N00583:75
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.
3. Hence he is also wont to begin with lesser, & ⟨p. 54⟩more tolerable strokes. He doth not come to the extremity at once, he proves them first with Rods, before he proceeds to make use of Scorpions in punishing of them. And there is a double consideration under which this may be observed; It is either with respect to the Judgments themselves, or to the degrees in which he doth inflict them. Hence we have such a difference mentioned, Isa. 9. 1. When at first he lightly afflicted, &c. and afterwards did more grievously afflict her. There are some Afflictions which in themselves are far less formidable than other; the nature of man is not so affrighted at them, and hereupon there is not so great a discovery of the anger of God, at least as to the heat of it: we find David chose rather to fall into the hands of God than of men, and God many times begins with such; these are the forlorn of his army which are first sent up to alarm a sinning people. He brings upon them Scarcity of the comforts of this life, by cutting short the fruits of the earth, and he visits them with Epidemical sicknesses, whereby they are brought low, and the like. There are also several degrees in the same kinds of Afflictions, whereby they prove more or less distressing to a people: and God useth to begin at the lower degrees; he comes first as a mo•• to the house of Ephraim, Hos. 5. 12. He ⟨p. 55⟩diminisheth them, and shortens their comforts, brings difficulties and straits upon them, before he falls upon them in the severity of these. He brings scarcity before a killing Famine, gentler sicknesses before destroying Pestilences, &c. And the reason of this is, because he will prove them to see if their hearts be tender, and sensible of the easier touches of his anger, that if they so be, there may be an end, and no further process made in the way of his wrath against them.
3. Hence he is also wont to begin with lesser, & ⟨p. 54⟩more tolerable stroaks. He doth not come to the extremity at once, he proves them first with Rods, before he proceeds to make use of Scorpions in punishing of them. And there is a double consideration under which this may be observed; It is either with respect to the Judgments themselves, or to the degrees in which he doth inflict them. Hence we have such a difference mentioned,