N01749:119
A treatise concerning conversion: showing the nature of saving conversion to God, and the…A treatise concerning conversion: shewing the nature of saving conversion to God, and the…
A treatise concerning conversion: showing the nature of saving conversion to God, and the way wherein it is wrought; together with an exhortation to labour after it. : To which is added, a lecture-sermon had at Boston, July 2. 1719. Wherein the way to know sincerity and hypocrisy is cleared up. / By Solomon Stoddard, Pastor of Northampton.A treatise concerning conversion: shewing the nature of saving conversion to God, and the way wherein it is wrought; together with an exhortation to labour after it. : To which is added, a lecture-sermon had at Boston, July 2. 1719. Wherein the way to know sincerity and hypocrisy is cleared up. / By Solomon Stoddard, Pastor of Northampton.
Boston: printed by J.F. i.e for D. Henchman, 1719
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.
CHAP. XVI. The Grace given in Conversion is imperfect.
The grace given in conversion, like other qualities, doth admit of innumerable degrees; and is very imperfect in the best of the people of God. Godly men are far from pretending to perfection: Job. 9.20. If I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse. Hence we find lamentations of some of the choicest men that have been in the world: Prov. 30. Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man. Rom. 7.23, 24. I see another law in my members, bringing me into captivity. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The sorrowful falls of David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Jonah, Peter, are sufficient demonstrations of this; and that ⟨p. 89⟩warfare that every godly man doth experience: Gal. 5.17. The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other: So that ye cannot do the things that ye would. Especially, grace at first conversion is very small; if after twenty or thirty years growth, it is very defective, it must needs be very small at first.
THe grace given in conversion, like other qualities, doth admit of innumerable degrees; and is very imperfect in the best of the people of God. Godly men are far from pretending to perfection: Job. 9.20. If I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse. Hence we find lamentations of some of the choicest men that have been in the world: Prov. 30. Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man.