N00802:1557
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 1: Untractableness under means, a character of a wicked man. DOCTRINE. I.
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.
4 And if we are left in this frame without Repentance, it is yet more signal: for, as God deserts hi• people to try them, and to let them know themselves, ⟨p. 507⟩so he fails not to give them Repentance in due time: he will bring them back again, and recover them to their Duty; so he did by David, and Peter: and though the Repentance of some good men, be not recorded in the Scriptures, whose falls are there mentioned, yet doubtless God gave it them, because it belongs to his Covenant.
4 And if we are left in this frame without Repentance, it is yet more signal: for, as God deserts hi• people to try them, and to let them know themselves, ⟨p. 507⟩so he fails not to give th•m Repentance in due time: he will bring them back again, and recover them to their Duty; so he did by David, and Peter: and though the Repentance of some good men, be not recorded in the Scriptures, whose falls are there mentioned, yet doubtless God gave it them, because it belongs to his Covenant.
USE III. Let it Exhort us, as we would approve our selves not to be wicked, to have a care how we carry our selves in this respect; for this end consider.
1. You will else darken your evidence, and this will be very uncomfortable. All our consolation ariseth from our apprehension of Gods love, and of our being Godly: there is then nothing more necessary for them that would live a comfortable life, than to take heed of doing any thing that may obscure this, which such a neglect of our selves will certainly do, both because it will grieve the Spirit, and provoke him to withdraw, and will put a black mark upon us.