N00254:347
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
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.
For their hearts and thoughts are taken up mostly about vain things. All their cares and utmost endeavours, are about that which is vanity of vanities. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and pride of life; worldly profits, pleasures, preferments, are the things, which the natural man doth most of all desire and seek after: Hence they that are only civil moral men, but still in an irregenerate state; yea, more, they that are Formalists in Religion, but strangers to the power thereof, are amongst the vain persons which my Text speaketh of. And godly men should not make such their intimates, they should not sit with, and be one heart with those whom they can not but judge to be poor, vain, carnal creatures still. The Apostle showeth, that in the last days, there will be men that shall have a form of godliness without the power of it, from such (saith he) turn away, 2 Tim. 3. 5. And it is a sign, that men have little experience of the power of godliness themselves, when they choose those that are formal, sapless, unsavoury creatures to be their greatest intimates and Familiars.
For their hearts and thoughts are taken up mostly about vain things. All their cares and utmost endeavours, are about that which is vanity of vanities. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and pride of life; worldly profits, pleasures, preserments, are the things, which the natural man doth most of all desire and seek after: Hence they that are only civil moral men, but still in an irregenerate state; yea, more, they that are Formalists in Religion, but strangers to the power thereof, are amongst the vain persons which my Text speaketh of. And godly men should not make such their intimates, they should not sit with, and be one heart with those whom they can not but judge to be poor, vain, carnal creatures still. The Apostle sheweth, that in the last dayes, there will be men that shall have a form of godliness without the power of it, from such (saith he) turn away, 2 Tim. 3. 5. And it is a sign, that men have little experience of the power of godliness themselves, when they chuse those that are formal, sapless, unsavoury creatures to be their greatest intimates and Familiars.