N00129:91
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. That Zion affords no more security to sinners then Sodom, Shiloh is as dangerous a place to sin in, as any in the world; if a people in covenant with God, be found rebellious, he will spare them no more then any other people, may he will begin with them. Am. 3. 2. judgement shall begin at his house; Shiloh's ruins are a memorial of this, and declare how vain it is to take sanctuary in the Tabernacle, and shrewd our selves from judgment under pretence of Gods covenant; Jerusalem smarted […] for this sin, if Joab be a man of death, it avails him not to take […] the horns of the Altar:
2. That Sion affords no more security to sinners then Sodom, Shiloh is as dangerous a place to sin in, as any in the world; if a people in covenant with God, be found rebellious, he will spare them no more then any other people, may he will begin with them. Am. 3. 2. judgement shall begin at his house; Shilohs ruines are a memorial of this, and declare how vain it is to take sanctuary in the Tabernacle, and shreud our selves from judgment under pretence of Gods covenant; Ierusalem smarted 〈…〉 for this sin, if Ioab be a man of death, it avails him not to take 〈…〉 the horns of the Altar:
Learn we therefore from hence, to beware to our selves, how we make bold to sin, and think the Covenant shall save us, if God find us rebellious, & bold sinners, though we should hide our selves in the Temple, and take refuge under the pretended shadow of Gods promises of favour and love to us, God will yet find us out, and will not spare us; whatever they plead for themselves. Mat. 7. 21, 22. yet Christs answer still is, I know you not; I tell thee, when God shall come forth to execute his judgements upon sinners, thy church membership, thy privileges shall not save thee, God will no more regard thee for all this then if thou we•t an Indian; except it be to punish thee the more, because thy sins have therein been greater, and more heinous: if such pleas could have prevailed, who could have pleaded more then Shiloh and lerusalem.