III. The bent and stress of their ministry was conversion to God;
regeneration and holiness. Not schemes of doctrines and verbal creeds,
or new forms of worship: but a leaving off in religion the superfluous,
and reducing the ceremonious and formal part, and pressing earnestly the
substantial, the necessary and profitable part to the soul; as all, upon
a serious reflection, must and do acknowledge.
IV. They directed people to a principle in themselves, though not of
themselves, by which all that they asserted, preached, and exhorted
others to, might be wrought in them, and known to them, through
experience, to be true; which is a high and distinguishing mark of the
truth of their ministry, both that they knew what they said, and were not
afraid of coming to the test. For as they were bold from certainty, so
they required conformity upon no human authority, but upon conviction,
and the conviction of this principle, which they asserted was in them
that they preached unto: and unto that they directed them, that they
might examine and prove the reality of those things which they had
affirmed of it, as to its manifestation and work in man. And this is
more than the many ministers in the world pretended to.
Pages:
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58