A44439:238
A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures
A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures by Ezekiel Hopkins ...
London: printed by E.H. for Nathanael Ranew, 1693
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Sermon 4: The Nature, Danger, Aggravations, and Cure of Presumptuous Sinning, &c. ON
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
1Sixthly, and lastly, When we can encourage our selves with hopes of Mercy, though we live in Sin impenitently; this is to sin presumptuously. You that know your selves to be Sinners, what is it that makes you to bear up with so much peace and confidence? why, do you not every moment fear lest Hell should open its mouth, and swallow you up, lest God should suddenly strike you dead by some remarkable Judgment, lest the Devil should fetch you away alive to Torments? ⟨p. 189⟩Why do you not fear this, since you know your selves to be Sinners? Why, truly you still hope for Mercy; and it is only from this very presumption that men cry Peace, Peace to themselves, when yet God is at enmity with them; they flatter themselves that it shall be well with them in the latter end, though God swears he will not spare them; but his Wrath and Jealousy shall smoke against them. In Deut. 29.19, 20. says God there, If any Man shall encourage himself when he goes on presumptuously in the way of his own heart, adding Drunkenness unto Thirst, I will not spare him, says God; but my Wrath and my Jealousy shall smoke against him, and all the Curses that are written in this Book, shall fall upon him. Were but Sinners truly apprehensive of their wretched Estate, how they stand liable every moment to the stroke of Divine Justice, how that there is nothing that interposeth betwixt them and Hell, but only God's temporary forbearance of them, truly it were impossible, utterly impossible to keep them from running up and down the Streets like distracted Persons and Mad-Men, crying out with horror of ⟨p. 190⟩Soul, O I am damned, I am damned; but their Presumption stupefies them, and they are lulled asleep by the Devil; and though they live in Sin, yet they still dream of Salvation; and thus their Presumption flatters them, till at length this Presumption ends then where their Damnation begins, and never before.
1Sixthly, and lastly, When we can encourage our selves with hopes of Mercy, though we live in Sin impenitently; this is to sin presumptuously. You that know your selves to be Sinners, what is it that makes you to bear up with so much peace and confidence? why, do you not every moment fear lest Hell should open its mouth, and swallow you up, lest God should suddenly strike you dead by some remarkable Judgment, lest the Devil should fetch you away alive to Torments?