N00802:1466
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
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.
USE. I. For Information in a few particulars.
1. Learn hence the different verdict that God and the world pass upon men. 1 Cor. 3.19. Men think themselves wise if they can baffle the counsels of God, and silence their own Consciences, and sin in despite of counsels and warnings, under a pretence of carnal reason: but God counts them no better than beasts, and writes this wisdom of theirs the most stupid folly: and let us take Gods censure of it, rather than mens vain opinion about it, for his word shall stand.
2. Hence see the miserable change which the fall doth brought upon man. When God made him at first, he was perfect in understanding, he knew ⟨p. 476⟩how to put difference between good and bad, and choose that which would pr•move the Glory of God & his own eternal felicity: and all his senses were in a due subordination, and offered him no delusion: but since his Apostasy he hath crazed his understanding, and fallen in a spiritual account, a species below himself. God therefore would have all men in their natural state to know that they are beasts, Eccl. 3.18. And how should this thought help to abase us, and make us bewail our infelicity?
2. Hence see the miserable change which the fall doth brought upon man. When God made him at first, he was perfect in understanding, he knew ⟨p. 476⟩