N00802:955
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. Young ones have not so resisted him as others have done. Children have Original Sin in them, as soon as they live, and begin to discover it as soon as they are capable: but God hath taken the Children of his Servants into Covenant with him, and they have not so notoriously rejected his Covenant as those have done, who withstood him in youth, and addicted themselves to follow folly and vanity.
4. Their hearts are usually more tender and easy to be wrought upon. Not but that natural hardness born with us requires Gods Almighty power to take it away, in the tenderest Child that is. But there is a contracted obstinacy, which grows on persons by custom, which Children do not presently arrive at; but are more tractable, readier to receive the impressions of Counsels given them. And this is the reason why we are bidden to begin early with them in, Prov. 22.6.
4. Their hearts are usually more tender and easy to be wrought upon. Not but that natural hardness born with us requires Gods Almighty power to take it away, in the tenderest Child that is. But there is a contracted obstinacy, which grows on persons by custom, which Children do not presently arrive at; but are more tractible, readier to receive the impressions of Counsels given them. And this is the reason why we are bidden to begin early with them in, Prov. 22.6.
5. They have many advantages now which they will not have afterwards. With such arguments the Spirit of God pleads with young ones to husband their youth well, Eccl 12. begin There will be many encumbrances of life afterward, which now burden them not: and when old age seizeth them, it will greatly unfit them for it, who did not engage in it before.