N00799:19
Morality not to be relied on for life. Or, A brief discourse, discovering the…
Morality not to be relied on for life. Or, A brief discourse, discovering the one thing wanting, which leaves the legalist short of life eternal. Delivered in a sermon on the lecture in Boston, May, 23d. 1700. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Four lines from Titus]
printed by B. Green for Benjamin Eliot, 1700
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
3. He may take a great deal of delight in thus doing. The very Heathen Moralists, who only ⟨p. 11⟩followed the light of nature, could boast that they found incomparably more of pleasure and satisfaction, in the exercise of their Virtues, than the greatest sensualists could possibly do in their fleshly pleasures, and could reject these with scorn for those. The Moralist doth not put a force upon his whole nature, though he may suppress some exorbitant motions of it, when he abstains from the things that the generality immerge themselves in, and lives contrary to the current of the times and places he lives in; but he gratifies his Moral Principles, when he curbs in these which are sensual. Mens Affections work naturally, when they are moved by the impressions of Reason in them, for it belongs to the nature of man, that he is a reasonable Creature. God therefore concedes that to men whom he yet reproves as false, Isa. 58.2. They ask of me the ordinances of Justice, they take delight in approaching to God.
3. He may take a great deal of delight in thus doing. The very Heathen Moralists, who only ⟨p. 11⟩followed the light of nature, could boast that they found incomparably more of pleasure and satisfaction, in the exercise of their Vertues, than the greatest sensuallists could possibly do in their fleshly pleasures, and could reject these with scorn for those. The Moralist doth not put a force upon his whole nature, though he may suppress some exorbitant motions of it, when he abstains from the things that the generality immerge themselves in, and lives contrary to the current of the times and places he lives in; but he gratifies his Moral Principles, when he curbs in these which are sensual. Mens Affections work naturally, when they are moved by the impressions of Reason in them, for it belongs to the nature of man, that he is a reasonable Creature. God therefore concedes that to men whom he yet reproves as false, Isa. 58.2. They ask of me the ordinances of Justice, they take delight in approaching to God.