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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 › Doctrine 3: God to be sought in a finding time. DOCTRINE. III.
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. He hath therefore made promises to such as se•• him, that they shall find him. The Prophet tells us from God, Isa 45.19. I said not to the seed of Jacob, seek me in vain. And to make this appear he hath obliged himself, 1 Chron. 28.9. If thou seek him, he will be found of thee. So, Psal. 69.32. Prov. 8.17. Heb. 11.6. And he who hath promised is faithful and will perform, and they that adventure on his word, shall never see cause to repent.
3. He hath made a way for his being found by Sinful men. And there is nothing wherein God hath equally celebrated his goodness to man, as in this; that when Sin had shut us out of his presence, and raised Mountains between him and us, he hath been at the cost to remove them, and make a New and Living way for us to find him. For this it was that Christ came into the World, and made the Atonement with his own Blood, that he might pull down the wall of separation: And now he tells us that he is the way, Joh. 14.6. And so there is a new way Consecrated, Heb 10.20. This God would not have done, if he had not designed that some of the lost race should find him in it.
4. He hath given us directions how we may find this way, and him in it. All the Gospel Precepts are adapted to this end. As there could have been no way, if he had not opened it, so we could never have known it, if he had not shown it us,