Boehm Quotes #3

"6. It is true, abundance of dead works of the Papists, which vulgar eyes admired in those days, have been laid aside by Protestants: but is not our dead faith, which too many have raised instead thereof, as empty a thing as their deal works? Where is that compunction and brokenness of heart, that poverty in spirit, that humility, those internal breathings, longings, and desires after Christ the author of salvation? Where is that inward knowledge and sense of the spirituality of the law, and that sorrow, grief, and anxiety of heart attending the experimental knowledge of our apostasy from God? And yet all this must needs proceed the practical application of the doctrine of faith, if ever the latter shall leave a saving change upon the mind, and prove a shelter in the day of wrath, and a stay in the storm of temptation. For all these acts of humiliation are comprehended in the drawing of the Father, which is the forerunning dispensation of the law, whereby the soul, as by a school master is brought at last unto Christ, to be justified by faith. No sooner does she come to believe in Christ. but she is thereby removed from that stock which is wild by nature. and is in grafted into Christ the true vine, in whom she now lives like a branch, and brings forth much fruit.

7. But where are those fruits which must unavoidably follow the doctrine of faith if duly applied by a returning sinner? Where are those sweet emanations and rivers of living water, which will readily flow, and often gush forth from the believer, though there were never a law to compel them? Where is that mortification of the deeds of the flesh, together with the succeeding newness of life? Where is that new creature, that patient resignation and submission to the will of God in his disposals of us? Where is that love of God shed abroad in the heart, and those other heavenly virtues and fruits of the Spirit springing up from the principle of faith as from a divine seed lodged within the soul? Are not these weighty and practical doctrines of true Christianity, both as they precede and follow the settlement of a divine faith, if not quite lost, yet despised, neglected, silenced among~ Protestants in this degenerate age?"

(19.) indeed many left the Pope, but never came to Christ. They cast away the more notorious prejudices, but took up more refined ones, and never received the love to truth, or any inward principle of grace.


(20.) As they were very dry, so everything seemed dead and destitute of a principle of life in the times of popery. Not as if there had been no Saviour at all, but because there were too many. It seems the guides and governors felt in themselves a secret conviction of the deplorable deadness and emptiness of that church, and for this reason contrived abundance human helps, means, inventions, thereby to amuse the ignorant, and to supply the place of a living Christ and Saviour. But all this would not do. The bones continued dead and dry. At last the work of reformation began. Christ is preached up as the fountain of life, to wash away the sin and uncleanness of the world.