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 6 of 51 (11%)
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climate of our nation.
_First Part_. It was sayd of olde, that zeale was an _Intension of love_: of late, that it is a compound of _love and anger, or indignation_. The Ancients aimed right, and shot neere, if not somwhat with the shortest. The moderne well discovered the use and exercise of more affections, then love, within the fathome and compasse of zeale; but in helping that default, went themselves somewhat wide, and came not close to the marke: which I ascribe not to any defect of eye-sight in those sharpe sighted Eagles; but onely to the want of fixed contemplation. And to speake truth, I have oft wondered why poore _Zeale_, a vertue so high in Gods books, could never be so much beholding to mens writings as to obtain a just treatise, which hath beene the lot of many particular vertues of inferiour worth; a plaine signe of too much under-value and neglect. Hee that shall stedfastly view it, shall finde it not to bee a degree or intension of love, or any single affection (as the _Schooles_ rather confined then defined zeale) neither yet any mixt affection (as the later, rather compounded then comprehended the nature of it) but an _hot temper, higher degree or intension of them all_. As varnish is no one color, but that which gives glosse & lustre to all; So the opposites of zeale, key-coldnes and lukewarmnesse, which by the Law of contraries must bee of the same nature, are no affections, but severall tempers of them all. |
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