N00583:65
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. Hence,By them God is said to do men hurt. So he expresseth it, Josh. 24. 20. Then will he turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after that he hath done you good. They are many ways harmful to a people that are brought under the impressions of them: besides the misery that men do personally suffer by them, in which some are usually more deeply concerned than others, being made the peculiar monuments of the severity of such Judgments; there is great evil which befalls the body of such a people. They are greatly hurt by Famines, by Pestilences, by Sword, by Captivity and bondage, their glory is disgraced by such disasters, their numbers are wasted, and they are made, of a great many, to be but a few; their comforts of life are taken away from them, and they are brought into miserable distress; they are filled with sorrows and bitter mournings; and they are ⟨p. 46⟩wasted, impoverished, and brought low by them, and made to come down & sit in the dust solitary; they are made a reproach to their enemies, a scoff and a scorn to all those that hate them, who point at them and say, This is Zion the out-cast, &c. And all this doth very sensibly hurt them; and that which doth a man hurt, must needs be contrary to him.
2. Hence,By them God is said to do men hurt. So he expresseth it, Josh. 24. 20. Then will he turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after that he hath done you good. They are many ways harmfull to a people that are brought under the impressions of them: besides the misery that men do personally suffer by them, in which some are usually more deeply concerned than others, being made the peculiar monuments of the severity of such Judgments; there is great evil which befalls the body of such a people. They are greatly hurt by Famines, by Pestilences, by Sword, by Captivity and bondage, their glory is disgraced by such disasters, their numbers are wasted, and they are made, of a great many, to be but a few; their comforts of life are taken away from them, and they are brought into miserable distress; they are filled with sorrows and bitter mournings; and they are ⟨p. 46⟩wasted, impoverished, and brought low by them, and made to come down & sit in the dust solitary; they are made a reproach to their enemies, a scoff and a scorn to all those that hate them, who point at them and say, This is Zion the out-cast, &c. And all this doth very sensibly hurt them; and that which doth a man hurt, must needs be contrary to him.