Does not the state of the church call for contrition? When I look round upon God’s people in this congregation, and in our favoured city; when I see how much their worldliness, indifference and stupidity, weakens the hands of ministers; prevents the access of the Comforter; and retards the progress of a work of grace; I feel justified in urging this duty as of present and immeasurable importance. Be entreated not to resist the motives to immediate repentance. There must not be a closet that does not witness many a heart-felt sigh; nor a bosom that does not swell with grief; nor an eye that does not run down with tears.
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Edward Payson – THE SIN, DANGER, AND UNREASONABLENESS OF DESPAIR.
How unreasonable then is it to despair of mercy; while this season, this opportunity of obtaining mercy is afforded; unless you are determined not to improve it. The precious privileges which you enjoy, while this season continues, render despair still more unreasonable. What walls are these which surround you? Are they not the walls of God’s house, a place where he has recorded his name, and respecting which he says, Wherever I record my name, there will I meet with you and bless you?
George Whitefield – The True Way of Keeping Christmas
This is a season when persons are apt to indulge themselves in all manner of luxury: iniquity now abounds apace; nothing is scarcely to be seen but things of the greatest extravagance imaginable; not only for the necessities of the body, but to pamper it in lust, to feed its vices, to make it go on in sin, to be a means for gratifying our carnal appetite; and this is a means to make us forget the Lord of glory.
The True Way of Keeping Christmas
A W Pink -The Christian in Romans 7
The one who bows to the solemn and searching teaching of God’s Word, the one who there learns the awful wreckage which sin has wrought in the human constitution, the one who sees the exalted standard of holiness which God has set before us, cannot fail to discover what a vile wretch he is. If he is given to behold how far short he falls of attaining to God’s standard; if, in the light of the divine sanctuary, he discovers how little he resembles the Christ of God; then will he find this language most suited to express his godly sorrow. If God reveals to him the coldness of his love, the pride of his heart, the wanderings of his mind, the evil that defiles his godliest acts, he will cry, “O wretched man that I am.”
Abraham Booth – His Ordination and Confession 1769
WHILE we are led to acknowledge the sovereign grace of
GOD, manifested in raising to himself a people out of the ruins
of the fall; we have also the highest occasion to adore the wisdom
and goodness of the great head of the church, in forming those,
whom he has thus made the happy subjects of his grace, into
particular societies, whereby they become subservient to each
other’s welfare, and are instrumental in promoting the common cause of the dear Redeemer.
THE church of CHRIST is fitly represented by the similitude of a body. As a body is composed of different members, and each member hath not the same office; so the church of CHRIST consists of a number of persons, who are designed to answer various purposes, each of which is connected with the good of the whole.
The Confession of Abraham Booth
Richard Greenham – Quench Not the Spirit 1598
The oldest manuscript I have ever narrated a sermon from, Richard Greenham published in 1598. Two Treatises of the Comforting of an Afflicted Conscience, with Certaine Epistles of the Same Argument:
Samuel Davies – The Resurrection of Damnation
Do not be amazed at this, because a time is coming when all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come out!” See them bursting into life from their subterranean dungeons!Horror throbs through every vein—and glares wildly and furiously in their eyes. Every joint trembles and every countenance looks downcast and gloomy! Now they see that tremendous Day of which they were warned in vain—and shudder at those terrors of which they once made light. They now experientially know the grand business of the Day and the dreadful purpose for which they are roused from their slumbers in the grave: to be tried, to be convicted, to be condemned, and to be dragged away to execution!
Conscience has been anticipating the trial—and no sooner is the soul united to the body, than immediately conscience ascends its throne in the soul. It begins to accuse, to convict, to pass sentence, to upbraid, and to torment! The sinner is condemned, condemned at his own tribunal—before he arrives at the bar of his omnipotent Judge!!
Thomas Sullivan – THE CHARGE OF PREPARATIONISM EXAMINED in Puritan sermons
COUNSELING THE AWAKENED SINNER
THE ANTECEDENTS TO REGENERATION
& THE
CHARGE OF PREPARATIONISM EXAMINED
In the History of Reformed Theology and Teaching
FROM THE PURITANS TO THE PRESENT
For a copy in Word THE CHARGE OF PREPARATIONISM EXAMINED
John Owen-HONOR DUE TO THE PERSON OF CHRIST — THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF IT
This distinct honor is to be given unto the person of the Son by virtue of this command of the Father, though originally on the account of his oneness in nature with the Father. And our duty herein is pressed with the highest enforcement; he that honors not the Son, honors not the Father.
Stephen Charnock – Mercy to the Chiefest of Sinners
From the collected works of Stephen Charnock, volume 5