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

Again, True Believers may be under sad Spiritual decays, and in this respect they may need, as it were, a new Conversion. This we see in the collapsed Churches of Asia, yea, a godly man may fall into gross sins, such as waste and wound the Conscience, and break communion with ⟨p. 18⟩God; indeed into any sin, though never so vile, except only that sin against the Holy-Ghost, and final Impenitency. Now in this case a new conversion is necessary; we see instances hereof in David, Psal. 51.10. after his fearful fall and miscarriage in that matter about Uriah (for that, as the Title showeth, was the occasion of his penning that Psalm) he prayeth, that God would create a clean heart, and renew a right Spirit in him: He speaketh as if all the work of Conversion were to begin anew again. And in Solomon: His penitent Soul wrote a Book of Repentance; Ecclesiastes is the Book of Solomons Repentance, not of his first, but of his second Repentance. And another instance hereof we have in Peter: Hence Christ said to him, Luke 12.32. When thou art Converted, &c. Peter was Converted before that him, as that by the sudden surprisal of a time, bu• Sa•an so far prevailed upon Temptation, he became guilty of Lying & Perjury, and (which was worst of all) denied Christ too: Now in regard of this fearful fall into sin, he stood in need of being, as it were, Converted anew; therefore Christ said to him, When thou art converted, meaning, when he should he should have repented of his grievous Transgression Besides all this, the truth of what you hear is ⟨p. 19⟩evident, if we consider the several steps of Conversion; e.g. A true Believer may undergo a new work of Conviction and Illumination; God may teach him that which he hath not seen, Job 34.32 he may have further Visions of God, & Visions of his own Heart too, yea such discoveries, as may differ in degree, as much from the enlightenings received, when first Illuminated, as the knowledge of a man differs from the knowledge of a child,