N01237:47
A discourse concerning the grace of courage, wherein the nature, beneficialness, and necessity of…
A discourse concerning the grace of courage, wherein the nature, beneficialness, and necessity of that virtue for all Christians, is described. Delivered in a sermon preached at Boston in New-England. June 5th. 1710. / By Increase Mather, D.D. ; [Two lines from I Corinthians]A discourse concerning the grace of courage, wherein the nature, beneficialness, and necessity of that vertue for all Christians, is described. Delivered in a sermon preached at Boston in New-England. June 5th. 1710. / By Increase Mather, D.D. ; [Two lines from I Corinthians]
Boston: printed by B. Green for Samuel Phillips, 1710
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.
USE. I. This may put us upon Examination, whether we have the Grace of Courage? You have heard that men may have a Natural Courage, and be adorned with an Heroic gift of Fortitude, and yet not have the Christian Grace of Courage, which is most Excellent, and more to be desired than the other. And yet this, they who are naturally Weak and Timorous, may […] have a great measure of it.
USE. I. This may put us upon Examination, whether we have theGrace of Courage? You have heard that men may have a Natural Courage, and be adorned with an Heroick gift of Fortitude, and yet not have the Christian Grace of Courage, which is most Excellent, and more to be desired than the other. And yet this, they who are naturally Weak and Timorous, may 〈…〉 have a great measure of it.
Let me then mention to you some Characters of one that has this Grace.
1. He is one that will bear a Faithful Testimony to the Truth, and against the Errors and Corruptions of the Time and Place in which the Divine Providence has disposed of him. There are some Truths which are the special Truths of the day. These the Scripture calls, The present Truth, 2 Pet. 1. 12. The great Truth of the Time in the Apostles days, was, That the Promised Messiah is come, and that Jesus of Nazareth is He. If a man did own that Truth, his Estate, Liberty, and Life was in danger to be taken from him. It argued a noble Courage to be in those that would profess their belief of it. And therefore in those days for a man to speak those few words, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, was as great and a greater evidence of a true Conversion, than any Relation of a work of Grace, is in these days.