N01749:51
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.
MAN in his natural estate is represented in Scripture as utterly depraved, dead in trespasses and sins. He is blind, and in darkness. And it may be thought that he is incapable to see the gloriousness of God, until there be first an habitual change in his understanding; but if we examine the word of God, we may find plain intimations, that this light doth precede the habitual change. ⟨p. 36⟩Joh. 5.25. The time is coming, and now is' when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. Hearing the voice of Christ is antecedent to their living: It is in that way that life enters into them. 2 Cor. 3.18. We all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image: Before they are changed into Gods image, they do behold his Glory. This makes it evident, that men are capable to behold the glory of the Lord before the habitual change. God discovers his Glory, and that inclines him to assent and draws forth an actual assent. Which may be further considered by these considerations.
Arg. 1. Man in his corrupted estate has his natural faculty of understanding. He hath the faculty of understanding in his corrupted estate, and in his renewed estate. A godly man has not two faculties of understanding, one whereby he knows God, and another whereby he knows other things; but by the faculty of understanding he knows God and Christ, and the truth of promises, and likewise rules of art, the motions of the Sun and Moon, and the natural causes. Where there is a natural understanding, endued with literal knowledge, and assisted by the Spirit of God, there is a power to know God: In that case there is nothing wanting in order to the spiritual knowledge of God. Men need no other faculty in order to spiritual ⟨p. 37⟩knowledge provided it be duly enlightened▪ To imagine that there needs any other lower is to fancy the need of another faculty, or a faculty in a faculty, in order to the knowledge of God; as if we understood the creature by one faculty, and God by another. A faculty of understanding instructed and assisted by the Spirit, must needs enable men to know God.