N00129:417
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.
2. In other things […] a general Consent and Agreement among Gods Ministers, but the people of God are divided in apprehension: and hence a check in many […] put to the comfortable carrying on of the Work of Reformation; some are of one mind, some of another; some consent with, and other dissent from the Messengers of God, and hence are ready to charge each other mutually as the causes of our Calamity: and what's the reason of these divisions in Reuben, but that we have enquired of God with an Idol in our hearts? We first take up Conclusions that we are in the right, and all others out of the way that are different from us; and then, with these Conclusions we go to God, and make as if we enquired of him.
2. In other things 〈…〉 a general Consent and Agreement among Gods Ministers, but the people of God are divided in apprehension: and hence a check in many 〈…〉 put to the comfortable carrying on of the Work of Reformation; some are of one minde, some of another; some consent with, and other dissent from the Messengers of God, and hence are ready to charge each other mutually as the causes of our Calamity: and what's the reason of these divisions in Reuben, but that we have enquired of God with an Idol in our hearts? We first take up Conclusions that we are in the right, and all others out of the way that are different from us; and then, with these Conclusions we go to God, and make as if we enquired of him.
3. In other things all agree as to the Theory, viz. as to many Moral Causes and Occasions, which are justly provoking to God to bring a Scourge upon us: Who agrees not that Pride, Profaneness, Contention, &c. are things which provoke Gods anger, and cause him to smoke against a people in the fire of his displeasure? yea, who agrees not that these sins are prevailing and increasing among us? and yet we little reform these things in our selves, neither are we satisfied in our enquiry, but still remain queri•ts; and why? we still enquire hypocritically: this may be matter of humiliation this day, among others let us not forget to bewail this sin in the presence of God, and beg of him to give us grace to seek him so as we may be heard by him, and he found by us.