Author Description

I. Of the necessity of the Cross of Christ in general; yet the little regard Christians have to it.-2. The degeneracy of Christendom from purity to lust, and moderation to excess.-3. That worldly lusts and pleasures are become the care and study of Christians, so that they have advanced upon the impiety of infidels.-4. This defection a second part to the Jewish tragedy, and worse than the first: the scorn Christians have cast on their Saviour.-5. Sin is of one nature all the world over; sinners are of the same church, the devil's children: profession of religion in wicked men makes them but the worse.-6. A wolf is not a lamb; a sinner cannot be, whilst such, a saint.-7. The wicked will persecute the good; this, false Christians have done to the true, for non-compliance with their superstitions; the strange carnal measures false Christians have taken of Christianity; the danger of that self-seduction.-8. The sense of that has obliged me to make this discourse for a dissuasive against the world's lusts, and an invitation to take up the daily cross of Christ as the way left us by him to blessedness.-9. Of the self-condemnation of the wicked; that religion and worship are comprised in doing the will of God. The advantage good men have over bad men in the last judgment.-10. A supplication for Christendom, that she may not be rejected in that great assize of the world. She is exhorted to consider what relation she bears to Christ; if her Saviour, how saved, and from what: what her experience is of that great work. That Christ came to save from sin and wrath by consequence; not to save men in sin, but from it, and so from the wages of it.