Bayley, Kiah. Impenitent Sinners in a Deplorable Situation. A Sermon, preached at Campton, N. H., 1831, and printed at the request of a number heard it delivered. Boston: Printed by J. P. Chapman, 1832. First Edition. [11500]
Stab sewn, self wraps as issued, 9 1/2 x 6 inches, untrimmed. 14 pp., old light stains throughout. Fair. Pamphlet.
The text is Romans 8:*, "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God."
"Our bodily appetites and passions often excite evil desires in our hearts, and draw us into sinful practices. And it is pleasing to the natural propensity, or disposition of our hearts, to gratify our fleshy appetites and passions. Hence the term Flesh is used to signify our depraved moral nature, as well as our animal nature. Being in the flesh means being unregenerate, or in the state in which we were born." p. 1.
A sermon explaining why those that are in the flesh cannot please God. I. It is not because sinners do not have the capacity to please God. 2. It is not because sinners are destitute of any faculty, or ability, which is necessary to constitute them moral agents, that they cannot please God. 3. It is not because sinners are ignorant of what God requires. 4. The reason why unregenerate sinners cannot please God is because their hearts are not right.
Improvement: 1. Those who teach there something morally good in unregenerate men, teach a false doctrine. 2. Those have not right ideas of moral depravity, who place it anywhere, but in the heart. 3. It is evident that our nature is wholly depraved. 4. Men, before conversion, cannot please God. 5. Sinners are not under a physical, or natural, necessity of sinning. 6. God is just in requiring sinners to do those things which are pleasing to him, notwithstanding they have no heart to do it. 7. We learn from our subject the worth and importance of the heart. 8. Sinners are continually offending God. 9. There is no reasonable ground for impenitent sinners, remaining such, to hope for happiness. 10. All impenitent sinners must remain under the wrath of God.
Conclusion: One must be born again, or regenerated. Sinners must turn to God with all of their heart. "When they are born of the Spirit their hearts are changed. They are made new creatures...Until this change is takes place, they are still in the flesh." p. 14.
Kiah Bayley (1770-1857), b. Newburry, MA; d. Hardwick, VT. Bayley graduated at Dartmouth (1793), with the honor of delivering the Greek oration. He studied theology with the Rev. Dr. Nathanael Emmons (1745-1840), at Franklin, MA. He chose the feeble Congregational Church in Newcastle, Maine, for his first parish, and was there from 1797 to 1824, when he requested his dismissal after the church could not agree on his salary. Several revivals occurred under his ministry, in 1816 and 1817, and the little church grew from 3 to about 180 members. He later preached for two years in Greensboro, VT, and three and a half at Thornton, NH, and in 1833 settled on a farm in Hardwick, VT, where there were several close family members. He published 11 sermons, and many tracts.
Rev. Bayley was very active in several educational and benevolent societies while in Maine. "Few men in the State of Maine have been more extensively engaged in all the benevolent movements of the churches there than Mr. Bailey. He was a Representative from Maine to the Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1819 and 1820; a member of the Board of Overseers of Bowdoin College eight or nine years...He was President of the Maine Missionary Society; was one of the Board of Trustees; was one of the Trustees of the Maine Charity School, and also Secretary of the same; he was a Trustee for the Society for Theological Education in Maine...and its Secretary for several years - this was the first Education Society in New England...The Lincoln and Kennebec Religious Tract Society was instituted May, 1802, and printed and distributed about thirty thousand tracts. The work of selecting, preparing, printing and distributing these tracts, rested very much on Mr. Bailey, as Secretary..." - see entry at FindAGrave for more of this good man's accomplishments (although the writer spells the name as "Bailey," it is the same man). There is also a somewhat speculative biography of him by Arthur T. Hamlin.
For all of this, Rev. Bayley and his wife had no children, she predeceased him, and he died in obscurity; he is practically unknown today.
