An Address to the Young Readers of This Catechism
VXY dear young Ones, for whom my heart’s desire, and prayer to God is, that ye may be saved; Let me beseech you, while you read this, and especially while you read your Bible, or hear the precious truths contained in it preached to you, to “hearken and hear for the time,” for the eternity “to come.” Now, now, in the most proper season of it, “get wisdom as the principal thing and “with all your getting, get understanding” of the important, the infinitely important, concerns of your salvation.
What! “know ye not your own selves?” — For the Lord’s sake, seriously think what souls ye have 5 — immortal souls; — souls, one of which is iriconceivably more worth than ten thousand worlds; — souls which are capable of enjoying an infinite God as their everlasting all in all; — souls, which shall, — which must ere long, enter into an eternal state of inconceivable misery or happiness. — — Alas! my young Friends, — must souls, formed by God himself j — souls, endowed with an understanding and will; — souls formed to live for ever — souls formed for the everlasting and immediate service and enjoyment of God j must soulss which, by the mercy, of God, have been solemnly devoted to him in baptismal and other covenant engagements; — souls, upon which parents, masters, and ministers, have bestowed so many prayers, instructions, and exhortations; — - souls, upon which God himself hath bestowed such instruction, warning, terrible alarms, and engaging allurements, and such striving of his Spirit, — be lost, — for ever lost, — for ever damned, by you who possess them, in order toob= X b tain some trilling, some carnal, some filthy, some ‘pernicious gratification, that perhaps a beast would contemn?
O think, as before God, what state you are in, while ye remain careless and unconverted, — being “without Christ,’” and “strangers to the covenant of promise,” ye are altogether “guilty before God, — alienated from the life of God,” and enemies to him j — cursed and condemned by God, because ye have not believed in his only begotten Son, — having no holiness, M no hope,” and “without God in the world.” — Being’* children of the devil,” your heart is “filled with all unrighteousness, pride, debate, deceit, malignity,” hatred of God — is full of all ignorance, unbelief, “subtlety and mischief.” It is “deceitful, above all things, and desperately wicked.” Its “carnal mind is enmity against God,” and “is not subject to his law, neither indeed can be.” It is infected with every defiling, every ruinous, every damning plague j replenished wiih every sinful lust, in the reigning power of it, and inhabited by legions of devils, ready to tempt you to every thing wicked.- Out of it, as, permitted by God, have, in all the
past hours of your life, “proceeded evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, idolatries, blasphemies.” Ye have lived “after the course of this wrorld, according to the prince of the power of the air, who worketh in” you as “children of disobedience.” Ye have hitherto “been foolish and disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures j living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another •,” — speaking and doing
M evil things as ye could.” And ah! what innumerable,
what dreadful curses of Almighty God, are inseparably annexed to all your sinful dispositions, thoughts, words, and actions! Alas! how those render all things, Christ and his gospel not excepted, the “savour of death unto death” unto you! — ‘Dreadful thought! Eternal destruction is ready at your side. “God is angry with you every day;” his “wrath abideth” on you; his “sword is drawn” and his M bow bent,” and his “arrows set” to destroy you. — A sound of your approaching damnation roars aloud, had you ea’ to hear it, in every threatening of his word. Even while you hear rhU sentence, hell stands open to receive you, and devils stand ready to dra you into everlasting fire. Why then are you not afraid to think another care-YOUNG READERS OF THIS CATECHISM. Vll
less thought? Why not afraid to shut your eyes, even in necessary sleep, lest you should open them in hell!
My dear children, O think, with grief, with shame, with trembling think, with persevering and deep concern, think how criminal and heinous before the Lord, are the sins of your youth, which ye look upon as mere trifles, as mere gaiety and sport. They are the accursed product of your inward, your original, and increased ignorance, pride, deceit, folly, filthiness, and enmity against God. — They are a most treacherous rebellion against his law, which is “holy, just, and good.” — They are committed against his authority over you, and against all his warnings, counsels,
promises, threatenings, mercies, and judgments. They
are ungratefully committed against all his peculiar favours in preserving and providing for you, while you could not help yourselves. — They are committed against all his peculiar calls, invitations, promises, and encouragements, to young ones. — They are a most base prostitution or the excellent talents, amrableness, and vigour, with which he hath endowed you, in your youth. — They are a most perverse abue of that peculiarly precious season of life, in which you ought to prepare for future usefulness and happiness. — They mightily increase and strengthen the original habits of corruption in you, and form in you many base acquired habits of vanity and lust. — They fearfully pervert the use of your tender affections, in opposition to God and his ways. — They are committed upon small and trilling temptations. i — They strongly entice others around you to sin, or harden them in it. — They fling reproach upon God, your Maker, Preserver, and Saviour, as if he, his promises, laws, mercies, and judgments, were unworthy of your early regard, and did encourage you in sin. — They defame your parents, masters, and ministers, as if they had agreed to train you up for the devil. — They draw down reproach on yourselves, which ye must bear, either in deep convictions,, or in everlasting punishments. — They deprive you of the most pleasant and profitable fellowship with God. — They forfeit for you the precious promises of long life and prosperity. — They expose you to fearful judgments in this life, and to the” damnation of heir’’ in the next. — Are these light matters? will you reckon them such in the agonies of death, at the tribunal of Christ, or amidst the flames of hell?
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Alas! why do ye, by your unconcern, your folly, your wickedness, take such pains, such early pains, to fit yourselves to be fuel for that “everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels!” If God grant you repentance, — how will it sting you, to recollect what earnest offers, what eminent opportunities of receiving his grace, ye have contemned, neglected, and abused; — what infinite kindness, condescension, and love, ye have trampled under your feet j — what fellowship with Christ, and his Father, and blessed Spirit, ye have despised and refused j — what ravishing views of his glory, and of all the perfections of God in him, as manifested, and to be for ever manifested in your eternal salvation *, what delightful tasting of his goodness — and what enriching reception of his fulness, — you have rejected, for the sake of the meanest or the filthiest pleasure or profit on earth, — which will entail grief and shame on you, while you live, and draw multitudes, all around you, ;o hell before, and after ycur death! — If, provoked with your perseverance in folly and guilt, God give you up to your own heart’s lusts, — alas! how your wickedness will rob him and his Christ of his property in our land and nation, and consign yourselves, your companions, and posterity, nay, even the church and nation, the whole management of which will quickly be in the hands of the rising generation, — -for who knows how long, — into the power of the devil, and the hand of an angry God!
My dear young ones, “know ye the God of your Fathers:’’ — the God who preserved, who guided, who blessed, who saved many of your fathers; — the God to whom your fathers dedicated you, and whom they have recommended to you •, — the God who, in your fathers, took you into covenant with himself ‘, — the God, “whom to know is life eternal,” and “this life is in his Son.” — We tell you, our posterity, that “this God is our God for ever,” and he “will be our guide even unto death.” — We never found him a barren wilderness, nor a land of drought. — We have found infinitely more satisfaction in this God, as our God, given by himself to us, in his word, than could balance all the pleasure, all the wealth, all the honour often thousand world?. — These words, thy God and MY God, have been “found” by us, and we have “eaten them,” and they have been to us the “joy and rejoicing of our heart.” There is none like the God of Jeshurun, who pardoneth
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iniquity, transgression, and sin. and who “deiighteth in mercy.” O how our hearts are ravished, when we think, how “this God,” this “fountain of iiving waters,” shall be our eternal ALL IN ALL, the strength of our heart and portion forever. If even on this sinful, this wretched earth, wisdom’s ways be such ways of pleasantness, what must it be for ever toemer to the joy of our Lord! <4 We shall be like him, for we shall see him a* he is. O come, taste, and see that” our -*’ God is “good,” and that they who trus. in him are blessed. “O consider the Apostle, and high Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus,” Come, behold our Surety, our Saviou;j-our Husband, whom our soul loveth, our King, “meek and lowly,” bringing salvation. Behold our God-man, “white and ruddy, the chief among ten thousand y fair, yea pleasant, — most sweet,” and “altogether lovely.” Ibis is our Beloved, our Friend, our Mediator, our God, O ye “sons and daughters of Jerusalem.” — Looking off all the vanities of creation consider him in his unparalleled person, the only begotten Son of ^od in our nature; — in his saving offices, — his endearing relations, — his incomparable excellencies, services, sufferings, and glories y — his unbounded fulness of grace and truth, and every good thing proper to be bestowed on us in time and eternity, and then tell us what ye think of our Christ.
Alas! my dear boys and girls, Do you believe that there is a God, who made you,- — who gave you a law for your heart and life, — and who will quickly call you to an account of every thought, word, and deed, — and never think of, never tremble at the view of your appearance before his tribunal, or of your lying for ever under his infinite wrath! — Have ye not seen, tasted, and felt, “that God is good?” Have ye not beard, have ye not known, what he hath done for the eternal salvation of sinful men? and will ye render him contempt and hatred for all his bounty and love! — Have you a natural principle of regard to your own preservation. and welfare; — and yet will ye counteract it, by a malicious and obstinate refusal of our infinitely lovely Lord Jesus, and all his everlasting righteousness, mercy, and grace? — Hath Gcd implanted in your breast a tender compassion towards the very beasts that perish; and yet will you be inhumanly cruel, as to break the hearts of your godly parentSj masters, ministers, or neighbours *,-i~ b3 and, if possible, break the heart of our infinitely gracious Redeemer, and his Father and blessed Spirit, by youi crucifying him afresh, trampling his covenant and blood under your feet, and murdering your own soul? — Alas! will you employ your vigorous minds in thinking on, and learning every thing but Jesus Christ, and what relates to him? — Will you readily believe every thing, but the excellent, the gracious words of a “God who cannot lie j” — his “faithful saying, worthy of all acceptation,” that “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,” even “the chief — his record,” that in his Son, there is eternal life prepared for, and given to you? — Will you earnestly desire every thing but Jesus, the “pearl of great price,” the ‘* unspeakable gift” of God, and his great and everlasting salvation? — Will you comply with every thing, but the offers of the glorious gospel, and covenant of grace, “well ordered in allthingsand sure?” — Will you thankfully receive every thing but God himself”, — but the true bread of life, which the Lord your God giveth you from heaven? — Why fond of every form of comliness, but that of gracious conformity to God? — Why fond of every pleasure, every joy, but that of rejoicing in God, through our Lord Jesus Chri-t. which is ‘* joy unspeakable and full of g]oy?”
Suffer me to expostulate a little with you on God’s behalf, — and on your own soul’s behalf. Why, in your peculiar day of grace, do you indulge such ignorance of Jehovah and his law, — of Jesus and his salvation, — and of their necesi:y and usefulness for ycu? — Why indulge such contempt and unbelief of the gospel of the grace of God? — Why encourage and promote such filthiness, and desperate hardness of heart? — Why cherish such superlative attachment to “loss and dun,” — to the perishing pleasures and profits of sin and seme? — Why cultivate such malice and enmity against Jesus Christ, and his Father and blessed Spirit, ap to” :nake light of,” and “neglect” his infinitely precious, necessary, and M great salvation?” Oh i that
you but felt “the word of God quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of vour soul and spirit,” joints and marrow, as M a discemer of the thought and intents of your heart!” — Oh! that ye but knew the infinite sinfulness which is in, and on you ai id the infinite and everlasting misery which awaits you! — Oh! that you would believe God’s peremptory and infallible declarations of the absolute necessity of his supernatural change of your state and nature, that “Except ye be converted,” and ‘’ become as Utile children,” ye “shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven i Except a man be born again,” he “’ cannot see the kingdom of God. — Except a man be born of the Spirit,” he “cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” — If ‘■* any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature: all old things are passed away,” and “all things are become new. — In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth any thing, but a new creature.” Without holiness, “no man shall see the Lord.” — We must be “begotten again11 by God, “to a lively hope, by the resurrection of Christ from the dead j — born again of incorruptible seed, by the word of God.” — and putting off the “old man,” with his deceitful lusts, and putting on the “new man,” which, after God, is created in “knowledge, righteousness,” and “true holiness,11 ye must as” new born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:” — For, “if any man have not the Spirit of
Christ, he is none of his.11 O that ye knew in this your
days of youth, while your faculties are fresh and vigorous, — while your affections are tender and lively, — while your lusts are less powerful, your hearts less hardened, and your worldly cares less embarrassing, — that fellowship with the Father, in his redeeming love, which ye so unthankfully neglect; — with the Son in his blood and grace, which ye so wickedly despise; — and with the Holy Ghost, in his influences, which ye so madly resist ?> Q that ye but knew the “riches of the glory of the gospel, which is Christ in you the hope of glory!” — that ye but apprehended, with all saints, 4’ what is the breadth,” and “length,” and ■” depth,” and “height,” and knew the power and the “love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
O think! with astonishment think, what kind of preparations Gcd hath made for your everlasting salvation ; — how he “so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever beiieveth on him shall not persh, but have everlasting life 1” — how he set him “up from everlasting,” as our Surety, who engaged his heart to approach to the Lord, and delighted to do his will in ransoming and saving us, — how, in his incarnation, he
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brought him into this world, “in the likeness of sinful iiesh,” the “man” his “fello*v,” — and our “near kinsman” and “brother, born for adversity!” — how he “made” him ki under the law,” and exacted from him all the 1. finite debt of obedience and suffering due from us! — ‘* that he might redeem us that were under the law!” — how “he made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we. “who knew nothing but sin, might be mnde the righteousness of God in him!” — how he made him “a curse for us*,” that we men, we Gentiles, might be M blessed in him with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places! — how he put him to grief, — to dea’h,- — for us thai we might live through him, in the joy of the Lord 1 — how he “delivered” bin “for our offences,” and “raised” him “again for our ju->tiricat:on; — Gave him glary” for himself and unbounded fulness of gifts, “for men, yen, for he rebellious, that our faith and hope might be in God!” — and how he hath made, and in the gospel, and its influence, maketh him to us, “wisdom,” and “righteousness,” and
11 sanctifica’ion,” and “redemption!”- And, O think,
. — with application think, — with what infinite candour, and compassionate earnestness, Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, by all his words, declarations, invitations, commands, promises, and threatenings — by all his works, as therewith connected; — -by all his mercies and judgments, — by all his ordinances and ministers; — by all your needs in time and eternity; — by all your desires; — and by all your vows and engagements; — calls, beseecheth, intreats, obtests, and expostulates with you, to receive himself, and all his fu’l and everlasting salvation, offered to you in the gospel, “freely, — without money” and “without price 1” Alas! my dear young men and ivoraen, why are you so prone to hunt after, listen to, and comply with every temptation of Satan, your destroyer; — every enticement of your vain companion; — every suggestion of your foolish and wicked heart, — to vour temporal and eternal ruin: — and yet so deaf, so averse to, and obstinate against the most earnest entreaties of the great God vour Saviour? — Do they love von more •, or have they, or will they, or can they do more, for your everlasting welfare, than he? — Why by your readv compliance with evpry thing ruinous — and by your obstinate resistance of aU.attempts to promote your
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true holiness and happiness, — do you labour to pull down everlasting destruction upon your own heads ?• — Why thus labour to extract your most dreadful ruin from all the perfections of a gracious God; — from all the persons of the Godhead ‘, — from all his purposes, covenants, words, and works 5 — and from all persons, and their actions, with whom you are connected, or do converse?
Nay, my beloved children, whom I wish for my “joy and crown in the day of the Lord.” — -When so much of the best of your time is already spent in vanity and wrath; — when death, judgment, and eternity hasten to meet you ‘, — when your judgment now of a long time “lingereth not,” your “damnation slumbereth not *,” — why should you delay your deepest concern, about your eternal salvation, one moment more ?- — Why defer coming to an infinitely gracious Redeemer, — to the “Lord God merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, and forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin?“- — Why delay, when called” from darkness” to God’s” marvellous light j “— called to receive “redemption through” Jesus’s “blood j” — to “receive out of his fulness and grace for grace — called to the fellowship of God’s Son •,” — called to be “heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ?” — Why lose another year, another month, another hour, another moment, without the enjoyment, the infinitely sweet enjoyment of God in Christ, as your Father, Husband, Friend, and Portion? Why hide yourselves “a« mong the stuff” of vain or earthly cares, when a “kingdom which cannot be moved,” is offered unto you? — Why, to render your eternal damnation more certain, and more dreadful, and your way of escape more difficult, — should you remain among devils, and carnal companions, and filthy lusts, when Jesus is lifting up his voice, and crying, “Whosoever will let him come unto me: Come unto me all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Him that cometh unto me, I will in nowise cast out. — Arise, my love, my” polluted” one, and come away. Come with me from Lebanon, with me from Lebanon. — Come ye to the waters; yea, come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price. Incline your ear, and come unto me 5 hear, and your soul shall live j and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.
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Eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Behold I stand at the door” of thine heart and “knock: Open to me, my sister, my love, my” defiled •, “for my head is filled with the dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.” When you hasten from storms, from trouble, from outward danger, why not make haste to Jesus, the refuge, the hope, set before you? — When he saith, “To-day, if ye will hear my voice, harden not your hearts ‘, Now is the accepted time j” NOW “is the day of salvation j” why should you say, Tomorrow? “When he waits to be gracious, and exalteth himself to shew mercy,” — why tire out his patience till he “shut up all his tender mercies in his wrath?” “Is it a small thing for you to weary men,” — weary parents, and ministers? “But will ye weary my God also?”
Lord Jesus, make haste to convince, to convert, to save, the rising generation in Britain. They perish,’ — they perish! O Redeemer, make no tarrying. Now be an accepted time; Now be a day of salvation, Save NOW,, O Lord j we beseech thee, send NOW prosperity.