N34404:401
Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses
Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses. / By Mr. Thomas Boston, late Minister of the Gospel at Etterick.
United States : s.n. Printed for the booksellers., M,DCC,LXXXVII. 1787
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.
I. The will is cured of its utter inability to will what is good. While the opening of the prison to them that are bound is proclaimed in the gospel: The Spirit of God comes to the prison door, opens it, go to the prisoner; and by the power of his grace makes his chains fall off; breaks the bond of iniquity, wherewith he was held in sin, so as he could neither will nor do any thing truly good; brings him forth into a large place, Working in him both to will and to do, of his good pleasure, Phil ii. 13. Then it is that the soul, that was fixed to the earth, can move heavenward; the withered hand is restored, and can be stretched out.
I. The will is cured of its utter inability to will what is good. While the opening of the prison to them that are bound is proclaimed in the gospel: The Spirit of God comes to the prison door, opens it, goe to the prisoner; and by the power of his grace makes his chains fall off; breaks the bond of iniquity, wherewith he was held in sin, so as he could neither will nor do any thing truly good; brings him forth into a large place, Working in him both to will and to do, of his good pleasure, Phil ii. 13. Then it is that the soul, that was fixed to the earth, can move heavenward; the withered hand is restored, and can be stretched out.
2. There is wrought in the will a fixed aversion to evil. In regeneration, a man gets a new spirit put within him, Ezek. xxxvi. 26. and that spirit lusteth against the fl•sh, Gal. v. 17. The sweet morsel of sin, so greedily swallowed down, he now loathes, and would fain be rid of it; even as willingly as one, that had drunk a cup of poison, would throw it up again. When the spring is stopped, the mud lies in the well unmoved: but when once the spring is cleared, the waters springing up, will work the mud away by degrees Even so, while a man continues in an unregenerate state, sin lies at ease in the heart: but as soon as the Lord strikes the rocky heart, with the rod of his strength in the day of conversion, grace is in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life,