N00583:64
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.
I. Herein he accomplisheth the Covenant threatening. If we look upon the Covenant of God as it is plighted between him and the body of a people professing to be his, it is very evident, that there do not only belong to it gracious promises made to their faithful Obedience unto him, but also awful threatenings against all disobedience; and to these threatenings do belong all the Afflictions that are denounced in the word of God against the disobedience of a people that stand so related to him. There are some indeed who do call these the promises of the Covenant; but it is very Catachrestically, if not a plain Antiphrasis: for a promise always hath a respect to something that is good; whereas these things are in their own nature evil, and so the Scripture calls them, which is the proper matter of a threatening; hence that, Jer. 11. 17. The Lord of hosts that ⟨p. 45⟩planted thee, hath pronounced evil against thee.And although sometimes eventually they prove for good, and that according to Gods purpose; and on this account, those that are compared to good Figs, are said to be sent to Babylon for their good, Jer. 24. 5. Yet this is besides the nature of them. Gods Children therefore are wont to be afraid of those Judgments, Psa. 119. 120. And God doth therefore speaks of them, that he may stir up this fear, to make them cautious against exposing of themselves to them.
I. Herein he accomplisheth the Covenat threatning. If we look upon the Covenant of God as it is plighted between him and the body of a people professing to be his, it is very evident, that there do not only belong to it gracious promises made to their faithfull Obedience unto him, but also awfull threatnings against all disobedience; and to these threatnings do belong all the Afflictions that are denounced in the word of God against the disobedience of a people that stand so related to him. There are some indeed who do call these the promises of the Covenant; but it is very Catachrestically, if not a plain Antiphrasis: for a promise always hath a respect to something that is good; whereas these things are in their own nature evil, and so the Scripture calls them, which is the proper matter of a threatning; hence that,