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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A49476 A sermon preached before the King at White-Hall being the last sermon preached at court / by the right reverend father in God Benjamin Laney ... Laney, Benjamin, 1591-1675. 1675 (1675) Wing L350; ESTC R7415 13,539 35

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10.8 is that which we preach and that was the Gospel Our particular election may be written in the Book of Life in Heaven but it is no where to be found written in the Book of the Gospel True Faith is that which we preach saith the Apostle but this Faith of Election no man can preach for who can say and say truly of his own knowledge that I or you or any man by name is elected Now if this Faith cannot come by hearing what will become of our Sermons indeed of any thing that can be called Religion or Sowing to the Spirit for that leads us a way to Heaven through believing some mysteries we understand not through many a heavy and hard law of mortification and denying our selves whereas this Faith cuts off all that and may well go for sowing to the flesh For first in favour to this it shrinks up all the duties of the Gospel into Faith and then all Faith into one Article and that not in the Creed neither and something they pare from that too it works not as an act which we may call ours for that will prejudice Gods free Grace but as a relation to Christ and in the Logick Schools it is disputed whether Relations have any real being or no. And thus all hangs upon a Pins point and leaves not a Corn to be sown to the Spirit We may therefore conclude that this and the other Pretenders are all deceived mistake the Field of the Spirit which is the Gospel and sowe quite beside it It will be now time to enter into the Field it self and see what work the Spirit there sets us to It is a large Field and reaches as far as the Gospel indeed too large to be passed through at one time But this as a great Country may be seen in a little Chart. 1. One of the works and a chief design of the Spirit in the Gospel is a godly righteous and vertuous life 2. And a second is like to it A right Faith in the Mystery of Christ and Salvation 3. A third is a devout and reverent worship of God in Prayers Praises and Confessions 4. A fourth is a careful use of the auxiliaries of Grace Sacraments Fastings and other acts of Humiliation 5. Fifthly Then we have the adorning all these with comely and decent Ceremonies This last though far from the Heart of Religion is yet within the Body of it as well as the rest One thing more I have not yet named which seems at a farther distance from the great duties of the Gospel and yet hath the advantage above the rest that it is here expresly called sowing to the Spirit and what that is we shall learn from the Verse precedent where 6. The Apostle exhorts him that is taught in the Word to communicate to him that teacheth in all good things If there be any coherence in the discourse any reason in the rational Particle for For he that soweth unto the Spirit The communicating our Goods for the Gospel is true sowing to the Spirit This duty therefore together with those already named are all Sowing to the Spirit and have a joint tendency to life everlasting For the meaning is not that any of them apart make a full Title to it but according to their quality and degree carry us their part in the way towards it It is therefore but a piece of fraud and Sophistry to discountenance one duty by setting up a greater against it as the manner is that the main purpose of the Gospel looks another way And so run down one duty with another the less with the greater as Great Persons do their Inferiors This is not onely a Deceit but plain mocking of God who commands both and a setting him against himself I note this Fallacy in common that it be not made use of here on our particular to mislead us from the due regard ought to be given to the maintenance of those that minister in the Gospel though it be not the accomplishment of the great dutie● 〈◊〉 ●ath a remote instuence upon all S●●●● in as low a place in Gods House as you please but for the Spirits sake let it not be turned out of dores I single out this duty from the rest that may deserve our care more and need it less It hath fewer friends to speak for it I confess but the true reason why I do it is because it was the particular occasion of the Apostles delivering this doctrine and in this I shall keep both a better measure with the Time and with the Apostles intention and it is a point too wherein we are as much deceived as in any Our worldly Goods by nature and kind are Carnal yet being sown to the Spirit become spiritual they are infranchised and incorporate into the Family and Retinue of the Spirit they alter their property not by imprinting any real indelible character into them as envy and ill-will objects but giving onely the respect that persons of low birth have when they are adopted or affianced into a more noble Stock When the Flesh serves the Spirit it is advanced above her condition the Volatile nature of the Flesh is fixed by the Spirit and helps to make up the title to everlasting life This is warrant enough for me to make a Suit and reward enough for those that grant it That for Gods sake and the Spirits when the Church Revenue comes into your thoughts to cast an eye if not of duty of compassion upon such miserable places where there is but too much necessity for it I can speak of my own knowledge that there are many hundreds of Parishes in this Kingdom where there is not so much yearly maintenance for serving the Cure as one of your Foot-men stand you in If so great a scandal to Religion and real obstruction to it be in these indigent Times too heavy a burthen to be removed and therefore unseasonable also to be moved Though this be no time of sowing to the Spirit it can be no season to pull up that which hath been already sown by the devotion of others 'T is strange that the Church maintenance should be thought to hang so loose more then other mens Estates as that any man when the sullen humour takes him can think to blow them away with a Motion Let the Church Lands be sold If they were held onely upon Frank almoign it is as firm a Tenure as any is in Law But it is more strange that they should think to mock and elude God who once declared it to be a robbing of him also When he charged the Jews for detaining Tithes and Offerings from the Priests of that Altar What reason can be given that the Ministers of a better Covenant should have a worse title There are not many Estates in the World besides which God himself owns this bears the Image and Superscription of the Spirit It must be a desperate boldness to break into his peculiar to stir