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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.
3. That man by Sin hath lost God. This is the unhappy effect of the Apostasy, and is the fruit ⟨p. 306⟩of sin, Isa. 59.2. Man was at first made near to God, but as soon as sin came in, it set him at a vast distance; so that now he knows him not, but is a stranger to him; hath lost all title to him as his God, and is become his enemy, and so is made miserable.
4. That fallen man must find God again, if ever he enjoy him. Vision and Fruition go together▪ Mans misery is that he hath left him, his only happiness is in finding him. We must find him, if we find life by him, Prov. 8.35. Till we so do, we remain in the forlorn state which Sin hath cast us into; That man that doth not find his God again, is undone for ever.
5. For this end God exhibits himself to man, as the object whom they are to seek. God hath made our seeking of him a medium in order to our finding him. Not but that he seeks us first by his preventing Grace, yet in order to his discovering himself graciously to us, he makes us to exert this Grace, in asking after him. Hence in the Gospel Proclamation these two are connected together, Jer. 29 13.