N01749:18
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. III. Habitual and Actual Conversion are wrought together.
Those holy Habits and Inclinations that God puts into the hearts of his People, are not visible in themselves; men cannot discern them but by their actings: As men are not able to see their own Souls, so they are not able to see those habits that are in them, but only by their actings: They have a power to reflect on the operations of their hearts, and so come to the knowledge of those habits that are in them; but they cannot see ⟨p. 11⟩those habits immediately: Hence no man is able upon his experience to tell the very minute when the habits of Grace were put into him: And generally men have thought that: the habits of Grace are put into men before their closing with Christ; and they have been wont to argue in that manner, that there must be holy principles before holy actions, there must be life before there be life acts: But there is no necessity of this; the faculty of acting, must be before the action, the cause must be before the effect; the man must have a being before he can have any operation; but it doth not follow from thence, that there must be a gracious habit before there be any gracious action: There is no necessity that there be an antecedent habit, it is sufficient if there be a concomitant habit and inclination. There was no necessity that Jacob should have an habit of Love to Rachel before he actually loved her; that Michal should have an habit of loving David before she actually loved him; there was no necessity that Adam and Eve should have an habitual inclination to Sin before they did sin: So, there is no necessity that men should have an inclination to believe in Christ and love God, before they do actually believe in Christ and love God; it is sufficient that there be a concomitant inclination that way: And thus it is from time to time; wherever there is an act of Faith and Love, there is a disposition to act ⟨p. 12⟩so for the time to come; but there is no necessity in Nature that the inclination should be antecedent.