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| Chapter XXIX.
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Chapter
XXIX.
Even as things are, if your thought is to spend this
period of existence in enjoyments, how are you so ungrateful as to
reckon insufficient, as not thankfully to recognize the many and
exquisite pleasures God has bestowed upon you? For what more delightful
than to have God the Father
and our Lord at peace with us, than revelation of the truth than
confession of our errors, than pardon of the innumerable sins of our
past life? What greater pleasure than distaste of pleasure itself,
contempt of all that the world can give, true liberty, a pure
conscience, a contented life, and freedom from all fear of death? What
nobler than to tread under foot the gods of the nations—to
exorcise evil spirits376
| 376 [See cap. 26,
supra. On this claim to such powers still remaining in the
church. See Kaye, p. 89.] | —to perform
cures—to seek divine revealings—to live to God? These are
the pleasures, these the spectacles that befit Christian
men—holy, everlasting, free. Count of these as your circus games,
fix your eyes on the courses of the world, the gliding seasons, reckon
up the periods of time, long for the goal of the final consummation,
defend the societies of the churches, be startled at God’s
signal, be roused up at the angel’s trump, glory in the palms of
martyrdom. If the literature of the stage delight you, we have
literature in abundance of our own—plenty of verses, sentences,
songs, proverbs; and these not fabulous, but true; not tricks of art,
but plain realities. Would you have also fightings and
wrestlings? Well, of these there is no lacking, and they are not of
slight account. Behold unchastity overcome by chastity, perfidy slain
by faithfulness, cruelty stricken by compassion, impudence thrown into
the shade by modesty: these are the contests we have among us, and in
these we win our crowns. Would you have something of blood too?
You have Christ’s.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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