has given thee or shall give thee thou art resolv'd not to be put off with any with all these nothing below himself shall satisfy thee for indeed nothing below him can And to insure the Choice that he may give himself to thee tell him thou givest thy self to him but be
each in terminis set down and mentioned as distinct parts of our Christianity and so of that Condition of Pardon and Eternal Life which the Gospel proposeth to us thus in the Text of St. Mark already cited Repent ye and believe the Gospel And in Acts 20. 21. St. Paul protesting to the Ephesian Elders that in his preaching he had kept back nothing that was profitable for them reduces the summ of all he had shewed them and taught them either publickly or from house to house that is the whole way of Salvation to these two Points He had testified both to the Jews and also to the Greeks Repentance towards God and Faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. And agreeably hereto the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews makes Repentance from dead Works and Faith towards God two Foundations or Principles of the Doctrine of Christ Heb. 6. 12. Upon the whole then being that all these Texts contain the undoubted Words of our Lord himself or of his Apostles or Persons inspired by him for the instructing Mankind in the way to Pardon and Salvation we must conclude either that sometimes Repentance is so put as to comprise or understand in it Faith and sometimes again Faith so put as to comprise Repentance or else one of these Absurdities will follow Either that 1. our Lord Christ and the Apostles sometimes taught an insufficient way to Pardon and Salvation or 2. that there are two or three ways to them and 't is no matter which we take Neither of which Consectaries can be ever admitted at least not by Protestants Wherefore it is not reasonable to imagine the practice either of Repentance or of Faith in order to our Peace with God may be spared because in some places only one of them is mentioned for that those places which make both necessary evidently inforce us where one only is expressed there to understand the other And besides that we have seen the Nature of each of them is such that they mutually inferr one the other that is neither can be without the other This will yet further appear in the Account now to be given of the due Method of the practice of both in order to make our Peace with God The Son of Sirach spoke more like an experienced Christian than a Jewish Apochryphal Author when he said Faith is the beginning of our cleaving unto God Eccles 25. 12. for one greater than he tells us He that cometh unto God must believe that he is and that he is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him Heb. 11. 6. But Repentance is a coming and turning unto God 't is a departing from or putting away what he most hates a wicked heart and life therefore there can be no practice of it without Faith foregoing And not only without such a Faith foregoing as that now mentioned out of the Author to the Hebrews That God is and that he is a Rewarder of them that seek him which is only the Faith due by the Law of Nature for the Light of Nature will convince us of the Being of a God and his just Government of the World but even not without most of the Acts of Faith truly Christian will Repentance ever be effected We have therefore in the first place and before any thing advised and conjured to be serious intent and in good Earnest in Religion and that as explained imports the giving a Man's self honestly to understand and by due Evidences to perswade himself of the truth of Christianity so that we suppose him who is to practise Repentance not only to know in general what his Duty is what Sin is what the Rewards belonging to Obedience and what the Wrath and Curse of God belonging to Sin but to be heartily perswaded of all these as also of the whole Covenant of Grace and its Conditions that God will as surely pardon and save every repenting and believing Sinner as he will damn all impenitent unbelieving wretches The Belief of this certain Woe if he go on in Sin and certain Pardon and Blessedness if he take up is the foundation and inducement of all true Repentance Thus a Faith or a Belief of the Doctrines Threats Promises and Commands of the Gospel when hearty and real moves acts and sets on the Soul at the very first to Repentance nor is Repentance possible without such Christian Knowledge or without the hearty perswasion of the truth of what we know and understand as before set forth Yet over and above all this we shall anon see Faith farther concerned than what has yet been said comes to in making our Peace or reconciling us to God § 6. In the mean while let us take a distinct view of the practice of Repentance and do what we can particularly to see by what steps or acts we may arrive at a true penitent state that is a Heart and Life changed from a course of Sin to the honest and stedfast endeavour of Holiness For no less than such a changed Heart and Life does true Repentance or a penitent state import And the Steps are four First A particular sight and sense of Sin Secondly Contrition under it Thirdly Confession of it Fourthly Actual breaking off the course of Sin both by the study of Mortification and of a Holy and Vertuous Life The due practice of Repentance includes I say all these four He who writes this is not ignorant a certain Church has made the Practice of Repentance a Sacrament and calls it by the name of Penance and tells us thereof there are but three parts Contrition Confession and Satisfaction in to which they hedge in Priestly Absolution And these indeed after their way or common road of Practice are quickly dispatch'd But they have herein disguised the Truth and abominably corrupted the most necessary part of Christian Religion The whole Truth which really lies under this Disguise we will endeavour faithfully and plainly to represent by viewing particularly every one of the four forementioned Steps of Practice which bring to this happy and peaceful state § 7. And the first of them is a plain and particular sight and sense of our own Guilt A sense I say as well as sight and I mean thereby such a Consciousness of our being transgressors of God's Holy Commands together with such a Perswasion both of the foulness of the Fact or Facts whereby we have transgress'd and the danger thereof that we are as far from excusing or thinking slightly of the Matter as from denying it We see our selves guilty vile and loathsome and without God's special Mercy everlastingly miserable Some Protestant People at present delight rather to call what we are now speaking of Conviction or in the Plural Number Convictions of Sin than to give it the Name we do And both they and we mean I conceive thereby much the same with what has been more anciently by others termed from that Passage as I suppose touching those Converts mentioned Acts 2. 37.