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Love's pedigree. Or A discourse showing the grace of love in a believer to…Love's pedigree. Or A discourse shewing the grace of love in a believer to…
Love's pedigree. Or A discourse showing the grace of love in a believer to be of a divine original delivered in a sermon preached at the lecture in Boston, Febr. 29. 1699[/]1700. / By S. Willard, teacher of a church there. ; [Two lines from James]Love's pedigree. Or A discourse shewing the grace of love in a believer to be of a divine original delivered in a sermon preached at the lecture in Boston, Febr. 29. 1699[/]1700. / By S. Willard, teacher of a church there. ; [Two lines from James]
printed by B. Green, 1700
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. The Apostasy robbed man of that holy love of God which was at first planted in him. This it did when it stripped him of the Image of God, in which this and all the other Graces of Sanctification were contained. When man put off the Image from him, all that was Spiritual, or Theologically good in him went with it: So that every Unregenerate man, if he will say the Truth, must confess of himself entirely, as Paul doth of himself in respect to his worser part, Rom. 7.18. In me, that is in my flesh▪ there dwells no good thing. Man, who at first loved God as his last end and chief good, now ceaseth to do so, and there is not one spark of that primitive love left in him. It is said of every natural man, that the love of the Father is not in him, 1 Joh. 2.15. The Affection of love abides in the man, it being essential to his Humanity, and inseparable from it; but it hath shifted objects, and exchanged God for the Creature; Unconverted men are said to be Lovers of pleasures, more than lovers of God, 2 Tim. 3.4. And hereupon that is one title put upon ungodly men, Rom. 1.30. Haters of God. So ⟨p. 13⟩that their first love, in respect of the object on which it was placed, is turned into hatred.
2. The Apostasy robbed man of that holy love of God which was at first planted in him. This it did when it stript him of the Image of God, in which this and all the other Graces of Sanctification were contained. When man put off the Image from him, all that was Spiritual, or Theologically good in him went with it: So that every Unregenerate man, if he will say the Truth, must confess of himself entirely, as Paul doth of himself in respect to his worser part, Rom. 7.18. In me, that is in my flesh▪ there dwells no good thing. Man, who at first loved God as his last end and chief good, now ceaseth to do so, and there is not one spark of that primitive love left in him. It is said of every natural man, that the love of the Father is not in him,