Unum necessarium awakenings for the unregenerate. Or, The nature and necessity of regeneration. Handled…

Name: Unum necessarium awakenings for the unregenerate. Or, The nature and necessity of regeneration. Handled…
Author: Cotton Mather

Unum necessarium awakenings for the unregenerate. Or, The nature and necessity of regeneration. Handled in a discourse designed for the service of any that may be thereby assisted in the grand concern of conversion unto God; but especially the rising generation. : With an addition of some other sermons relating to that important subject. / By Cotton Mather. ; [Five lines from Ezekiel]

Cotton Mather 1663–1728Boston printed: printed by B.H. i.e for Duncan Campbell, 1693

[6], 154 [i.e. 162] p. ; 15 cm. (8vo) · 39k words · Evans 654 · Wing M1164

Title page typeset from the transcription.

GOOD COUNSEL In Answer to the GREAT QUESTION; What shall I do to be…: GOOD COUNSEL In Answer to the GREAT QUESTION; What shall I do to be Saved?

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.

[ Earlier:103–118 of 228

:103p. 75

I would now pray my Hearers, to Set their Hearts, unto the Things which I am going to speak; they are not Vain, or Light and Small Things; your Lives, yea, the Lives of your Never-Dying Souls, are as deeply concerned in these things, as in any that you were Ever Treated with.

:104p. 75–77¶1

I. There is a Thirsty, that is, a Distressed Condition of Soul, whereinto the Children of Men are brought, before they will come ⟨p. 76⟩unto the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall never Comply with the Invitations of the Gospel; until our Hearts have by an Heartbreaking work of the Law upon them, first been prepared for it: now that work of the Law do's raise a Mighty, and a Scalding Thirst, in the Souls of them that feel it. When Our Lord was Dying for us, He Cried out, I Thirst! and that must be our Cry, when we are Coming to Our Lord for the Good Effects of His Death. Says Our Lord, If any man Thirst, Let him Come unto Me, not because any Preparatory Thirst, may entitle us unto the use of a Saviour; but because without such a Thirst, it is Ordinarily and Naturally impossible, that we should care for Our Saviour. All of us may come unto the Lord Jesus Christ; but we never shall, yea, we never can, come, till we have Thirsty Souls within us. The Waters of Life, will not be welcome to us, till we are like Sampson or Hagar, even Dying in Thirsty Anguishes. As the best Honey, so the best Water, is Loathed by the full Soul. Until we are Dry by the parchings of Guilt and Grief within us, we shall be Deaf to all the proposals of the Lord Jesus Christ. While men have not their Hearts Broken, Amazed, and Abased, by Convictions, from the Spirit of God becoming a Spirit of Bondage unto ⟨p. 77⟩them, our Lord says, as in Joh. 5.44. How can you Believe? When our Lord Invites us to Come unto Him, He supposes that the Wrath of God has given a dreadful Inflammation unto our Souls; that we have seen the Eternal God Angry with us, and the Everlasting Fire of His Indignation in the Fiery Vault below ready to fly up and break out upon us; that our Souls have been as it were set on a Light Fire, with hideous Apprehensions of the Sins which Lie upon us, and of the Wants and Woes which we are exposed unto. Except men are thus Awakened, they will for ever sleight all overtures about coming to the Lord Jesus Christ; they will say, There is no Beauty in him, for which he should be desired! Until we are thus disturbed in that Rest which we had in our corrupt estate under the first Adam, we shall never take one good step towards the Second. Well then,

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