N00254:409
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.
3. Another evil effect of sleeping at Sermons, is, that it maketh men leave a guilty Conscience.
Sin doth so, especially known sin, and in a most peculiar manner breaches of the third Commandment, the Lord having said, that he will not hold those guiltless that take his Name in vain; but all this is true of those that sleep at Sermons. Hence except their hearts are strangely obdurated in the ways of sin, they feel checks of Conscience for this evil. Men have that in their own breasts which tells them that they should not do so, when they give way to temptation, and fall a sleep under that solemn dispensation of the Word of God, spoken to them in his Name. And when the Lord awakens Conscience, there are great troubles of spirit for this sin. It hath been so with some of the Elect of God at their first Conversion. God hath made it a sad and a terrible thought unto them, to consider, how many Sermons they have lost, and sinned, and slept away; how they have turned a deaf car upon the Messages which the Lord hath seat from Heaven to them.
Sin doth so, especially known sin, and in a most peculiar manner breaches of the third Commandment, the Lord having said, that he will not hold those guiltless that take his Name in vain; but all this is true of those that sleep at Sermons. Hence except their hearts are strangely obdurated in the wayes of sin, they feel checks of Conscience for this evil. Men have that in their own breasts which tells them that they should not do so, when they give way to temptation, and fall a sleep under that solemn dispensation of the Word of God, spoken to them in his Name. And when the Lord awakens Conscience, there are great troubles of spirit for this sin. It hath been so with some of the Elect of God at their first Conversion. God hath made it a sad and a terrible thought unto them, to consider, how many Sermons they have lost, and sinned, and slept away; how they have turned a deaf car upon the Messages which the Lord hath seat from Heaven to them.