N00254:228
Practical truths tending to promote the power of godliness
Practical truths tending to promote the power of godliness: wherein several important duties, are urged, and the evil of divers common sins, is evinced; delivered in sundry sermons. / By Increase Mather, teacher of a church at Boston in New-England. ; [Ten lines of Scripture texts]
printed by Samuel Green upon assignment of Samuel Sewall, 1682
Baptised Persons are under Sacred and Awful Obligation to the Lord.
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.
7. Baptism doth oblige men unto constancy in the way of obedience. It is an everlasting bond. A mark of the Lord, which leaveth an eternal obligation unto duty upon the Souls of men. The Covenant is perpetual, Jer. 50. 5. Let us join our selves to the Lord in a perpetual Covenant, which shall not be forgotten. The Covenant is everlasting, Isai. 24.5. They have broken the everlasting Covenant, i. e. that Covenant which ought never to have been broken by them. ⟨p. 109⟩Therefore Baptism confirming the Covenant, carrieth with it the force of an everlasting obligation. The person that is baptised, is bound to serve God not for a while only, but for ever. He is bound to hold fast the profession of his Faith without wavering. He is bound to practise (as well as to profess) the thing that good is, all his days. He is bound to continue in his observing of divine Institutions, he is under obligation to be constant in his love to Saints, and to the Truths, and Worship, and Ordinances of God, even to the end of his days.
7. Baptisme doth oblige men unto constancy in the way of obedience. It is an everlasting bond. A mark of the Lord, which leaveth an eternal obligation unto duty upon the Souls of men. The Covenant is perpetual, Jer. 50. 5. Let us joyn our selves to the Lord in a perpetual Covenant, which shall not be forgotten. The Covenant is everlasting, Isai. 24.5. They have broken the everlasting Covenant, i. e. that Covenant which ought never to have been broken by them. ⟨p. 109⟩Therefore Baptisme confirming the Covenant, carrieth with it the force of an everlasting obligation. The person that is baptised, is bound to serve God not for a while only, but for ever. He is bound to hold fast the profession of his Faith without wavering. He is bound to practise (as well as to profess) the thing that good is, all his dayes. He is bound to continue in his observing of divine Institutions, he is under obligation to be constant in his love to Saints, and to the Truths, and Worship, and Ordinances of God, even to the end of his dayes.