N01484:47
A sorrowful spectacle. In two sermons, occasioned by a just sentence of death, on…
A sorrowful spectacle. In two sermons, occasioned by a just sentence of death, on a miserable woman, for the murder of a spurious offspring. : The one declaring, the evil of an heart hardened, under and against all means of good. : The other describing, the fearful case of such as in a suffering time, and much more such as in a dying hour, are found without the fear of God. : With some remarkable things, relating to the criminal; proper for all to be informed of. / By Cotton Mather, D.D. and F.R.S. ; [One line from Acts]
Boston: printed by T. Fleet & T. Crump for Samuel Gerrish, 1715
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.
We will enquire more Particular […] When, and How, does a […] his Heart?
We will enquire more Particular 〈…〉 When, and How, does a 〈…〉 his Heart?
He does it, Ah! wretched Sinner, Thou doest it, in such Things as these.
First. A Sinner does Render and Proclaim himself Hard-hearted in Sin, when he has made himself Impudent in it. We read of some; Ezek. III. 7. They are Impudent and Hard-hearted. Where there is a Brow of Brass, there is an Heart of Stone. A Sinner has hardened his Heart, when he has got an hearty Courage for Sin, and is grown so Courageous in it, as that he can Sin Openly, and Publicly. If Men Declare their Sin like Sodom, they hide it not; and it may be said unto them; as in Jer. III. 3. Thou hast a Whores Fore-head, thou refusest to be Ashamed. Confident Creature, If thou hadst not made thyself Hard-hearted, thou wouldest be more Ashamed. The hardness of Heart, arrives to a more considerable Obduration, when a Sinner can express a more singular Defiance of the Infinite GOD, a what he does. Those People have […] their Hearts, of whom the ⟨p. 17⟩Holy One may say, as in Isa. LXV. 3. 'Tis a People that provoketh me to Anger, continually to my Face. People that can Sin in the special Presence of GOD; People whom the nearest Relation to GOD will not restrain from the grossest Impieties; People that will go reeking to or from the Table of the Lord, under the unrelenting Appetites of the vilest Impieties; Church-Members that under a Mask of Religion will carry on a Course of Adulteries, or of Dishonesties. And so have those People, who are so Hardy as to make their Appeals to GOD for the Vindication of their Innocency, when GOD knows the Matters to be Unjust and Untrue, wherein He has been so daringly Appealed unto. O Hard-hearted Monster; What an hardness of Heart hast thou contracted, in […] thou canst say, God knows,—a […] to be so or so, when thou dost thyself know that it is not so!