N01037:39
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.
THE Danger Of SPEEDY Degeneracy, › Application 3: USE III. Of WARNING.
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.
USE III. Of WARNING.
That you do not grow more corrupt. We are running down hill and our natures lead us to degeneracy, and we are now grown so bad that temptations to degeneracy do abound in the Land; Men have bad examples before them; they harden one another, Men will be counted ridiculous if they do not in some measure comply: We are like a man in a Consumption, in danger to grow worse and worse. Like a tree in a withering condition, in danger to dye: There is need of much care.
Consider,
1. If you do go on to corrupt your selves, you will frustrate the design of planting the Land. The design of our Fathers in Planting this Country, was that their Posterity might fear and serve the Lord, ⟨p. 24⟩They would not have left England merely for their own quietness: but they were afraid that their Children would be corrupted there. But what advantage will the Planting of this Land be, if we should grow a corrupt People here? as good have been bad in Old England as in New: what great matter is it, if we be delivered from Superstition, if we carry in other respects wickedly: The Planters of the Country might even repent that ever they came over into this Land: the design will be very much lost; they might say as Joshua says,