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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A67899 Six sermons preached by ... Seth, Lord Bishop of Sarum.; Sermons. Selections Ward, Seth, 1617-1689. 1679 (1679) Wing W831; ESTC R5947 121,746 478

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he should bind them up in chains that he should exclude them from the benefit of Repentance and reserve them to the Judgement of the Great Day That he should allow this priviledge to lapsed men that he should reveal himself to them that he should make them understand their duty and their interest that he should set before them good and evil happiness and misery the desire and the detestation of humane nature that he should by all means court and wooe them to that which all men naturally desire and discourage and divert them from that which they naturally abhorr That after all this he should not prevail in such a case as this that they should scornfully reject the end of all their hopes that they should studiously pursue the object of all their fears This is that rational wonder that I am now to lay before you To manifest this wonder a little more explicitely let us consider the advantages of Nature and the Motives from Scripture to bring men to repentance The grounds and fundamental elements of the Doctrine of Repentance are these The Being Attributes of God The immortality of the Souls of men The principles of Synteresis The terrours of natural Conscience The for●casts of v●ngeance The apprehension and desire of an Attonement And all these are manifest from the Dictates and discoveries of the Light of Nature The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handy work They speak it loud they spread it largely they proclaim it constantly Their sound is gone out into all the world there is no speech or language but their voice is heard among them The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen even his eternal power and God-head Concerning his providence in governing the world St. Paul tells the men of Lystra and the Priest of Iupiter that he did not leave himself without witness amongst the Heathen The whole earth is full of his righteousness and all the people see his glory So that a man shall say Verily there is a reward for the righteous doubtless there is a God that judgeth the earth He is not far from any one of us in whom we live and move and have our being He is the Father of Spirits and we are his off-spring Surely there is a spirit within a man and that spirit immortal deriving from Him who only hath immortality And these things have asserted themselves with so great evidence that they have been generally acknowledged by all sorts of heathen Authors Philosophers Historians Orators and Poets Moreover they shew the Law of Synteresis written in their hearts they have consciences accusing or excusing they find themselves concluded under sin and are perplexed and tormented under the apprehensions of an offended God For Conscience condemned by its own witness is very timorous and always fore-casteth grievous things The starting of Alexander when he had killed his friend and of Nero when he had destroyed his mother The confusions of Tiberius when he wrote from Capreae to the Senate concerning the death of Sejanus The foretastes of an avenging Nemesis described by heathen Orators and Histo●ians The passions ascribed to Medea and Hercules and Orestes c. by the Poets The Rites and Sacrifices of all the Pagan world The prodigious ways of expiations devised to make their attonement with their imaginary Deities offended They were all of them the products of natural Conscience exerting it self in such a disquisition as is delivered by the Prophet Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord or bow my self before the high God shall I come before him with burnt offerings with calves of a year old will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or ten thousand rivers of oyl shall I give my first-born for my transgression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul All these and many more are the Indications of Nature the incitements and provocations of natural Conscience to bring men to repentance But beside these common Motives the persons of the Text whether they were the Jews and Inhabitants of Ierusalem at the time of the destruction of it by Titus and Vespasian or any that called themselves Christians they had a clearer and more glorious light to guide them they had far more efficacious and noble Motives to lead and urge them to repentance the Light and Motives of the Holy Scriptures There it is that the Power and Wisdom and Goodness and Severity of God are gloriously displayed the immortal Nature and sinful condition of the souls of men the rewards and punishments of this life and of the world to come are clearly discovered The elements of the Doctrine of Repentance the Motives to it are there explained and applyed mixt and combined a 1000 several ways The Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament are nothing else but a Systeme of various powerful Methods to b●ing men to repentance This is the general aim and common scope of all the Doctrines the Histories the Logick and Rhetorick of the Book of God This was Noah's Text upon which he preached to the old world 120 years Upon this errand God ●ent all the Prophets rising early and sending them they said Turn again now every one from his evil way This was the message of him that was the voice of one crying in the wilderness Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand Our Lord Christ and his seventy Disciples and his twelve Apostles they all with one voice insisted upon this Theme and when the Holy Ghost himself descended he likewise drove at this conclusion Repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the time of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. The time would fail me if I should attempt in any measure to lay before you the declarations promises threatnings exhortations dehortations reasonings expostulations instances of mercies and of judgements delivered in the Scriptures to bring men to repentance To this end God hath declared himself slow to anger gracious and merciful He hath said that he would have no man perish He hath sworn that he doth not desire the death of the wicked but had rather that he should turn and live He considers our frame and his ways are equal He is ready to pardon to pardon iniquity transgression and sin though they are as scarlet to make them white as snow if they be a cloud to scatter them like a cloud Wherefore let the wicked forsake his ways and the un●ighteous his imaginations and return unto the Lord. On the other side to break the hardness of the hearts of men to rouze them up from their impenitency he declares his justice and asserts his propriety in vengeance Vengeance is mine and I will repay it He protests that he will by no means acquit the guilty