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A PRAYER for one, who is tempted to delay applying to Religion, though under some Conviction of its Importance.

"O thou righteous and holy Sovereign of heaven and earth! "Thou God, in whose hand my breath is, and whose are all my ways!" (Dan. v. 23.) I confess, I have been far from glorifying thee, or conducting myself according to the intimations or the declarations of thy will. I have therefore reason to adore thy forbearance and goodness, that thou hast not long since stopped my breath, and cut me off from the land of the living. 1 adore thy patience, that I have not, months and years ago, been an inhabitant of hell, where ten thousands of delaying sinners are now lamenting their folly, and will be lamenting it for ever. But, O God, how possible is it, that this trifling heart of mine may, at length, betray me into the same ruin! and then, alas, into a ruin aggravated by all this patience and forbearance of thine! I am convinced, that sooner or later, religion must be my serious care, or I am undone. And yet my foolish heart draws back from the yoke; yet I stretch myself upon the bed of sloth, and cry out for "a little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep." (Prov. vi. 10.) Thus does my corrupt heart plead for its own indulgence, against the conviction of my better judgment. What shall I say? O Lord, save me from myself! save me from the artifices and deceitfulness of sin! save me from the treachery of this perverse and degenerate nature of mine, and fix upon my mind what I have now been reading!

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“O Lord, I am not now instructed in truths, which were before quite unknown. Often have I been warned of the uncertainty of life, and the great uncertainty of the day of salvation: and I have formed some light purposes, and have begun to take a few irresolute steps in my way towards a return to thee. But, alas, I have been only, as it were, fluttering about religion, and have never fixed upon it. All my resolutions have been scattered like smoke, or dispersed like a cloudy vapour before the

wind. Oh! that thou wouldst now bring these things home to my heart, with a more powerful conviction than it hath ever yet felt! Oh! that thou wouldest pursue me with them, even when I flee from them! If I should ever grow mad enough to endeavour to escape them any more, may thy Spirit address me in the language of effectual terror; and add all the most powerful methods, which thou knowest to be necessary, to awaken me from this lethargy, which must otherwise be mortal! May the sound of these things be in mine ears, "when I go out, and when I come in, when I lie down, and when I rise up!" (Deut. vi. 7.) And if the repose of the night, and the business of the day, be for a while interrupted by the impression, be it so, O God! if I may but thereby carry on my business with thee to better purpose, and at length secure a repose in thee, instead of all that terror which I now find, when "I think upon God, and am troubled." (Psa. lxxvii. 3.)

"O Lord, my flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgment." (Psa. cxix. 120.) I am afraid lest even now, that I have begun to think of religion, thou shouldest cut me off in this critical and important moment, before my thoughts grow to any ripeness; and blast in eternal death, the first buddings and openings of it in my mind. But Oh! spare me, I earnestly entreat thee; for thy mercies' sake, spare me a little longer! It may be, through thy grace, I shall return. It may be. if thou continuest thy patience towards me a while longer, there may be some better fruit produced by this cumberer of the ground." (Luke xiii. 7, 8.) And may the remembrance of that long forbearance, which thou nast already exercised towards me, prevent my continuing to trifle with thee, and with my own soul! From this day, O Lord, from this hour, from this moment, may I be able to date more lasting impressions of religion, than have ever yet been made upon my heart by all that I have ever read, or all that I have heard! Amen "

CHAPTER IV.

THE SINNER ARRAIGNED AND CONVICTED.

As I am attempting to lead you to true religion, and not merely to some superficial form of it, I am sensible I can do it no otherwise, than in the way of deep humiliation. And therefore, supposing you are persuaded, through the divine blessing on what you have before read, to take it into consideration, I would now endeavour, in the first place, with all the seriousness I can, to make you heartily sensible of your guilt before God. For I well know, that unless you are convinced of this, and affected with the conviction, all the provisions of gospel grace will be slighted, and your soul infallibly destroyed, in the midst of the noblest means appointed for its recovery. I am fully persuaded that thousands live and die in a course of sin, without feeling upon their hearts any sense that they are sinners; though they cannot, for shame, but own it in words. And therefore let me deal faithfully with you, though I may seem to deal roughly; for complaisance is not to give law to addresses in which the life of your soul is concerned.

Permit me, therefore, O sinner, to consider myself at this time as an advocate of God; as one employed, in his name, to plead against thee, and to charge thee with nothing less than being a rebel and a traitor, against the sovereign Majesty of heaven and earth. However thou mayest be dignified or distinguished among men; if the noblest blood run in thy veins; if thy seat were among princes, and thine arm "the terror of the mighty in the land of the living;" (Ezek. xxxii. 27.) it would be necessary thou shouldest be told, and told plainly, that thou hast broken the laws of the King of kings, and by the breach of them art become obnoxious to his righteous condemnation.

Your conscience tells you, that you were born the natural subject of God; born under the indispensable obligations of his law. For it is most apparent, that the constitution of your rational nature, which makes you capable of receiving law from God, binds you to obey it. And it

is equally evident and certain, that you have not exactly obeyed this law; nay, that you have violated it in many aggravated instances.

Will you dare deny this? Will you dare to assert your innocence? Remember, it must be a complete innocence: yes, and a perfect righteousness too! or it can stand you in no stead, farther than to prove, that, though a condemned sinner, you are not quite so criminal as some others, and will not have quite so hot a place in hell as they. And when this is considered, will you plead not guilty to the charge? Search the records of your own conscience; for God searcheth them: Ask it seriously; "Have you never in your life sinned against God?" Solomon declared that in his days "there was not a just man upon earth, who did good and sinned not:" (Eccles. vii. 20.) And the apostle Paul," that all had sinned, and come short of the glory of God;" (Rom. iii. 23.) that "both Jews and Gentiles, (which you know comprehend the whole human race,) were all under sin." (Rom. iii. 9.) And can you pretend any imaginable reason, to believe the world is grown so much better since their days, that any should now plead their own case as an exception? Or, will you however, presume to arise in the face of the omniscient Majesty of heaven, and say, I am the man?

Supposing, as before, you have been free from those gross acts of immorality, which are so pernicious to society, that they have generally been punishable by human laws; can you pretend, that you have not, in smaller instances, violated the rules of piety, of temperance, and harity? Is there any one person, who has intimately known you, who I would not be able to testify, that you had said or done something amiss? Or, if others could not convict you, would not your own heart do it? Does it not prove you guilty of pride, of passion, of sensuality; of an excessive fondness for the world, and its enjoyments; of murmuring, or at least of secretly repining, against God, under the strokes of his afflicting providence; of mispending a great deal of your time; of abusing the gifts of God's bounty, to vain, if not (in some instances) to pernicious purposes; of mocking him, when you have pretended to engage in

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his worship," drawing near to him with your mouth and your lips, while your heart has been far from him?" (Isa. xxix. 13.) Does not conscience condemn you of some one breach of the law, at least? And by one breach of it, you are in a sense, a scriptural sense," become guilty of all;" (Jam. ii. 10.) and are as incapable of being justified before God by any obedience of your own, as if you had committed ten thousand offences. But, in reality, there are ten thousand, and more, chargeable to your account. When you come to reflect on all your sins of negligence, as well as on those of commission; on all the instances, in which you have "failed to do good, when it was in the power of your hand to do it;" (Prov. iii. 27.) on all the instances, in which acts of devotion have been omitted, especially in secret; and on all those cases in which you have shewn a stupid disregard to the honour of God, and to the temporal and eternal happiness of your fellow-creatures. When all these, I say, are reviewed, the number will swell beyond all possibility of account, and force you to cry out, "Mine iniquities are more than the hairs of my head." (Psal. xl. 12.) They will appear in such a light before you, that your own heart will charge you with countless multitudes; and how much more then "that God who is greater than your heart, and knoweth all things." (1 John iii. 20.)

And say, sinner, is it a little thing, that you have presumed to set light by the authority of the God of heaven, and to violate his law, if it had merely been by carelessness and inattention? How much more heinous, therefore, is the guilt, when in so many instances you have done it knowingly and wilfully? Give me leave seriously to ask you, and let me intreat you to ask your own soul, "Against whom hast thou magnified thyself? Against whom hast thou exalted thy voice?" (2 Kings xix. 22.) or lifted up thy rebellious hand? On whose law, O sinner, hast thou presumed to trample? and whose friendship and whose enmity hast thou thereby dared to affront? Is it a man like thyself, that thou hast insulted? Is it only a temporal monarch? Only one, "who can kill thy body, and then hath no more that he can do?” (Luke xii. 4.) Nay,

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