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CHAP. III.

The awakened Sinner urged to immediate Consideration, and cautioned against Delay.

Sinners, when awakened, inclinable to dismiss Convictions for the present. §. 1. An immediate Regard to Religion urged. §. 2. (1.) From the Excellency and Pleasure of the thing itself. §. 3. (2.) From the uncertainty of that future Time on which Sinners presume, compared with the sad Consequences of being cut off in Sin. §. 4. (3.) From the immutability of God's present Demands. §. 5. (4.) From the Tendency which Delay has, to make a Compliance with these Demands more difficult than it is at present. §. 6. (5.) From the Danger of God's withdrawing his Spirit, compared with the dreadful Case of a Sinner given up by it: §. 7. Which is probably now the Case of many. §. 8. Since therefore, on the whole, whatever the Event be, Delays must prove Matter of Lamentation. §. 9. The Chapter concludes with an Exhortation against yielding to them: §. 10. And a Prayer against Temptations of that Kind.

§. 1. I HOPE my last address so far awakened the convictions

of my reader, as to bring him to this purpose, "that some time or other he would attend to religious considerations." But give me leave to ask earnestly and punctually, "when that shall be?" Go thy way for this time, and at a more convenient season I will send for thee, was the language, and the ruin, of unhappy Felix*, when he trembled under the reasonings and expostulations of the apostle. The tempter presumed not to urge, that he should give up all thoughts of repentance and reformation; but only that, considering the present hurry of his affairs (as no doubt they were many,) he should defer it to a longer day. The artifice succeeded, and Felix was undone.

§. 2. Will you, reader, dismiss me thus? For your own sake, and out of tender compassion to your perishing immortal soul, I would not willingly take up with such a dismission and excuse. No, not though you should fix a time; though you shall determine on the next year, or month, or week, or day. I would turn upon you, with all the eagerness and tenderness of friendly importunity, and intreat you to bring the matter to an issue even now. For if you say, "I will think on these things to-morrow," I shall have but little hope; and shall conclude, that all that I have hitherto urged, and all that you have read, hath been offered and viewed in vain.

§. 3. When I invited you to the care and practice of religion, it may seem strange, that it should be necessary for me

* Acts xxiv. 25.

say,

affectionately to plead the case with you, in order to your immediate regard and compliance. What I am inviting you to, is so noble and excellent in itself, so well worthy the dignity of our rational nature, so suitable to it, so manly, and so wise, that one would imagine, you should take fire, as it were, at the first hearing of it; yea, that so delightful a view should presently possess your whole soul with a kind of indignation against yourself, that you pursued it no sooner.-" May I lift up mine eyes, and my soul to God? May I devote myself to him? May I even now commence a friendship with him; a friendship, which shall last for ever, the security, the delight, the glory of this immortal nature of mine?" And shall I draw back and "Nevertheless let me not commence this friendship too soon let me live at least a few weeks or a few days longer, without God in the world." Surely it would be much more reasonable to turn inward, and say, "Oh my soul, on what vile husks hast thou been feeding, while thine heavenly Father has been forsaken, and injured? Shall I desire to multiply the days of my poverty, my scandal, and my misery?" On this principle, surely an immediate return to God should in all reason be chosen; rather than to play the fool any longer, and to go on a little more to displease God, and thereby to starve and to wound your own soul; even though your continuance in life were ever so certain, and your capacity to return to God and your duty ever so entirely in your own power, now, and in every future moment, through scores of years yet to come.

§. 4. But who, or what are you, that you should lay your account for years, or for months to come? What is your life? Is it not even as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away? And what is your security, or what is your peculiar warrant, that you should thus depend upon the certainty of its continuance ? and that so absolutely, as to venture, as it were, to pawn your soul upon it? Why you will perhaps say, "I am young, and in all my bloom and vigour : I see hundreds about me, who are more than double my age: and not a few of them, who seem to think it too soon to attend religion yet."--You view the living, and you talk thus. But I beseech you, think of the dead. Return in your thoughts, to those graves in which you have left some of your young companions, and your friends. You saw them awhile ago gay and active; warm with life, and hopes, and schemes. And some of them would have thought a friend strangely importunate,

James iv. 14,

that should have interrupted them in their business, and their pleasures, with a solemn lecture on death and eternity. Yet they were then on the very borders of both. You have since seen their corpses, or at least their coffins; and probably carried about with you the badges of mourning, which you received at their funerals. Those once vigorous, and perhaps beautiful bodies of theirs, now lie mouldering in the dust; as senseless, and helpless, as the most decrepid pieces of human nature, which fourscore years ever brought down to it. And what is infinitely more to be regarded, their souls, whether prepared for this great change, or thoughtless of it, have made their appearance before God, and are at this moment, fixed either in heaven or hell. Now let me seriously ask you, would it be miraculous, or would it be strange, if such an event should befal you? How are you sure, that some fatal disease shall not this day begin to work in your veins? How are you sure, that you shall ever be capable of reading or thinking any more, if you do not attend to what you now read, and pursue the thought which is now offering itself to your mind? This sudden alteration may at least possibly happen; and if it does, it will be to you a terrible one indeed. To be thus surprised into the presence of a forgotten God, to be torn away, at once, from a world, to which your whole heart and soul has been rivetted; a world, which has engrossed all your thoughts, and cares, all your desires and pursuits; and be fixed in a state, which you never could be so far persuaded to think of, as to spend so much as one hour in serious preparation for it: how must you even shudder at the apprehension of it, and with what horror must it fill you? It seems matter of wonder, that in such circumstances, you are not almost distracted with the thoughts of the uncertainty of life, and are not even ready to die for fear of death. To trifte with God any longer, after so solemn an admonition as this, would be a circumstance of additional provocation, which, after all the rest, might be fatal: nor is there any thing you can expect in such a case, but that he should cut you off immediately, and teach other thoughtless creatures, by your ruin, what a hazardous experiment they make, when they act as you are acting.

§. 5. And will you, after all, run this desperate risk? For what imaginable purpose can you do it? Do you think, the business of religion will become less necessary or more easy, by your delay? You know that it will not. You know that whatever the blessed God demands now, he will also demand twenty or thirty years hence, if you should live to see the time. God

hath fixed the method, in which he will pardon and accept sinners, in his gospel. And will he ever alter that method? Or if he will not, can men alter it? You like not to think of repenting, and humbling yourself before God, to receive righte ousness and life from, his free grace in Christ; and you above all dislike the thought of returning to God in the ways of holy obedience. But will he ever dispense with any of these, and publish a new gospel, with promises of life and salvation to impenitent unbelieving sinners, if they will but call themselves christians, and submit to a few external rites? How long, do you think, you might wait for such a change in the constitution of things? You know, death will come upon you; and you cannot but know in your own conscience, that a general dissolution will come upon the world, long before God can thus deny himself, and contradict all his perfections, and all his declarations.

§. 6. Or if his demands continue the same, as they assuredly will, do you think any thing, which is now disagreeable to you in them, will be less disagreeable hereafter, than it is at present? Shall you love sin less, when it is become more habitual to you, and when conscience is yet more enfeebled and debauched? If you are running with the footmen and fainting, shall you be able to contend with the horsemen*. Surely you cannot imagine it. You would not say, in any distemper which threatened your life, I will stay till I grow a little worse, and then I will apply to a physician; I will let my disease get a little more rooted in my vitals, and then I will try what can be done to remove it." No, it is only where the life of the soul is concerned, that men think thus wildly: the life and health of the body appear too precious, to be thus trifled away.

§. 7. If after such desperate experiments you are ever recovered, it must be by an operation of divine grace on your soul, yet more powerful and more wonderful in proportion to the increasing inveteracy of your spiritual maladies. And can you expect, that the Holy Spirit should be more ready to assist you, in consequence of your having so shamefully trifled with him, and affronted him? He is now, in some measure, moving on your heart: if you feel any secret relentings in it upon what you read, it is a sign you are not yet utterly forsaken. But who can tell, whether these are not the last touches he will ever give to a heart so long hardened against him? Who can tell, but God may this day swear in his wrath that you shall not enter into his rest. I

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have been telling you, that you may immediately die. You own it is possible you may. And can you think of any thing more terrible? Yes, sinner, I will tell you of one thing more dreadful than immediate death and immediate damnation. The blessed God may say, "As for that wretched creature, who has so long trifled with me, and provoked me, let him still live: let him live in the midst of prosperity and plenty : let him live under the purest, and most powerful ordinances of the gospel to that he may abuse them, to aggravate his condemnation, and die under sevenfold guilt, and a sevenfold curse. I will not give him the grace to think of his ways for one serious moment more; but he shall go on from bad to worse, filling up the measure of his iniquities, till death and destruction seize him in an unexpected hour, and wrath come upon him to the uttermost*

§. 8. You think this an uncommon case; but I fear it is much otherwise. I fear there are few congregations, where the word of God has been faithfully preached, and where it has been long despised, especially by those whom it had once awakened, in which the eye of God does not see a number of such wretched souls; though it is impossible for us to pronounce upon the case who they are.

§. 9. I pretend not to say, how he will deal with you, oh reader; whether he will immediately cut you off, or seal you up under final hardness and impenitency of heart; or whether his grace may, at length, awaken you, to consider your ways, and return to him, even when your heart is grown yet more obdurate than it is at present. For to his almighty grace nothing is hard, not even to transform a rock of marble into a man and a saint. But this I will confidently say, that if you delay any longer, the time will come when you will bitterly repent of that delay; and either lament it before God in the anguish of your heart here, or curse your own folly and madness in hell; yea, when you will wish, that, dreadful as hell is, you had rather fallen into it sooner, than have lived in the midst of so many abused mercies, to render the degree of your punishment more insupportable, and your sense of it more exquisitely tormenting.

§. 19. I do therefore earnestly exhort you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the worth, and, if I may so speak, by the blood of your immortal and perishing soul, that you delay not a day, or an hour, longer. Far from giving sleep to your eyes, or slumber to your eyelids,† in the continued neglect

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