N00357:759
The safety of appearing at the day of judgement, in the righteousness of Christ
The safety of appearing at the day of judgement, in the righteousness of Christ: opened and applied. By Solomon Stoddard Pastor to the church of North-Hampton in New-England. ; [Nine lines from Philippians]The safety of appearing at the day of judgement, in the righteousness of Christ: opened and applied. By Solomon Stoddard Pastor to the church of North-Hampton in New-England. ; [Nine lines from Phillipians]
Boston: printed by Samuel Green for Samuel Phillips, 1687
Title page typeset from the transcription.
The Safety of Appearing in the Righteousness of Jesus Christ. › Chapter 10
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.
But I am afraid that God has given me up to judicial hardness of heart, that he has taken his spirit away from me; and if so he does not intend me in the call of the gospel:
Answer.
1. There is an hardness of heart that is not judicial: indeed every man by nature is under the power of an hard heart: there may be abundance of hard heartedness in you though no judicial hardness: there may be some legal softness, and tenderness, and relenting where there is judicial hardness, as it was with Pharaoh: so there may be hardness where there is no judicial hardness: this is an evidence of it, because God promises them to take away the hardness of their hearts, Ezek. 11.19. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
2. Many others have feared that they have been judicially hardened, that have afterwards been converted: they that are judicially hardened do not use to be perplexed with this fear: the judgment it self is wont to deliver them from fears of this kind: but it is a frequent thing for souls under trouble to be afraid of this: others have seen afterwards that they have been mistaken, and so may you.