N00731:68
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 2 › Proposition 3: PROPOSITION. III.
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.
2. Sin is the greatest Folly. Psal. 85.8. Let them not turn again to folly, i. e. to Sin. Prov. 8.11. As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly. A Dog has not the reason to consider and think with himself, that the thing which he vomits up, was it which made him sick, & therefore he returns to it again. Just so it is with Sinners. It may be they have felt pain by their sins, their Bodies have been hurt thereby: And it may be their Consciences have smarted for what they have done; yet they will commit those Sins again. Thus do they return to their folly. Such fools are they. All Sin is folly: For it is against the rules of wisdom: All the Precepts contained in the Law or Word of God are wise precepts. There ⟨p. 72⟩is no Sin but it is a Transgression of one or other of them. Jer. 8.8, 9. How do you say, we are wise? They have rejected the Word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them? Sin is a departure from God the fountain of all wisdom: And therefore the more men sin, the more unwise are they. The greatest Sinners are the greatest fools in the world. In the greatness of their folly they go astray. Prov. 5.23. And as all Sin is folly, so there are some Sins which are in a most peculiar manner so. Sins of Uncleanness are most abominable folly. When Shechem had defiled Dinah, it was said of him, that he had wrought folly in Israel, which thing ought not to be done. Gen. 34.7. Sins of that nature brutify men. They act more like brute beasts then like men with rational Souls. The wise man speaketh of a young man that was observed to go to the house of an Harlo•, there to debauch himself, of whom he giveth this character, that he was a young man void of understanding, and that he went after her, as an Ox goeth to the Slaughter, and as a Fool goeth to the correction of the Stocks. Prov. 7.7, 22. Such brutish folly are such Sinners guilty of,