Mather - Houston-Packer Collection BS478 .M3 1705

34 The Gofpei Preachedalder the Old 2. Mt thouabed by a fpirit of Light and Love, or Darknefs and fear? Haft thou a dark or clear Light ? It may be thy Candlegives but a dim Light, and finokes in the focket, as if it were going out : Thouart dark, as to the Light and Work of this age. This is a fign thou art but low in thy attainments. Art thou a ìed by Fear or Love ?.If by Fear only, this is low and legal : If by love alto, this is Gofpel-like. The Lau genders unto Bondage, Gal. 4.. 24.1t ma's delivered Heb. r2. S. withdarknefs and tempefl: But the fpirit of the Gofpel is a fpirit of Faith and Love,not of Fear and terror. . 3. Where there is an aptnefs to backffide and fall off from good beginnings, and to fall again after recovering Difpenfations. This is but a weak and infant (late; as little Children when firft they begin to got they catch many a fall. 4.. Confider of what flooding thy Profeffion is : at frft all Believers are but low and weak ; but for an old profeffor to be fo, this is fad. It may be thou haft madea Profeflion of Religion ten or twenty years. It is time for thee to put away childifh things, Heb. 5. 12, you might have been for the time fetled and eftablifhed Chriftians, alluredof Gods Love: But you are yet under the power of finful corruptiöns, ofPride, and Peevifhnefs, and pafon; yet under darknefs and prevailing doubts about your Intereft in God; and this after many years profeflion of Religion : This might better become the Sons of God under thofe old. Difpenfations, thanone of thyyears and 'landing. We have briefly gone through the feveral pieces of Difco- 66a11' very, the feveral Beams of Gofpel-light that (hone forth before the Law, during that firft period from Adam to Mofes. The fecond grand period is that under the, Law, from Mofss to the Meffiah. This we are now to fpeak unto : We may call it the Legal or the Mofaical Difpenfation. In this feafon there were further, clearer, and more plentiful beamings forth of Gofpel-light upon the Church, above what had been before. Now might the Spoufe fay, The Voice of my Beloved, behold be comethleaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the Hills, &c. Cant. 2. 8, 9. The Worfhip of God, and the true Religion and Church of God was now reduced to a better confiftence and fettlement in the world than ever before. There were two things efpecially which were the peculiar advantages of this Difpenfation under the Law, wherein it did excel the former,, which was before the Law. i That now the true Religion was preferved and propagatedby Writing ao poferity, which had been done before only orchiefly by Oral Tradition. which -.

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