N00461:39
Promise-keeping a great duty. As it was delivered in a sermon / by Samuel…
Promise-keeping a great duty. As it was delivered in a sermon / by Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Three lines from Proverbs]
Boston: printed by Benjamin Harris, 1691
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.
5. We ought therefore to do nothing afterwards that will impede our performances, and necessitates us to fail in our promise. If God sees meet to put in an obstruction, we are to adore his providence & submit quietly to his Supremacy; but if we do it our selves, it will bring us under blame; if it be heedlessly, we are faulty by it, but if it be designedly, this will be imputed to our fallacious mind; and render us all together inexcusable; he that engageth ⟨p. 15⟩to do one thing, and then sets about that which will certainly put him by from being able to attain it, practically sets himself against the truth, and voluntarily necessitates himself to tell a lie.
5. We ought therfore to do nothing afterwards that will impede our performances, and necessitates us to fail in our promise. If God sees meet to put in an obstruction, we are to adore his providence & submit quietly to his Supremacy; but if we do it our selves, it will bring us under blame; if it be heedlesly, we are faulty by it, but if it be designedly, this will be imputed to our fallacious mind; and render us al together inexcusable; he that engageth ⟨p. 15⟩to do one thing, and then sets about that which will certainly put him by from being able to attain it, practically sets himself against the truth, and voluntarily necessitaets himself to tell a ly.
2. Of what concernment it is for the people of God to be careful in this matter.
A. Promises are made either to God or man, the former of these are by a mere peculiar appropriation called vows; and do not belong to our present discourse: the latter are properly second-Table-Duties, and are a part of that love which we owe unto men: but yet the second great comprehensive command is like unto the first, inasmuch as it is stamped with the same authority, and hath the same ultimate end, leading unto the glorifying of God as well as the other: and there are sundry weighty considerations which will represent this to us as a momentous Duty; especially,