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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.
1. He awakens the mans Conscience, and sets his sin before him, in the aggravations of it. Gods hand is laid on the Conscience; it was before asleep, and though these sins stood upon record in it, the man ⟨p. 178⟩took no notice of them, and so they gave him no molestation; but now when it is roused, and forced to do its Office, he is made to read these records, compare them with the Rule, and so make a judgement of them, Psal. 50.21. I will set them in order before thee. And now Conscience looks on them in such circumstances as make them have the most formidable and frightful aspect: Did not Cain look on his through such a glass? Gen. 4.14. And Judas too?
2. He, together with this sets home the awful terrors of his Word. There are amazing Threatenings that there stand upon record; there is a Flying Roll of Curses of a great length and breadth: Now these God not only setteth before the man, but he throws them upon his Conscience, and they fall upon him furiously; he is made to take them all to himself, and say, I am the man, this is my portion at the hands of God, &c. And when God hath by Conscience thus applied them, the man is in his own feeling, as if he were under the impressions of all this Wrath; he is in an hell upon earth, and feels the miseries of the damned upon him in great measure; this made Judas choose to go to hell, to know the worst of it.
2. He, together with this sets home the awful terro•rs of his Word. There are amazing Threatnings that there stand upon record; there is a Flying Roll of Curses of a great length and breadth: Now these God not only setteth before the man, but he throws them upon his Conscience, and they fall upon him furiously; he is made to take them all to himself, and say, I am the man, this is my portion at the hands of God, &c. And when God hath by Conscience thus applied them, the man is in his own feeling, as if he were under the impressions of all this Wrath; he is in an hell upon earth, and feels the miseries of the damned upon him in great measure; this made Judas chuse to go to hell, to know the worst of it.