N00583:81
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.
When he begins in a way of Judgment with them; when he takes his rod in hand and smites them, and they are not bettered by these smitings, yet as he proceeds very slowly in renewing and adding severity to his strokes, according as was observed under the former Doctrine, so he makes many stops and delays in his progress, although he takes them out of one fire & kindleth another upon them, as he threatens to do by them, Ezek. 15 7. Yet he hath his intervals between. The manner of expression in the Text notes that God seeks, and consequently waits for their Reformation by these things, and that signifies such an intermission as this. And there are two things wherein it will be more especially discovered.
When he begins in a way of Judgment with them; when he takes his rod in hand and smites them, and they are not bettered by these smitings, yet as he proceeds very slowly in renewing and adding severity to his stroaks, according as was observed under the former Doctrine, so he makes many stops and delays in his progress, although he takes them out of one fire & kindleth another upon them, as he threatens to do by them, Ezek. 15 7. Yet he hath his intervalls between. The manner of expression in the Text notes that God seeks, and consequently waits for their Reformation by these things, and that signifies such an intermission as this. And there are two things wherein it will be more especially discovered.
I. He doth not speedily pass from one Judgment to another. When he brings one sort of Affliction upon his people, as a Testimony of his displeasure at them, he continues them under that for a considerable time, before he goes on to another; we read of a Famine in Davids time that continued for three years successively; and no other Judgment is recorded to intervene, though the procuring cause of it was not ⟨p. 61⟩presently removed;