N01152:57
The inexcusableness of neglecting the worship of God, under a pretence of being in…
The inexcusableness of neglecting the worship of God, under a pretence of being in an unconverted condition. Showed in a sermon preached at Northampton, the 17th. Decemb. 1707. being the time of the sitting of the Inferior Court. / By Solomon Stoddard, Pastor of Northampton. ; Imprimatur, J. Dudley.The inexcusableness of neglecting the worship of God, under a pretence of being in an unconverted condition. Shewed in a sermon preached at Northampton, the 17th. Decemb. 1707. being the time of the sitting of the Inferiour Court. / By Solomon Stoddard, Pastor of Northampton. ; Imprimatur, J. Dudley.
printed by B. Green. Sold by Samuel Phillips, 1708
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.
9. We have no cause to wonder to find some Divines of our own Nation, and some of other Nations to deny that the Supper is a Converting Ordinance. I find Wendiline, a great Divine in his disputations against the Lutherans acknowledging again & again, that the Sacraments may instrumentally begin Faith in Adult Persons; & in another place, saying, That the Sacraments of confirmation; he means the Passover, and the Lords-Supper may organically begin Faith. Yet there be a great many Divines that do deny this. But this is not to be wondered at, seeing they hold, That Elect Infants that have federal holiness, have at the same time the internal grace of Regeneration. Thus Voetius Statu. Elect. Unte. Conv. And he says, That Dr. Burges does prove by many Divines, that Elect Infants have an initial & seminal Regeneration upon their Baptism; if it were so, no doubt but their actual Conversion would be in early days, before they come to that Age, when persons are wont to be admitted to the Lords Supper.
9. We have no cause to wonder to find some Divines of our own Nation, and some of other Nations to deny that the Supper is a Converting Ordinance. I find Wendiline, a great Divine in his disputations against the Lutherans acknowledging again & again, that the Sacraments may instrumentally begin Faith in Adult Persons; & in another place, saying, That the Sacraments of confirmation; he means the Passover, and the Lords-Supper may organically begin Faith. Yet there be a great many Divines that do deny this. But this is not to be wondred at, seeing they hold, That Elect Infants that have faederal holiness, have at the same time the internal grace of Regeneration. Thus Voetius Statu. Elect. Unte. Conv. And he says, That Dr. Burges does prove by many Divines, that Elect Infants have an initial & seminal Regeneration upon their Baptism; if it were so, no doubt but their actual Conversion would be in early days, before they come to that Age, when persons are wont to be admitted to the Lords Supper.
10. No Christian Country does neglect this Ordinance no we do in this Land. In our own Nation at home, so in Scotland, Holland, Denmark, Sweedland, and among the Protestants in Germany & France, they do generally Celebrate the Memorial of Christs Death. This Country is singular in neglecting of it. About Forty years past, there were a Multitude in the Country, Unbaptized: but that neglect was taken into Examination, and now there is an alteration in that particular. But to this day there be Four to One that do neglect the Lords-Supper; as if it did not belong to them to magnify God upon the account of the Work of Redemption. We are a People that pretend high in Religion, but indeed we fall short of other People in the very Form of it, and don't come up in our practice in this particular to many other Churches.