N00129:45
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 1. To reprove our carnal confidence in the enjoyment of the means of grace and privileges of the Gospel: you that trust in your interests you have Sabbaths, Sacraments, liberty of nearest communion with God in his Ordinances, &c. and hereupon you are ready to think that God loves you, and will not bring a scourge upon you, but conclude your selves to be exempted from any danger of misery and desolation; let me tell you; you trust in lying words, you lean upon such a prop as will certainly fail and deceive you in the latter end. Consider, Jer. 9. 25, 26.
Use 1. To reprove our carnal confidence in the enjoyment of the means of grace and priviledges of the Gospel: you that trust in your interests you have Sabbaths, Sacraments, liberty of nearest communion with God in his Ordinances, &c. and hereupon you are ready to think that God loves you, and will not bring a scourge upon you, but conclude your selves to be exempted from any danger of misery and desolation; let me tell you; you trust in lying words, you leane upon such a prop as will certainly fail and deceive you in the latter end. Consider, Jer. 9. 25, 26.
Use 2. To awaken us to be think our selves what use it is that we make of the means of grace which we have and enjoy, what good we get by the Ordinances: think it not enough that we have and enjoy them; you have the temple of the Lord among you, the Word preached from Sabbath to Sabbath, and the Sacraments administered; these are high privileges, but all the benefit is in the use of them, if we have them only to look upon, and boast off, and not to improve for our conversion to God, and help forward in his ways, they will become a snare to us in the end.
Use 2. To awaken us to be think our selves what use it is that we make of the means of grace which we have and enjoy, what good we get by the Ordinances: think it not enough that we have and enjoy them; you have the temple of the Lord among you, the Word preached from Sabbath to Sabbath, and the Sacraments administred; these are high priviledges, but all the benefit is in the use of them, if we have them only to look upon, and boast off, and not to improve for our conversion to God, and help forward in his ways, they will become a snare to us in the end.