N00731:83
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.
I•f. 2. Sinners are to be pitied and mourned over. We bear with Fools: I• we know them to be such, we pity them and bear with their folly; Sinners are the miserablest •ools in the World: And shall no body pity them? If we should see distracted persons destroying their own ⟨p. 90⟩bodies would we not pity them, and be sorry for h•m: How much more when we see di•••acted Sinners destroying their own Souls What though they desire none of our pity? And what though they should wrong us, and reproach and revile us, yet let us pity them for they know not what they do. The Time will come when they will see and be ashamed of their fully: Though for the present because madness is in their hearts, they are not ashamed, nevertheless they shall be made sensible. Isa. 26.11. They will not see but they shall see and be ashamed. Either God will Convert them and to make them see their folly: Grace is Wisdom in the inward parts. True Repentance is (a resipience) a growing wise again. Hence it was said of the returning Prodigal, that He came to himself. Luk. 15 17. He was not himself when he spent his Estate in riotous Living. If he had not been mad he would never have done so; but he saw his folly in departing from his Fathers house where he had bread enough and to spare, & in bringing upon himself poverty, and misery, and death. Or, if Sinners are not in a way of unfeigned Repentance, made to see their folly whilst they are in this world, they will see it and lament it for ever in ⟨p. 91⟩another world: When they are put in Prison, and cast into the Dungeon; so are they that are mad sometimes brought to themselves. Thus when Sinners shall be cast into that Dungeon where is blackness of darkness for ever, they will be made sensible of their folly. Therefore we should pity and mourn over them: They that are Regenerate and made wise unto Salvation, should pity the folly of unregenerate ones, and the rather because they themselves once were such.