N00129:460
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.
Secondly, Be it a singular sin, and let it centre where it will, it seems we are to seek about it; It tell you, the way to know it, is to reform what we do know. God reveals himself by degrees to a people according to their improvement. God hath told us of these and those things; why should he discover any more, since we mend not, but make so ill use of what he hath discovered. Let me tell you, and I can assure you of it to be a truth, prove it, and you shall have experience of it, If we repent from our hearts of our known sins, God will either remove the stroke off from us, or further discover what is provoking to him.
Secondly, Be it a singular sin, and let it center where it will, it seems we are to seek about it; It tell you, the way to know it, is to reform what we do know. God reveals himself by degrees to a people according to their improvement. God hath told us of these and those things; why should he discover any more, since we mend not, but make so ill use of what he hath discovered. Let me tell you, and I can assure you of it to be a truth, prove it, and you shall have experience of it, If we repent from our hearts of our known sins, God will either remove the stroke off from us, or further discover what is provoking to him.
Return, come.] Verba festinantes. The words
1. Contain a general duty: this duty is a serious Repentance, implied in both words put together. Return. Esau went out from the Church, despised the Privileges of it, his Posterity, here is called upon to come back again. Come; i. e. Come to God, to him from whom you went away in that Apostasy: which two are true Repentance; A turning away from sin, a going to God.
1. Contain a general duty: this duty is a serious Repentance, implied in both words put together. Return. Esau went out from the Church, desoised the Priviledges of it, his Posterity, here is called upon to come back again. Come; i. e. Come to God, to him from whom you went away in that Apostacy: which two are true Repentance; A turning away from sin, a going to God.