1650 · Prayer & devotion · The gospel
The Glorious Feast of the Gospel
In Isaiah 25 the prophet describes a great feast on a mountain, with the richest food and the finest wine, where God swallows up death for ever and wipes away every tear. Richard Sibbes preached on these few verses and saw in them the whole good news of the gospel.
There are nine sermons, taking the verses in order: the feast itself, which is Christ and all his benefits, and how to come to it hungry; the veil over the nations taken away; death swallowed up; the tears and the reproach God's people bear now, both to be ended; and the waiting people who say at last, “Lo, this is our God.” Sibbes sees the promise begun at Christ's first coming and finished at the last day.
- About 4 hours to read (56,000 words)
- Rewards a slower read
- Devotional reading, a sermon at a time.
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Then & Now
What did 1650 look like?
Here is a paragraph from “The Seventh Sermon,” as it was first printed and as you'll read it in this edition.
As printed in 1650
I anſwer, Iſaiah was the Pen-man, God the mouth; the head dictateth, the hand writeth; Chriſt the head dictates, and his ſervant writeth: So that holy men write as they were inſpired by the holy Ghoſt,264 a better ſpirit than their owne. Why doe yee look on me,265 ſaith Iſaiah? thinke not it is I that ſay it, I am but a man like your ſelves; but the mouth of the Lord hath ſpoken it.
Today
Ans. I answer, Isaiah was the penman, God the mouth. The head dictateth, the hand writeth. Christ the head dictates, and his servant writeth. So that holy men write as they were inspired by the Holy Ghost, a better spirit than their own. ‘Why do ye look on me?’ saith Isaiah. Think not it is I that say it; I am but a man like yourselves; but ‘the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.’
About this edition
Faithful, and easier to read
Sibbes's sermons on Isaiah 25:6-9 from the first edition (1650), in modern spelling; an earlier copy's misprints and dropped words corrected against the 1650 text, and its Greek and illegible places restored from the page images.
74.4% of the words are exactly as printed. Most of the rest are spelling and punctuation; only 2.1% changed in grammar or wording. Every change is recorded, and you can see each one in Then & Now.
Open Then & Now- First published
- 1650
- Made from
- The 1650 London printing (EEBO-TCP A93248)
How this edition was made
Sources
Checked against
- Monergism's modernized text (from the SDG reprint; (c) Monergism Books 2017), a check only
- The earlier Freely Given Books copy (a Grosart-type text, 1862), corrected against 1650
- Source files
- This edition on GitHub
- Licence
- Public domain (CC0): copy and share freely
- Found a mistake?
- Tell us
About the authorRichard Sibbes 1577–1635The gentle preacher his hearers called “the heavenly Doctor.”