N00583:79
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.
USE. III. Let it rouse us all up to this Reformation. You here see how it is; we have an holy God to do withal, who is jealous for his great name, and though he has a reserve of mercy for the penitent, yet will have his honour in all his works. He hath been apparently testifying his displeasure against our ways and doings, and he is still growing upon ⟨p. 59⟩us in it, and we cannot see to the other end of these dark dispensations. Why then should we be so stiff-necked and hard hearted? what good shall we get by a resolute pursuance of our own ways, against all the endeavours that are laid out upon us to reduce us from them? have we not felt enough already to our sorrow? And shall we force him to lay more and heavier Calamities upon us still? Oh let us be wise! It was a good advice that Pharaohs servants gave to him, Exod. 10. 7. How long shall this man be a snare to us? let the men go, &c. knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed? And may I not well say, how long shall our sins befool us? how long shall we stand by them, and not part with them? do we not know that they have already almost ruined us? Remember then, that though God hath gone far with us in his Judgments, and increased them more than once upon us, yet there are more and more terrible ones behind, ready to be poured out upon us? He hath not shot all his arrows yet; the sharpest are still in his quiver; and he seems to have a fearful one now upon the string: and shall we not fall down at his feet and prevent it? Shall we yet dare him to it, and force him to make us feel the bitterest of it? Oh let it not once be!
USE. III. Let it rouse us all up to this Reformation. You here see how it is; we have an holy God to do withall, who is jealous for his great name, and though he has a reserve of mercy for the penitent, yet will have his honour in all his works. He hath been apparently testifying his displeasure against our ways and doings, and he is still growing upon ⟨p. 59⟩us in it, and we cannot see to the other end of these dark dispensations. Why then should we be so stiff-necked and hard hearted? what good shall we get by a resolute pursuance of our own ways, against all the endeavours that are laid out upon us to reduce us from them? have we not felt enough already to our sorrow? And shall we force him to lay more and heaviour Calamities upon us still? Oh let us be wise! It was a good advice that Pharaohs servants gave to him,