THE NEW CREATURE DESCRIB'D, AND CONSIDER'D AS THE SURE CHARACTERISTICK OF A MAN'S BEING IN CHRIST: TOGETHER WITH SOME SEASONABLE ADVICE TO THOSE WHO ARE NEW-CREATURES. A SERMON PREACH'D AT THE BOSTON THURSDAY-LECTURE, JUNE 4. 1741. AND MADE PUBLIC AT THE GENERAL DESIRE OF THE HEARERS

Boston: Printed by G. Rogers, for J. Edwards and S. Eliot., 1741. 47pp, but lacking the half title. Disbound, scattered spotting, Good+.

Chauncy "was undoubtedly the most influential clergyman of his time in Boston, and, with the exception of Jonathan Edwards, in all New England" [DAB]. He was Edwards's most influential opponent of the Great Awakening and was, as DAB puts it, "a man of the intellect utterly distrusting the emotions as calculated to befog and pervert the mind." Here he explains that, "if any man be united in Christ," he becomes "a new creature, i.e. another man."
This Sermon is an interesting window on the uncertainties and disruptions created by the Great Awakening. Chauncy delineates the changes that occur in such a person who comes to Christ; but he warns of "an undesirable excess...where the concern is carried to so great a height, as to discompose the mind." He reassures anyone who complains that "I han't had the experience of that light and joy in the LORD, which I hear of in others. My soul han't felt those raptures of delight and comfort, which is the case of one and another, I converse with; and it puts me upon questioning the goodness of my state."
FIRST EDITION. Evans 4688. ESTC W23229.