N03796:244
An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: showing I. What conversion is…An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: shewing I. What conversion is…
An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: showing I. What conversion is not, and correcting some mistakes about it. II. What conversion is, and wherein it consisteth. III. The necessity of conversion. IV. The marks of the unconverted. V. The miseries of the unconverted. VI. Directions for conversion. VII. Motions [i.e., Motives] to conversion. : Whereunto are annexed Divers practical cases of conscience judiciously resolved. / By Joseph Alleine, late Minister of the Gospel at Taunton, in Somersetshire.An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: shewing I. What conversion is not, and correcting some mistakes about it. II. What conversion is, and wherein it consisteth. III. The necessity of conversion. IV. The marks of the unconverted. V. The miseries of the unconverted. VI. Directions for conversion. VII. Motions [i.e., Motives] to conversion. : Whereunto are annexed Divers practical cases of conscience judiciously resolv'd. / By Joseph Alleine, late Minister of the Gospel at Taunton, in Somersetshire.
Philadelphia: printed by B. Franklin, 1741
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.
Chap. IV. Showing the Marks of the Unconverted.
Chap. IV. Shewing the Marks of the Unconverted.
While we keep aloof in generals, there is little fruit to be expected: It is the Hand fight that does execution. David is not awakened by the Prophet's hovering at a Distance, in parabolical Insinuations: He is forced to close with him, and tell him Home, Thou art the Man. Few will, in Words, deny the Necessity of the New-birth; but they have a Self-deluding Confidence, that the work is not now to do: And because they know themselves free from that gross Hypocrisy, that doth take up Religion merely for a colour to deceive others, and for the Covering of wicked Designs, they are confident of their ⟨p. 65⟩Sincerity, and suspect not that more close Hypocrisy (where the greatest Danger lies) by which a Man deceiveth his own Soul, Ja. 1.26. But Man's deceitful Heart is such a matchless Cheat; and Self-delusion so reigning and so fatal a Disease, that I know not whether be the greater, the difficulty, or displicency or the necessity of the undeceiving Work that I am now upon. Alas, for my unconverted Hearers, they must be undeceived, or undone. But how shall this be effected? Hic labor, hoc opus est.
WHile we keep aloof in generals, there is little fruit to be expected: It is the Hand fight that does execution. David is not awaken'd by the Prophet's hovering at a Distance, in parabolical Insinuations: He is forced to close with him, and tell him Home, Thou art the Man. Few will, in Words, deny the Necessity of the New-birth; but they have a Self-deluding Confidence, that the work is not now to do: And because they know themselves free from that gross Hypocrisy, that doth take up Religion merely for a colour to deceive others, and for the Covering of wicked Designs, they are confident of their ⟨p. 65⟩Sincerity, and suspect not that more close Hypocrisy (where the greatest Danger lies) by which a Man deceiveth his own Soul, Ja. 1.26. But Man's deceitful Heart is such a matchless Cheat; and Self-delusion so reigning and so fatal a Disease, that I know not whether be the greater, the difficulty, or displicency or the necessity of the undeceiving Work that I am now upon. Alas, for my unconverted Hearers, they must be undeceived, or undone. But how shall this be effected? Hic labor, hoc opus est.