Some important truths about conversion, delivered in sundry sermons, / by Increase Mather, D.D.…

for a man to Confess Sin, and to Reform, and Hear, and Pray, and Fast, and yet to renounce all this, and to abhor himself after all, this is hard, this is hard. 2. It appears that it is an hard thing to be saved, in that those things which are requisite to Salvation, are not easily attained. As now, 1. You heard the last time, that Repentance is necessary to Salvation; There fore Repentance is said to be unto life, Acts 11.18. But the practice of Repentance is no easy work. Indeed that which some take for Repentance is easy; that is, when a man hath sinned in words, to say that he is sorry for it, & God forgive me: But true Repentance is not in words only, but from the heart: It is heart-work, and therefore hard work, Joel 2.13. Rent your hearts; For a man to have his heart rent within him, must needs be hard to endure. To have any member rent from the body is hard, but what then is it for to have the very heart rent? Jer. 4.3. Plough up the fallow ground of your hearts. Your hearts are over-grown with the weeds of ⟨p. 250⟩sin, but these must be ploughed up with godly Sorrow and Repentance for sin. For a man to suffer furrows to be made in his heart within him, how tedious and how terrible is it. 2. Faith in Christ is necessary to Salvation, but it is no easy matter to believe: For a man to renounce Sin, Self and World, and to close with Jesus Christ upon his own blessed Terms, is a hard work: Therefore Christ hath said, John 6.44. No man can come to me, except the Father draw him: There must be drawing for it, and drawing of the Almighty, or the Soul will never come to Christ; for sin draweth, and the World draweth, and the Devil draweth, to pull the Soul away from Christ, and therefore except God by an Infinite hand draw the Soul to Christ, they will not come together. See what the Scripture saith, Ephes. 1.19, 20. The exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead: So that Power, Mighty Power, Greatness of Power, Exceeding greatness of Power, is put forth in making a Soul to believe, nay, the same power which was exerted in raising Christ from the dead: And that was such a mighty