N00583:37
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.
2. Gods own Children are sometimes judicially left under obstinate frames. It is the mournful expostulation of the Church, Isa. 63. 17. O Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our hearts from thy fear? And though there be a Principle of saying grace in them, which inclines them to an holy fear; yet they have a body of death too, which hath it influence on them, and that so powerful, that they are drawn by it into the sins of the times and places they live in, and God is displeased at them for it, and so he awfully leaves them to have their ears stopped, so as not to give ear, as they ought to do, to the warnings he gives, and the Judgments which he inflicts. We have instances for this in Eli, David, Asa, serving to let us understand, how far holy men may, under desertion provoke their Father to displeasure, ⟨p. 22⟩and thereby open away for more temporal Judgments to come upon them.
2. Gods own Children are sometimes judicially left under obstinate frames. It is the mournfull expostulation of the Church, Isa. 63. 17. O Lord, why hast thou made us to erre from thy wayes, and hardned our hearts from thy fear? And though there be a Principle of saying grace in them, which enclines them to an holy fear; yet they have a body of death too, which hath it influence on them, and that so powerfull, that they are drawn by it into the sins of the times and places they live in, and God is displeased at them for it, and so he awfully leaves them to have their ears stopt, so as not to give ear, as they ought to do, to the warnings he gives, and the Judgments which he inflicts. We have instances for this in Eli, David, Asa, serving to let us understand, how far holy men may, under desertion provoke their Father to displeasure, ⟨p. 22⟩and thereby open away for more temporal Judgments to come upon them.