N00129:361
Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy
Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy: delivered in several sermons on solemn occasions: / by Mr. Samuel Willard Pastor of the Church of Christ at Groton. ; [Eight lines of Scripture texts]
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.
1. If we despise them, we despise God, Luke 10.18. the Prince accounts all the affronts and indignities offered to his Ambassadors, to bear a proper respect to himself; and do you then think that God will bear it? Moses may hold his peace, Gods Ministers may pity and pray for you, yea will; but God will not suffer his own glory thus to be trampled upon, nor his Servants thus to be abused.
2. If we contemn them, and receive not their Ministry, it is the ready way to be given up by God to a spirit of delusion, 2 Thess. 2. 10 Observer, and you shall se•, this hath been the door out of which so many have gone away into those giddy distempers which they are now inflicted withal, even those many Enthusiasms of the Devil; an undervaluing of the Ministry, an elevating and […] up private gifts, •amp;c. which hath led men by degrees to those great Apostasies, whereby their light (which would have shone clearly in its proper Orb) hath spent it self in a blaze, and gone out in a stinking snuff.
2. If we contemn them, and receive not their Ministry, it is the ready way to be given up by God to a spirit of delusion, 2 Thess. 2. 10 Observer, and you shall se•, this hath been the door out of which so many have gone away into those giddy distempers which they are now inflicted withall, even those many Enthusiasms of the Devil; an undervaluing of the Ministry, an elevating and 〈…〉 up private gifts, •amp;c. which hath led men by degrees to those great Apostacies, whereby their light (which would have shone clearly in its proper Orb) hath spent it self in a blaze, and gone out in a stinking snuff.