N01749:149
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.) There is ground to hope that he will bestow converting grace on you. You are under the means of grace; accordingly the Ministers of the gospel should hope for you, and accordingly take pains with you: It would be a very sinful thing if they should be discouraged about you, and neglect to teach, and warn, and direct you. Paul tells us that he warned all his hearers, Acts 20, 31. And as there is ground for the Minister to take encouragement ⟨p. 111⟩to endeavour your conversion, so there is ground for you to be encouraged, to strive for your own conversion. If it were beyond the power of God to convert, or beyond the grace of God to pardon you, then you would have reason to be discouraged. Men may not expect impossibilities; but God can renew his image within you. The soul of a man is a suitable subject for grace; and as long as the faculties of the soul do remain, a capacity to be gracious doth remain. Your corruptions are accidental, and so may be mortified. Your mind can't be so blind, as to be incapable of light. Your heart cant be so hard as to be uncapable to be made soft. If your corruptions are very strong, omnipotency can overcome them. Mat. 19.26. With God all things are possible. Neither is it beyond the grace of God to pardon you. It is great folly to set limits to that which is infinite. God's grace exceeds man's sinfulness: His thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways; but high above them, as the heavens are above the earth. Indeed if God had revealed, that he would not pardon you, that would cut off all hope; but there is no such thing in the word. God says in his word, that his spirit should not always strive with flesh, Gen. 6.3. but that only signifies, that he would wait only an hundred and twenty years, and then bring the flood. He says, that the heart of the people shall be made fat, Isai. 6.10. but that was a national Judgment; ⟨p. 112⟩particular persons might be converted for all. Sometimes God sware concerning Israel, that they should not enter into his rest,