Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n
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A62445
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Exercitations and meditations upon some texts of Holy Scripture and most in Scripture-phrase and expression. By Samuel Thomsonn, M.A. and Doctor of Physick; formerly student in Magdalen-Hall in Oxford.
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Thomsonn, Samuel, b. 1643?
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1676
(1676)
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Wing T1035; ESTC R221734
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178,823
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458
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28. 13. Psal 119. 8. and forsaketh his sins shall have mercy Then shall I not be confounded when I have respect to all thy Commandments So we must be broken from our sins Psal 119. 101. 104. and for our sins not only to leave and abhor some sins but every way of wickedness utterly to abhor To hate Rom. 12. 9. Psal 19. 12. Psal 18. 23. every false way and to refrain our feet from every evil way abhor that which is evil even secret sins and beloved sinners to keep our selves from our iniquity That beloved sin which we have long used and is even natural and customary to us and that sin which doeth Heb. 12. 1. so easily beset us which may be as dear to us as the right hand or the right eye yet to pluck out these sins Matt. 5. 29 30. and cut them off and cast them from us And not only to hate sin but to abhor Job 42. 6 Ezek. 6. 9. 20. 43. our selves for it and loath our selves in our own sight for all those evils we have committed This this is true repentance which unless we have and attain unto we shall never be saved Deut. 9. 7. Psal 27. 7. It is not enough to repent once we must remember our former sins the sins of our youth yea our original sin for we were shapen in iniquity and in sin did our mother conceive us Eccles 7. 20. Prov. 24. 16. Daily let us renew our repentance as we sin every day A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again that is many times a certain number for an uncertain Even as a candle newly blowen out and yet smoaking is kindled and revived by a little breath So a Soul is delivered from ordinary dangers and streights by a timely viz. a dayly repentance A member out of joint must be set as soon as may be else a callous substance may grow in the Cavity and hinder the placing of it in again So unless we renew our repentance daily a callous hardness may grow on our hearts and hinder our renewing again by repentance Thus far of the first step of our recovery out of a natural condition into a state of Life and Salvation for God will bring us as by the gates of Hell unto Heaven first He will bring us low before He will raise us up A child is about four weeks in the dark cell of the womb and thence it comes out through difficulties and pains which makes it cry when it comes into the World Even so a child of God is held sometimes in the dark to make him see his misery in a natural lost condition and then with pain and grief through the mortification of sin He comes into newness of life to be born again by the Word and Spirit and so is made the child of God Except a John 3. 5. man be regenerate and thus born again He cannot enter into the kingdom of God Now the second step is And believe the Gospel So we see that repentance and Faith are the ordinary means our blessed Saviour here prescribeth to Salvation The word Faith hath five acceptations in Scripture 1. Faith is taken by a metonymie of the adjunct for the subject for the doctrine of Faith or the Gospel which we do believe Holding Faith and a 1 Tim. 1. 19. good conscience which some having put away concerning Faith have made Shipwrack Holding the mysterie of Faith 1 Tim. 3. 9. 1 Tim. 4. 1. Jude 5. Jam. 2. 19. in a pure conscience 2. Faith is taken for historical or dogmatical Faith Thou believest there is one God thou doest well the devils also believe and tremble This Faith which is common both to the reprobate and elect consists in a bare assent 3. There is a temporary Faith which is the knowledg and joyful assent of the mind yielded to Gods promises for a time till afflictions come He that Mat. 13. 20 21. receiveth the seed into stony places is he that heareth the word and anon with joy receiveth it yet hath he not root in himself dureth but for a while for when tribulations or persecutions come because of the word by and by he is offended 4. There is a Faith of miracles which is a certain perswasion of some strange effects and works to be done by the power of God If I have Faith so that I could remove mountains If you 1 Cor. 13. 2. Mat. 17. 20. have Faith ye should say to this mountain remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove and nothing shall be impossiâ—le to you This Faith was granted but for a certain time and was given to reprobates also as appears by the example of Judas Iâ—oariot to whom the gift of working miracles was given as well as to the rest of the Apostles 5. But there is a saving Faith which we define thus A virtue by which adhering to Gods faithfulness we rest upon Him that we may obtain what He hath promised to us Or it is a firm and constant apprehension of Christ and all His merits as they are promised and offered in the Word and Sacraments Or once more it is the gift of God by which an elect man applies to himself all the free promises of Christ made known in the Gospel and so he most sweetly resteth upon them The just shall live by Faith this is the Rom. 1. 17. Faith of Gods elect which is proper to the elect and which none can have but the elect and chosen of God As Titus 1. 1 2. Acts 13. 48. many as were ordained to eternal life believed The general object of true saving Faith is the whole Truth of Goâ— revealed but the special object of Faith as it justifies is the promise of remission of sins by the Lord Jesus So theâ— God when he gives this Faith 1. Hâ— enlightneth the understanding to see thâ— truth and preciousness of the rich offerâ— of Grace in the Lord Jesus The lighâ— shineth in darkness now we have received John 1. 5. 1 Cor. 2. 11 12. 14. the spirit which is of God that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God 2. God enables the will to embrace these rich offers of grace and to stretch out all the desires of the Soul after them and to rest and build everlasting comfort upon them The things of God as they are 1 Cor. 1. 18. 2. 14. foolishness to mans natural judgment so they are enmity to his natural will And therefore when God gives Faith He gives a new light to the understanding and new motions and inclinations to the heart As the Covenant of grace is I will give them a new heart Ezek. 36. 26. It must be a mighty power to turn the heart of man upside down and cause him to pitch all the desires of his Soul on a supernatural object No man John 6. 44. Eph. â— 19 20. can come to me
Gods Wisdom Providence Justice and Goodness not to be obedient to God in bearing of adversities which he hath inflicted upon us but through grief to fret against him or do something against his commands not craving deliverance or help from him nor moderating grief by the acknowledging and resting on his Divine Will but to yield to grief so far as to be broken and overcome thereby and so driven to dispair So did Saul and Judas Iscariot To this impatience belongeth that complaining and crying out as if God afflicted us beyond our deserts and we had merited no such thing There is also a Hypocritical Patience as in those who vainly excruciate and torment themselves as those worshippers of Baal who cut and 1 Kings 18. 28 gashed themselves with knives till the bloud gushed out And of the same sort are also the Popish whippings c. There is also a Stoical Apathy or insensibility which we may call stupidity her rejected because a sense of our grief and some complaint or lamentation is not contrary to Patience so that we charge not God foolishly but justify God in his dispensations and utter nothing against him and complain not so much for the affliction as for our sins and acknowledge that he hath punished us less than our Ezra 9. 15. iniquities have deserved Why cryest Jer. 30. 15. thou for thine afflictions thy sorrow is incurable for the multitude of thine iniquities because thy sins were increased God hath done thus unto thee Thus we may glory in tribulation knowing tribulation worketh patience Rom. 5. 3 4 5. and patience experience and experience hope and hope maketh not ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us That is we rejoyce in our present afflictions which are an assured proof unto us of everlasting 2 Cor. 4. 17. glory These light and momentany afflictions work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory Here is a Hyperbole beyond an Hyperbole It is an evident token unto us of Salvation Phil. 1. 28. and that of God The Holy Ghost doth through tribulation fashion and frame us to Patience in which God doth from time to time give us assured proofs of His Grace and Protection whereby we conceive a firm hope in Him grounded upon the love which He bears unto us which He hath given us large cause of feeling and hath lively sealed it to our hearts by His Spirit of Adoption The more Gods servants suffer tribulation and adversity with patience The more they feel in themselves and have experience of His aid and assistance and this makes them more to hope in God as knowing they shall never be ashamed of their faith and hope Rom. 10. 11 and considence in Him Through patience and comfort of the Rom. 15. 4. Luke 8. 15. Scriptures we have hope Let us bring forth fruit with patience such fruits as God by His dispensations calls for and requires of us and that with patience that is persevering to the last in the middest of and notwithstanding all our tryals and afflictions God will render Rom. 2. 7. to them eternal life who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality So we have need of patience that after Heb. 10. 36. we have done the will of God we may receive the promise In all things approving our selves to be the servants of God who is stiled the God of patience in much patience in afflictions Rom. 15. 4. in distresses in necessities c. which 2 Cor. â— 4. we endure Being strengthned with all might accerding to His glorious power unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness So that the Ministers of Col. 1. 11. Christ may glory in us in the Churches of God for our patience and faith in all 2 Theâ— 1. 4. our persecutions and tribulations which we endure Let us follow after righteousness godliness 1 Tim. 6. 11. faith love patience meekness 2 Cor. 8. 7. And as to grow in grace so also in this of patience Adding to our faith vertue and to vertue knowledge and to 2 Pet. 1. 5. 6 7. knowledge temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness charity That God may know and approve our works and our labour and our patience that we have born and have had patience and have not fainted Rev. 2. 2 3. That it may be said of us among others Here is the patience of the Saints here Rev. 14. 12. are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus That Christ may say to us Because ye have kept the Rev. 3. 10. word of my patience I also will keep you from the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth It is not anothers patience that will avail us unless for our example and imitation but in our patience we must possess and that our own souls Consider the work of God In the Eccl. 7. 14. day of prosperity rejoyce In the day of adversity consider God hath set the one over against the other to the end that man should find nothing after him That is be wise in discerning the various ways of Gods Providence for to second them with thine affections either of joy or sorrow Since Gods Will cannot be altered wisdom should make a man quietly submit unto it for there are variable things in this world to which we must conform our affections both of joy and grief Here we may expect nothing but changes and alterations for in the middest of life we are in death Here is no perpetuity of any condition Adversity is a considering time when God writeth bitter things against Job 13. 2â— us therefore in the day of adveâ—â—â—ty consider Endeavour to have such a feeling as God calleth the unto by His visitation or dispensation for He hath set adversity against prosperity He hath mixed evil with good to direct man by these different means of mildness and severity unto a happy death for after death there are no more vicissitudes nor varieties all things and conditions are then perpetual neither is there any place for repentance or amendment Q. What is the true nature of this vertue of Patience A. I answer This Christian Patience looks on a Three fold Object 1. On God By whose Good-will and pleasure all adversities are appointed and from thence come This Job in his afflictions did see and acknowledge when he said shall we Job 2. 10. receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil In this regard murmuring against God is opposed 1 Cor. 10. 10. to patience Neither murmur ye as some of them murmured and were destroyed of the destroyer This murmuring against God is the ready way to our