On this Thursday of Jeremy Taylor week, words from a Taylor sermon on how "the duties of religion", and the right ordering of our natural domestic and communal duties, do "the work of Heaven", slowly, through natural means.
And now the first part of this duty is to make religion
to be the business of our lives; for this is the great instrument which will naturally produce our growth in grace, and
the perfection of a Christian. For a man cannot, after a
state of sin, be instantly a saint; the work of Heaven is not
done by a flash of lightning, or a dash of affectionate rain,
or a few tears of a relenting pity: God and his church have
appointed holy intervals, and have taken portions of our time
for religion, that we may be called off from the world, and
remember the end of our creation, and do honour to God,
and think of heaven with hearty purposes and peremptory
designs to get thither. But as we must not neglect those
times, which God hath reserved for his service, or the church
hath prudently decreed; nor yet act religion upon such days
with forms and outsides, or to comply with customs, or to
seem religious: So we must take care, that all the other
portions of our time be hallowed with little retirements of
our thoughts, and short conversations with God, and all
along be guided with holy intention; that even our works of nature may pass into the relations of grace, and the
actions of our calling may help towards the obtaining the
prize of our high calling; while our eatings are actions of
temperance, our labours are profitable, our humiliations are
acts of obedience, and our alms of charity, and our marriages
are chaste; and whether we eat or drink, sleep or wake,
we may do all to the glory of God, by a direct intuition, or
by a reflex act; by design, or by supplement; by foresight,
or by an after-election. And to this purpose we must not
look upon religion as our trouble and our hinderance, nor
think alms chargeable or expensive, nor our fastings vexatious and burdensome; nor our prayers a weariness of spirit:
but we must make these, and all other the duties of religion,
our employment, our care, the work and end for which we
came into the world; and remember that we never do the
work of men, nor serve the ends of God, nor are in the
proper employment and business of our life, but when we
worship God, or live like wise or sober persons, or do benefit
to our brother.'Of Growth in Grace' in The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Volume IV.
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