N00583:8
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.
TO THE READER.
Christian Reader,
HOW many ways Gods hand is out against this People, and that He hath now for a long time been managing a Controversy with us, in a course of awful Afflictive Providences, is Obvious to him who is not willingly a Stranger in our Israel. We have tried many ways for the removal of our troubles, and, among others have kept many Fasts, both Public and Private, to seek an Atonement, and obtain help from Heaven: many also, if not the most of our Churches have with Solemnity revived their Covenant Obligations to God. But that after all our Essays on this account, our distresses abide on us, and our perplexities are growing upon us, and God seems to blast our Enterprises, ⟨image ?⟩to return our Prayers with anger upon us, to hide Counsel, and take away our Spirits from us; yea, & expose us to the Scorn of our enemies, the Language of the Providences we are now under speaks plainly: and what may be the meaning of these things? We are by Name and Profession a People of God; and there are great Promises made to such, in case of their close walking with God: yea, and though they have Sinned, and brought troubles on themselves, if they truly Repent, and Return to Him. Doubtless if God had not been angry, we had not been thus Afflicted; and if he had not been Provoked by our Sins, He would not have been angry; and if we had bearkned to the voice of the Rod, it would have been removed, and not continued, and harder strokes inflicted. That which God expects of us is Reformation; and though this belongs to each of us personally; and if every one would take beed to himself, and mend one, the whole would be amended: there is a common concern lying upon us, as we are a People whose interests are bound up together; so God treats us in his Providence as a community. Doubtless then it is, that it is not like to be better with us as a People, till such a Reformation be promoved; and there are the measures and steps to be taken in it, which, it is to be feared, have hitherto been neglected. What these are the Scriptures will inform us, and the examples of Gods