N01037:10
The danger of speedy degeneracy, held forth in a sermon preached at the lecture…
The danger of speedy degeneracy, held forth in a sermon preached at the lecture in Boston the 5th. of July, 1705. / By Solomon Stoddard Pastor of the church at Northampton.
Boston: printed by B. Green for Benj. Eliot, 1705
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
DOCTRINE.
The Covenant People of God do sometimes grow very corrupt in a little time.
When the former Generation were dead that came into the Land of Canaan, they did evil in the sight of the Lord: People are wont to be very inconsistent in goodness; as they are subject to many other changes, so to changes in Religion; Piety is not natural to a people, and so they do not hold it long; sometimes when a people are grown corrupt, they hold that a great while; but when they are holy, it is not long before ⟨p. 6⟩they lose their holiness; it is otherwise with particular persons that are once holy, such men will continue to be holy all the days of their lives, but if a people be an holy people, many times they lose it quickly; it is easy to go down hill: people are apt to grow degenerate; one would have thought, considering the piety of those that went into Canaan, the Divine Constitution of their Church, the great manifestations of the glory of God to that Nation, that they would have held their Religion from Generation to Generation, but it was otherwise.