N01749:137
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.
THE Nature of Saving CONVERSION, AND THE Way wherein it is wrought. › MOTIVES.
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.
2. If you be not converted, you will perish for ever. It may be God may bring great calamities on you in this world on on that account: He may curse you in your estate, in your body, or in your relations. It may be he may shorten your days: But however that be, you will be damned. If you live here among many that will go to heaven, yet you will go to hell. You may possibly enjoy many good things here from the bounty of God; but you will not find mercy from the Lord in that day. You may flatter your selves with the hopes of heaven; but when your case comes to be determined, you will be sent to hell. Joh. 3.3. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. If you have other qualifications that are commendable and honourable, yet you will be rejected. Moral qualifications which heathens may attain to, will not prepare you for heaven. If you pity the poor, God will not pity you. If you shed many tears, that will not quench the ⟨p. 99⟩fire of God's wrath. You were born children of wrath; and if you continue in your natural condition, you will remain under the wrath of God. God will not take men to heaven that continue in a State of enmity to him. If the choicest men upon earth pray for your Salvation, God will not hear them. All unconverted men are ungodly men. If they be honest men, if they be sober men, if they be religious men, if they be zealous, yet they are ungodly; and they shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world, if they be not converted, they are not pardoned, and there will be no place for them in heaven, Mat. 28.3. Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not e•ter into the kingdom of heaven.
And can you content your selves to be in a perishing condition? Can you stand still till the wrath of God overtake you? What will it signify for you to eat and drink, and get land and cattle, and spend away a few years after a troublesome manner; and then sink down into the bottomless Pit? A dying time will come; Can you think of it without horror? Don't it make you tremble to consider it? Will it not be a burden too heavy for you? It is an awful thing to think of the damnation of neighbours; And can you bear the thoughts of your own damnation? One would think you should not be able to take any comfort in your choicest enjoyments,