N00731:21
The folly of sinning, opened & applied, in two sermons, occasioned by the condemnation…The folly of sinning, opened & applyed, in two sermons, occasioned by the condemnation…
The folly of sinning, opened & applied, in two sermons, occasioned by the condemnation of one that was executed at Boston in New-England, on November 17th. 1698. / By Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, in Cambridge, and preacher of the Gospel at Boston in N.E. ; [Two lines from Romans]The folly of sinning, opened & applyed, in two sermons, occasioned by the condemnation of one that was executed at Boston in New-England, on November 17th. 1698. / By Increase Mather, praesident of Harvard Colledge, in Cambridge, and preacher of the Gospel at Boston in N.E. ; [Two lines from Romans]
Boston: printed by B Green for Michael Perry over against the Town House, 1699
THE FOLLY OF Sinning. › Sermon 1 › Proposition 1: PROPOSITION I.
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.
Sin is a practical disowning and denying the glorious Attributes of the Ever Blessed God. When men sin, they do not really believe the Omnipresence of God. Ezek. 8.12. They say the Lord sees us not, the Lord has forsaken the earth. There are Sinners, that if they thought a man, nay, a child of seven years old, that could tell of it, saw them, they would not commit that sin. Do they then really believe that God seeth […] ⟨p. 15⟩That He by […] they must be Judged another day, looks on them all that while! By sin men defy his Power: Sinners give the Almighty the challenge. Isa. 5.19. They said, Let him make speed and hasten his work, that we may see it, and let the Counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it. q. d. He has threatened us a long time, but why does not he do what he threatens? Let him come and do his worst, the sooner the better, we fear him not. We must not suppose that they did in words thus express themselves, but this was the language of their sinful practices. They lived as if they had been really of that opinion, as if they thought they could be too hard for the Almighty. Sin calls the Truth of God into Question God says, If thou dost transgress my Law, ye shall surely die for it: But Sin and the Devil says, it may be not for all that. Gen. 3.8. Therefore it must needs provoke him. How are men provoked if their fellow creatures give them the Lie? And will not the most High God be offended, when wretched men shall make him a Liar? Sin strikes at the very Life and Being of God: It says, […] there is no God in Heaven. It is an ⟨p. 16⟩Iniquity to be punished by the Judge, for it denies the God that is above. Job 31.28. So far as a man is a Sinner, he is an Atheist. Psal. 14 1. The fool has said in his heart that there is no God. It is hardly possible for a man with a rational soul really to believe that there is no God; but the fool wisheth there were none. And he does not believe that there is such a God as indeed there is. He is ready to think that God is altogether such another as himself, which is to Ungod him. He says in his heart, that God is not so Holy a God as his Ministers and as his Word declareth him to be, which is in effect to say, that He is no God: For if He should be less holy then He is, He should cease to be God. Holiness is called the Life of God.