The Law and the Gospel

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One great mystery is that the holy frame and disposition, by which our souls are furnished and enabled for immediate practice of the law, must be obtained by receiving it out of Christ’s fullness, as a thing already prepared and brought to an existence for us in Christ and treasured up in Him; and that as we are justified by a righteousness wrought out in Christ and imputed to us, so we are sanctified by such a holy frame and qualifications as are first wrought out and completed in Christ for us, and then imparted to us. And, as our natural corruption was produced originally in the first Adam, and propagated from him to us, so our new nature and holiness is first produced in Christ, and derived from Him to us, or as it were propagated. So that we are not at all to work together with Christ, in making or producing that holy frame in us, but only to take it to ourselves, and use it in our holy practice, as made ready to our hands. Thus we have fellowship with Christ, in receiving that holy frame of spirit that was originally in Him. For fellowship is when several persons have the same thing in common (1 John 1: 1-3). This mystery is so great that notwithstanding all the light of the gospel, we commonly think that we must get a holy frame by producing it anew in ourselves and by forming and working it out of our own hearts. Therefore many that are seriously devout take a great deal of pains to mortify their corrupt nature and beget a holy frame of heart in themselves by striving earnestly to master their sinful lusts, and by pressing vehemently on their hearts many motives to godliness, laboring importunately to squeeze good qualifications out of them, as oil out of a flint. They account that, though they be justified by righteousness wrought out by Christ, yet they must be sanctified by a holiness wrought out by themselves. And though, out of humility, they are willing to call it infused grace, yet they think they must get the infusion of it by the same manner of working, as if it were wholly acquired by their own endeavours. On this account they acknowledge the entrance into a godly life to be harsh and unpleasing, because it costs so much struggling with their own hearts and affections, to new frame them. If they knew that this way of entrance is not only harsh and unpleasant, but altogether impossible; and that the true way of mortifying sin and quickening themselves to holiness is by receiving a new nature, out of the fullness of Christ; and that we do no more to the production of a new nature than of original sin, though we do more to the reception of it – if they knew this, they might save themselves many a bitter agony, and a great deal of misspent burdensome labour, and employ their endeavours to enter in at the strait gate, in such a way as would be more pleasant and successful.”
- Walter Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification

Remember the Sabbath Day

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Ex 20:8
An Act of assembly in Scotland in June 1589 treated absence from the Public Worship of God without good cause as tantamount to violation of the Sabbath.

James Melville in his poem on the Ten Commandments included this Stanza on the Forth commandment:

That thou shoulds’t rest from all thy works, and halelie direct,
And set thyself to work my works, in love and holiness,
In praying and in praising me, with hearty thankfulness,
To learn my Word, & think upon my works so wonderful.

Archibald Warriston reporting on a sermon by Henry Rollock in 1633 wrote:

Whereupon he urged that, imitating God’s example, we should rest on the Sabbath Day, 1. From the works of sin. 2. Of our calling. 3. of our pleasures and delights. But, said he, “it is most commendable to labour in our particular calling all the week but on the Sabbath day we may do, 1. The works of piety; 2. of charity, chiefly if it be free from servility, as visiting the sick, but not as building of a bridge; 3. of necessity ‘for God made the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath,’ but not of an improvident necessity as in the salt pans, or of an in eminent necessity as the bringing of storks to the barnyard for fear of a storm, but of any present necessity as to draw any man out of an dungeon.

Lift Up Thy Heart to Heaven

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The soul of man is pressed down with sin and with the cares of this world, which, as lead doth the net, draweth is so down, that it cannot mount above till God send spiritual prayers, as cork to the net, to exalt it; which arise out of faith, as the flame doth out of the fire, and which must be free of secular cares, and all things pressing down, which showeth unto us that worldlings can no more pray than a mole is able to fly. But Christians are as eagles which mount upward. Seeing then the heart of man by nature is fixed to the earth, and of itself is no more able to rise therefrom than a stone which is fixed to the ground, till God raises it by his power, word, and workmen; it should be our principal petition to the Lord that it would please him to draw us, that we might run after him; that he would exalt and lift up our hearts to heaven, that they may not lie still in the puddle of this earth.
—Archibald Symson.

Love One Another

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Though the commandment to love one another cannot now be called a new one, as if just issued forth—for from the beginning of the gospel it was announced as the distinctive command of our one Lawgiver—yet it may well be called new so far as he is concerned, for no one gave it until he did it; and so far as you are concerned, for it was a law to which you were strangers, until you assumed his easy yoke and light burden.
–John Brown of Edinburgh