N00129:444
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) Give a spirit of Reformation to all his people, that such a work may be universally consented to, that we may all set our hearts and shoulders to the Work: doubtless there is no greater good we can beg for at the hands of God at this time.
Secondly, Where thou canst do no good, there mourn: beg of God to give thee a spirit of mourning for all the sins of the Land. We find this spirit to have been eminent in good David, Psal. 1. 19. 136, 158. and it is that, which (if it tend not to the prevention of public Calamity, yet) will bring a private blessing• along with it, such shall not be forgotten in the day of Calamity, but be noted for mercy, Ezek. 9. 4.
Secondly, Where thou canst do no good, there mourn: beg of God to give thee a spirit of mourning for all the sins of the Land. We finde this spirit to have been eminent in good David, Psal. 1. 19. 136, 158. and it is that, which (if it tend not to the prevention of publick Calamity, yet) will bring a private blessing• along with it, such shall not be forgotten in the day of Calamity, but be noted for mercy, Ezek. 9. 4.
6. Let thy further enquiry be accompanied with amendment of what is at the present discovered, that is the way to know more; to be faithful ⟨p. 75⟩[…] have now my finger upon the right Sore. […] say indeed this is New Englands great disease; God hath begun in his Judgements to visit us, and there is a great deal of enquiry after the Cause: Gods Ministers endeavour faithfully to discover it, and yet still we are querists, Divine Providence speaks, and points at many things evidently, and still we are where we were; we acknowledge many things, and grant them to be amiss, and yet still the cry is, What's the reason? God is pleased to hide the reason: and why? why, men cannot see wood for trees: if we wait for immediate Revelations, we may wait long enough, there is no expecting of one to come from the dead to tell us. Indeed we can hardly look any where, but we may see causes apparent.