N00802:943
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.
1. You are yet in the place where there is room for repentance and forgiveness. You are not in the pit from which there is no Redemption; if you were there, you were gone for ever; but you are alive still, and within the compass of a treaty; you are there where proclamation is made, that if you seek God with all your heart, you shall find him. God hath no where said that he will not give you the grace to seek him, or that you shall not find him if you so do. Secret things belong to God; but the offer of this Grace is to be made to you; and though it be admirable, yet God hath bidden such a proclamation to be published, Jer. 3.1. And I am sure that he can break your hard hearts, and give you repentance; and if he do, there is no doubt of the good success of it.
2. You are yet striven with, and called upon. God indeed speaks of a cessation of his Spirit striving with obstinate Sinners, Gen. 6.3. And there are the awful instances of it; but the case is otherwise with you. If the means of grace are influenced so as to rouse and awaken you out of your security, and make you feel your misery, and be afraid by reason of it: if he presents your sins to you in their aggravations, and makes them evil and bitter to you, this is a work of his Spirit, and saith that he strives still; and whiles he strives, there is hope that he may be found.
3. Hence these fears and terrors are not to drive ⟨p. 329⟩you to despair, but to awaken you from your neglect. And indeed you stand in need of them. You despised many a gentle warning, and were grown dreadfully secure, fearfully asleep; it was therefore meet that you should be startled by some terrible impressions made on you, […] he should give you deep and gaping wounds in your Consciences, to make you sensible the providence then is merciful, though terrible; but you ought to count it a mercy, and then, the lesson properly to be learned from it, is to put you upon speed, and utmost diligence, in seeking of God without delay. We have such a prayer of the Psalmist,