N00583:28
Reformation the great duty of an afflicted people. Setting forth the sin and danger…
Reformation the great duty of an afflicted people. Setting forth the sin and danger there is in neglecting of it, under the continued and repeated judgments of God. : Being the substance of what was preached on a solemn day of humiliation kept by the Third Gathered Church in Boston, on August. 23d. 1694. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of the said church. ; [Four lines from Zechariah]
printed by Bartholomew Green, 1694
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.
7. God hath been wont, upon their Reformation, to avert his Judgments from his People. This is a course that hath not used to fail. How often did he do so for his People of old! as we shall find upon Record in Scripture History: Nay such hath been the pity which he hath extended to them in this regard, that when their Reformation hath been feigned, and not upright, yet he hath delivered them for-all, and that many a time, as is intimated in Psal. 78. 34. &c. how much more then will be do so when it is hearty, and sincere? it is a very remarkable passage in, Judg. 10. 15, 16.
7. God hath been wont, upon their Reformation, to avert his Judgments from his People. This is a course that hath not used to fail. How often did he do so for his People of old! as we shall find upon Record in Scripture History: Nay such hath been the pitty which he hath extended to them in this regard, that when their Reformation hath been feigned, and not upright, yet he hath delivered them for-all, and that many a time, as is intimated in Psal. 78. 34. &c. how much more then will be do so when it is hearty, and sincere? it is a very remarkable passage in, Judg. 10. 15, 16.
8. Hence the reason why God hath at any time proceeded to Extirpate a Professing People hath been their Impenitence. When neither word nor rod, neither warnings nor Judgments would prevail with them to return, but they have remained obstinate under all; see an account of ⟨p. 16⟩this, 2 Chron. 36. 15, 16. He waited till there was no remedy; no other course to be taken: all their other Provocations, though never so many and heinous, would never have brought it to this, if they had not added contumacy to their Apostasy; hence we have God using of that Expostulation with them, Isai 48. 18, 19.