N00129:389
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.
Use II. This may be for Direction to us, what use to make of the consideration and fore-thoughts of the night of Trouble, in a few things:
First, Consider what just reason we have to expect a night, a change, more sorrows still; viz.
1. The grievous loss of precious time in the best, Oh how much of our time here have we wasted away, aliud agendo, in that which profits not. None in the world ever enjoyed a happier advantage to serve God in, then we have done for so long a season in this Wilderness, wherein we have enjoyed peat, and the liberties of the Gospel, liberty to be as good as we will, and all encouragements to serve God; but oh how much have we been wasting away unprofitably, in Contentions, and busy Wranglings about matters of an inferior consideration, about our worldly Cares and Perplexities, &c. We have used but little care to redeem those precious hours from those encompassing vanities which beset us.
1. The grievous loss of precious time in the best, Oh how much of our time here have we wasted away, aliud agendo, in that which profits not. None in the world ever enjoyed a happier advantage to serve God in, then we have done for so long a season in this Wilderness, wherein we have enjoyed peat•, and the liberties of the Gospel, liberty to be as good as we will, and all encouragements to serve God; but oh how much have we been wasting away unprofitably, in Contentions, and busie Wranglings about matters of an inferiour consideraton, about our worldly Cares and Perplexities, &c. We have used but little care to redeem those precious hours from those encompassing vanities which beset us.