N01911:47
Some important truths about conversion, delivered in sundry sermons, / by Increase Mather, D.D.…
Some important truths about conversion, delivered in sundry sermons, / by Increase Mather, D.D. teacher of a church at Boston, in New-England ; With a preface by Dr. Owen.Some important truths about conversion, delivered in sundry sermons, / by Increase Mather, D.D. teacher of a church at Boston, in New-England ; With a praeface by Dr. Owen.
Boston: printed by John Allen for John Edwards, 1721
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.
It hath been a great Question amongst some, Whether Faith or Repentance be first wrought; and a great deal of disputing there hath been about this point, which might have been spared. The true and plain Answer is, That as Repentance is taken for the first part of Conversion, so it is in order of Nature, before Faith, though in time with it: The term from which, is in order of Nature, before the term to which; but as Repentance is taken for the whole work of Conversion (as oft in Scripture it is) so it implieth Faith in Christ. You heard but now, that Conversion & Vocation are the same. Now in Vocation, the term to which the Soul is called, is the Kingdom of Christ, Col. 1.13. This Text doth intimate, that Converted ones are brought into the Kingdom of Heaven; and it must needs be so, ⟨p. 14⟩because in Conversion, the term to which the Soul is brought, is the Kingdom of Christ; now that is meant by the Kingdom of Heaven, even the heavenly Kingdom of the Messiah: Christs Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Heaven, are the same.
Pro. V. True Believers on Christ may undergo a farther, and, as it were, a second Conversion. This is plainly (and indeed a main thing intended therein) intimated in the Text: Christ here tells his own Disciples, that except they were converted: i. e. except there were, a new Conversion wrought in them, and upon them, they should not see Heaven. There is an universal & a particular Conversion: One in the state of Nature, needs the former; a true Christian may stand in need of this latter. This may be secretly hinted at by that expression, Jer. 4.3. Plough up the fallow ground of your hearts. Fallow ground you know, is such as hath been once broken up already; but by reason of its being overgrown with weeds and thorns, &c. may need a further and a new breaking up. So it is here, they that have had their hearts truly broken up for sin, may become fallow ground, so as to need that new furrows should be made in their Souls: They may be so overgrown