A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich by Samuel Ward
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page 23 of 51 (45%)
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glorifie God; marvelling and enquiring what such forwardnesse should
meane, concluding with _Nebuchadnezzar, Surely the servants of the most high God._ These are good Factors and Agents, doing God as good service, as Boutesewes doe the Divell, and Jesuites the Pope, sparing no cost, nor labour; and what they cannot doe themselves, they doe by their friends, _Who is on my side, who? &c._ As for lets and impediments, they over-looke and over-leape them, as fire passeth from one house to another; neither is there any standing for any Gods enemies before them: they make havock of their owne and others corruptions. If you will rightly conceive of _Peters_ zeale in converting & confounding, you must imagine (saith _Chrysostome_) a man made all of fire walking in stubble. All difficulties are but whetstones of their fortitude. The sluggard saith, _There is a Lyon in the way_; tell _Samson_ & _David_ so, they will the rather goe out to meet them. Tell _Nehemiah of Samballat_, hee answereth, _Shall such a man as I feare?_ Tell _Caleb_ there are _Anakims_, and hee will say, _Let us goe upp at once, &c_. Let _Agabus_ put off his girdle and binde _Paul_, let him be told in every City, that bonds await him, hee is not onely ready for bonds, but for death; tell _Jubentius_, hee must lay downe his life, he is as willing as to lay off his clothes: tell _Luther_ of enemies in _Wormes_, hee will goe if all the tiles of the houses were Divells. The horse neighs at the trumpet; the Leviathan laughs at the speare. They that meane to take the Kingdome of God by violence, provide themselves to goe through fire and water, carry their lives in their hands, embrace faggots; they say to father and mother, _I know you not_: to carnall Counsellers and friendly enemies, _Get you behinde mee Sathan._ Zeale is as strong as death, hot as the coales of Juniper; flouds of |
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