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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 › The danger and mischief of Sinful silence and evasions. DOCTRINE.
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. A natural pride makes men loth to take shame to themselves, by a free confession. Pride is one of the leading lusts in Original Sin, and such is the influence of it, that though men know they have done amiss, and are inwardly ashamed, yet they cannot tell how to stoop and abase themselves low because of it: so that all the cunning tricks, evasions, hidings which men use, are nothing else but the breaking out of pride in them, making them count it a disgrace to fall under Convictions, Jer. 13 15.
5. And carnal presumption encourageth them in keeping silence. And it hath its various actings in the man: he presumes of secrecy, he presumes of mercy; he promiseth himself to escape well enough; he thinks if he can but keep his own counsel there is no danger: and this ⟨p. 165⟩vain delusion prompts him to such courses whereby he grows secure and careless.
5. And carnal presumption encourageth them in ke•ping silence. And it hath its various actings in the man: he presumes of secrecy, he presumes of mercy; he promiseth himself to escape well enough; he thinks if he can but keep his own counsel there is no danger: and this ⟨p. 165⟩vain delusion prompts him to such courses whereby he grows secure and careless.
2. That in thus doing, men do but lay in for the more awful distress of Conscience afterwards. The truth of this will be made manifest by the following Conclusions.