N00347:223
A brief discourse of justification. Wherein this doctrine is plainly laid down according to…
A brief discourse of justification. Wherein this doctrine is plainly laid down according to the Scriptures. : As it was delivered in several sermons on this subject. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Ten lines of quotations]
Boston: printed by S for Samuel Phillips, 1686
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
1. When all our duties, even the very best that we do, help to make us more humble, and more vile on our own eyes: trust in, and conceitedness of duties go always together; and so much as we are lifted up in our own conceits ⟨p. 147⟩by the review of what we have been doing, so far we confide in it: but when not only our sins serve to abuse us before God, and lay us in the dust before him, but those very duties wherein are most conscientious in obeying God, do by our looking upon them, help to make us see what worthless nothings we are: when we gather up out of every one of them something to make us see how little cause there is why God should look towards us, and to wonder at his rich condescendency to accept of any thing at our hands: and this is a good token of Humiliation: Thus it was with David, after that large contribution was made towards the building of the Temple, 2 Chron. 29. 13, 14. We thank thee, and praise thy glorious name, but who am I? and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? and the Church, Isa. 64. 6. we all are as an unclean thing, and our righteousness are as filthy rags, every prayer, every Sabbath, every Ordinance in which we attend, do all help to let us see how unworthy we are of Gods favour; how full of death, and of a body of death, we are; and that there is and can be nothing in us, that can commend in any wise unto God.
1. When all our duties, even the very best that we do, help to make us more humble, and more vile on our own eyes: trust in, and conceitedness of duties go always together; and so much as we are lifted up in our own conceits ⟨p. 147⟩by the review of what we have been doing, so far we confide in it: but when not only our sins serve to abuse us before God, and lay us in the dust before him, but those very duties wherein are most consciencious in obeying God, do by our looking upon them, help to make us see what worthless nothings we are: when we gather up out of every one of them something to make us see how little cause there is why God should look towards us, and to wonder at his rich condescendency to accept of any thing at our hands: and this is a good token of Humiliation: Thus it was with David, after that large contribution was made towards the building of the Temple,