N00583:46
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.
1. That a principal part of the natural impotency of men, lies in the pravity of their wills. It is true, mans whole nature and all the faculties in him are debilitated, sin having a rooting in them all, and robbed them of the Image of God, by which once man was fitted with ability for his work; but as the will is the leading faculty in the man, so is the impotency of it very notorious. That sin which men are full of, hath laid fast hold on ⟨p. 29⟩them, and engaged their hearts to it, and they have made choice of it, and that according to the dictates of a depraved understanding: for that being filled with crooked principles, causing it to judge perversely of things, and quite contrary to what they are in reality, hath drawn away the will after it, into a spontaneous and deliberate Election and Embracement of these delusions; and by their will it is that men hold fast deceit, Jer. 8. 5. Their sins have thus gained not only their Approbation, to prefer them before holiness, but also their Affections; they love the ways of iniquity, and that makes them to adhere to them; Jer. 2. 25. I have loved strangers, and after them I will go. And hereby their wills are become so impotent, that they cannot make a better choice of themselves, or by their own power: and yet all this is voluntary; there is no outward force laid upon them to cause them thus to do, but it is a fruit of the native Corruption which is in them.
1. That a principal part of the natural impotency of men, lies in the pravity of their wills. It is true, mans whole nature and all the faculties in him are dehilitated, sin having a rooting in them all, and robbed them of the Image of God, by which once man was fitted with ability for his work; but as the will is the leading faculty in the man, so is the impotency of it very notorious. That sin which men are full of, hath laid fast hold on ⟨p. 29⟩them, and engaged their hearts to it, and they have made choise of it, and that according to the dictates of a depraved understanding: for that being filled with crooked principles, causing it to judge perversly of things, and quite contrary to what they are in reality, hath drawn away the will after it, into a sponteneous and deliberate Election and Embracement of these delusions; and by their will it is that men hold fast deceit,