N00526:59
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.
AWAKENINGS FOR THE UNREGENERATE. › Proposition 2: The Second PROPOSITION.
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.
AND now there is a most Importunate EXHORTATION & EXCITATION to be given unto those that are yet perishing in their Unregeneracy. 'Tis thus much; Miserable Souls, make sure of Regeneration before it be too late: Give all Diligence to make your Vocation and Election sure. Or, take it in the words of the Prophet, Ezek. 18.31. Cast away from you all your Transgressions, and make you a New Heart, and a New Spirit; for why will you Die? Sinners, you never were Addressed, upon a Matter of more Importance for you: We must be in Earnest with you; and there are two things to be Asked of you▪ yea, to be Charged on you, in the Name of the God that made you.
AND now there is a most Importunate EXHORTATION & EXCITATION to be given unto those that are yet perishing in their Unregeneracy. 'Tis thus much; Miserable Souls, make sure of Regeneration before it be too late: Give all Diligence to make your Vocation and Election sure. Or, take it in the words of the Prophet, Ezek. 18.31. Cast away from you all your Transgressions, and make you a New Heart, and a New Spirit; for why will you Dy? Sinners, you never were Addressed, upon a Matter of more Importance for you: We must be in Earnest with you; and there are two things to be Ask'd of you▪ yea, to be Charg'd on you, in the Name of the God that made you.
I. In the first place then, Be very sensible of your own Inability to accomplish your own Regeneration. Lie humbly under the Awe of that Assertion, in Phil. 2.13. It is God, who Works in you, both to Will and to Do, of His own Good Pleasure. It is God, who not only gives us the Power of Turning ⟨p. 41⟩to Himself, but every Act of Turning also, must be of His production. Without such an Humiliation in your Souls, the Regeneration of your Souls, is utterly to be despaired. How apt will men be to put off all cares about their own Regeneration, if they imagine that they can always have within their own reach, The Things that accompany Salvation, or that they have a Key in their own Hands with which they can Unlock Heaven at their own Arbitrary Leisure? How unlikely will the Sovereign God also be, to bestow Regeneration upon those who do not own that Sovereignty, or do not feel that we are, Saved by Grace, through' Faith; and this not of our selves, 'tis the Gift of God? Indeed, the Natural and Essential Freedom of our Will, remains unto us; it wills freely, wherever it Wills at all: but alas, 'tis no better than, Free among the Dead: only Dead Works are grateful to the Will of the Unregenerate: his Will, as well as the rest of his whole Soul, is corrupted in him. Tis very true, that God Commands us to Return unto Himself; yea, there is both Infinite Justice and Infinite Wisdom, in his giving of that Command: there is Justice in it, because we Owe unto God our Maker all manner of Obedience, and tho' we in the Apostasy of our First Father, justly Imputed unto us, have sinned away our Ability to yield that Obedience, yet