N00800:151
The peril of the times displayed. Or The danger of mens taking up with…
The peril of the times displayed. Or The danger of mens taking up with a form of godliness, but denying the power of it. Being the substance of several sermons preached: / by Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. N.E. ; [One line from Augustine in Latin]
Boston: 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.
3. It must then needs follow, that to cast off the form of Godliness, is a farther ⟨p. 143⟩step of Apostasy. We have already observed, that to be content with the form without the power, is a woeful degeneracy, and shows that men do contradict their own Profession: but yet it is a more audacious discovery of mens being departed from God, and having forsaken his fear, when they put off their visor, and appear bare faced in their Irreligion. The former supposeth them to be in their Consciences convinced of the worthiness of the true Religion, and that it is a thing which God requires of men, though they want a love for it; but this casts the greatest open contempt upon it that can be: and, let men please themselves as they will with their own deceivings, yet they are nothing better, who reject it upon Spiritual Pride, then such as do so to gratify their own Carnal Lusts.
3. It must then needs follow, that to cast off the form of Godliness, is a farther ⟨p. 143⟩step of Apostasy. We have already observed, that to be content with the form without the power, is a woful degeneracy, and shews that men do contradict their own Profession: but yet it is a more audacious discovery of mens being departed from God, and having forsaken his fear, when they put off their vizar, and appear bare faced in their Irreligion. The former supposeth them to be in their Consciences convinced of the worthiness of the true Religion, and that it is a thing which God requires of men, though they want a love for it; but this casts the greatest open contempt upon it that can be: and, let men please themselves as they will with their own deceivings, yet they are nothing better, who reject it upon Spiritual Pride, then such as do so to gratify their own Carnal Lusts.
2. Beware of censuring these for Hypocrisy, who are careful to keep up the form which God himself hath prescribed to us. That God hath not only directed us how we are to Serve him with our inward man, but that he hath also told us how he expects that we worship him with the outward man, is a truth unconfutably