N01749:139
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.
When they have sorrows, they hope for a change after a while: But what will you have to comfort you, when your miseries are everlasting? When death shall come upon you, can you bid it welcome? You had rather be turned into nothing than turned into hell. Is it not better to take pains that you may escape, than loiter away your time, till destruction comes upon you like an armed man?
3. If you be converted, God will bestow eternal life upon you? If a man be indeed converted, yet he may have great afflictions in this world. Though God many times rewards men with outward blessings, yet that is a more arbitrary way, and he mixes many afflictions with them. So it was with Jacob, and Job, and David; but converted men shall have eternal life. He will bestow some other things of great consequence upon them: He will hear their prayers, accept their services, and have communion with them; and at last he will bestow eternal life upon them. Jam. 5.20. He that converteth a sinner from the error of his way, shall save a soul from death. Act. 3.19. Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing ⟨p. 102⟩shall come from the presence of the Lord, Act. 26.18. To turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of satan unto God, that they may receive the forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among them that are sanctified. After they are converted, they may do that which is very provoking to God, and God may execute fatherly anger upon them; but they shall not miss of eternal life thereby; there is no falling from a state of Adoption, or Justification. Conversion will issue in Glorification. Joh. 4.14. The water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water, springing up into eternal life. It is a great thing to go to heaven; but this shall be the portion of all that are converted. The generality of men shall fall short of heaven, but no converted man shall fall short. Wealthy men, and gifted men, and honourable men, and religious men may; but converted men shall not: