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A44498 A gracious reproof to pharisaical saints causlessly murmuring at Gods mercies toward penitent sinners in explication of Luc. 15. 30, 31 / written by John Horne, sometimes minister of Lin Allhallows. Horn, John, 1614-1676. 1668 (1668) Wing H2803; ESTC R43264 137,083 347

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A Gracious Reproof TO PHARASAICAL SAINTS Causlesly murmuring at GODS MERCIES TOWARD PENITENT SINNERS In Explication of Luc. 15.30 31. Written by JOHN HORNE sometimes Minister of Lin Allhallows Psal 119.1 2 3. Blessed are the undefil'd in the way who walk in the Law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his Testimonies and seek him with the whole heart They also do no iniquity they walk in his ways Bat As for transgressors wo to them for destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity Psal 37.38 Prov. 20.29 Is thine eye evil because mine is good Matth 20.15 London Printed for Tho. Passenger at the three Bibles on London bridge 1668. TO THE READER Reader WHither thou beest Saint or Sinner and one of them assuredly thou art thou maist through Gods blessing find something useful for thee I hope worthy thy perusall and serious consideration in this insuing Treatise If thou beest one that knowlest the grace of God in truth and thereby art sanctifyed to God and followest after holiness here is that that may perswade thee and shew thee caus● to be holy still and to go on in denying all ungodliness and worldly lusts to live soberly righteously and godlily in this present world abiding in Christ and walking with God Both as it sets before thee the good and blessed state of those that so do and as it shews the miserable and sad state of those that do otherwise and especially of such as having tasted the graciousness of the Lord withdraw from him again and after they have begun to be good turn to do badly forsaking the way of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness Prov. 2.13 of which therefore also it doth admonish thee However strongly thou think thou standest that thou take heed of falling of which there is need enough to be admonished in this back sliding and truly and too shamefully adulterous and sinful generation Wherein they that depart from iniquity make themselves a prey and wherein men being frighted from or scoffed and derided at for nothing so much as truth and plety there is too general a temptation upon men be afraid or ashamed to be or however to confess and shew themselves to be seriously holy and religious Atheisme Prophanes● Popery and all manner of debauchery growing into fashion and nothing scarce looked upon as more obsolete and antick than soundness and sincerity with true zeal and fervency in the exercise and practise of the truth of Religion And yet it also admonisheth thee to beware of the leaven Pharasees which is hypocrisie of being too rash and censorious in judging those that having been prophane and evil livers or abusers of God's grace and truth return therefrom to a better mind or of judging God's and Christ's or his Servants dealings with such when by the profession of such persons he or evidently and apparently they are more gracious and ready to receive sinners than thou wouldst have them There is nothing more eminently discovered in God than love and charity to the souls of men whereof the whole Gospel and all the holy men in the Scriptures bear their testimony especially in his receiving repentant sinners And therefore nothing should be more desired by us and rejoyced in on their behalf than their conversion to him and finding his gracious acceptance God's children should be and are in some measure like to God himself who is their Father and therefore as his elect holy and beloved put on bowels of mercy kindness lowliness of mind long-suffering and above all charity which is the bond of all perfection as the Apostle exhorteth Col. 3.12.14 Nor doth any thing scarce make men liker the Devil than to endeavour to hinder or to repine at the conversion of sinners or God's mercy to them as that was one concomitant or product rather of the Pharasees zeal and religion their opposing Christ and grudging at him for his charity to sinners so I suppose it was none of the least of the ingredients of that evil frame which occasioned his stiling them the children of the Devil Joh. 8.44 Well may we be glad indeed when we find any such thing as a sincere convert in these evil days and God gracious to sinners therein When there are so many Apostates from God so few Converts to him Converts there may be some to this or that opinion or practise from some open prophanness sometimes to thriftiness and worldliness and yet even such conversions are not so frequent in these days as from thriftiness to prodagality and rudeness sometimes possibly to some opinionative profession or zealous endeavour after righteousness that is not Gods but mens own but few that when they return return to the Lord Jer. 4.1 to mind and receive and walk in the knowledg and faith of him and his great goodness to mankind in Jesus Christ our Lord and so to behold his glory as thereby to be changed into his image by the operation of his power and spirit and so to worship God in the spirit as testifying of his grace in his Son Phil. 3.3 Rejoyce in Jesus Christ have no confidence in the flesh When we see any turning to this we have cause to be glad and rejoyce for them for they turn from death to life from misery to salvation and unspeakable felicity But alas more play the Prodigals in going from Christ and God and the living in the faith and knowledge of him as the fountain of life and righteousness to live upon either their outward or inward receits from him their riches friends wit parts or their righteous frames and endeavours receits and attainments which lived upon will soon with the Prodigals patrimony be spent and leave them to losse and beggary or ● servile drudgery and desire of husks then do imitate him in returning to God and Christ to live in his house and upon him and his provision therein the grace not in us but in Christ Jesus 2 Tim. 2.1 which is and may be matter of great lamentation Yet if thou beest a sinner walking in thy self thine own will wisdom righteousness lusts affections or appetites and so not in Christ Jesus not in the way of understanding not in the spirit but in the flesh and so in a state of sin as such there be great store both of persons in a sort zealous and of prophane here is that that may move thee to repent and to turn to God therefrom Both the evil and dangerousness of the state of sin and sinners and the acceptableness to God of true and unfeined repentance in returning to Christ and so to God in and by him is here toucht upon and it s largely evidenced that God is ready to embrace such as so do return and to give them the most sure signs and pledges of his mercy toward them as having joy in their salvation And indeed this is the main scope of the Parable herein paraphrastically explicated and of the Text opened and applyed and by
such a plunge but alwayes in a posture of duty and obedience being puft up thereby to fall into passions and offences to see gross sinners upon an appearingly slighty repentance received to such favours as they have never had experience of the like These things seem to render valid the interpretation of the words that I have given besides the words themselves answered here by the Father to his froward Son Son thou art ever with me and all that I have is thine which agree unto none so properly as unto truly righteous and obedient Children And the words so looked upon though they do not suit just with the generality of the Jews or Pharisees who were Hypocrites nor may be so construed as to render them truly righteous yet by an argument from the greater to the less do more strongly reprove them after this sort If persons truly righteous and in the main dutiful and obedient have no cause to murmur at Gods great mercies towards grievous sinners if upon their repentance they be not only pardoned but also meet with such joyes and expressions of gladness in God and his Servants as themselves never had proof and experience of much less have formal Professors carnal Christians or Hypocrites that have nothing but a form of Worship and an appearance of Godliness and Devotion and that mixed too with great blindeness opposition to Christ his wayes and truth and with many other great latent evils and some open enough too sometimes much less I say have such cause to murmur at Gods mercies to penitent sinners and think themselves slighted in that their formal out-side and Pharisaical Professions are less regarded forasmuch as their formal Devotion and Religion is far short of the grosser Sinners hearty repentance and turning unto God Such sinners might say to them as the Thief upon the Cross to his fellow that mocked at Christ Fearest thou not God seeing thou art in the same condemnaton in as bad a condition by thy resting in an ignorant formal out-side profession without inward life and power and therein indulging thy self in some seemingly less but as well forbidden corruptions such as their swearing by the Temple and by the Altar and thinking themselves guiltless therein when God had forbidden to swear save by his Name and by his Name too customarily rashly or falsly somewhat like mens swearing by their Faith and Troth or by the Mass or by the Name of God customarily and such other Oaths in which they hold themselves innocent Mat 23.16 17 18 19 Yea and adding to thy other sins that that makes thee equal with the chief sinners viz. opposition to Gods Wayes Truths and people even to the Name of his only Son called upon by them as Paul tells us when he had reckoned up many great sinners as ungodly unholy prophane murtherers of Fathers murtherers of Mothers Whoremongers defilers of themselves with mankinde Man-stealers c. for whom he sayes Christ Jesus came into the world to save them yet speaking of himself that had been of the straitest Sect of Religion among the Jews and abhorred and hated those grosser wayes of ungodliness yet because he had in his ignorant zeal for God and his Church and the Traditions of the Elders blasphemed Christ and his Truth and People and been a persecutor of and injurious ro them he stiles himself therefore the chief of sinners as if a greater sinner then those Thieves Whoremongers and Murtherers before spoken of by him thou I say art in as bad a condition as I poor prodigal was in before I repented and how much worse then now I am in having repented such as are so far guilty themselves as the Pharisees more generally had a spice of that persecuting spirit against Christ and his Doctrine have I say no cause to murmur against Gods goodness to repentant sinners but had need rather to repent them with them that they might obtain like mercy also as our Saviour implies that the Publicans and Harlots repentance and being thereupon admitted into Gods Kingdom and so into a state of righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost Rom. 14.17 should have moved the Pharisees to repentance with them of their formal and pharisaical righteousness and other sinful evils found with them To that purpose is what is written in Matth. 21.31 32. Verily I say unto you that the Publicans and Harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you before you Pharisees formal Professors superstitiously righteous for John came unto you in the way of righteousness and ye believed him not but the Publicans and the Harlots believed him and ye when ye had seen it repented not that ye might believe I do not say then that all that murmur at Gods goodness to repenting Sinners are really righteous and the Sons of God No the generality of the Scribes and Pharisees were not so nor were the false Teachers and the Preachers up of Circumcision in the Primitive Churches such who were greatly offended at the Gentiles finding such mercy as to be received in in their uncircumcision in the flesh into the number of Gods Saints and holy ones The Apostle gives them other Characters when he sayes Beware of dogs beware of evil workers beware of the concision Phil. 3.2 and sayes of such That their end was destruction ver 19. and that they were false Apostles deceitful workers messengers and Ministers of Sathan and the like 2 Cor. 11.13 14 15. But I say such as cleave to God their Father and depart not from him in faith or life that are ever with him and have interest in all he hath these are truly righteous persons through Christ in the main though they also may possibly be sometimes leavened with the leaven of the Pharisees their corrupt principles or wayes if they take not heed thereof as is implyed Matth. 16.6 they may have froward sullen peevish and envious fits befal them yea and besides our Saviour for better winning in the Pharisees and taking off their prejudices might and I think did sometime speak to them upon supposal of their being what they judged themselves to be truly righteous as in Matth. 9.13 I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance CHAP. V. A three-fold state of men considered in the Text The first The state of righteous Walkers in three Branches the first Branch opened and applyed THE words then being thus explicated and cleared as to the two Sons therein mentioned let us go forward and I observe in them a threefold state or way of men here spoken to which I shall desire a little briefly to consider as God shall assist therein 1. The good state of truly righteous and obedient persons walking in the fear and obedience of the Lord and that is set forth in the first Branch of the reply of the Father to his elder Son ver 31. Son thou art ever with me and all that I have is thine 2. The sad and deplorable state of persons