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A84072 A guide to the humble: or an exposition on the common prayer Viz. I. The visitation of the sick. II. The Communion of the sick. III. The burial of the dead. IV. The thanksgiving of women after child-birth. V. The denouncing of God's anger and judgments against sinners, with prayers to be used on the first day of Lent, and at other times. By Thomas Elborow. Elborow, Thomas. 1675 (1675) Wing E322A; ESTC R227794 105,673 309

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well be for we who live in this age cannot be ignorant how many good Laws have been made for the correcting of vice and how few executed either we love vice so well that we will not or we have indulged it so much that we dare not bring it to open Penance But God who was neither pleased with it nor afraid of it did for when Adam the first of Man-kind and King of the whole World under God had transgressed his positive Law and committed a great sin in breaking an easie Commandement he brought him to his confession his open and full confession though he came unwillingly to it and used many evasions and equivocations which the Tempter taught him to use who first taught him to sin he gave him an Ash-Wednesday Lecture for the Ceremony of Ashes from whence this Day derives the name came from his Pulvis es Dust thou art Gen. 3.19 and he put him to his Penance In moerore in sudore In sorrow shalt thou eat and in sweat He who abused his indulged innocent pleasures should live with afflictions thorns and thistles Gen. 3.17 18 19. The promised Seed gave him hopes of pardon Gen. 3.15 but he must pass this Penance first and that he might pass it he must quit his Paradise be driven for a time from the presence of the Lord. So He drove out the Man c. This was the first great Specimen of Church Discipline it is Primitive and ancient enough as ancient as the Church it self and it is authentick and authoritative enough for God himself was the author of it and it was practised in the Church before the Law till sin was so imperious that nothing could reform it but a Deluge and under the Law till wickedness was so predominant that nothing could quell its power but a Babylonian captivity in the time of the Messias till Vice was so prevalent amongst the Jews that nothing could check the rage of it till the Roman Eagles fell upon Jerusalem like Birds of Prey upon a Carkass and in the Christian Churches of the Apostles planting till sin was grown so much in defiance of the light that God was pleased not only in Justice but in Mercy too to withdraw the Candlestick and in all Churches of the Christian World was this Christian Discipline used this godly Discipline and where it was most used there Christianity most flourished till corruption had gotten the start of Christianity and Christianity and Covetousness or something worse had made a match But now it is every where either too much abased or else almost totally abandoned so that it is no wonder Christians in name should be worse than Heathens in manners when the Christian Church is without Discipline when the Tares and the Wheat the Goats and the Sheep the Chaff and the good Corn the Dross and the Gold the Unclean and the Clean the Vile and the Precious must all promiscuously make up one communion in the participation of most holy things and no Judicial Discipline is used to make so much as a tolerable separation so that in the Church Militant here on Earth sin is only the Triumphant part But in Heaven where no unclean thing shall ever enter it shall not be so For flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God neither corruption inherit incorruption 1 Cor. 15.50 God hath here in the History of the first original of all our humane race opened to us this great truth wherein there is a History as well as a Mystery what is spoken of Adam and Paradise of Adam placed in Paradise whilst he remained innocent and of Adam brought to confession penance and removed out of Paradise when he became notoriously criminal is historical but it is written 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of a type and ensample in respect of us and so is mystical shewing that all notorious criminals who live in the bosom and bowels of the Christian Church and are a reproach to the Christian name and a scandal to Christian profession are to be removed are to be brought to their confession penance and to remain sometime separate from the community of Christians whose holy Laws and Lives they will not conform to This was God's Law and this was Gods practice but as godly as we pretend our selves to be I do not see that we transcribe God's Copy and draw his practise into imitation We suffer many scandals in the Church seek no removing of them suffer Vice to be accounted Vertue and Vertue to be accounted criminal and seek no redressing of it Adam innocent and Adam a transgressor is all one to us he shall remain in Paradise though the curse of briars and thorns grow up and remain with him he may eat of the tree of sin and when he hath done so come without any controul to the Tree of Life if it was possible without doing his penance so little do we regard who comes or what is done in the Church which is the Paradise of God Church Officers are much to be blamed as to this particular who do not duly and truly present such Criminals But God would not have it so would not suffer it to be so For He drove out the Man c. That I may give you an exact model of the godly Discipline which the Primitive Christian Church used at the beginning of Lent or much about this time of the Year I shall take my Scheme from this first pattern of it set by God himself in his severe dealings with lapsed Adam 1. Adam so long as he kept his integrity remained innocent and had done nothing notoriously criminal to deface that divine and glorious Image which God his Maker had stamped upon him had all Paradise at his command he might freely take the fruition of God's Creation and enjoy his Creator in a happy and a contemplative life Thus he was In statu instituto in his first and innocent estate but when he became a delinquent and a Transgressor and stood convicted of a notorious sin against his Maker when the Serpent in subtilty had beguiled Eve and Eve in simplicity had deceived Adam and under the specious pretence of being like unto God and wise in knowing good and evil he made himself a sinner against God lost that wisdom which he had by refusing the good and choosing the evil then God took a severe course with him to humble him for his pride and to mortify him for his presumption Paradise the Garden of his pleasure was turned into a place of his penance and punishment and he lost the liberty of those fruitions which he had made a forfeiture of by a too great licentiousness God put upon him his Penance Robes cloathed him in skins the badges of his sin and the covers of his shame Gen. 3.21 So in imitation of this practise of God the Church in the Primitive times did deal with her criminals such as apostatized from Christianity in times of Persecution or such as