Exhortations to the Ungodly

All persons to whom I can address this exhortation, are either godly or ungodly; in the state of sin, or in the state of grace. And both of them have need to study themselves.

I. And to begin with the unrenewed, carnal sort, it is they that have the greatest need to be better acquainted with themselves. O that I knew how to make them sensible of it; if any thing will do it, methinks it should be done, by acquainting them how much their endless state is concerned in it. In order hereunto, let me yet add to all that is said already, these few considerations:

1. If you know not yourselves, you know not whether you are the children of God, or not; nor whether you must be for ever in heaven or hell; no, nor whether you may not, within this hour, behold the angry face of God, which will frown you into damnation. And is this a matter for a man of reason to be quietly and contentedly ignorant of? It is a business of such unspeakable concern, to know whether you must be everlastingly in heaven or hell, that no man can spare his cost or pains about it, without betraying and disgracing his understanding. You are sure you shall be here but a little while; those bodies, you all know, will hold your souls but a little longer; as you know that you that are now together here attending, must presently quit this room and be gone, so you know that, when you have stayed a little longer, you must quit this world, and be gone into another. And I think there is not the proudest of you but would be taken down, nor the most sluggish or dead-hearted but would be awakened, if you knew that you must go to endless misery, and that your dying hour would be your entrance into hell. And if you know not yourselves, you know not but it may be so. And to know nothing to the contrary, would be terrible to you if you well considered it, especially when you have so much cause to fear it. O sirs, for a man to live here senselessly, that knows not hut he may hurn in hell for ever, and knows not, because he is hiind and careless; how unsuitable is it to the principle of self-preservation? And how much unbeseeming the rational nature, to have no sense or care, when you look before you into the unquenchable flic, and the utter darkness.

If any of you think that all these matters arc to be put to the adventure, and cannot now be known, you are dangerously mistaken. As you may certainly know by Scripture, that there is a future life of joy to the godly, and of misery to the wicked, so may you know, by a faithful trial of yourselves, to which of these at present you belong, and whether you are under the promise or the threatening; know yourselves, and you may know whether you are justified or condemned already, and whether you are the heirs of heaven or hell. Surely He that comforteth his servants with the promise of glory to all that believe and are new creatures, and sanctified by his Spirit, did suppose that we may know whether we believe,. and are renewed and sanctified or not: or else, what comfort can it be to us? If blinded infidels, have no means to quiet themselves but their unbelief, and a conceit that there is no such life of misery, they have the most pitiful opiate to ease them in the world; and may as well think to become immoLtal, by a confident conceit that they shall never die. / If they befool themselves with the ordinary questions, ‘Where is hell, and what kind of fire is it?’ &c. I answer them, with Augustine, “It is better to be in doubt about tilings that are hidden from us, than to quarrel about things that are uncertain to us.; I am past doubt that we must understand that that rich man was in the heat of pain, and the poor man in a refreshing place of joys: but how to understand that flame in hell, that bosom of Abraham, that tongue of the rich man, that finger of the poor man, that thirst of torment, that drop for cooling or refreshment, perhaps will hardly be found by the most humble inquirers, but never by contentious strivers.”

So that I may conclude, that the greatness and dreadfulness of the case, should make every person that hath an eye to see, an ear to hear, and a heart to understand, to read, inquire, and consider; and never rest till they know themselves, and understand where it is that they are going to take up their abode to everlasting.

2. Consider, that all men must shortly know themselves. Presumption will be but of short continuance. Though ever so confident of being saved without holiness, you will speedily be undeceived. If the Spirit’s illumination do not convince and undeceive you, death will undoubtedly do it at the farthest. Thousands and millions know their sin and misery now, when it is too late, that would not know it when the remedy was at hand. Sinners! your souls are now in darkness: your bodies are your dungeon; but when death brings you out into the open light, you will see what we could never makei you sec. O how glad would a faithful minister of Christ be, if, by any information, he could now give you half the light that you shall then have, and now make you know at the heart with the feeling of repentance, that which you must else quickly know, even at the heart with the feeling of despair. Sirs, I hope you think not that I speak mere fancies to you, or any thing that is questionable or uncertain: you cannot say so without denying yourselves to be Christians; no, nor without contradicting the light of nature, and debasing your souls below the heathen, who believe an immortality of souls in a different state of joy or misery in the life to come: and if you are once below heathens, what are you better than brute beasts? Better in your natural faculties and powers, as not being made brutes by your Creator; but worse as to the use of them, and the consequences to yourselves, because you are voluntary, self-abusing brutes., But to believe you shall die as a beast, will not prevent the miserable life of an impenitent sinner. It will not make your souls to be mortal, to believe they are mortal. Faith and reason can both assure you, that your souls lie not down with your bodies in the dust, nor are annihilated by the falling of your earthly tabernacle; no more than the spirits when the glass is broken that held them: or than the bird is annihilated that is got out of the shell: nor any more than the angels that appeared to the apostles or others, were annihilated when they disappeared: or, (if I must speak more suitably to the ungodly,) no more than the devil, that sometimes appeareth in a bodily shape, is annihilated when that appearance vanisheth. As I suppose there is not a person in all this populous city, that was here but sevenscore years ago, so I suppose there is none of you that expect to be here so long a time; they arc gone before you into a world where there is no presumption or security: and I tell you all, you are going after them apace, and are almost there, i

O sirs, that world a world of light. To the damned souls it is called outer darkness, because they have none of the light of glory or of comfort; but they shall have the light of a self-accusing, self-tormenting conscience, that is gone out of the darkness of self-ignorance and self-deceit, and is fully cured of its slumber and insensibility.

Do you now take a civilized person for a saint? You will not do so long. Doth the baptism of water only go with you now for the regeneration of the Spirit? It will not be so long: you will shortly be undeceived. Doth a ceremonious Pharisee thank God for the sincerity and holiness which he never had? He will shortly be taught better to know the nature of holiness and sincerity, and that Cod justifieth not all that justify themselves. Doth a little formal, heartless, hypocritical devotion, now cover a sensual, worldly mind? The cover will be shortly taken off, and the nakedness and deforraity of the Pharisee will appear. Doth the name of a Christian, and the heartless use of outward ordinances, and that good esteem of others, now go for godliness and saving grace? The autumn is at hand, when these leaves will all lie in the dust, and will go for fruit no longer. Do you now take it for true religion to be hot for lust, and pride, and gain, and cold for God and your salvation? and to obey God as far as will stand with your outward prosperity, and as the flesh, or your other masters will give leave? This is an opinion that never accom~ panied any man beyond the grave. Do you think to be saved by all that devotion, which gives God but the leavings of the flesh and world, and by a religion that gives him but the outer rooms (when pleasure and gain are next your hearts), and that makes him but an underling to your covetousness and ambition Think so if you can, when you are gone hence. Cannot the preacher now make the ungodly to know that they are ungodly, the unsanctified to know they are but carnal, and the Pharisee to know that his religion is vain? Death can convince the awakened soul of all this in a moment.

You can choose whether you will believe us; but death will so speak as to be believed. You must be voluntary in knowing your misery now: but then you shall know it against your wills. You must open your eyes, if you will see yourselves by the light which we bring to you; but death irresistibly throws open all. To say, in pride and obstinacy, ‘I will not believe it,’ will now serve the turn to quiet your consciences, and make you seem as safe as any; but when God saith, ‘You shall feel it,’ your unbelief is ineffectual: it can then torment you, but it can no longer ease you. There is then no room for ‘I will not believe it.’ /’ God can, without a word, persuade you of that wlwch you were resolved you would never be persuaded oL j While you are in the body, you are every one affected according as you apprehend your state to be, whether it be indeed as you apprehend it or not; but when death hath opened you the door into eternity, you will be all affected with your conditions as they are indeed. To day you are quiet, because you think your souls are safe; and some are troubled, that think they are in a state of misery: and it is likely that some on both sides are mistaken; and the quiet of one, and the disquiet of another, may arise for want of the knowledge of yourselves. But death will rectify both these errors; and then, if you are unsanctified, no false opinions, no unbelief, no confident conceits of your integrity, will abate your desperation, or give any ease to your tormented minds; nor will there be any doubts, or fears, or despairing, self-afflicting thoughts, to disquiet those that Christ hath justified, or abate their joys.

O how many thousands will then think much otherwise of themselves than they now do! Death turns you out of the company of flatterers, and calls you out of the world of error, where men laugh and cry in their sleep; and bringeth you among awakened souls, where all things are called by their proper names, and all men know themselves to be as they are indeed.^ Serious religion is not there a derision; nor loving, and seeking, and serving God with all the heart, and soul, and might, is not there taken for unnecessary preciseness. God judgeth not as man, by outward appearances, but with righteous judgment: “That which is highly esteemed among men, is abomination in the siht of God.” And he will make you then to judge of yourselves as he hath judged you. Though wisdom now be justified but of her children, it shall then be justified by all: not by a sanctifying, but a constrained, involuntary, tormenting light; and though now men can believe as well of themselves, as self-love and the quieting of their consciences doth require, yet then they will have lost this mastery over their own conceits.

O therefore, seeing you are all going into an irresistibly convincing light, and are almost in that world where all must fully know themselves; seeing “nothing is covered that shall not be revealed, nor hid that shall not be made known,” and no unsanctified hypocrite doth flatter himself into such high presumption, but a dying hour will take him down, and turn it all into endless desperation, if true conversion prevent not;, I beseech you be more conversant with conscience than you have been: be ashamed, that you who know nothing better than flesh to adorn and to be careful of, should bestow more hours in looking into the glass, than you bestow to look I into God’s word and your own hearts; yea, more in a year, than you have thus bestowed in all your lives! /

O that you knew what a profitable companion conscience is for you to converse with! You would not then think yourselves so solitary as to be destitute of company and employment, while you have so much to do at home, and one in your bosom that you have so much business with.

And it is a necessary and inseparable companion-If conscience should chide you when you had rather be flattered; yet there is no running from it for more pleasant company. / Conscience is married to you please it on safe terms as well as you can; but do n6t think to overrun it: for it will follow you; or you must return to it home again, when you have gone your furthest. There is no expectation of a divorce’; no, not by death: it will follow you to eternity And therefore be not strange to conscience, that will be your comforter or tormentor at the hour of death; that can do so much to make sickness, and all suffering, light or grievous; and to make death welcome or terrible to you. Fly not from conscience, that must dwell with you for ever.

O foolish sinners! do you want company and business to pass away your time? Are you fain to go to cards or dice to waste this treasure,»which is more precious than your money? Do you go to an alehouse, a playhouse, to seek for company or pastime? Do you forget what company and business you have at home? As you love your peace and happiness, instead of conversing with vain, lascivious, or ungodly persons, O spend that time in converse with your consciences! You may there have a thousand times more profitable discourse. Be not offended to give conscience a sober, faithful answer, if it ask you, What have you done with all your time? and how you have lived in the world? and how you have obeyed tl)e calls of grace? and how you have entertained Christ in your hearts? and whether you have obeyed him or his enemy? and whether you have been led by the Spirit or the flesh? and what forwardness the work of your salvation is in? and what assurance you have of your justification and.salvation? and what readiness to die? Think it not presumption in conscience thus to examine you: though you have perhaps unthankfully disdained to be thus examined by your pastors, whose office is to help you, and watch for your souls, yet do not disdain to be accountable to yourselves. Accountable you must be, ere long, to God; and that friend that would help you to make ready such accounts, on which so great a weight dependeth, methinks should be welcomed vvitli a thousand thanks. Ministers and conscience should Ije acccjitable to you, that come on so necessary a work.

The chidings of conscience are more friendly language than the flattery of your ignorant or proud associates; and should be more grateful to you than “the laifghter of fools, which is like the crackling of thorns in the fire.” Thy own home, though it be a house of mourning, is better for thee than such a sinful house of mirth. Hear but what conscience hath to say to you. No one will speak with you, that hath words to speak which more nearly concern you. I beseech you, sirs, be more frequent and familiar with conscience than most men are. Think not the time lost vviien you walk and talk with it alone. Confer with it about your endless state, and where you are likely to be for ever, and what thoughts you will have of your sins and duties, of the world and God, of yielding or overconring at the last. Is there no sense in this discourse? Thou art dead and senseless if thou think so. Is idle talk and prating better? I hope you are not so distracted as to say so. If you have not blinded, deceived, or bribed it, I tell you, conscience hath other kind of discourse for you; more excellent and necessary things to talk of, than wantons, or worldlings have. It is better to be giving conscience an account, what business thou hast had so often in such company; and how thou wouldst have looked, if death had found thee there, than, without leave from God or conscience, to go thither again.

The thriving way is neither to be still at home, nor still abroad; but to be at home when home-work is to be done, and to be abroad only for doing and xrettin’r cood, in a way of dilijient Christian tradincf, and to brine that home that is sot abroad. When you have done with conscience, converse with others that your business lieth with, and go abroad when it is for your Master’s work: but go not upon idle errands; converse not with prodigal wasters of your time, and enemies to your souls. One time or other conscience will speak, and have a hearing: the sooner the better. Put it not off to a time so unseasonable as death: I say, not unseasonable for conscience to speak in, but unseasonable for it to begin to speak in; and unseasonable for those terrible words that need a calmer time for answer; and unseasonable for so many things and so great, as self-betrayers use to put off until then, which need a longer time for due consideration and despatch.

3. And I beseech you consider, with what amazing horror it must needs surprise you, to find on a sudden, and unexpectedly, when you die, that all is worse with you than you imagined or would believe! After a whole life of confident presumption, to be suddenly convinced by so dreadful an experience of your so long and wilful a mistake! To find, in a moment, that you have flattered your souls into so desperate a state of woe! To see and feel all the selfish cavils and reasonings confuted, in one hour, which the wisest and holiest men on earth could never beat you from before! O, sirs, you know not what a day, what a conviction, that will be! You know not what it is for a guilty soul to pass out of the body, and find itself in the plague of an unsanctified state, and hated of the holy God, that never would know it till it was too late. You know not what it is to be turned, by death, into the world of spirits, where all self-deceit is detected by experience, and all must undergo a righteous judgment; where blindness and self-love can no more persuade the miserable that they are happy, the unholy that they are sanctified, the fleshly-minded men that they are spiritual, the lovers of the world that they are the lovers of God. Men cannot there believe what they list; nor take that for a truth which makes for their security, be it ever so false: men cannot there believe that they are accepted of God, while they are in the bonds of their iniquity; or that their hearts are as good as the best, while their tongues and lives are opposite to goodness, or that they shall be saved as soon as the godly, though they be ungodly.

It is easy for a man to hear of waves, and gulfs, and shipwreck, that never saw the sea; and, without any trouble, to hear of sickness and tormenting pains, and cutting off of limbs, that never felt such things. It is easy for you, in the midst of health, and peace, and quietness, to hear of a departing soul, and where it shall appear, and what it shall there see, and how great a discovery death will make. But, O sirs, when this must be your case, (as you know it must be, alas, how speedily!) these matters will then seem considerable: they will be new and strange to those that have heard of them a hundred times, because they never heard of them sensibly till now. One of those souls that have been here before you, and have passed into eternity, have other thoughts of these things than you have! O how do they think now, of die fearless slumber and stupidity of those thafc they have left behind! What think they now of those that wilfully fly the light, and flatter themselves in guilt and misery, and make light of all the joys and torments of the other world? Even as- the damned rich man in Luke xvi. thought of his poor brethren, that remained in prosperity and presumption upon earth, and little thought what company he was in, what a sight he saw, and what he did endure!

Poor careless souls! you know not now what it is, for the ungodly to see that they are ungodly, by the irresistible light of another world; and for the unholy to feel in hell that they are unholy, and to be taught by flames, and the wrath of the Almighty, what is the difi’erence between the sanctified and the carnal, between an obedient and a rebellious life. While here, you little know these things: you see them not, you feel them not; and the Lord granft you may never so know them by woful experience. That you may escape such a knowledge, is the end of all that I am saying to you: but that will not be, but by another kind of knowledge, even the knowledge of belief and serious consideration.

For your souls’ sake, therefore, come to the light, and try yourselves, and shuffle not over a work of such unspeakable consequence, as the searching of your hearts, and judging of your spiritual state! O be glad to know what you are indeed! Put home the question, ‘Am I sanctified or not? Am I in the Spirit or in the flesh?’ Be glad of any help for the sure resolution of such doubts. Take not up with slight and venturous presumptions. It is your own case; your nearest and your greatest case; all lies upon it: who should be so willing of the plainest dealing, the speediest and the closest search, as you? O be not surprised by an unexpected sight of an unrenewed, miserable soul at death? If it be so, see it now, while seeing it may do good: if it be not so, a faithful search can do you no harm, but comfort you by the discovery of your sincerity. Say not too late, ‘I ihouglit I had been born again of the Spirit, and had been in a state of grace: I thought I had been a child of God, and reconciled to him, and justified by faith!’ O what a heart-tearing word would it be to you, when time is past, to say, ‘I thought it had been better with me!’

4. Consider, also, that It is one of Satan’s principal designs of your damnation, to keep you ignorant of yourselves. He knows, if he can but make you believe that you are regenerate, when you are not, you will never seek to be regenerate; and that if he can make you think that you are godly, when you are ungodly, and have the Spirit of Christ, while you are servants to the flesh, he may defeat all the labours of your teachers, and let them call on you to be converted till their hearts ache, to no purpose, but leave you as you are. He knows how light you will sit by the physician, if he can but make you believe that you are well; and how little care you will take for a pardon, if you think that you have one already. In vain we may call on you to turn, and become new creatures, and give up yourselves to Christ, if you think that you are good Christians, and are in the way to heaven already.

And when you know beforehand, that there lieth the principal game of the deceiver, and that it will be his chief contrivance, to keep you unacquainted with your sin and danger, till you are past recovery, one would think there should be no need to bid you to be diligent to know yourselves.

3. And I beseech you consider also, that without this design there is no likelihood that Satan could undo you: if he keep you not ignorant of yourselves, he is never likely to keep you in his power: you come out of his kingdom when you come out of darkness. He knoweth that if once you did but see how near you stand to the brink of hell, you would think it time to change your standing.

There is a double principle in nature, that would do something towards your repentance and recovery, if your eyes were opened to see where you are.

1. There is, since the seduction and ruin of man, by Satan’s temptations, an enmity put into the whole nature of man against the whole satanical, serpentine nature; so that this natural enmity would so much conduce to your deliverance, as that you would not be contented with your relation, if you knew that you are the slaves of the devil; nor would you be charmed into sin so easily, if you knew that it is he indeed that doth invite you: no language would be so taking with you, which you knew was uttered by his voice. It would do much to affright you from his service, if you knew that it is he indeed that setteth you on to work, and is gratified by it. He kecpeth men in his bondage, by making them believe that they are free: he persuadeth men to obey him, by persuading them that it is God that they obey: and he draweth them to heU by making them believe that they are following Christ to heaven; or at least, that they are following the inclination of their nature in a pardonable infirmity.

2. And the natural principle of self-love would, in order to self-preservation, do much to drive you from your sinful state, if you did hut know what a state it is. There is no man so far hateth himself, as to be willing to be damned. You cannot choose a habitation in hell; for such a place can never be desired. Surely he that cannot choose but to fly from an enemy, or from fire, or water, or pestilence, when he perceives his danger, would fly from hell if he perceived his danger.

I beseech you all, that are secure in an unsanctified state, do but look inwards, and help me in preaching this doctrine to your hearts, and tell yourselves, whether you do think that your state is good, and that you are the children of God as well as others; and that though you are sinners, yet your sins are pardoned by the blood of Christ, and that you shall be saved if you die in the state that you are in? And are not these thoughts the reason why you venture to continue in your present state, and look not after so great a change as Scripture speaketh of as necessary?

And I pray you deal plainly with your hearts, and tell me, you careless sinners, young or old, that live here as quietly as if all were well with you, If you did but know that you are at this hour unregenerate, and that without regeneration there is no salvation: if you did but know that you are yet carnal and unholy, and that “without holiness none shall see God:” if you did but know that you are yet in a state of enmity to God while you call him Father, and of enmity to Christ, while you call him your Saviour, and of enmity to the Holy Spirit, while you call him your Sanctifier: if you did but know, that your sins are unpardoned, and your souls unjustified, and that you are condemned already, and shall certainly be damned if you die as you are, Could you live quietly in such a state? Could you sleep, and eat, and drink quietly, and follow your trades, and let time run on without repenting and returning unto God, if you knew that you are past hope, if death surprise you in this condition? For the Lord’s sake, sirs, rouse up yourselves a little, and be serious in a business that concerneth you more than ten thousand natural lives; and tell me, or rather tell yourselves, If you did but know that while you live here, you are unrenewed, and therefore under the curse of God, and in the bondage of the devil, and are hastening towards perdition, if you be not sanctified and made new creatures before you die — could you forbear going alone, and there bethink yourselves, ‘O what a sinful, dreadful condition are we in! What will become of us, if we be not regenerate before we die! Had we no understandings, no hearts, no life or sense, that we have lingered so long, and lived so carelessly in such a state! O where had we been now, if we had died unregenerate! How near have we been oft to death! How many sicknesses might have put an end to life and hope! Had we died before this day, we had been now in hell without remedy.’ Could any of you that knew this to be your case, forbear to betake yourselves to God, and cry to him, in the bitterness of your souls, ‘O Lord, what rebels, what wretches have we been! We have sinned against heaven and before thee, and are no more worthy to be called thy children! O how sin Iiath captivated our unstandings, and conquered our very sense, and made us live like men that were dead, as to the love and service of God, and the work of our salvation, which we were created and redeemed for! O Lord, have mercy upon these blind and senseless miserable souls! Have mercy upon these despisers and abusers of thy mercy! O save us or we perish! Save us from our sins, from Satan, from thy curse and wrath 1 Save us, or we are undone and lost for ever! Save us from the unquenchable fire, from the worm that never dieth! from the bottomless pit, the outer darkness, the horrid gulf of endless misery! O let the bowels of thy compassion yearn over us! O save us for thy mercy sake; shut not out the cries of miserable sinners. Regenerate, renew, and sanctify our hearts; O make us new creatures! O plant thine image on our souls, and incline them towards thee, that they may be wholly thine! O make us such as thou commandest us to be! Away with our sins, and sinful pleasures, and sinful company! We have had too much, too much of them already! Let us now be thine, associated with them that love and fear thee; employed in the works of holiness and obedience all our days! Lord, we are willing to let go our sins, and to be thy servants: or if we be not, make us willing.’

What say you, sirs, if you knew that you were this hour in a state of condemnation, could you forbear making haste with such confessions, complaints, and earnest supplications to God? And could you forbear going presently to some faithful minister, or godly friend, and telling him your case and danger, and begging his advice, and prayers, and asking him, what a poor sinner must do to be recovered, pardoned, and saved, that is so deep in sin and misery, and hath despised Christ and grace so long? Could you tell how to sleep quietly many nights more, before you had earnestly sought for help, and made this change? How could you choose but presently betake yourselves to the company, and converse, and examples of the godly that are within your reach? (For whenever a man is truly changed, his friendship and company is changed, if he have opportunity.) And how could you choose but go and take your leave of your old companions, and with tears and sorrow tell them, how foolishly and sinfully you have done, and what wrong you have done each other’s souls, and entreat them to repent and do so no more, or else you will renounce them, and fly from their company as from a pestilence?

Cnn a man forbear thus to fly from hell, if he saw that he is as near it as a condemned traitor to the gallows? He that will beg for bread, if he be hungry, would beg for grace, if he saw and felt how much he needeth it: and seeing it, is the way to feel it. He that will seek for medicines when he is sick, and would do almost any thing to escape a temporal death, would he not seek to Christ, the remedy of his soul, if he knew and felt that otherwise there is no recovery? and would he not do much atrainst eternal death? “Skin for skin, and all that a man hath, he will give for his life,” was a truth that the devil knew, and maketh use of in his temptations. And will a man then be regardless of his soul, that knows he hath an immortal soul? and of life eternal, that knows his danger of eternal death?

O, sirs, it is not possible, but the true knowledge of your state of sin and danger, would do very much to save you from it. For it is a wilful, chosen state. All the devils in hell cannot bring you to it, and continue you in it against your will. You are willing of the sin, though unwilling of the punishment. And if you truly knew the punishment, and your danger of it, you would be the more unwilling of the sin; for God hath affixed punishment to sin for this end, that they that else would love the serpent, may hate it for the sting./ Foreseeing is to a man, what seeing is, to a beast; if he see it before his eyes, a beast will not easily be driven into a coal-pit or a gulf; he will draw back and ’ strive, if you go about to kill him. And is he a man, or some monster that wants a name, that will go on to hell, when he seeth it, as it were, before him? and that will continue in a state of sin, when he knows he must be damned in hell for ever, if he so continue to the end? Indeed sin is the deformity of the soul. He is a monster of blindness that seeth not the folly and peril of such a state, and that a state of holiness is better. And he is a monster of slothfulness, that will not stir when he finds himself in such a case, and seek for mercy, and value the remedy, and use the means, and forsake his sinful course and company, till mercy take him up and bring him home, and make him welcome, as “one that was lost but now is found, was dead, but is alive,”

I do not doubt, for all these expostulations, but some men may be such monsters, as thus to see that they are in a state of wrath and misery, and yet continue in it.

As, 1. Such as have but a gHmmeriiig, insufficient sight of it, and a half beHef, while a greater belief and hope of the contrary, that is, presumption, is predominant at the heart. But these are rather to be called men ignorant of their misery, than men that know it; and men that believe it not, than men that do believe it, as long as the ignorance and presumption is the prevailing part.

2. Such as, by the rage of appetite and passion, are hurried into deadly sin, and so continue, whenever the tempter offereth them the bait against their conscience, and some apprehension of their misery. But these have commonly a prevalent self-flattery secretly within, encouraging and upholding them in their sin, and telling them, that the reluctancies of their consciences are the Spirit’s strivings against the flesh, and their fits of remorse are true repentance; and though they are sinners, they hope they are pardoned, and shall be saved, so that these do not know themselves indeed.

3. Such as, by their deep engagements in the world, and love of its prosperity, and a custom in sinning, are so hardened, and cast into a slumber, that though they have a secret knowledge, or suspicion, that their case is miserable, yet they are not awakened to the due consideration and feeling of it; and therefore they go on as if they knew it not: but these have not their knowledge in exercise. It is but a candle in a dark lantern, that now and then gives them a convincing flash, when the right side happens to be towards them; or like liglUning, that rather frightens and amnzcth them, than directeth them. And, as I said of the former, their self-ignorance is the predominant part, and therefore they cannot be said indeed to know themselves.

4. Such as, being in youth or health, do promise themselves long life, or others that foolishly put away the day of death, and think they have yet time enough before them; and therefore, though they are convinced of their misery, and know they must be converted or condemned, do yet delay, and quiet themselves with purposes to repent hereafter, when death draws near, and there is no other remedy but they must leave their sins, or give up all their hopes of heaven. Though these know somewhat of their present misery, it is but an ineffectual knowledge; and they know little of the wickedness of their hearts, while they confess them wicked, otherwise they could not imagine, that repentance is so easy a work to such as they, as that- they can perform it when their hearts are further hardened, and that their salvation may be ventured on it by delays. Did they know themselves, they would know the backwardness of their hearts; and manifold difficulties should make them see the madness of delays, and of longer resisting and abusing the grace of the Spirit, that must convert them, if ever they be saved.

5. Such as have light to show them their misery, but live where they hear not the discovery of the remedy, and are left without any knowledge of a Saviour. I deny not but such may go on in a state of misery, though they know it, when they know no way out of it.

6. Such as believe not the remedy, though they hear of it, but think that Christ is not to be believed in, as the Saviour of the world.

7. Such as believe that Christ is the Redeemer, but believe not that he will have mercy upon them, as supposing their hearts are not qualified for his salvation, nor £ver will be, because the day of grace is past, and he hath concluded them under a sentence of reprobation; and therefore thinking that there is no hope, and that their endeavours would be all in vain, they cast off all endeavours, and give up themselves to the pleasures of the flesh, and say, ‘It is as good to be damned for something, or for a greater matter, as for a less.’

So that there are three sorts of despair, that are not equally dangerous. 1. A despair of pardon and salvation, arising from infidelity, as if the Gospel were not true, nor Christ a Saviour to be trusted with our souls, if predominant, is damnable. 2. A despair of pardon and salvation, arising from a misunderstanding of the promise, as if it pardoned not such sins as ours, and denied mercy to those that have sinned so long as we; this is not damnable necessarily of itself, because it implieth faith in Christ; and not infidelity, but misunderstanding, hindereth the applying, comforting act; and therefore this actual personal despair, is accompanied with a general actual hope, and with a particular personal, virtual hope. 3. A despair of pardon and salvation, upon the misunderstanding of ourselves, as thinking both that we are graceless, and always shall be so, because of the blindness and hardness of our hearts. Of this despair, I say as of the former, it is joined J 2 with faith, and with general and virtual hope: and, therefore, is not the despair that, of itself, condemneth. Many may be saved that are too much guilty of it-But if either of these two latter sorts shall so far prevail, as to turn men off from a holy, to a fleshly, worldly interest and life, and make them say, ‘We will take our pleasure while we may, and will have something for our souls before we lose them,’ and do accordingly; this kind of desperation is damnable by the effects, because it takes men off the means of life, and giveth thera up to damning sins.

Thus I have showed you of seven sorts of persons that may know themselves, their sin and danger, with such an ineffectual, partial knowledge as I have described, and yet continue in that sin and misery.

And in two cases, even sound believers may possibly go on to sin, when they see the sin: and not only see the danger of it, but despairingly think it greater than it is. As, 1. In case of common, unavoidable failings, infirmities, and low degrees of grace: we are all imperfect, and yet we all know that it is our duty to be perfect, (as perfection is opposed to sinful, and not to innocent perfection,) and vet this knowledge maketh us not perfect. We know we should be more humbled, and more believing, and more watchful, and love God more, and fear and trust him more, and be more fruitful and diligent, and obedient and zealous; and yet we are not what we know we should be in any of these. In these we all live in sin against knowledge; else we should be all as good as we know we ought to be, which no man is. And if, through temptation.

any of us should be ready to despair, because of any of these infirmities, because we cannot repent, or love God, watch, or pray, or obey more perfectly, or as we should, yet grace ceaseth not to be grace, though in the least degree, because we are ready to despair for want of more. Nor will the sincerity of this spark, or grain of mustard seed, be unsuccessful, as to our salvation, because we think so, and take ourselves to be insincere, and our sanctification to be none; nor yet because we cannot be as obedient and good as we know we should be. For the Gospel saith not, ‘He that knoweth he hath faith or sincerity shall be saved; and he that knoweth it not, shall be damned: or he that is less holy or obedient than his conscience tells him he should be, shall be damned.’ But, “He that believeth and repenteth, shall be saved,” whether he know it to be done in sincerity or not: and “he that doth not, shall be damned,” though he ever so confidently think he doth. So that, in the degrees of holiness and obedience, all Christians ordinarily sin against knowledge.

2. And besides what is ordinary, some extraordinarily, in the time of a powerful temptation, go further than ordinarily they do. And some, under melancholy or choleric distempers of body, or under a diseased, violent appetite, may transgress more against their knowledge, than otherwise they would do. When the spirits are flattened, the thoughts confused, the reason weakened, the passion strengthened, and the executive faculties indisposed, so that their actions are but imperfectly human or moral; (imperfectly capable of virtue or vice, good or evil)

it is no wonder here, if poor souls not only perceive their sin, but think it and the danger to be tenfold greater than they are, and yet go on against their knowledge, and yet have true grace.

This much I have said, both to stay you from misunderstanding what I said before, concerning the power of conviction to conversion, and also to help you to the fuller understanding of the matter itself, of which I treat. But exceptions strengthen and not weaken any rule or proposition in the points not excepted. Still I say, that out of these cases, the true knowledge of a sinful, miserable state, is so great a help to bring us out of it, that it is hardly imaginable, how rational men can wilfully continue in a state of such exceeding danger, if they be but well acquainted that they are in it. I know a hardened heart hath an unreasonable, obstinate opposition against the means of its own recovery: but yet men have some use of reason and self-preserving love and care, or they are not men. And though little transient lightnings often come to nothing, but leave some men in greater darkness; yet could we but set up a standing light in all your consciences, could we fully convince and resolve the unregenerate, that they cannot be saved in the carnal state they are in, but must be sanctified or never saved; what hopes should we have, that all the subtleties and snares of Satan, and all the pleasures and gain of sin, and all the allurements of ungodly company, could no longer hinder you from falling down at the feet of mercy, and begging forgiveness, through the blood of Christ, and giving up yourselves in covenant to the Lord, and speedily and resolutely betaking yourselves to a holy life! Could I but make you thoroughly known unto yourselves, I should hope that all the unsanctified would date their conversion from this very day; and that you would not delay till the next morning, to bewail your sin and misery, and fly to Christ, lest you should die, and be past hope this night.

And doth so much of our work, and of your recovery, lie upon this point, and yet sh;ill we not 1)8 able to accomplish it? Might you be brought into the way to heaven, if we could but persuade you that you arc yet out of the way; and will you be undone, because you will not suiFer so small and reasonable a part of the cure as this? O God forbid! O that we knew how to illuminate your minds so far, as to make you find that you are lost! how ready would Christ be then to find you, and to receive and welcome you, upon your return! Here is the first difficulty, which if we could but overcome, we should hope to conquer all the rest. O that any of you that know the nature of self-deceit, and know the fallacious reasonings of the heart, could tell us but how we might undeceive them! O that any of you that know the nature of human understanding, with its several maladies, and their cure, and know the power of saving truth, could tell ns what key will undo this lock! what medicine will cure this disease, of wilful, obstinate, self-deceiving! Think but on the case cf our poor people, and of ours, and sure you cannot choose but pity both them and us. We are all professors of the Christian faith, and all say we believe the word of God. This word assureth us, that all men are fallen in Adam, and are “by nature children of wrath,” and increase in sin and misery, till supernatural grace recover them. It tells us, that the Redeemer is become, by office, the Physician or Saviour of souls; washing away their guilt by his blood, and renewing and cleansing their corrupted natures by his Spirit. It tells us, that he will freely work the cure, for all that will take him for their physician, and will forgive and save them that penitently fly to him, and value, and accept, and trust in his grace: and that except they be thus made new creatures, all the world cannot save them from everlasting wrath. This is the doctrine that we all believe, or say we believe. Thus doth it open the case of sinners. We come now, according to our office, and the trust reposed in us, and we tell our hearers what the Scripture saith of man, and what it commandeth us to tell them. We tell them of their fall, their sin and misery; of the Redeemer, and the sure and free salvation, which they may have if they will but come to him. But, alas! we cannot make them believe that they are so sick, as to have need of the Physician: and that they are dead, and have need of a new creation, as to the inclination of their hearts, and the end, and bent, and business of their lives. We are sent to tender them the mercy of Christ, but we cannot make them believe that they are miserable. We are sent to offer them the riches, and eye-salve, and white raiment of the Gospel; but we cannot make them know that they are poor, and blind, and naked. We are sent to call them to repent and turn, that they may be saved; and we cannot make them know that they need a change of heart and life. Here they sit before us, and we look on them with pity, and know not how to help them. We look on them, and think, Alas, poor souls, you little see what death will quickly make you see! You will then see that there is no salvation, by all the blood and merits of Christ, for any but the sanctified: but O that we could now make you understand it! We look on them with compassion; and think, Alas, poor souls, a change is near! It will be thus with you but a little while, and where will you be next? We know, as sure as the word of God is true, that they must be converted and sanctified, or be lost for ever: and we cannot make them believe, but that the work is done already. The Lord knoweth, and our consciences witness to our shame, that we be not half so sensible of their misery, nor so compassionate

towards them as we ought to be. But yet sometimes our hearts melt over them, and fain we would save them from the “wrath to come;” and we should have great hopes of the success, if we could but make them know their danger. It melts our hearts to look on them, and think that they are so near damnation, and never likely to escape it, till they know it; till they know that their corruption is soreat, that nothing but the quickening Spirit can recover them, and nothing less than to become new creatures will serve the turn. O that we knew how to get within them, to open the windows, that the light of Christ might show them their condition! But when we have done all, we find it past our power. We know they will be past help in hell, if they die before they are regenerate. And could we but get themselves to know it, they would bettor look about tbcm and be saved. But we are not able. It is more than we can do. We cannot get the grossest worldling, the basest sensualist, the proudest child of the spirit of pride, to know that he is in a state of condemnation, and must be sanctified or be damned. Much less can we procure the formal Pharisee, thus to know himself. We can easily get them to confess that they are sinners, and deserve damnation, and cannot be saved without Christ; but this will not serve: the best saint on earth must say as much as this. There are converted and unconverted sinners, sanctified and unsanctified sinners, pardoned and unpardoned sinners; sinners that are members of Christ, the children of God, and heirs of heaven, and sinners that are not so. They must know not only that they are sinners, but that they are yet unconverted, unsanctified, unpardoned sinners; not only that they cannot be saved without Christ, but that they have no special interest in Christ: they will not so value and seek for conversion, and remission, and adoption, as to obtain them, while they think they have them already. They will not come to Christ that they may have life, while they think they have part in Christ already. Paul, after his conversion, was a sinner, and had need of Christ: but Paul, before his conversion, was an unsanctified, unjustified sinner, and had no part in Christ. This is the state of sin and misery that you must come out of, or yon are lost: and how can you be brought out of it, till you know that you are in it?

O therefore that we knew how to make you know it! How should we make poor sinners see that they are within a few steps of everlasting fire, that we might induce them to run away from it, and be saved! We cry so often, and lose our labour, and leave so many in their security and self-deceits, that we are discouraged, and remit our desires, and lose our compassion; and, alas! grow dull, and too insensible of their case, and preach too often as coldly as if we could be content to let them perish. We are too apt to grow weary of holding the light to men asleep, or that shut their eyes and will not see it. When all that we have said is not regarded, and we know not what more to say, this damps our spirits; this makes so many of us preach almost as carelessly as we are heard. Regardless, sleepy hearers, make regardless, sleepy preachers. Frequent frustration abatelh hope: and the fervour and diligence of prosecution ceaseth as hope abateth. This is our fault: your insensibility is no good excuse for ours: but it is a fault not easily avoided.

And when we are stopped at the first door, and cannot conquer Satan’s outworks, what hope have we of going further? If all that we can say, will not convince you that you are yet unsanctified and unjxistified, how shall we get you to the duties that belong to such, in order to the attainment of this desirable state?

And, here, I think it not unreasonable to inform you, why the most able, faithful ministers of Christ do search so deep, and speak so hardly of the case of unrenewed souls, as much displeaseth many of their hearers, and makes them say, they are too severe and terrible preachers. The zealous Antinomian saith, they are legalists; and the profane Antinomian saith, they rail and preach not mercy, but judgment only, and would drive men to despair. But will they tell God he is a legalist, for making the law, even the Gospel law, as well as the law of nature, and commanding us to preach it to the world? Shall they escape the sentence, by reproaching the law-maker? Will not God judge the world; and judge them by a law; and will he not be just, and beyond the reach of their reproach? O, sinner, this is not the smallest part of thy terror, that it is the Gospel that speaks this terror to thee, and excludes thee from salvation, unless thou be made new: it is mercy itself that thus condemneth thee, and judgeth thee to endless misery. You are mistaken, sirs, when you say we preach not mercy, and say we preach not the Gospel, but the law: it is the Gospel that saith, “Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven! and that if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his.” The same Gospel that saith, “He that believeth shall be saved,” saith also, that “He that believeth not shall be damned.” Will you tell Christ, the Saviour of the world, that he is not merciful, because he talks to you of damnation? Mercy itself, when it tells you that “there is no condemnation,” doth limit this pardon to them “that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” It is sanctifying mercy that must save you, if ever you be saved, as well as justifying mercy. And will you refuse this mercy, and by no entreaty yield to have it, and yet think to be saved by it? What! saved by that mercy which you will not have? - And will you say, we preach not mercy, because we tell you, that mercy will not save you, if you continue to reject it? To be saved by mercy without sanctification, is to be saved and not saved; to be saved by mercy, without mercy: your words have no better sense than this. And are those afraid, lest preachers should make thera mad, by showing them their need of mercy, that are no wiser than to cast away their souls upon such senseless, self-contradicting conceits as these?

I beseech you, tell us whose words are they, that say, “Without holiness none shall see God?” and that “He that is in Christ, is a new creature,” and such like passages which offend you. Are they ours, or are they God’s? Did we indite the Holy Scriptures, or did the Holy Ghost? Is it hard of us, if there be any words there that cross your flesh, and that you call bitter? Can we help it, if God will save none but sanctified believers? If you have any thing to say against it, you must say it to him: we are sure that this is in his word: and we are sure he cannot lie: and, therefore, we are sure it is true. We are sure that he may do with his own as he list, and that he oweth you nothing, and that he may give his pardon and salvation to whom, and upon what terms he please: and, therefore, we are sure he doth you no wrong. But if you think otherwise, reproach not us that are but messengers; but prepare your charge, and make it good against your Maker, if you dare and can. You shall shortly come before him, and be put to it to justify yourselves: if you can do it by recrimination, and can prevent your condemnation, by condemning the law and the Judge, try your strength and do your worst.

Ah, poor worms! dare you Uft up the head, and move a tongue ngainst the Lord! Did Iiifiiiiic ^^’isdom itself want wisdom, to make a law to rule the world? And did Infinite Goodness want goodness to deal mercifully, and as was best with man! And shall Justice itself be judged to be unjust? and that by you! by such silly, ignorant, and unrighteous ones as you! as if you had the wisdom and goodness, which you think God wanted when he made his laws!

And whereas you tell us of preaching terribly to you, we cannot help it, if the true and righteous threatenings of God be terrible to the guilty. It is because we know the terrors of the Lord, that we preach them, to warn you to prevent them. And so did the apostles before us. Either it is true that the unquenchable fire will be the poition of impenitent, unbelieving, fleshly, worldly, unsanctified men, or it is not true. If it were not true, the word of God were not true: and, then, what should you do with any preaching at all, or any religion! But if you confess it to be true, do you think in reason it should be silenced? Or, can we tell men of so terrible a thing as hell, and tell them that it will certainly be their lot, unless they be new creatures, and not speak terribly to them! O, sirs, it is the wonder of my soul that it seemeth no more terrible, to all the ungodly, that think they do believe it. Yea, and I would it did seem more terrible, that it might affright you from your sin to God, and you might be saved. If you were running ignorantly into a eoal-pit, would you revile him that told you of it, and bid you stop if you love your life! would you tell him that he speaks bitterly or terribly to you?

It is not the preacher that is the cause of your danger: he doth but tell you of it, that you may escape. If you are saved, you may thank him: but if you are lost, you may thank yourselves. It is you that deal bitterly and terribly with yourselves. Telling you of hell doth not make hell: warning you of it, is not causing it: nor is it God that is unmerciful, but you are foolishly cruel and unmerciful to yourselves. Do not think to despise the patience and mercy of the Lord, and then think to escape, by accusing him of being unmerciful, and by saying, it is a terrible doctrine that we preach to you, impenitent sinners! I confess to thee it is terrible, and more terrible than thy senseless heart imagineth. One day, if grace prevent it not, thou shall find it ten thousand times more terrible than thou canst apprehend it now., When thou seest tliv JudjTc, with millions of his angels, comiu” to condemn thee, thou wilt then say his laws are terrible indeed. Thou hast to do with a holy, jealous God, who is a “consuming fire;” andean such a God be despised, and not be terrible to thee? He is called, “The great, the mighty, and the terrible God.” “With God is terrible majesty.” “He is terrible out of his holy place.” “He is terrible to the greatest, even to the kings of the earth.” It is time for you, therefore, to tremble and submit, and think how unable you are to contend with him:’ and not revile his word or works, because they are terrible; but fear him for them, and study them on purpose that you may fear and glorify him. And as David, “Say unto God, How terrible art thou in thy works! Through the greatness of thy power shall thy enemies submit themselves unto thee — Come and see the works of the Lord f He is terrible in his doings towards the children of men,” “Let them praise thy great and terrible name, for it is holy.” And will you reproach God, or his word, or works, or ministers, with that which is the matter of his praise? If it be terrible to hear of the wrath of God, how terrible will it be to feel it? Choose not a state of terror to yourselves, and preaching will be less terrible to you. Yield to the sanctifying work of Christ, and receive his Spirit: and then that which is terrible to others will be comfortable to you. What terror is it to the regenerate (that knoweth himself to be such), to hear that none but the regenerate shall be saved? What terror is it to them that mind the things of the Spirit, to hear of the misery of a fleshly mind, and that they that live after the flesh shall die? The word of God is full of terror to the ungodly: but return with all your hearts to God, and then what word of God speaks terror to you? Truly, sirs, it is more in your power than ours, to make our preaching easy and less terrible to you! We cannot change our doctrine, but you may change your state and lives: we cannot preach another Gospel, but you may obey the Gospel which we preach. Obey it, and it will be the most comfortable word to you in the world. We cannot make void the word of God, but you may avoid the stroke by penitent submission. Do you think it fitter to change our Master’s word, and falsify the laws of God Almighty, or for you to change your crooked courses, which are condemned by his word, and to let go the sin which the law forbiddeth? It is you that must change and not the law. It is you that must be conformed to it, and not the rule that must be made crooked to conform to you.

Say not as Ahab of Michaiah, of the minister: “I hate him, for he prophesieth not good of me, but evil for a Balaam could profess, that if the king “would give him his house full of silver and gold, he could not go beyond the word of the Lord bis God, to do less or more,” or “to do either good or bad of his own mind.” What good would it do you for a preacher to tell you a lie, and say that you may be pardoned and saved in an impenitent, unsanctified state? Do you think our saying so, would make it so? Will God falsify his word to make good ours? Or would he not deal with us as perfidious messengers that had betrayed our trust, and belied him, and deceived your souls? And would it save an unregenerate man to have Christ condemn the minister for deceiving him, and telling him that he may be saved in such a state?

Do but let go the odious sin that the word of God doth speak so ill of, and then it will speak no ill of you.

Alas, sirs, what would you have a poor minister do, when God’s command doth cross your pleasure; and when he is sure to offend either God or you? Which should he venture to offend? If he help not the ungodly to know their misery, he ofTendeth God: if he do it he ofFendeth them. If he tell you, that “All they shall be damned that believe not the truth, that have pleasure in unrighteousness,” your hearts rise against him for talking of damnation to you: and yet it is but the words of the Holy Ghost, which we are bound to preach! If he tell you that “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die,” you will be angry, and if he do not tell you so, God will be angry; for it is his express determination. And whose anger, think you, should a wise man choose; or whose should he most resolutely avoid — the anger of the dreadful God of heaven, or yours? Your anger we can bear; but his anger is intolerable. When you have railed, and slandered us and our doctrine, we can live yet; or if you kill the body you can do no more: you do but send us before, to be witnesses against you, when you come to judgment. But who can live, when God will pour out wrath upon him? We may keep your slanders and indignation from our hearts; but it is the heart that the heart-scarcliing God contendeth with: and who can heal the heart which he will break? You may reach the flesh; but he that is a Spirit can afflict and wound the spirit: “And a wounded spirit who can bear?” Would you not yourselves say he were worse than mad, that would rather abuse the eternal God, than cross the misguided desires of such worms as you; that would displease God to please you, and sell his love to purchase yours? Will you be instead of God to us, when we have lost his favour? Will you save us from him, whom he sendeth for our souls by death, or sentenceth us to hell by judgment? Silly souls! how happy were you, could you save yourselves! Will you be our gods if we forsake our God? Blame not God to use them as enemies and rebels, that will change him for such earthen gods as you. We have one God, and but one, and he must be obeyed, whether you like or disUke it: “There is one Lawgiver that is able to save and destroy,” and he must be pleased, whether it please your carnal minds or not. If your wisdom now will take the chair, and judge the preaching of the Gospel to be foolishness, or the searching application of it to be too much harshness and severity, I am sure you shall come down ere long, and hear his sentence that will convince you, that the “wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, and the foolishness of God (as blasphemy dare call it) is wiser than men.” And God will be the final Judge, and his word shall stand when you have done your worst. The worst that the serpent can do, is but to hiss awhile and put forth the sting, and bruise our heel; but God’s day will be the bruising of his head, and “Satan shall be bruised under feet.”

The sun will shine, and the light thereof discover your deformities, whether you will or not. And if adulterers or thieves, that love the works of darkness, will do their worst by force or flattery, they cannot make it cease its shining, though they may shut their eyes, or hide themselves in darkness from its light. Faithful teachers are the “lights of the world.” They are not lighted by the Holy Ghost, to be “put under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they may give light to all that are in the house.” What would you do with teachers but to teach you? and what should they make known to you, if not yourselves?

lerily, sirs, a sinner under the curse of the law, unsanctified and unpardoned, is not in a state to be jested and dallied with, unless you can play in the flames of hell: it is plain dealing that he needs. A quibbling, flashy sermon, is not the proper medicine for a lethargic, miserable soul, nor fit to break a stony heart, nor to bind up a heart that is kindly broken. Heaven and hell should not be talked of in a canting, or pedantic strain. A Seneca can tell you, that it is’a physician that is skilful, and not one that is eloquent, that we need. It is a cure that we need; and the means are best, be they ever so sharp, that will accomplish it. Serious, reverend gravity, best suiteth with matters of such incomprehensible concern. You may play with words when the case will bear it: but as dropping of beads is too ludicrous for one that is praying to be saved from the flames of hell; so a sleepy, or a histrionical speech, is too light and unlikely a means to call back a sinner that is posting to perdition, and must be humbled and renewed by the Spirit, or be for ever damned. This is your case, sirs: and do you think the playing of a part upon a stage doth fit your case? O, no! So great a business requireth all the serious earnestness in the speaker that he can use. I am sure you will think so, ere long, yourselves; and you will then think well of the preachers that faithfully acquainted you with your case: and (if they succeed to your perdition) you will curse those that smoothed you up in your presumption, and hid your danger, by false doctrine, or misapplication. God can make use of clay and spittle to open the eyes of men born blind; and of rams-horns to bring down the walls of Jericho: but usually he fitteth the means to the end, and works on man agreeably to his nature: and therefore, if a blind understanding must be enlightened, you cannot expect that it should be done by glow-worms, but by bringing into your souls the powerful celestial truth, which shall show you the hidden corners of your hearts, and the hidden mysteries of the Gospel, and the unseen things of the other world. If a hardened heart be to be broken, it is not stroking, but striking that must do it. It is not the sounding brass, the tinkling cymbal, the carnal mind pulFed up with superficial knowledge, that is the instrument fitted to the renewing of men’s souls: but it is he that can acquaint you with what he himself hath been savingly acquainted. The heart 4s not melted into godly sorrow, nor raised to the life of faith and love, by a game at words, or useless notions, but by the illuminating beams of sacred truth, and the attraction of Divine displayed goodness, communicated from a mind that by faith hath seen the glory of God, and by experience found that he is good, and that liveth in the love of God: such a one is fitted to assist you, first in the knowledge of yourselves, and then in the knowledge of God in Christ.

Did you consider what is the office of the ministry, you would soon know what ministers do most faithfully perform their office, and what kind of teaching and oversight you should desire: and then you would be reconciled to the light: and would choose the teacher (could you have your choice) that would do most to help you to know yourselves, and know the Lord.

I beseech you judge of our work by our commission, and judge of it by your own necessities. Have you more need to be acquainted with your sin and danger? or to be pleased with a set of handsome words, which, when they are said, do leave you as they found you; and leave no light, and life, and heavenly love upon your hearts: that have no substance that you can feed upon in the review?

And what our commission is you may find in many places of the Scripture: “When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thy hand: yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul:” and “If thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live, because he is warned, also thou hast delivered thy soul.”

And what if they distaste our doctrine, must we forbear? “Tell them, thus saith the Lord God, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.” So Ezek. xxxiii. 1 — 10.

You know what became of Jonah for refusing to deliver God’s threalenings against Nineveh.

Christ’s stewards must give to each his portion. He himself threateneth damnation to the impenitent, the hypocrites, and unbelievers, (Luke xiii. 3, 5. Mark xvi. IG. Matt. xxiv. 51.) Paul saith of himself, “If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” Patience and meekness is commanded to the ministers of Christ, even in the instructing of opposcrs, but to what end, but “that they may escape out of the snare of the devil, ulio are taken captive by him at his will?” So that, with all our meekness, we must be so plain with you as to make you know that you are Satan’s captives, taken alive by him in his snares, till God, by giving you repentance, shall recover you.

The very office of the preachers sent by Christ was “to open men’s eyes, and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive remission of sins, and inheritance v,’ith the sanctified by faith in Christ;” which telleth you, that we must let men understand, that till they are converted and sanctified, they are blind, and in the power of Satan, far from God; unpardoned, and having no part in the inheritance of saints.

Christ tells the Pharisees, that they were of their father the devil, when they boasted that God was their Father. And how plainly he tells them of their hypocrisy, and asked them how they escape the damnation of hell, you may see in Matt, xxiii.

Paul thought it his duty to tell Elymas, that he “was full of all subtlety and mischief, the child of the devil, and the enemy of all righteousness, a perverter of the right ways of the Lord.” And Peter thought meet to tell Simon Magus, that he had “neither part nor lot in that matter: that his heart was not right in the sight of God;” that he was in “the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity.”

The charge of Paul to Timothy is plain and urgent, “I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort.” And to Titus, “Rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.”

Judge now, whether ministers must deal plainly or deceitfully with you, and whether it be the searching, healing truth that they must bring you, or & smooth tale that hath no salt or savour in it. And would you have us break these laws of God, for nothing but to deceive you and tell you a lie, and make the ungodly believe that he is godly, or to hide the truth that is necessary to your salvation? Is the knowledge of yourselves so intolerable a thing to you?

Beloved, either it is true that you are yet unsanctified, or it is not. If it be not, it is none of our desire you should think so: but if it be true, tell me, why would you not know it? I hope it is not because you would not be tormented before the time. I hope you think not that we delight to vex men’s consciences with fear, or to see men live in grief and trouble, rather than in well-grounded peace and joy. And if indeed you are yet unregenerate, that is not severe in us that tell you of it, but of yourselves that wilfully continue it. Do we make you ungodly, by telling you of your ungodliness? Is it we that hinder the forgiveness of your sins, by letting you know that they are not forgiven? O no! we strive for your conversion, to this end that your sins may be forgiven; and you hinder the forgiveness of them, by refusing to be converted. When God forsaketh stubborn souls for resisting his grace, note how he expresseth his severity against them: “That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.” You see here, that till they are converted, men’s sins are not forgiven them; and that whoever procureth the forgiveness of their sins, must do it by procuring their conversion; and that the hindering of their conversion is the hindering of their forgiveness; and that blindness of mind is the great hinderance of conversion. And therefore, undoubtedly, the teacher that brings light into your minds, and first showeth you yourselves, and your unconverted, unpardoned state, is he that takes the way to your conversion and forgiveness: as the forecited text showeth you, “I send thee to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, (that they may first know themselves, and then know God in Jesus Christ,) and from the power of Satan (who ruled them as their prince, and captivated them as their gaoler) unto God, (whom they had forsaken as a guide and governor, and were deprived of as their protector, portion, and felicity,) that they may receive forgiveness of sins, (which none receive but the converted,) and an inheritance among them that are sanctified;” for glory is the inheritance of the saints alone; and all this “through faith that is in me,” (by believing in me, and giving up themselves unto me, that by my satisfaction, merits, teaching. Spirit, intercession, and judgment, it may be accomplished).

Truly, sirs, if we knew how to procure your conversion and forgiveness, without making you know that you are unconverted and unpardoned, we would do it, and not trouble you needlessly with so sad a discovery. Let that man be accounted unworthy to be a preacher of the gospel, that envieth you your K 45 peace and comfort. Wc would Tiot have you think one jot worse of your condition than it is. Know but the very truth, what case you are in, and we desire no more.

And so far are we, by this, from driving you to desperation, that it is your desperation that we would prevent by it; which can no other way be prevented. When you are past remedy, desperation cannot be avoided; and this is necessary to your remedy. There is a conditional despair, and an absolute despair. The former is necessary to prevent the latter, and to bring you to a state of hope. A man that hath a gangrened foot may despair of life, unless it be cut off; that so, by the cure, he may not be left to an absolute despair of life. So you must despair of being pardoned or saved without conversion, that you may be converted, and so have hope of your salvation, and be saved from final, absolute despair. I hope you will not be olFended with him, that would persuade you to despair of living, unless you will eat and drink. You have no more reason to be offended with him that would have you despair of being pardoned or saved without Christ, or without his sanctifying Spirit.

Having said so much of the necessity of ministers endeavouring to make unregenerate sinners know themselves, I shall next try what I can do towards it, with those that hear, by proposing these few (]uestions to your consideration: —

Qiicst. I. Do you think that you were ever unsanctified, and in a state of wrath and condemnation, or not? If not, then you are not the offspring of

Adam; you are not then of the human race: for the Scripture telleth you, that “we are conceived in sin;” and that “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned;” and that “by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation;” and that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us;” and “the wages of sin is death.”

And I hope you will confess, that you cannot be pardoned and saved without a Saviour; and therefore, as you need a Saviour, so you must have a special interest in him. It is as certain that Christ saveth not all, as that he saveth any; for the same word assureth us of the one and of the other.

(lues/, 2. But if you confess that once you were children of wrath, my next question is. Whether you know how, and when, you were delivered from so sad a state ^- or at least, whether it be done, or not? Perhaps you will say, it was done in your baptism, which washeth away original sin. But, granting you that all that have a promise of pardon before, have that promise sealed, and that pardon delivered them by baptism, I ask.

Quest. 3. Do you think that baptism by water alone will save, unless you be also baptized by the Spirit? Christ telleth you the contrary, with a vehement asseveration: “Verily, verily, 1 say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” And Peter tells you, that it is “not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good K 2 conscience towards God.” “If therefore you have not the Spirit of Christ,” for all your baptism, “you are none of his;” for “that which is born of the flesh is (but) flesh,” and you must be born of the Spirit if you will be spiritual.

I shall further grant you, that many receive the Spirit of Christ even in their infancy, and may be savingly, as well as sacramentally, then regenerate. And if this be your case, you have a very great cause to be thankful for it. But I next inquire of you,

Quest, 4. Have you not lived an unholy, carnal life, since you came to the use of reason? Have you not since then declared, that you did not live the life of faith, nor walk after the Spirit, but after the flesh? If so, then it is certain that you have need of a conversion from that ungodly state, whatever baptism did for you; and therefore you are still to inquire, whether you have been converted since you came to age.

And I must needs remind you, that your infant covenant made in baptism, being upon your parents’ faith and consent, and not your own, will serve your turn no longer than your infancy, unless when you come. to the use of reason, you renew and own that covenant yourselves, and have a personal faith and repentance of your own. And whatever you received in baptism, this must be our next inquiry.

Quest. 5. Did you ever, since you came to age, upon sound repentance, and renunciation of the flesh, the world, and the devil, give up yourselves unfeignedly, by faith, to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and show, by the performance of this holy covenant, that you were sincere in the making of it? I confess it is a matter so hard to most, to assign the time and manner of their conversion, that I think it no safe way of trial. And therefore I will issue all in this one question:

Quest. 6. Have you the necessary parts of the new creature now; though perhaps you know not just when, or how it was formed in you? The question is, whether you are now in a state of sanctification? And not, whether you can tell just when you did receive it? It beginnelh so early with some, and so obscurely with others, and in others the preparations are so long or notable, that it is hard to say when special grace came in. But you may well discern whether it be there or not. And that is the question that must be resolved, if you would know yourselves.

And, though I have been long in these exhortations, to incline your wills, I shall be short in giving you those evidences of the holy life, which must be before your eyes while you are upon the trial. In sum, if your very hearts do now unfeignedly consent to the covenant which you made in baptism, and your lives express it to be a true consent, I dare say you are regenerate, though you know not just when you first consented. Come on, then, and let us inquire what you say to the several parts of your baptismal covenant.

1. If you are sincere in the covenant you have made with Christ, you do resolvedly consent, that God shall be your only God, as reconciled to you by Jesus Christ. Which is, 1. That you will take him for your Owner, or your absolute Lord, and give up yourselves to him as his own. 2. That you will take him for your supreme Governor, and consent to be subject to his government and laws, taking his wisdom for your guide, and his will for the rule of your wills and lives. 3. That you will take him for your chiefest Benefactor, from whom you receive and expect all your happiness, and to whom you owe yourselves and all, by way of thankfulness; and that you take his love and favour for your happiness itself, and prefer the everlasting enjoyment of his glorious sight and love in heaven, before all the sensual pleasures of the world. I would prove the necessity of all these by Scripture as we go, but that it is evident in itself; these three relations being essential to God, as our God in covenant. He is not our God, if not our Owner, Ruler, and Benefactor. You profess all this, when you profess but to love God, or to take him for your God.

2. In the covenant of baptism you do profess to believe in Christ, and take him for your only Saviour. If you do this in sfncerity, 1. You do unfeignedly believe the doctrines of his Gospel, the articles of the Christian faith, concerning his person, his offices, and his sufferings and works. 2. You do take him unfeignedly for the only Redeemer and Saviour of mankind, and give up yourselves to be saved by his merits, righteousness, intercession, &c. as he hath promised in his word. 3. You trust upon him and his promises, for the attainment of your reconciliation and peace with God, your justification, adoption, sanctification, and the glory of the life to come. 4. You take him for your Lord and King, your Owner and Ruler, by the right of redemption; and your grand Benefactor, that hath obliged you to love and gratitude, by saving you from the wrath to come, and purchasing eternal glory for you by his most wonderful condescension, life, and sufferings.

3. In the baptismal covenant, you are engaged to the Holy Ghost. If you are sincere in this branch of your covenant, I. Vou discern your sins as odious and dangerous, as the corruption of your souls, and that which displeaseth the most holy God. 2. You see an excellency in holiness of heart and life, as the image of God, the rectitude of man, and that which fits him for eternal blessedness, and maketh him amiable in the eyes of God. 3. You unfeignedly desire to be rid of your sin, how dear soever it hath been to you, and to be perfectly sanctified by the Holy Spirit, in the use of the means which lie hath appointed; and you consent that the Holy Ghost, as your Sanctifier, do purify you, and kindle the love of God in you, and bring it to perfection.

4. In baptism, you profess to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil; that is, as they stand for your hearts against the will and love of God, and against the happiness of the unseen world, and against your faith in Christ your Saviour, and against the sanctifying work of the Holy Ghost. If therefore you are sincere in this part of your covenant, you do, upon deliberation, perceive all the pleasures, profits, and honours of this world, to be so vain and worthless, that you are habitually resolved to prefer the love and favour of God, and your salvation, before them; and to be ruled by Jesus Christ, and his Spirit and word, rather than by the desires of the flesh, or the world’s allurements, or the will of man, or the suggestions of the devil; and to forsake all rather than forsake the Father, the Saviour, the Sanctifier, to whom yon are devoted, and the everlasting life, which, upon his promise, you have taken for your hope and portion. This is the sense of baptism, and all this in profession being essential to your baptism, must be essential to your Christianity. Your parents’ profession of it was necessary to your infant title to the outward privileges of the church. Your own personal profession is necessary to your continuance of those privileges, and your visible Christianity and communion with the adult. And the truth of what you profess, is necessary to your real Christianity before God, and to your title to salvation; and this is what is to be now inquired after. You cannot hope to be admitted into heaven upon lower terms than the sincerity of that profession which entereth you into the church; while we tell you of no higher matters necessary to your salvation, than the sincerity of that which is necessary to baptism and Christianity. I hope you will not say we d(?al too strictly with you. Inquire now, by a diligent trial of your hearts, whether you truly consent to all these articles of your baptismal vow or covenant. If you do, you are regenerate by the Spirit: if you do not, you have but the sacrament of regeneration; which aggravateth your guilt, as a violated profession and covenant must needs do. And I do not think, that any man worthy to be discoursed with, will have the face to tell you, that any man, at the use of reason, is, by his baptism, or any thing else, in a state of justification and salvation, whose heart doth not sincerely consent to the covenant of baptism, and whose life expresseth not that consent.

Hence, therefore, you may perceive that it is a thing unquestionable, that all these persons are yet unregenerate, and in the bond of their iniquity.

1. All those that have not unfeignedly devoted themselves to God, as being not their own, but his. His by the title of creation: “Know ye that the Lord he is God; it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves: we arc his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” And his by the title of redemption: for “we are bought with a price.” And he that unfeignedly taketh God for his Owner, and absolute Lord, will heartily give up himself unto him; as Paul saith of the Corinthians, “They first gave up their own selves to the Lord, and to us by the will of God.”

And he that entirely giveth up himself to God, doth, with himself, surrender all that he hath in desire and resolution. As Christ, with himself, doth “give us all things,” and “addeth other things to them that seek first his kinrfdom and its riijhteousness,” so Christians, with themselves, do give up all they have to Christ.

And he that giveth up himself to God, will live to God: and he that taketh not himself to be his own, will take nothing for his own; but will study the interest of his Lord, and think he is best disposed of, when he honoureth him most, and serveth him best. “Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

If any of you devote not yourselves unfeignedly K 3 to God, and make it not your first inquiry, what God would have you be and do, but live to yourselves, and yet think yourselves in a state of grace, you are mistaken, and do not know yourselves. How many might easily see their miserable condition in this discovery, who say in effect, “Our lips are our own: who is Lord over us!” and rather hate and oppose the interest of God and holiness in the world, than devote themselves to the promoting of it! “Do ye thus requite the Lord, ye foolish people and unwise? Is not he thy Father that hath bought thee? Hath he not made thee, and established thee?”

2. All those are unregenerate, and in a state of death, that are not sincerely subjected to the governing will of God, but are ruled by their carnal interest and desires; and the word of a man that can gratify or hurt them, can do more with them than the word of God. To show them the command of a man that they think can undo them if they disobey, doth more prevail with them, than to show them the command of God, that can condemn them to endless misery. They more fear men, that can kill the body, than God, that can destroy both soul and body in hell-fire. When the lust of the flesh, and the will of man, do bear more sway than the will of God, it is certain that such a soul is unregenerate. “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life — Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed; that henceforth we should not serve sin. — Know ye not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” “Forasmuch, then, as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind; for he that hath sulFered in the flesh hath ceased from sin: that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.”

3. All those are unregenerate, that depend not upon God as their chief benefactor; and do not most carefully apply themselves to him, as knowing that “in his favour is life,” and that “his loving-kindness is better than life,” and that to his judgment we must finally stand or fall: but do ambitiously seek the favour of men, and call them their benefactors, whatever become of the favour of God. He is no child of God, that preferreth not the love of God before the love of all the world. He is no heir of heaven, that preferreth not the fruition of God in heaven, before all worldly glory and felicity. “If ye be risen with Christ, seek the tilings that are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.” The love of God is the sum of holiness; the heart of the new creature; the perfecting of it is the perfection and felicity of man.

4. They are certainly unregenerate, that believe not the Gospel, and take not Christ for their only Saviour, and his promises of grace and glory, as purchased by his sacrifice and merits, for the foundation of their hopes, on which they resolve to trust their souls for pardon and peace with God, and endless happiness. “Neilher is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” “This is the record, that God has given us eternal life; and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son, hath life; and he that hath not the Sou, hath not life.”

V hen our happiness was in Adam’s hands, he lost it: it is now put into safer hands, and Jesus Ch rist, the second Adam, is become our treasury. He is the head of the body, from whom each member hath quickening influence. The life of saints is in him, as the life of the tree is in the root, unseen. Holiness is a living unto God in Christ; though we are dead with Christ, to the law, and to the world, and to the flesh, we are alive to God. So Paul describeth our case in his own, “I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” “Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “Christ is the vine, and we are the branches; without him we can do nothing. If you abide not in him, and his words in you, you are cast forth as a branch, and withered, which men gather and cast into the fire, and they are burned.” In baptism you are married unto

Christ, as to the external solemnization; and in spiritual regeneration, your hearts do inwardly close with him, entertain him, and resign themselves unto him by faith and love; and by a resolved covenant become his own.

3. That person is certainly unregcnerate, that never was convinced of a necessity of sanctification, or never perceived an excellency and amiableness in holiness of heart and life, and loved it in others, and desired it himself; and never gave up himself to the Holy Ghost, to be further sanctified in the use of his appointed means; desiring to be perfect, and willing to press forward towards the mark, and to abound in grace. Much less is that person renewed by the Holy Ghost, that hateth holiness, and had rather be without it, and would not walk in the fear and obedience of the Lord.

The spirit of holiness is that life by which Christ quickeneth all that are his members. He is no member of Christ that is without it. “According to his mercy, he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewhig of the Holy Ghost.”

6. That person is unregenerate, that is under the dominion of his fleshly desires, “and mindeth the things of the flesh above the things of the Spirit,” and hath not mortified it so far, as not to live according to it. A carnal mind, and a carnal life, are opposite to holiness, as sickness is to health, and darkness to light.” There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. — For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the

Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. — For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if by the Spirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts.”

7. Lastly, That person is certainly unregenerate, that so far valueth and loveth the world, or any of the carnal accommodations thereifi, as practically to prefer them before the love of God, and the hopes of everlasting glory: seeking it first with highest estimation, and holding it fastest; so as that he will rather venture his soul upon the threatened wrath of God, than his body upon the wrath of man; and will be religious, no further than m”.y consist with his prosperity or safety in the world, and hath something that he cannot part with for Christ and heaven, because it is dearer to him than they. Let this man go ever so far in religion, as long as he goeth further for the world, and setteth it nearest to his heart, and will do most for it, and, consequently, loveth it better than Christ, he is no true Christian, nor in a state of grace.

The Scriptures put this also out of doubt, as you may see, Matt. x. 37, 38. Luke xiv. 25, 27, 33. “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me, &c. Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. Whosoever ho be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” — “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God.” No wonder, then, if the world must be renounced in our baptism. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

You see, by this time, what it is to be regenerate, and to he a Christian indeed, by what is contained even in our baptism: and, consequently, how you may know yourselves, whether you are sanctified, and the heirs of heaven, or not.

Again, therefore, I summon you to appear before your consciences. And if indeed these evidences of regeneration are not in you, stop not the sentence, but confess your sinful, miserable state, and condemn yourselves; and say no longer, I hope yet that my present condition may serve the turn, and that God will forgive me, though I should die without any further change. Those hopes, that you may be saved without regeneration, or that you are regenerate when you are not, are the pillars of Satan’s fortress in your hearts, and keep you from the saving hopes of the regenerate, that will never make you ashamed.

Uphold not that which Christ is eiifraged against: down it must, either by grace or judgment: and, therefore, abuse not your souls, by under-propping such an ill-grounded, false, deceitful hope. You have now time to take it down so orderly and safely, as that it fall not on your Iieads, and overwhelm you not for ever. But if you stay till death shall undermine it, the fall will be great, and your ruin irreparable. If you are wise, therefore, know yourselves in time.