N00526:120
Unum necessarium awakenings for the unregenerate. Or, The nature and necessity of regeneration. Handled…
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]
Boston printed: printed by B.H. i.e for Duncan Campbell, 1693
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.
IV. Being thoroughly Apprehensive, that we have no strength to come unto the Lord Jesus Christ, we should first Cry for that Strength, and then Try whether we cannot come. As for us, we cannot come unto the Lord Jesus Christ; although' our Precious and Immortal Souls do justly lie at the Stake, if we Do not come. And we never shall Come unto the Lord Jesus Christ aright, until we do with much anguish of Soul, see that we cannot come or stir towards Him. Nothing renders men more Incapable of a due Coming to the Lord Jesus Christ, than a vain and a proud Opinion of a Free will in themselves, of it self able to Do this Good Work; Or than forgetting, That in all Salvation-work, it is God who works in us, both to Will and to Do, of His own good pleasure. 'Tis very unlikely, That God should give us the Faith to come unto the Lord Jesus Christ, unless we subscribe to that, in Eph. 2.8. Faith is not of your selves, 'tis the Gift of God. It is not likely that God should bestow upon us the Power to come unto the Lord Jesus Christ, without making us to own that in Eph. 1.19. We Believe, according to the working of His mighty Power. It was hardly a stranger thing to see Peter walking on the Sea,, than to see a Sinner coming to the Lord Jesus Christ. O be sensible of this accursed Impotency! but at the same time see, that without the Grace of ⟨p. 88⟩God we cannot so much as arrive to be thus far sensible. And yet there are two▪ Things from which we should not be hereby discouraged.
IV. Being thoroughly Apprehensive, that we have no strength to come unto the Lord Jesus Christ, we should first Cry for that Strength, and then Try whether we cannot come. As for us, we cannot come unto the Lord Jesus Christ; altho' our Precious and Immortal Souls do justly lie at the Stake, if we Do not come. And we never shall Come unto the Lord Jesus Christ aright, until we do with much anguish of Soul, see that we cannot come or stir towards Him. Nothing renders men more Incapable of a due Coming to the Lord Jesus Christ, than a vain and a proud Opinion of a Free will in themselves, of it self able to Do this Good Work; Or than forgetting, That in all Salvation-work, it is God who works in us, both to Will and to Do, of His own good pleasure. 'Tis very unlikely, That God should give us the Faith to come unto the Lord Jesus Christ, unless we subscribe to that, in