THE neglecting of the means of grace and accounting them a common thing is one of the crying sins of our day. That sin, says Thomas Shepard the noted New England divine is next to the unpardonable sin. “Oh,” he writes, “If the Spirit be glorious then is the gospel glorious. If the ministry of men could bring in, and draw with them the princes of this world, and all their wealth to serve you, angels and their ministry, nay bring Christ Himself bodily to you, how glorious were this? But what is this to bring the Spirit into a sty, into thy soul! Oh, therefore, take heed of a light esteem of the gospel as those in Matt. xxii. 3, who were shut out. Now I must speak something. Take heed you that have once esteemed it, of accounting it a common thing (it is next to the unpardonable sin) of accounting the gospel ministers, truth, justification by faith, etc., common things. See them glorious. The greatest glory that ever was in the world, did once lie hid under the meanest outside, viz., Jesus Christ, and yet the Apostle beheld His glory. So the gospel is most glorious now, as being His glass, and this notwithstanding is most mean in the account of many. Paul is in the eyes of the Corinthian doctors a mean man, his presence was contemptible, his words mean also; men despised them.”
—Thomas Shepard.