N00583:52
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.
And what a happy day would this prove for us, if it might come to this issue?
DOCT. IV. An unreformed Professing People do all the while walk contrary to God.
Thus he interprets it, Text. This is the very sense that he puts upon it; in the Hebrew it is, ⟨p. 36⟩shall walk with me contrarily. And the manner of expression seems to have something observable in it, nothing, a pretence of being his people, and making it their design to walk with him, i. e. in conformity to his commands; and yet a carrying of it contrary, to the pretence of their practice. And the phrase notes an Opposition, or a setting of themselves against God. And that such a people as do not, will not reform, do thus, will appear on the Consideration of these things.
1. All Apostasy is a revolting from God. A People that are in Covenant with him, have acknowledged and submitted to his Sovereignty over them; they have owned him to be their Lord, and their King, and their Law-givers and bound themselves to yield obedience to all his commands; promised that all that the Lord shall speak unto them, they will do it. Now God hath given them his Orders, according to which he expects that they should regulate themselves, and therein give a Testimony of their loyalty to him: Every professing people are brought under this bond of the Covenant When therefore they depart from his obedience, and turn aside to their crooked ways, they therein depart from their Allegiance. Hence it is called a revolting,