Selected quad for the lemma: love_n
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A44439
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A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures by Ezekiel Hopkins ...
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Hopkins, Ezekiel, 1634-1690.
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1693
(1693)
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Wing H2735; ESTC R37910
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158,868
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429
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Lives in pursuing such vain things from which we may be snatcht before we can cast another look at them Sowre Death will soon convince us that all is but vanity and vexation of spirit that we here set our eyes and hearts upon And therefore Vse 2 Secondly Seeing by the appointment of God we must all shortly die let us be perswaded to be always in a readiness and preparation for it Our Souls are Immortal and must live for ever and when our Bodies die and fall into the Dust they immediately enter into an Estate that is for ever unalterable Directions to prepare for Death Now here I shall only lay down a few directions and so conclude First Wean your Hearts from an inordinate love of the World Get hearts weaned from the World Death must and will pluck you from it and oh it will be a violent rending if your affections be glewed to it Consider that all things in this present World are fading and perishing but your precious Souls are ever living and Immortal be not therefore unequally yoaked joyn not your ever-living Souls to dying comforts This is a tyranny worse than that which was Exercised by those of old who tied living Bodies to dead Carkasses Oh! what a sad parting hour will it be to thee when thou shalt go into another World and leave behind thee all that thou countest good in this how wilt thou protract and linger and wishly look back again upon all those precious vanities and dear nothings and follies that here thou placedst thy happiness and contentment in But now when the heart sets loose from all these things with what satisfaction shall we be able to Die accounting what we lose by Death to be no great matter because what we gain thereby will be infinitely more to our advantage Secondly Repentance must not be deferred upon hopes of long Life Would you be prepared for Death beware then that you do not defer your Repentance one day or hour longer upon any presumption of the continuance of your Life Death depends not upon the warning of a sickness God doth not always afford it but sometimes he doth execution before he Shoots off his warning Piece why may it not be so with you however it is possible your sickness may be such as may render you uncapable of doing your last good Office for your Soul But if it should be otherwise yet this I am sure of it is the unfittest time in all your Life to be then casting up your Accounts when you should be giving of them up to have your Evidences for Heaven then to clear up to your Souls when you should produce and shew them for your support and comfort Live every day as if it were your last Thirdly Live every day so as if every day were your last and dying day and the very next day allotted to you unto Eternity if it be not so it is more than any of us know and since we have no assurance of one day or hour longer it is but Reason and Wisdom to look upon every day as that which may prove our very last Be constant in the exercise of a holy life Fourthly Be constant in the Exercise of a Holy Life and always doing of that that you would be content Christ should find you doing when he comes to Summon you before his Bar. Think with thy self if thou wer 't now upon thy sick Bed and hadst received the Sentence of Death and sawest thy Friends stand mourning round about thee but cannot help thee what would be thy thoughts and thy discourse then Why let the same thoughts and the same discourse fill up every day and hour of thy Life for thou knowest not whether now this moment thou art not as near Death as if thy Friends and Relations yea and thy Physicians also dispaired of thy Life and had given thee over for Dead Fifthly and Lastly Get an assurance of a better Life Labour to get an assurance of a better Life and this will prepare you for a temporal Death When you and all things in the World must take leave of one another and part forever than to have the sense of the Love of God of an interest in Jesus Christ and the sight and view of your own Graces these will bear up your Heart in a dying hour these things are Immortal as your Souls are and will enter into Heaven with you and abide there with you to Eternity O whom will it not comfort to think that Death will change his Bottle into a Spring though here our Water sometimes fails us yet in Heaven whither we are going we shall bath our selves in an infinite Ocean of Delights lying at the breasts of an infinite Fountain of Life and Sweetness Whoever hath such an assurance as this is cannot but welcome Death embracing it not only with contentment but with Delight And while the Soul is strugling and striving to unclasp it self and to get loose from the Body it cannot but say with Holy Longings and Pantings Come Lord Jesus come quickly THE GREAT EVIL and DANGER OF Little Sins IN FOUR SERMONS ON St. MATTH V. 19. Whosoever therefore shall break any one of these least Cammandments and shall teach Men so he shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven By EZEKIEL HOPKINS late Lord Bishop of London-Derry LONDON Printed by E. H. for NATHANAEL RANEW at the King's Arms in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1693. THE GREAT EVIL and DANGER OF LITTLE SINS FROM St. MATTH V. 19. Whosoever therefore shall break any one of these least Commandments and shall teach Men so he shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven AMongst those many Points that our Saviour handles in this his Sermon on the Mount An Introduction one is the Stability and Permanency of the Moral Law the Obligation of which he affirms to be as perpetual as Heaven and Earth Verse 18. Verily verily I say unto you till Heaven and Earth pass one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law till all be fulfilled This Assertion Christ lays down in opposition to the common and corrupt Doctrine of the Scribes and Pharisees the Jewish Teachers who by their Traditions sought to make void the Law of God Now says Christ unless they can remove the Earth and rowl up the Heavens and carry the World without the World it is but a vain Attempt for it is decreed in Heaven That till Heaven and Earth pass not a tittle of the Law shall fail but all shall be fulfilled As it is in this lower World notwithstanding it is maintained by a continual flux and vicissitude by the perpetual change of one being into another one corrupting and another rising up in a new form and shape out of its Ruines and yet not the least dust of Matter is or can be consumed but the same Matter and the same Quantity still continues which were at first created
they who thus argue and who thus act never knew what a sweet and powerful Attractiveness there is in the sense of pardoning Grace and Love to win over the Heart from the practice of those sins that God hath forgot to punish Pardoning Grace engageth to Love God Secondly This should engage us to Love that God who so loved us as freely for his own sake to forgive us such vast Debts and such multiplied sins This is the import of that Speech of our Saviour he loveth most to whom most is forgiven him And hence it is and you may commonly observe it That none are such great Lovers and Admirers of free Grace as those who before Conversion were the vilest and most flagitious Sinners Thirdly Pardoning Grace should teach us to forgive others Since God doth so freely pardon us let this teach us and prevail with us to pardon and forgive the offence of others This is that the Scripture doth urge as the most natural Inference of this Doctrine of God's pardoning Grace Thus the Apostle Ephes 4.32 Be ye kind to one another tender-hearted forgiving one another as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you And say not as ignorant People are wont to do I will forgive but I will never forget for God doth forgive and forget too I will blot out your transgressions and I will remember your sins no more Your sins against God are Talents others Offences against you are but Pence and if for every trivial Provocation you are ready to take your Brother by the Throat and wreak your wrath and revenge upon him may you not fear lest your Lord and Master to whom you stand deeply indebted should also deal so with you for far greater Crimes than others can be guilty of against you and cast you into Prison until you have paid the utmost most Farthing especially considering that you pray for the forgiveness of your own sins as you do proportionably forgive the sins of others Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us And thus I have opened and demonstrated unto you the former part of the Doctrine That the Grace of God whereby he blots out and forgives sin is absolutely free I am now in the next place to prove that it is infinitely glorious Now this I shall endeavour to do by considering pardon of sin in the Nature of it in the Concomitants of it and in the Effects and Consequences of it From all which it will appear both how great a Mercy it is to us and how great a Glory it is to God that he blots out and forgets sin And First Let us consider the nature of pardon of sin what it is And this we cannot better discover than by looking into the Nature of sin Sin therefore as the Apostle describes it is a Transgression of the Law Now to the Validity of any Law there are Penalties literally expressed or tacitly implyed which are altogether necessary The guilt contracted by the transgressing of the Law is nothing but our liableness to undergo the Penalty threatned in the Law and this guilt it is two-fold the one is intrinsical and necessary and that is the desert of punishment which sin carries always in it The other is extrinsical and adventitious by which sin is ordained to be punished These two things are in every sin Every sin deserves Death and God hath in his Law ordain'd and threatned to inflict Death for it Question Now it being clear That Pardon and Remission of Sin is nothing but the removal of the guilt of sin the Question is Whether it removes that guilt that consists in the desert of punishment or that which consists in the voluntary appointment of it unto punishment or both Answer To this I Answer Pardon of sin doth not remove the intrinsical desert of punishment but only the adventitious appointment and ordination of it unto punishment flowing from the Will of God who hath in his own Law threatned to punish sin Remission doth not make that the sins even of Believers themselves should not deserve Death for a liableness to the penalty of the Law in this sence is a necessary consequent upon the Transgression of the Law But because God in the Covenant of Grace hath promised not to reward his Penitent Servants according to the evil of their doings therefore Pardoning Grace removes this guilt of sin arising from God's Ordination of it unto punishment As now suppose a Traytour should accept of the proffer of a Pardon the guilt of his Treason ceaseth not in the inward nature of it but still he deserves to be punished but this Obnoxiousness of his through the Prince's Favour and Appointment is taken away and so that guilt ceaseth So the Repenting Sinner every sin he commits deserves Death but upon his believing in the Lord Jesus Christ this liableness unto Death ceaseth being graciously remitted to them by God Now the Scripture sets forth this Pardon of sin in very sweet and full Expressions It is called a covering of sin Psal 32.1 Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered Though our covering of our sins is no Security from the inspection of God's Eye who clearly beholds the most hidden and secret things of Darkness yet certainly those sins that God himself hath covered from himself he will never again look into so as to punish for them Nay yet farther as a ground of Comfort Pardon of sin is not only called a covering of our sins from God's sight but a covering of God's Face and Sight from them so we have it Psal 51.9 Hide thy face from my sins and blot out mine iniquities It is a casting of our sins behind God's back as a thing that shall never more be regarded or look'd upon so it is expressed to us Isaiah 38.17 Thou hast in love to my soul says good Hezekiah when a Message of Death was brought to him by the Prophet cast all my sins behind thy back It is a casting of them into the depth of the Sea from whence they shall never more arise either in this World to terrifie our Consciences or in the World to come to condemn our Souls so we have it in Micah 1.19 I will cast all their Iniquities says God into the depth of the Sea It is a scattering of them as a thick cloud so it is called Esay 44.22 I will scatter their sins as a cloud and their iniquities as a thick cloud And in the Text it is called a blotting out and a forgetting of sin I even I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for my own sake and will not remember thy sins a blotting out to shew That God will never read his Debt-Book against us and a forgetting it That we may not fear that God will accuse us without-book Now these and such like Expressions with which the Scripture doth abound do very much illustrate the Mercy of God in pardoning of sin and I