November 29, 2014

Lewis Stuckley (c.1621-1687) on God's Offers and Tenders of Grace

"Fourthly, You have sinned impenitently, notwithstanding all the means for your repentance and reducement, which God hath most wonderfully vouchsafed you. The Lord hath for many years striven with you to put away your sins, and to reclaim you from your miscarriages: sometimes God hath come up to Mount Ebal, and threatened you with sword, famine, fire, and pestilence, and yet you have refused to hear from thence: he hath lept to Mount Gerrizim, and allured you by all kinds of blessings; and yet you have carried yourselves stoutly and impudently towards all the offers and tenders of grace for your recovery. God would have healed you; he hath said, wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, my Father, thou art the guide of my youth, turn thou unto me; yet you returned not. You have had many of the Lord's faithful ambassadors, who have laid seige at your hearts, to engage them to the Lord, and to take you off from your sinful ways, but alas! all the glad tidings of mercy have not affected you, have not won you: all the ordinances of Jehovah have found little place in you, have left no impression upon your souls; You have justified Judah and Samaria in all their stubbornness and rebellion against the Lord. How righteous is it with the Lord to call upon the ministers, Let them alone, threaten them no more, promise them no more."
Lewis Stuckley, A Gospel-Glass (London: Printed for the Author, and are to be sold by Giles Widdows at the Maiden-head in Aldersgate-street, near Jewen-street, 1670), 435-436. Also in Lewis Stuckley, A Gospel Glass (London: Printed by R. Edwards, Crane Court, Fleet Street; for W. Suitaby, Maxwell and Wilson, Williams and Smith, and Byfield and Son, 1809), 352.

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