Selected quad for the lemma: knowledge_n
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A44688
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The Redeemer's tears wept over lost souls a treatise on Luke XIX, 41, 42 : with an appendix wherein somewhat is occasionally discoursed concerning the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, and how God is said to will the salvation of them that perish / by J.H.
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Howe, John, 1630-1705.
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1684
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Wing H3037; ESTC R27434
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75,821
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that amidst all my disappointments and sorrows it never came into my mind to say Where is God my Maker I could never savour any thing spiritual or divine and was ever ready in distress to turn my self any way than that which I ought towards thee I now see and bemoan my folly and with a convinced self-judging heart betake my self to thee The desires of my Soul are now unto thy Name and to the remembrance of thee Whom have I in Heaven but thee or on earth that I can desire besides thee This is Repentance towards God and is one thing belonging and most simply necessary to our Peace But thô it be most necessary it is not enough It answers to something of our wretched case but not to every thing We were in our state of Apostacy averse and disaffected to God To this evil Repentance towards him is the opposite and only proper Remedy But besides our being without inclination towards him we were also without Interest in him We not only had unjustly cast off him but were also most justly cast off by him Our Injustice had set us against him and his Justice had set him against us we need in order to our Peace with him to be relieved as well against his Justice as our own Injustice What if now we would return to him he will not receive us And he will not receive us for our own sakes He must have a recompence for the wrong we had done him by our rebellion against his Government and our contempt of his goodnes Our repentance is no expiation Nor had we of our own or were capable of obliging him to give us the power and grace to repent Our high violation of the sacred rights and honour of the Godhead made it necessary in order to our peace and reconciliation there should be a sacrifice and a Mediatour between him and us He hath judg'd it not honourable to him not becoming him to treat with us or vouchsafe us favours upon other terms And since he thought it necessary to insist upon having a sacrifice he judg'd it necessary too to have one proportionable to the wrong done lest he should make the Majesty of Heaven cheap or occasion men to think it a light matter to have fundamentally overturn'd the common order which was setled between himself and men The whole earth could not have afforded such a sacrifice it must be supply'd from Heaven His coeternal Son made man and so uniting Heaven and Earth in his own person undertakes to be that sacrifice and in the vertue of it to be a standing continual Mediatour between God and us Through him and for his sake all acts and influences of grace are to proceed towards us No sin is to be forgiven no grace to be confer'd but upon his account 'T is reckon'd most God-like most suitable to the divine Greatnes once offended to do nothing that shall import favour towards sinners but upon his constant interposition Him hath he set over us and directed that all our applications to himself and all our expectations from him should be thorough him Him hath he exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour to give us repentance and remission of Sins Now to one so high in power over us he expects we should pay a suitable homage That homage the Holy Scripture calls by the name of Faith believing on him God hath set him forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to declare his righteousnes for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God to declare his righteousnes that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus Rom. 3.25 26. So that when by repentance we turn to God as our end we must also apply our selves by faith to our Lord Jesus Christ as our way to that end Which till we do we are in rebellion still and know not what belongs to our peace He insists that his Son into whose hands he hath committed our affairs should be honoured by us as he himself requires to be John 5.23 Now these two things summe up our part of the Covenant between God and us By repentance we again take God for our God Repenting we return to him as our God By Faith we take his Son for our Prince and Saviour These things by the tenour of the Evangelical Covenant are required of us Peace is setled between God and us as it is usually with men towards one another after mutual hostilities by striking a Covenant And in our case it is a Covenant by sacrifice as you have seen Nor are harder terms than these impos'd upon us Dost thou now sinner apprehend thy self gone off from God And find a war is commenced and on foot between God and thee He can easily conquer and crush thee to nothing but he offers thee termes of peace upon which he is willing to enter into Covenant with thee Dost thou like his termes Art thou willing to return to him and take him again for thy God To resign and commit thy self with unfeigned trust and subjection into the hands of his Son thy Redeemer These are the things which belong to thy Peace See that thou now know them 2. But what knowledge of them is it that is here meant The thing speaks it self It is not a meer contemplative knowledge We must so know them as to do them otherwise the increase of knowledge is the increase of sorrow Thy guilt and misery will be the greater To know any thing that concerns our practice is to no purpose if we do not practise it It was an Hebrew form of speech and is a common form by words of knowledge to imply practice It being taken for granted that in matters so very reasonable and important if what we are to do once be rightly known it will be done Thus elsewhere the same great requisites to eternal life and blessednes are expressed by our Lord. This is life eternal to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent It being supposed and taken for granted that a true vivid knowledge of God and Christ will immediately form the soul to all sutable dispositions and deportments towards the one and the other and consequently to all men also as Christian precepts do direct to all the acts of sobriety justice and charity unto which the law of Christ obliges An habitual course of Sin in any kind is inconsistent with this knowledge of the things of our peace and therefore with our peace it self All Sin is in a true sense reducible to ignorance and customary sinning into total destitution of divine knowledge According to the usual style of the sacred writings 1 Cor. 15.34 Awake to righteousnes and sin not for some have not the knowledge of God 3 John 11. He that sinneth i. e. that is a doer of sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a worker of iniquity hath not seen God II. Such as live under the
THE Redeemer's Tears WEPT OVER Lost Souls A TREATISE ON LUKE XIX 41 42. WITH AN APPENDIX WHEREIN Somewhat is occasionally discoursed CONCERNING The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost AND How God is said to Will the Salvation of them that perish By J. H. Minister of the Gospel LONDON Printed by J. Astwood for Thomas Parkhurst at the Bible and three Crowns at the lower end of Cheapside 1684. PREFACE WHEN Spiritual Judgments do more eminently befall a people great outward Calamities do often ensue We know it was so in the instance which the Text here insisted on refers to But it is not alwaies so The connection between these two sorts of Judgments is not absolutely certain and necessary yea and is more frequent with the contraries of each For this Reason therefore and because Judgments of the former kind are so unexpressibly greater and more tremendous this Discourse insists only upon them about which serious monitions both have a clearer ground and are of greater importance and wholly waves the latter Too many are apt first to fancy similitudes between the state of things with one people and another and then to draw inferences being perhaps imposed upon by a strong imagination in both which yet must pass with them for a Spirit of Prophecy and perhaps they take it not well if it do not so with others too It were indeed the work of another Prophet certainly to accommodate and make application of what was spoken by a former to a distinct time and people 'T is enough for us to learn from such sayings as this of our Saviour those rules of life and practice such instructions and cautions as are common to all times without arrogating to our selves his Prerogative of foretelling events that shall happen in this or that The affectation of venturing upon futurity and of foreboding direful things to Kingdoms and Nations may besides its being without sufficient ground proceed from some or other very bad Principle Dislike of the present methods of Providence weariness and impatiency of our present condition too great proneness to wish what we take upon us to predict the Prediction importing more heat of anger than certainty of foresight a wrathful Spirit that would presently fetch down fire from heaven upon such as favour not our inclinations and desires so that as the Poet speaks whole Cities should be overturned at our request if the heavenly Powers would be so easy as to comply with such furious imprecations A temper that ill agrees with Humanity it self not to care at what rate of common calamity and misery a purchase be made of our own immunity from sufferings Nay to be willing to run the most desperate hazard in the case and even covet a general-ruine to others upon a meer apprehended possibility that our case may be mended by it when it may be more probable to become much worse But O how disagreeable is it to the Spirit of our merciful Lord and Saviour whose name we bear upon any terms to delight in humane miseries The greatest honour men of that complexion are capable of doing the Christian Name were to disclaim it Can such angry heats have place in Christian breasts as shall render them the well pleased spectators yea authors of one anothers calamities and ruine Can the tears that issued from these compassionate blessed eyes upon the foresight of Jerusalem's woful Catastrophe do nothing towards the quenching of these flames But I adde that the too-intent fixing of our thoughts upon any supposeable events in this World argues at least a narrow carnal mind that draws and gathers all things into time as despairing of Eternity and reckons no better state of things considerable that is not to be brought about under their own present view in this world as if it were uncertain or insignificant that there shall be unexceptionable eternal order and rectitude in another 'T is again as groundless and may argue as ill a mind to prophesy smooth and pleasant things in a time of abounding wickedness The safer middle course is without Gods express warrant not to prophesy at all but as we have opportunity to warn and instruct men with all meekness and long suffering for which the Lords ordinary Messengers can never want his warrant And after our blessed Saviour's most imitable Example to scatter our tears over the impenitent even upon the too probable apprehension of the temporal Judgments which hang over their heads but most of all upon the account of their liablenes to the more dreadful ones of the other state which in the following discourse I hope it is made competently evident this Lamentation of our Saviour hath ultimate reference unto For the other though we know them to be due and most highly deserved yet concerning the actual infliction of them even upon obstinate and persevering sinners we cannot pronounce We have no settled constitution or rule by which we can conclude it any more than that outward felicity or prosperity shall be the constant portion of good men in this World The great God hath reserved to himself a latitude of acting more arbitrarily both as to Promises and Threatnings of this nature If the accomplishment of either could be certainly expected it should be of the Promises rather because as to promised Rewards God is pleased to make himself Debtor and a right accrues to them to whom the Promise is made if either the Promise be absolute or made with any certain condition that is actually performed But God is alwayes the Creditor poenae the right to punish remains wholly in himself the exacting whereof he may therefore suspend without any appearance of wrong as seemeth good unto him If therefore he may withhold temporal blessings from good and pious men to which they have a remote and fundamental right as having reserved to himself the judgment of the fit time and season of bestowing them Much more doth it belong to his Wisdom to fix the bounds of his Patience and Long-suffering and determine the season of animadverting upon more open and insolent offenders by temporal Punishments according as shall make most for the ends of his Government and finally prove more advantageous to the dignity and glory 〈◊〉 it The practice therefore of our Saviour in speaking so positively concerning the approaching fail and ruine of Jerusalem is no patern unto us He spake not only with the Knowledge of a Prophet but with the Authority of a Judge and his words may be considered both as a Prediction and a Sentence We can pretend to speak in neither capacity touching things of this nature But for the everlasting Punishments in another World that belong to unreconciled sinners who refuse to know the things of their peace the Gospel-constitution hath made the connection firm and unalterable between their continuing unrepented wickedness and those punishments When therefore we behold the impudent provoking sins of the age wherein we live against the natural eternal law of our Creator