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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 distress of Conscience from Gods heavy hand. 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.
2. That he doth it by laying his angry hand on the man. Here take notice of three things.
1. That God is usually provoked to anger when he doth thus. How far he may do it in Sovereignty to try his people, I shall not here dispute. Job is such an instance, who complaineth of Gods Terrors, and his writing bitter things against him. However this is one of the Judgments of God that come for Sin, and there hath been a provocation offered in order to it, for the most part: and this the Psalmist plainly intimates in our Text; for it was while he kept silence.
1. That God is usually provoked to anger when he doth thus. How far he may do it in Soveraignty to try his people, I shall not here dispute. Job is such an instance, who complaineth of Gods Terrours, and his writing bitter things against him. However this is one of the Judgments of God that come for Sin, and there hath been a provocation offered in order to it, for the most part: and this the Psalmist plainly intimates in our Text; for it was while he kept silence.
2. This therefore is an effect or display of his anger ▪ ⟨p. 177⟩God hath no affections properly; but there are the resultances of his will in the way of his Dispensation to his Creatures, which carry in them a resemblance of such a thing in us, which is thus expressed according to our manner of conception: Afflictive Providences are therefore usually assigned to his anger; holy men were wont so to express their resentments of them,