N00802:1626
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 2: Wicked mens Sorrows, great and innumerable. DOCTRINE II.
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.
1 Think much and often of th•se sorrows. The threatenings of the Word of God, the miseries ⟨p. 535⟩contained in the Curse, and included in the death which Sinners are doomed too, is a common place very profitable for them to be much in the contemplation of: it is the neglect of this that makes them secure and confident. God would have men to meditate on terrors It is, I confess, a very sad and uncomfortable speculation, but profitable; and there is no hope that ever you should fly to the City […] Refuge, till you are soakingly affected with there things; and to what end hath God recorded them in his Word, but that Sinners should meditate of them; that seeing their misery, they may be excited to look about them, and be driven from their vain security.
1 Think much and often of th•se sorrows. The threatnings of the Word of God, the miseries ⟨p. 535⟩contained in the Curse, and included in the death which Sinners are doomed too, is a common place very profitable for them to be much in the contemplation of: it is the neglect of this that makes them secure and confident. God would have men to meditate on terrours It is, I confess, a very sad and uncomfortable speculation, but profitable; and there is no hope that ever you should fly to the City 〈…〉 Refuge, till you are soakingly affected with there things; and to what end hath God recorded them in his Word, but that Sinners should meditate of them; that seeing their misery, they may be excited to look about them, and be driven from their vain security.
2. Apply them all to your selves. The misery of many is, that when they read or hear of these things, though possibly they sound dreadfully yet they shelter themselves from the terrors of them, by reckoning themselves not concerned: and woeful are the delusions by which Sinners are wheedled into a fond security on this account; the Covenant, or their Morality, or their not being so bad as others are, &c. But read the description given in the Word of God, of them to whom they belong, & see if you do not find your selves as really contained in it, as if your names had been there written at length; and take it as your portion.