Selected quad for the lemma: grace_n
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B06797
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Two sermons concerning nature and grace. Preach'd at White-hall, April, 1699. / By E. Young, Fellow of Winchester-College ...
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Young, Edward, 1641 or 2-1705.
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1700
(1700)
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Wing Y71; ESTC R41169
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21,820
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61
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gifts unto your Children how much more will your heavenly Father give give what give good gifts so the Antithesis requires and so one would think the Expression should run but instead of this it runs thus How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him Implying that the Holy Spirit is equivalent to all other good Gifts nay as much exceeding them as the Love and Power of God exceeds that of Man And therefore however we may of esteem Long Life and Prosperous Fortunes yet so indifferent are they in the Event That God bestows them without any Indication either of his Love or Hatred as that Passage of Solomon is to be interpreted Eccles 9.1 For God bestows them not only upon the Good but upon the Evil and the Unthankful upon those that seek them not from him upon those that do not acknowledge them as received at his hands and finally upon those that are never the better for having received them as will appear at the adjusting of Accounts But on the other hand sanctifying Grace is a Pearl of greater Price than to be cast away upon the Regardless This is a Certain Benefit and a lasting Good and therefore God disposes it upon another sort of Condition viz. to them that ask him i. e. to them that wisely estimate and worthily value and earnestly desire this excellent Gift And indeed when we consider the Duty of Prayer qualify'd with those Circumstances that the Holy Scripture does require viz. That it must be Instant Fervent Importunate Violent we may conclude that Prayer it self is as certain a Proof of the Communications of Grace as it is a Means to procure them For if we must pray Instantly Fervently Importunately Violently what are the Things we must pray for in this manner No worldly Need can justifie such a Desire Our Desire of Life or any of its Accommodations in such a measure would be Immoderate Impatient and Sinful and therefore it is that Submission and Resignation is prescribed to our Requests in respect of all these things Grace therefore is the only Blessing that can be worthy such a measure of Importunity This alone we may desire instantly and with Impatience of Denial and yet not exceed Grace is that Kingdom of Heaven that suffereth Violence and the Violent take it by force In this Office of Prayer and in an Endeavour of Christian-living suitable and comporting with it without which Comportment the Efficacy of our Prayers must necessarily be voided I say in there two Offices of praying for God's Grace and walking in the Road of God's Grace consists the Practice of our Dependance upon him The Fruits whereof I shall next enquire into and shew that through this Dependance upon God which our present Weakness and Insufficiency enforces Man reaps greater Advantages from his present State than could have been look'd for had he been restored to the State of Primitive Perfection And to prove This it will be Argument enough if I shew that Man has now Provision made 1. For a safer Vertue and 2. For a more commendable Vertue and 3. For a more excellent Reward than otherwise he could have had 1. Man has now Provision made for a safer Vertue than Adam had when he was first formed Adam was left in the hands of his own Counsel And so the Author of Ecclus tells us Chap. 15.24 where he says God made Man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from or in the beginning and left him in the hands of his own Counsel c. For if we interpret this Text to mean that Man has Counsel Wisdom Liberty or Strength to chuse and pursue all that is necessary to Godliness I am sure it can be apply'd to no man since the Fall and this the whole Current of Sacred Writ makes demonstrable But Adam was furnished with such degrees of Perfection that it was fit be should be left in the hands of his own Counsel But withal we know that Adam fell under his own hands and after he was once fall'n after he had darken'd his Soul weaken'd and poison'd his Nature by giving up Reason to the power of Appetite he must necessarily have sunk under the dominion of Sin he must necessarily have grown more and more indulging careless desperate and without thoughts or power of Repenting as the Case of the fall'n Angels was had it not been for the Grace of that Covenant which was founded purely upon the occasion of his Fall For all the subsequent Power that Adam had to please God and to walk as a Man converted from the errour of his way from that time forward issued not at all from the Strength of his Nature as if Recovered by the means of Reflexion Nature was as much indisposed and insufficient to produce such a Reconciling Change in him as it is at this Day in any of his Posterity And accordingly we may observe from the History That before the New Covenant was pronounc'd and ratified in the Promised Seed there was no footstep of Repentance that appear'd either in Adam or Eve but merely a shifting off their Crime as if in Design to preclude their Repentance and therefore it appears that all the subsequent Power that Adam had whereby to Repent and to please God did issue purely from the Succour of that Grace which God vouchsased him in Compassion to his new-contracted Disorder and upon which he might now rest for the Course of his future Obedience with much more Security than he could upon his former Native Perfections Now to argue home to my Purpose Let us suppose that after Adam had fall'n yet this notwithstanding God had ordain'd that Original Uprightness should have equally descended upon all his Posterity yet we must allow that any one of his Posterity though born with the same degrees of Uprightness that he was might yet have been foil'd by the Wiles of the Tempter and so have fall'n as well as he did Now had they so fall'n I mean fall'n only personally and for themselves had they so fall'n and in the mean while the Covenant of Grace not been founded as it was only founded upon the Account of the Propagation of Sin how could any such have ever recover'd to that State from which they fell or indeed to any Degree of Acceptance with God Their Case must have been as desperate as that of the fall'n Angels was before they would have was now made natural to them and aimed at nothing more than to enjoy the Pleasures of farther Depravation Whereas on the other hand according to the present state of things and for the succour of our Nature as it is now infirm there is a Provision made through the New Covenant for a safer adherence to Vertue and such a Provision as every Christian may have the Benefit of unless it be in the case of affected Slothfulness and wilful Indulgence in Sin Sin indeed may more easily make its first Breaches upon us by reason of
have implored Ability from him whence all humane sufficiency is derived Lord leave not me that I may not leave thee Lord strengthen me by thy Grace that I may not deny thee and then I shall not deny thee In this method he had been secure and prevented his shamefull fall But instead of this he builds a Resolution upon his own Strength and our Lord to rebuke him did no other than leave him to his own strength to perform it and this was in effect the same as to leave him under the necessity of not performing it For this is the main Lesson that this instance teaches us viz. That Man when he is left unto himself is purely weak and insufficient to any thing that is good These two Points are evident in Peter's Case 1. That he did not rightly know himself when he made his Resolution And 2. That the Defeat of his Resolution taught him that notwithstanding all his particular Graces and Endowments he was not able to do any thing as he should do without God's actual Assistance And therefore for our present Instruction I shall draw these two Observations from the Case 1. That it is Hard to know our selves And 2. That to know our selves Truly is to know that we are and that in our best Estate weak and insufficient of our selves to do any thing that is good 1. It is hard to know our selves By the Knowledge of our selves I intend not the Knowledge of our mechanick Frame to know by what Ligaments our Soul is united to our Body or by what mediating Correspondencies they act mutually upon one another to know in what manner Sensation or in what Remembrance is performed what Springs set our involuntary Motions a-work or what Influence our Will communicates to those that are voluntary To know this is not simply Hard but impossible and it ought to mortifie the Pride of any Man's Understanding to consider That the smallest of the Parts we are composed of and the least of those Acts we are always conversant with which we see minutely and live by their being done do yet escape and surmount our Comprehension But if the Knowledge of this part of our selves be impossible one thing we may infer from the benignity of Providence That likewise wise it is not Needful It would not conduce any thing to the Happiness of Mankind to be better acquainted with the Philosophy of our Beings nor do we suffer any thing from the Ignorance of it The Soul acts as orderly in those that never Enquire as in those that pretend to determine the chief place of its Residence and our Pulse beats as well when we think not of it at all as when we think of it never so wisely But the Knowledge here intended is the Knowledge of our Moral Selves of our state in respect of Vertue whether we really chuse to follow that which is Good and what Firmness there is in our Choice whether we make Proficiency in Religion and whether there be Sincerity in our Pretences what is the state of our Wills Inclinations and Desires all which the Prophet Jeremy means by the word Heart when he thus pronounces concerning it The Heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it Who can know it Not a second not any one without us this we are sure of But this is not all We our selves can hardly know that Heart which we carry in our own Breasts Its Propensions are retired and dark and it is not easie to guess whether the Bent of our Affections will carry us at any time when their respective occasions offer Now to be ignorant of our selves in this respect can never be of an indifferent importance If we know not our selves be sure we shall neither disapprove our selves nor mend our selves nor will natural Pride fail to take hold of the occasion that is To make the best Interpretation of that which we least discern And so the more Ignorant we are of our selves the more we shall come to be Opiniative and Conceited What false measures Men may take of themselves we are advertis'd in a remarkable Instance Rev. 3. where our Lord speaks of the Laodiceans in these words ver 17. Thou say'st I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked Now was not this a Judgment of themselves wonderfully erroneous Wou'd one think it possible that any Man should not be able to discern between Riches and Poverty Sight and Blindness being Cloath'd and being Naked We may justly think it impossible in the Literal Sense but how is it then in the Moral Is it possible for a vicious Man to think himself Godly Is it possible for the Churl to account himself Liberal for the Sensual to account himself Heavenly-minded for the Negligent to account himself Devout Is not this equally hard And yet the Prophet Isaiah suggests Chap. 32.4 that when the Eyes of them that see are dim the Churl may account himself liberal and so in the rest That is When ounce indulged Affections have imposed upon the Understanding and darkned the Soul and Men are thereupon content to take up with false Notions and to judge of themselves by false Rules they may come to esteem themselves Good though they are absolutely Evil They may think well of themselves for some casual Acts of Vertue though in the mean time they live under the Habit of contrary Vices They may account themselves Religious even while they are Carnal Worldly and Immoral And yet to be Religious and at the same time to be Immoral implies as great a Contradiction as is to be found between Riches and Poverty Sight and Blindness But this indeed is a Deceit so gross that it cannot pass upon an honest and considerate Mind And therefore I shall produce some others that are more refin'd and subtle and such as may escape the Observation of a more scrupulous Enquiry into our selves For example 1. Even when we do well it is hard to discern from what Principles we act whether from the Fear and Love of God wh ich certainly sanctifie or from external Considerations which sanctifie not at all but yet may occasionally produce Actions of the same appearing Goodness When our Saviour entertained those that came to hear him with the multiply'd Loaves and fed their Bodies as well as their Souls St. John 6. what a hearty Confession did they break forth into ver 14. This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the World How sedulously did they follow him What pains did they take to be with him How did they repine at the missing his Conversation but a part of a day Cou'd any one believe but that these were Disciples mature and steady and prepared to confess their Master at the peril of their Lives I question not but they believed as much of themselves and look'd upon themselves as