N00731:71
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.
1. Indocibility is the property of a Fool. He is unteachable: Suppose he should have the best Instructors in the world, he will not learn wisdom, nor get understanding. The Sinners amongst the Jews had Prophets to Instruct them, and yet they would not Learn. Isa. 28.13. The word of the Lord was unto them▪ Precept upon Precept, Line upon Line, here a little and there a little▪ God dealt with them as we do with Children that must learn first one line & there another, and but a little at a time. And or all that, they would learn nothing: They were ever Learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the Truth; so unteachable were they. If a Fool be Corrected as well as Instructed, yet he will not learn. There is no beating of knowledge into him: And is it not so with Sinners? There is many a Sinner that has smarted for his sin & folly, & yet he has not the sense to reform hi• ways. Many a drunkard that has suffered much in his Estate, and in his Relations, and in ⟨p. 76⟩his Soul and Body, because of that sin, and for all that, he has neither the Grace nor Wit to leave that sin: Though he has been stricken and beaten for it, he will seek it yet again. Prov. 23.35. What a Fool is such a sinner? We see every day that what the wise man speaks is true. Prov. 27.22. Though thou shouldst bray a Fool in a Mortar with a Pestle yet will not his foolishness depart from him. In old Time one kind of grinding which people used was to put their parched Corn into a Mortar, and so to grind it to powder. The grains of Corn tho' much hardened, would by a Pestle beating it in the Mortar be reduced to soft Meal; but a Sinner is such an hard hearted Fool, that though the plagues of the Lord be never so heavy upon him, he will not amend nor leave his •olly. Let him be put into the Mortar of Divine wrath, and bruised with the Iron Pestle of Judgments one after another, he is and will be foolish still. Though the Lord has stricken him, he receiveth not Correction, his heart is harder than a Rock, he refuseth to return. Would any […] but a Fool be thus obstinate?