Christ: The Way, the Truth, and the LifeBrown, John
Religion
Christ: The Way, the Truth, and the Life
Brown, John
Bible. John XIV, 6 -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jesus Christ; Justification (Christian theology); Sanctification
If thou answer this designation, and art really a partaker of the
unction, which is the high import of that blessed and glorious name
called upon thee, thine eye must affect thy heart, and a soul swelled
with godly sorrow must at last burst and bleed forth at a weeping eye,
while thou looks upon most of this licentious and loathsome generation,
arrived at that height of prodigious profanity as to glory in their
shame, and boast of bearing the badge and black mark of damnation. But,
besides this swarm who savage it to hell, and make such haste hither, as
they foam themselves into everlasting flames, carrying, under the shape
and visage of men, as devils in disguise; the face of the church is
covered with a scum of such, who are so immersed in the concerns of this
life, and are so intense in the pursuit of the pleasures, gain, and
honours thereof, as their way doth manifestly witness them to be sunk
into the deep oblivion of God, and desperate inconsideration of their
precious and immortal souls. But in the third place, besides these who
are hurried into such a distraction with the cares of this life, that
they, as natural brute beasts made to be destroyed, are never at leisure
to consider either the nature and necessity of their noble souls, or to
converse with the notion of a Deity. Thou may perceive a company of
self-deceiving speculatists, who make broad the phylacteries of their
garments, and boast of some high attainments in religion; yea, would
have others look upon them as arrived at the very porch of heaven, and
advanced to a high pitch of proficiency in the ways of God, because they
can discourse a little of the mysteries of salvation, and without ever
diving farther into the depth and true nature of religion, dream
themselves into a consideration of being saints, and conclude themselves
candidates for glory.
This is that heart-moving object which presents itself to thy eye and
observation this day. This is that deplorable posture, wherein thou
mayest perceive most men at the very point of perishing eternally, who
are within the pale of the visible church, some dancing themselves
headlong in all haste into the lake of fire and brimstone, some so much
concerned in things which have no connexion with their happiness, as to
drop unconcernedly into the pit, out of which there is no redemption;
and others dreaming themselves into endless perdition: and all of them
unite in a deriding at, or despising the means used, and essays made, in
order to their recovery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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