A Goodly Heritage

Christopher Love, minister of St. Laurence-Jewry in London, was beheaded at the age of 29 for treason during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. Thomas Manton preached his funeral sermon. Among others accused, but not convicted or executed, were Thomas Watson and several other prominent London ministers. Love declared his innocence to the very end. The letters written between Christopher and his wife Mary, as he sat in the Tower of London awaiting his death in August, 1651, are full of love and poignant affection. I will show you the eight particular properties of a man without Christ.      1. Every man without Jesus Christ is a base man.      2. He is a bondman.      3. He is a beggarly man.      4. He is a blind man.      5. He is a deformed man.      6. He is a disconsolate man.      7. He is a dead man; and...

How may I know whether the Lord has brought me into a state of mortification or not?...It may be that some of you are very desirous to be satisfied in it, so I shall give you six revealing characteristics of it and go over them very briefly. Would you know whether God has brought you into a state of mortification or not? 1. You may know it by this characteristic: if you are now more fearful of running into occasions and opportunities of sin than you have been in times past , this is an argument that you are a mortified man. An unmortified heart is bold and venturous and will rush upon occasions of sin, whereas a mortified heart is very careful to avoid all occasions of evil. One compares a mortified man to a dove or partridge. Now such as use that game of hawking report that such an innate fear and dread doves or partridges have of the hawk that they not only fear the hawk but the very feathers of it. So a mortified man not only fears a downright sin, but also anything that may be a...