N00583:71
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.
DOCT. VI. There is a certain gradation in the Judgments of God upon an Apostatizing People.
God here speaks of Punishing them, or smiting of them (for so the word used in our Text firstly signifies) Seven times more, i. e. by a seven fold greater and more terrible smiting than that which was before, and he mentions this many times over in the Context, in every of which he still riseth by Sevens. Seven is not here to be taken strictly, but for many,or much greater; and yet, it being a number of perfection, it denotes a very notable and observable Augmentation of the Calamities threatened, in the progress of Gods judicial dispensations, when he passeth over from one scene of Judgments to another, and withal it points us to the gradual progress which he is pleased to make with men this way, and this gives us the advantage to take notice of the wonted dealings of God with a people in ⟨p. 51⟩Covenant with him, different from what is usually towards those that are strangers to him▪ or towards particular persons. And there are four things that we may here take notice of; only remembering, that God useth much of his Sovereignty in the diversifying of his dispensations on this account; as to circumstances; though for the substance this is the ordinary course.
God here speaks of Punishing them, or smitting of them (for so the word used in our Text firstly signifies) Seven times more, i. e. by a seven fold greater and more terrible smiting than that which was before, and he mentions this many times over in the Context, in every of which he still riseth by Sevens. Seven is not here to be taken strictly, but for many,or much greater; and yet, it being a number of perfection, it denotes a very notable and observable Augmentation of the Calamities threatned, in the progress of Gods judicial dispensations, when he passeth over from one scene of Judgments to another, and withall it points us to the gradual progress which he is pleased to make with men this way, and this gives us the advantage to take notice of the wonted dealings of God with a people in ⟨p. 51⟩