N01749:81
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.
When Man is in his corrupt estate the Essence of the soul remains entire, and that natural disposition remains in the Will to follow the last dictates of the Understanding; so that when God makes this change in the Understanding, there is always a proportionable change made in the W•ll• When God makes an Understanding he makes a Will, and when he renews the Understanding he renews the Will: They are not two things, ⟨p. 58⟩but one and the same soul, diversely denominated according to two several ways of working, which are inseparably conjoined. When the soul has this spiritual light, it necessarily acts accordingly. Therefore the way to conversion is this,
WHen Man is in his corrupt estate the Essence of the soul remains intire, and that natural disposition remains in the Will to follow the last dictates of the Understanding; so that when God makes this change in the Understanding, there is always a proportionable change made in the W•ll• When God makes an Understanding he makes a Will, and when he renews the Understanding he renews the Will: They are not two things, ⟨p. 58⟩but one and the same soul, diversely denominated according to two several ways of working, which are inseparably conjoined. When the soul has this spiritual light, it necessarily acts accordingly. Therefore the way to conversion is this,
I. The soul sees the reason and foundation of spiritual carriages. Holy carriages are very reasonable; but whatever is presented before men to persuade them, nothing will have any efficacy on them, until God gives spiritual light; for naturally they are blind, they are at a loss about the reality of those things, tho' they make a continual profession of them: But when God shines into their hearts with the light of life, they are convinced of those things that are the foundations of such carriages. They counted them probable before, but now they are evident to them.