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The truly blessed man
The truly blessed man: or, The way to be happy here, and for ever: being the substance of divers sermons preached on, Psalm XXXII. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. N.E. ; [Five lines from Isaiah]
printed by B. Green for Michael Perry, 1700
Sermon › Doctrine 3: God to be sought in a finding time. DOCTRINE. 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.
2. Nay, on his withholding, the means have a contrary operation. Instead of softening, they will harden; instead of drawing you nearer to God, they will put you at a farther distance from him. There are two contrary effects of the means on m•n, 2 Cor. 2.15, 16. And where the one is not, the other is. God by the same means ripens some for ruin, by which he fits others for glory. Not that it is the natural tendency of the Gospel, but the Judicial Dispensation of God towards men who despise his Spirit striving in it, who for this leaves them to their hearts lusts, to their hardening in sin, and encouraging themselves in their wicked courses, and by presumption to put from them the fear of God, and the awe of his Judgments, and so to heap up wrath against themselves; and in such a •at soil, to ripen the faster for destruction.
2. Nay, on his witholding, the means have a contrary operation. Instead of softning, they will harden; instead of drawing you nearer to God, they will put you at a farther distance from him. There are two contrary effects of the means on m•n, 2 Cor. 2.15, 16. And where the one is not, the other is. God by the same means ripens some for ruine, by which he fits others for glory. Not that it is the natural tendency of the Gospel, but the Judicial Dispensation of God towards men who despise his Spirit striving in it, who for this leaves them to their hearts lusts, to their hardning in sin, and encouraging themselves in their wicked courses, and by presumption to put from them the fear of God, and the aw of his Judgments, and so to heap up wrath against themselves; and in such a •at soil, to ripen the faster for destruction.
3. If we resist him, it will be the way to have him be gone. The Spirit of Christ is a tender Spirit: