A66112:187
Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy delivered…
Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy delivered in several sermons on solemn occasions / by Mr. Samuel Willard ...Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy delivered in several sermons on solemnm occasions / by Mr. Samuel Willard ...
printed by Samuel Green, 1673
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.
2. This is to forget our own sinfulness: whiles we judge and censure others, we do tacitly justify our selves, and think our selves better then others; we interpret our merit rather then Gods mercy to be the distinguishing cause: and is not this to lift up our selves too high?
2. This is to forget our own sinfulness: whiles we judge and censure others, we do tacitly justifie our selves, and think our selves better then others; we interpret our merit rather then Gods mercy to be the distinguishing cause: and is not this to lift up our selves too high?
3. This is to forget divine Sovereignty: God all this while is not adored by us in his Supreme uncontrollable disposal which he hath of all creatures, to lay his hand where he pleaseth, without giving account to the creature. Consider well with thy self, and it may be thou hast been ten times a greater sinner, if all the circumstances of aggravation were well pondered and weighed, but God for ends best known to himself hath thus dealt.
3. This is to forget divine Soveraignty: God all this while is not adored by us in his Supreme uncontrolable disposal which he hath of all creatures, to lay his hand where he pleaseth, without giving account to the creature. Consider well with thy self, and it may be thou hast been ten times a greater sinner, if all the circumstances of aggravation were well pondered and weighed, but God for ends best known to himself hath thus dealt.
4. This is the way to rob God of the glory of his goodness to thee ⟨p. 31⟩in preserving thee from this sad Calamity, whereas if thou reflect inward, thou mightest see so much of provocation in thy own heart, and so many grievous obliquities and wanderings, that it would set thee into a rapture of admiration, at the unspeakable favour which appears in thy preservation, who mightest have been chosen in the room of this person, to have been hung up as a sign, and a wonder, and an astonishment, for others with sad hearts to have looked upon.