It may be you are ready to say, What meaneth this stir? and are apt to wonder why I follow you with such earnestness, still ringing the same lesson in your ears, that ‘ you should repent, and be converted.” But I must say to you, as Ruth to Naomi, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee.” Were it a matter of indifference—might you be saved as you are—I would gladly let you alone; but would you not have me. solicitous for you, when I see you ready to perish? As the Lord liveth, before whom I am, I have not the least hope to see one of your faces in heaven, except you be converted. I utterly despair of your salvation, except you will be prevailed with to turn thoroughly, and give up yourself to God in holiness and newness of life. Hath God said, ‘” Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God,” John 3: 3; and yet do you wonder why your ministers so earnestly labor for you? Thinkit not strange that I am earnest with you to follow after holiness, and long to see the image of God upon you. Never did any, nor shall any, enter into heaven by any other way but this. The conversion described is nota high attainment of some advanced Christians, but every soul that is saved passeth this change.
It was a saying of the noble Roman, when he was hasting with corn to the city in the famine, and the mariners were loath to set sail in foul weather, “It is necessary for us to sail—it is not necessary for us to live.” What is it that thou dost count necessary? Is thy bread necessary? Is thy breath necessary? Then thy conversion is much more necessary. Indeed, this is the one thing necessary. Thine estate is not necessary; thou mayest sell all for the pearl of great price, and yet be a gainer by the purchase. Thy life is not necessary; thou mayest part with it for Christ, to infinite advantage. Thy reputation is not necessary; thou mayest be reproached for the name of Christ, and yet be happy; yea, much more happy in reproach than in repute. But thy conversion is necessary; thy salvation depends upon it; and is it not needful, in so important a case, to look about thee? On this one point depends thy making or marring to all eternity.
But I shall more particularly show the necessity of conversion in five things; for without this,
I. Tey BEING is in vain. Is it not a pity thou shouldst be good for nothing, an unprofitable burden of the earth, a wart or wen in the body of the universe? Thus thou art, whilst unconverted; for thou canst not answer the end of thy being. Is it not for the divine pleasure that thou art and wast created? Did not God make thee for himself? Art thou a man, and hast thou reason? Then, bethink thyself why and whence thy being is. Behold God’s workmanship in thy body, and ask thyself, to what end did God rear this fabric? Consider the noble faculties of thy heaven-born soul, To what end did God bestow these excellencies? Was it to no other end than that thou shouldst please thyself, and gratify thy Senses? Did God send men into the world, only like the swallows, to gather a few sticks and mud, and build their nests, and rear up their young, and then away? The very heathen could sce farther than this. Art thou so “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and dost thou not yet think with thyselfsurely, it was for some noble and exalted end?
O man! set thy reason a little in its seat. Is it not a pity such a goodly fabric should be raised in vain? Verily thou art in vain, except thou art for God: better thou hadst no being, than not be for him. Wouldst thou serve thy end? thou must repent and be converted: without this thou art to no purpose; yea, to bad purpose.
Thou art fo no purpose. Man, unconverted, is like a choice instrument that hath every string broken or out of tune. The Spirit of the living God must repair and tune it by the grace of regeneration, and sweetly move it by the power of actuating grace, or else thy prayers will be but howlings, and all thy services will make no music in the ears of the Most Holy. All thy powers and faculties are so corrupt in thy natural state, that, except thou be purged from dead works, thou canst not serve the living God. An unsanctified man cannot work the work of God.
1. He hath no skill in it; he is altogether as unskilful in the work as in the word of righteousness. There are great mysteries in the practice as well as in the principles of godliness. Now the unregenerate know not the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.” You may as well expect him that never learned the alphabet to read, or look for goodly music on the lute from one that never set his hand to an Instrument, as that a natural man should do the Lord any pleasing service. He must first be taught of God, taught to pray, taught to profit, taught to go, or else he will be utterly at a loss.
2. He hath no strength for it. How weak is his heart! he is presently tired. The Sabbath, what a weariness is it! He is without strength, yea, dead in sin.
3. He hath no mind to it; he desires not the knowledge of God’s ways; he doth not know them, and he doth not care to know them; he knows not, neither will he understand.
4. He hath neither due instruments nor materials for it. A man may as well hew the marble without tools, or paint without colors or instruments, or build without materials, as perform any acceptable service without the graces of the Spirit, which are both the materials and instruments in the work. Almsgiving is not a service of God, but of vain-glory, if it spring not from divine love. What is the prayer of the lips without grace in the heart, but the carcass without the life? What are all our confessions, unless they be exercises of godly sorrow and unfeigned repentance? What our petitions, unless animated with holy desires and faith in the divine attributes and promises? What our praises and thanksgivings, unless from the love of God, and a holy gratitude and, sense of God’s mercies in the heart? So that a man may as well expect that trees should speak, or look for motion from the dead, as look for any service, holy and acceptable to God, from the unconverted. When the tree is evil, how can the fruit be good?
Also, without conversion you live to bad purpose. The unconverted soul is a very cage of unclean birds, a sepulchre full of corruption and rottenness. O dreadful case! Dost thou not yet see a change to be needful? Would it not have grieved one to see the golden consecrated vessels of God’s temple turned into quaffing bowls of drunkenness, and polluted with the idol’s service? Was it such an abomination to the Jews, when Antiochus set up the picture of a swine at the entrance of the temple? How much more abominable, then, would it have been to have had the very temple itself turned into a stable or a sty; and to have had the holy of holies” served like the house of Baal! This is the very case of the unregenerate: all thy members are turned into instruments of unrighteousness, servants of Satan; and thy inmost heart into a receptacle of uncleanness. You may see what kind of guests are within, by what comes out; for, “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies,” etc. This black troop discovers what a hell there is within. -
O abuse insufferable! to see a heaven-born soul abased to such vileness; to see the glory of God’s creation, the chief of the works of God, the lord of this lower world, eating husks with the prodigal! Was it such a lamentation to see those that did feed delicately sit desolate in the streets; and the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, esteemed as earthen pitchers; and those that were clothed in scarlet embrace dunghills? Lam. 4: 2, 5. And is it not much more fearful to see the only being that hath immortality in this lower world, and carries the stamp of God, become as a vessel wherein is no pleasure, and be put to the most sordid use? O indignity intolerable! Better thou wert dashed in a thousand pieces, than continue to be abased to so vile a service.
II. Not only man, but THE WHOLE VISIBLE CREA-TION, is in vain without this. God hath made all the visible creatures in heaven and earth for the service of man, and man only is the spokesman for all the rest. Man is, in the world, like the tongue to the body, which speaks for all the members. The other creatures cannot praise their Maker, but by duntb signs and hints to man that he should speak for them. Man is, as it were, the high-priest of God’s creation, to offer the sacrifice of praise for all his fellow-creatures. The Lord God expecteth a tribute of praise from all his works. Now, all the rest do bring in their tribute to man, and pay it by his hand. So then, if a man be false, and faithless, and selfish, God is wronged of all, and has no active glory from his works.
O dreadful thought! that God should build such a world as this, and lay out such infinite power, and wisdom, and goodness thereupon, and all in vain; and that man should be guilty, at last, of robbing and spoiling him of the glory of all! O think of this. While thou art unconverted, all the offices of the creatures are in vain to thee; thy meat nourishes thee in vain; the sun holds forth his light to thee in vain; the stars that serve thee in their courses by their powerful, though hidden influence, do it in vain; thy clothes warm thee in vain; thy beast carries thee in vain; in a word, the unwearied labor and continued travail of the whole creation, as to thee, are in vain. The service of all the creatures that drudge for thee, and yield forth their strength ~ unto thee, that therewith thou shouldest serve their Maker, is all but lost labor. Hence, “the whole creation groaneth,” Rom. 8:22, under the abuse of men unsanctified, who pervert all things to the service of their lusts, quite contrary to the very end of their being.
III: Without this, Try RELIGION is vain; all thy religious performances will be but lost; for they can neither please God nor save thy soul, which are the very ends of religion. Be thy services ever so specious, yet God hath no pleasure in them. Is not that man’s case dreadful whose sacrifices are as murders, and whose prayers are a breath of abomination? Many, under convictions, think they will set upon mending, and that a few prayers and alms will set all right again; but alas, sirs, while your hearts remain unsanctified your duties will not pass. How punctual was Jehu! and yet all was rejected because his heart was not upright. How blameless was Paul! and yet, being unconverted, all was but loss. Men think they do much in attending God’s service, and are ready to set him down so much their debtor; whereas their persons being unsanctified, their duties cannot be accepted.
O soul! do not think, when thy sins pursue thee, that a little praying and reforming thy course will pacify God. Thou must begin with thine heart. If that be not renewed, thou canst no more please God than one who, having unspeakably offended thee, should bring thee the most loathsome thing to pacify thee; or having fallen into the mire, should think with his filthy embraces to reconcile thee.
It is a great misery to labor in the fire. The poets could not invent a worse hell for Sisyphus than to be ever toiling to get the stone up the hill, and then that it should presently roll down again and renew his labor. God threatens it as the greatest of temporal judgments, that they should build and not inhabit, plant and not gather, and that their labors should be eaten up by strangers. Is it so great a misery to lose our common labors, to sow in vain, and to build in vain? how much more to lose our pains in religion—to pray, and hear, and fast in vain! This isan undoing and eternal loss. Be not deceived; if thou goest on in thy sinful state, though thou shouldst spread forth thy hands, God will hide his eyes; though thou make many prayers, he will not hear. If a man without skill set about our work, and spoil it in the doing, though he take much pains, we give him but small thanks. God will be “worshipped after the due order. If a servant do our work, but quite contrary to our order, he shall have rather stripes than praise. God’s work must be done according to God’s mind, or he will not be pleased; and this cannot be, except it be done with a holy heart.
IV. Without true conversion, THY HOPES are in vain, “The hope of the hypocrite shall perish.” “The Lord bath rejected thy confidences.”
1. The hope of comfort here is vain. It is not only necessary to the safety, but comfort of your condition, that you be converted. Without this, you “shall not know peace.” Without the fear of God” you cannot have the “comfort of the Holy Ghost.”” God speaks peace only to his people and to his saints. If you have a false peace, continuing in your sins, it is not of God’s speaking, and then you may guess the author. Sin is a real sickness, yea, the worst of sickness; it is a leprosy in the head, the plague of the heart; it is rottenness in the bones; it pierceth, it woundeth, it racketh, it tormenteth. A man may as well expect ease when his diseases are in their full strength, or his bones out of joint, as true comfort while in his sins.
O wretched man, that canst have no ease in this case but what comes from the deadliness of the disease! You shall hear the poor sick man saying, in his wildness, he is well, when you see death in his face: he would be up and about his business, when the very next step is likely to be to his grave. The unsanctified often see nothing amiss; they think themselves whole, and cry not for the physician; but this only shows the danger of their case.
Sin doth naturally breed distempers and disturbances in the soul. What a continual tempest is there in a discontented mind; what a corroding evil is inordinate care! What is passion but a very fever in the mind; what is lust but a fire in the bones; what is pride but a deadly dropsy; or covetousness, but an insatiable and insufferable thirst; or malice and envy, but venom in the very heart? Spiritual sloth is but a scurvy in the mind, and carnal security a mortal lethargy; and how can that soul have true comfort which is under so many diseases? But converting grace cures, and so eases the mind, and prepares the soul for a settled, standing, immortal peace. “Great pedce have they that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them.” They are the ways of wisdom that afford pleasure and peace. David had infinitely more pleasure in the word than in all the delights of his court. The conscience cannot be truly pacified till soundly purified. Cursed is that peace which is maintained in a way of sin. Two sorts of peace are more to be dreaded than all the troubles in the world; peace with sin, and peace in sin. ‘
2. Thy hopes of salvation hereafter are in vain; yea, worse than in vain; they are most injurious to God, most pernicious to thyself. There is death, desperation, and blasphemy in this hope.
(1.) Thereis deathinit. Thy confidence shall berooted out of thy tabernacles, God will up with it root and branch; it shall bring thee to the king of terrors. Though thou mayest lean upon this house, it will not stand, but will prove like a ruinous building, which, when a man trusts to it, falls down about him. hii
(2.) There is desperation in it: Where is the hope of the hypocrite when God takes away his soul?” Then there is an end for ever of his hope. Indeed, the hope of the righteous hath an end; but it is not a destructive, but a perfective end; his hope ends in fruition, others in frustration. The godly may say at death, “It is finished;”’ but the wicked, “It is perished,” and in too sad earnest bemoan himself, as Job, in a mistake, “Where is now my hope? He hath destroyed me; I am gone, and my hope is removed like a tree.” The righteous hath hope in his death.” When nature is dying, his hopes are living; when his body is languishing, his hopes are flourishing; his hope is a living hope, but others’ a dying, yea, a damning, soul-undoing hope: “When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish; and the hope of unjust men perisheth.” It shall be cut off and. prove like a ““spider’s web,” which he spins out of his own bowels; but then comes death and destroys all, and so there is an eternal end of his confidence wherein he trusted; for “the eyes of the wicked shall fail, and their hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost.” Wicked men are fixed in their carnal hope, and will not be beaten out of it; they hold it fast; they will not let it go; but death will knock off their fingers. Though we cannot undeceive them, death and judgment will. When death strikes his dart through thy liver, it will ruin thy soul and thy hopes together. The unsanctified Alleine’s Alarm. 5
have hope only in this life, and therefore are of all men most miserable.” - When death comes, it lets them out into the amazing gulf of endless desperation.
(3.) There is blasphemy in it. To hope we shall be saved, though continuing unconverted, is to hope that we shall prove God a liar. He hath told you, that, merciful and pitiful as he is, he will never save you notwithstanding, if you ge on in ignorance, or a course of unrighteousness. In a word, he has told you that, whatever you be or do, nothing shall avail you to salvation unless you become new creatures Now, to say God is merciful, and we hope that he will save us, without conversion, is in effect to say, “We hope that God will not do as he says.” We must not set God’s attributes at variance; God has resolved to glorify his mercy, but not to the prejudice of his truth, as the presumptuous sinner will find to his everlasting sorrow.
Ossectron. But we hope in Jesus Christ; we put our whole trust in God; and therefore doubt not but we shall be saved.
Answer 1. This is not hope in Christ, but against Christ. To hope to see the kingdom of God without being born again; to hope to find eternal life in the broad way, is to hope Christ will prove a false prophet. David’s plea is, “I hope in thy word.” But this hope is against God’s word. Show me a word of Christ for thy hope that he will save thee in thine ignorance or profane neglect of his service, and I will never try to shake thy confidence.
2. God doth with abhorrence reject this hope. Those condemned in the prophet, went on in their sins; yet, saith the prophet, “will they lean upon the Lord.” Micah 8:11. God will not endure to be made a prop to men in their sins. The Lord rejected those presumptuous sinners that went on still in their trespasses and yet would stay themselves upon Israel’s God, as a man would shake off the briers that cleave to his garment.
3. If thy hope be any thing worth, it will purify thee from thy sins, 1 John, 3: 3; but cursed is that hope which cherishes men in their sins. Ossecrion. Would you have us despair?
Answer. You must despair of ever coming to heaven as you are, that is, while you remain unconverted. You must despair of ever seeing the face of God without holiness; but you must by mo means despair of finding mercy upon your thorough repentance and conversion; neither may you despair of attaining to repentance and conversion, in the use of God’s means..
v. 1. Without conversion, ALL THAT CHRIST HATH DONE AND SUFFERED will be, as to you, in vain; that is, it will no way avail you to salvation. Many urge this as a sufficient ground for their hope, that Christ died for sinners; but I must tell you, Christ never died to save impenitent and unconverted sinners, so continuing. A great divine was wont, in his private dealings with souls, to ask two questions: 1. What hath Christ done for you? 2. What hath Christ wrought in you? Without the application of the Spirit in regeneration, we have no saving interest in the benefits of redemption. I tell you from the Lord, that Christ himself cannot save you if you go on in this state.
1. It were against his trust. The Mediator is the servant of the Father, shows his commission from him, acts in his name, and pleads his command for his justification; and God has committed all things to him, intrusted his own glory and the salvation of the elect with him. Accordingly, Christ gives his Father an account of both parts of his trust before he leaves the world. Now Christ would quite cross his Father’s glory, tarnish his greatest trust, if he should save men in their sins; for this were to overturn all his counsels, and to offer violence to all his attributes.
(1.) To overturn all his counsels; of which this is the order, that men should be brought through sanctification to salvation. He hath chosen them, that they should be holy. They are elected to pardon and life through sanctification. If thou canst repeal the law of God’s immutable counsel, or corrupt him whom the Father hath sealed, to go directly against his commission, then, and not otherwise, mayst thou get to heaven in this condition.
To hope that Christ will save thee while unconverted, is to hope that Christ will falsify his trust. He never did, nor ever will save one soul but whom the Father hath given him in election, and drawn to him in effectual calling. Be assured, Christ will save none in a way contrary to his Father’s will.
(2.) To save men in their sins would offer violence to all the attributes of God.. To his justice; for the righteousness of God’s judgment lies in rendering to all according to their works. Now, should men sow to the flesh, and yet of the Spirit reap everlasting life, where were the. glory of divine justice, since it would be given to the wicked according to the work of the righteous?
To his holiness. If God should not only save sinners, but save them in their sins, his most pure and strict holiness would be exceedingly defaced. The unsanctified are, in the eyes of God’s holiness, exceedingly vile and hateful. It would be offering the extremest violence to the infinite purity of the divine nature to have such dwell with him. They cannot stand in his judgment: they cannot abide his presence.” If holy David would not endure such in his house, no, nor in his sight, can we think God will? Should he take men as they are, from the mire of their filthiness to the glory of heaven, the world would think that God was at no such great distance from sin, nor had any such dislike to it as we are told he hath; they would be ready to conclude that God was altogether such a one as themselves, as some of old wickedly did, from the very forbearance of God.
To his veracity. For God hath declared from, heaven, that “if any shall say he shall have peace, though he should go on in the imagination of his heart, his wrath shall smoke against that man;” that “they” only “that confess and forsake their sins shall find mercy;’ that they that shall enter into his hill must be of clean hands and a pure heart.” Deut. 29:19, 20; Prov. 28: 13; Psalms 24: 3,4. Where were God’s truth, if, notwithstanding all this, he should bring men to salvation without conversion? O desperate sinner, that darest to hope that Christ will make his Father a liar, and nullify his word to save thee!.
To his wisdom. For this were to throw away the choicest of mercies on them that would not value them, nor were any way suited. to them.
They would not value them. The unsanctified sinner puts but little price upon God’s great salvation. He sets no more by Christ than the whole by the physician. He prizes not his balm, values not his cure, but tramples upon his blood. Now, would it stand with wisdom to force pardon and life upon those that would return no thanks for them? Will the all-wise God, when he hath forbidden us to do it, throw his holy things to dogs, and his pearls to swine, that would, as it were, but turn again and rend him? This would make mercy to be despised indeed. Wisdom requires that life be given in a way suitable to God’s honor, and that God provide for the securing of his own glory as well as man’s felicity. It would be dishonorable to God to bestow his choicest riches on them that have more pleasure in their sins than in heavenly delights.” God would lose the praise and glory of his grace, if he should cast it away upon them that were not only unworthy, but unwilling:
Also, the mercies of God arc no way suited to the unconverted. The divine wisdom is seen in suiting things to each other, the means to the end, the object to the faculty, the quality of the gift to the capacity of the receiver. Now, if Christ should bring the unregenerated sinner to heaven, he could take no mare felicity there than a beast would, if you should bring him into a beautiful room, to the society of learned men; whereas the poor thing had.much. rather be grazing with his fellow-brutes. Alas, what could an unsanctified creature do in heaven? he could not be contented there, because nothing suits him. The place doth not suit him; he would be quite out of his element, a fish out of water. The company doth not suit him: what communion hath darkness with light; corruption with perfection; vileness and sin with glory and immortality? The employment doth not suit him; the anthems of heaven fit not his mouth, suit not his ear. Canst thou charm thy beast with music; or wilt thou bring him to thy organ and expect that he should make thee melody, or keep time with the tuneful choir? Had he skill, he would have no will, and so could find no pleasure in it. Spread thy table with delicacies before a languishing patient, and it will be but an offence. Alas, if the poor man say of a Sabbath-day, ‘” What a weariness is it!” how miserable would he think it to be engaged in an everlasting Sabbath!
To his immutability, or else to his omniscience or omnipotence; for this is enacted in heaven, and enrolled in the decree of the court above, that none but the pure in heart shall see God;” this is laid up with him, and sealed among his treasures. Now, if Christ bring any to heaven unconverted, either he must get them in without his Father’s knowledge, and then where is his omniscience? or against his will, and then where were his omnipotence? or he must change his will, and then where were his immutability?
Sinner, wilt thou not give up thy vain hope of being saved in this condition? Saith Bildad, Shall the earth be forsaken for thee; or the rocks be moved out of their place 2” May I not much more reason so with thee? Shall the laws of heaven be reversed for thee? Shall the everlasting foundations be overturned for thee? Shall Christ put out the eye of his Father’s omniscience, or shorten the arm of his eternal power for thee? Shall divine justice be violated for thee; or the brightness of his holiness be blemished for thee? O the impossibility, absurdity, blasphemy, of such a confidence! To think Christ will ever save thee in this condition, is to make the Saviour become a sinner, and do more wrong to the infinite Majesty than all the wicked on earth or devils in hell ever did, or ever could do’; and yet wilt thou not give up such a blasphemous hope?: 4
2. To save men in their sins were against the word of Christ. We need not say, Who shall ascend into heaven, to bring down Christ from above? Or, who shall descend into the deep, to bring up Christ from beneath? The word is nigh us.” Are you agreed that Christ shall end the controversy? Hear then his own words:. Except ye be converted, ye. shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of -heaven.” “You must be born again.” “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part in me.” Repent or perish.” One word, one would think, were enough from Christ; but how often and earnestly doth he reiterate it: “Verily, verily, except a man be born again, he shall not see the kingdom of God.” Yea, he doth not only assert but prove the necessity of the new birth, from the fleshliness and sinfulness of man from his first birth, by reason of which man is no more fit for heaven than the beast is for the chamber of the king. And wilt thou yet rest in thy own presumptuous confidence, directly against Christ’s words? He must go quite against the law of his kingdom, and rule of his judgment, to save thee in this state.
3. It would be against the oath of Christ. He hath lifted up his hand to heaven, he hath sworn that those who remain in unbelief and know not his ways—that is, are ignorant of them, or disobedient to them—shall not enter into his rest. And wilt thou not yet believe, O sinner, that he is in earnest? Canst thou hope he will be forsworn for thee? The covenant of grace is confirmed by an oath and sealed by blood; but all must be made void, and another way to heaven found out, if thou be saved, living and dying unsanctified. God is come to his last terms with man, and has condescended as far as in honor he could. Men cannot be saved while unconverted, except they could get another covenant made, and the whole frame of the Gospel, which was established for ever with such dreadful solemnities, quite altered. And must not thev be distracted, to hope that they shall?
‘4. It would be against-his konor. - God will so show his love to the sinner, as withal to show his hatred to sin; therefore, he that names the name of Jesus must “depart from iniquity and deny all ungodliness;”’ and he that hath hope of life by Christ must purify himself as he is pure,” otherwise Christ would be thought a favorer of sin. The
Lord Jesus would have all the world know, that though he pardons sin, he will not protect it. If. holy David say, Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity,” Psa. 6: 8, and shut the doors against them, Psa. 101: 7, shall not such more expect it from Christ’s holiness? v3. It would be against his offices. “God hath exalted him to be a Prince and a Saviour.” He would act against both, should he save men in their sins. It is the office of a king to be “a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to them that do well.” “He is a minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath on him that doeth evil.” Now, should Christ favor the ungodly, so continuing, and take those to reign with him that would not that he should reign over them, this would be quite against his office; he therefore reigns that he may put his enemies under his feet.” Now, should he lay them in his bosom, he would frustrate the end of his regal power; it belongs to Christ, as a King, to subdue the hearts and slay the lusts of his chosen. What king would take rebels in open hostility into his court? What were this but to betray life, kingdom, government, and all together? If Christ be a King, he must have honor, homage, subjection. Now, to save men while in their natural enmity, were to obscure his dignity, lose his authority, bring contempt on his government, and sell his dear-bought rights for naught. N
Again, as Christ would not be a Prince, so neither a Saviour, if he should do this; for his salvation is spiritual. - He is called Jesus, because he saves his people from their sins. Matt. 1: 21. So that, should he save them in their sins, he would be neither Lord nor Jesus. To save men from the punishment, and not from the power of sin, were to do his work by halves, and be an imperfect Saviour. His office as the Deliverer, is “to turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” ‘“He is sent to bless men, in turning them from their iniquities.” “To make an end of sin.” So that he would destroy his own designs, and nullify his offices, to save men abiding in their unconverted state.
Arise, then! What meanest thou, O sleeper? Awake, O secure sinner, lest thou be consumed in thine iniquities: say, as the lepers, “If we sit here, we shall die.” Verily, it is not more certain that thou art now out of hell, than that thou shalt “speedily be in it, except thou repent and be converted: there is but this one door for thee to escape by. Arise then, O sluggard, and shake off thine excuses: how long wilt thou slumber, and fold thy hands to sleep? Wilt thou lie down in the midst of the sea, or sleep on the top of a mast? There-is no remedy, but thou must either turn or burn. There is an unchangeable necessity of the change of thy condition, except thou hast resolved to abide the worst of it, and try it out with the Almighty. If thou lovest thy life, O man, arise and come away. Methinks I see the Lord Jesus laying the merciful hands of a holy violence upon thee; methinks he acts like the angels to Lot: Then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, lest thou be consumed. And, while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, the Lord being merciful unto him; and they brought him without the city, and said, Escape for thy life, stay not in all the plain; escape to the mountains, lest thou be consumed.” &
O how wilful will thy destruction be if thou shouldst yet harden thyself in thy sinful state! But none of you can say that you have not had fair warning. Yet methinks I cannot leave you so.” It is not enough for me to have delivered my own soul. What, shall I go away without my errand? Will none of you arise and follow me? Have I been all this while speaking to the wind; have I been charming the deaf adder, or allaying the restless ocean with argument? Do I speak to the trees and rocks, or to men; to the tombs and monuments of the dead, or to the living? If you be men, and not senseless stocks, stop and consider whither you are going; if you have the reason and understanding of men, dare not to run into the flames, and fall into hell with your eyes open; but bethink yourselves, and set to the work of repentance. What, men, and yet run into the pit, when the very beasts will _
not be forced in? What, endowed with reason, and yet trifle with death and hell, and the vengeance of the Almighty? Are men herein only distinguished from very brutes, that these, having no foresight, have no care to provide for the things to come; and will you, who are warned, not hasten your escape from eternal torments? O show yourselves men, and let reason prevail with you.
Is it a reasonable thing for you to contend against the Lord your Maker, or “to harden yourselves against his word,” Job 9: 4, as though the Strength of Israel would lie? Is it reasonable that an understanding creature should lose, yea, live quite against the very end of his being? Is it reasonable that the only being in this world that God hath made capable of knowing his will and bringing him glory, should yet live in ignorance of his Maker, and be unserviceable to his use, yea, should be engaged against him, and resist his Creator? “Hear, O heavens, and give ear,.O earth,” and let the creatures without sense judge if this be reason, that man, whom God hath “nourished and. brought up, should rebel against him?” Judge in your own selves. Is it a reasonable undertaking for briers and thorns to set themselves in battle against the devouring fire; or for the potsherd of the earth to strive with its Maker? You will say, This is not reason;” or surely the eye of reason is quite put out. And, if this be not reason, then there is no reason that you should continue as you are, but there is all the reason in the world that you should forthwith turn and repent.
What shall I say? I could spend myself in this argument. O that you would but hearken to me; that you would now set upon a new course! Will you not be made clean? When shall it once be? Reader, wilt thou sit down and consider the forementioned argument, and debate it, whether it be not best toturn? Come, and let us reason together: Is it good for thee to be here? Wilt thou sit till the tide come in upon thee?. Is it good for thee to try whether God will be as good as his word, and to harden thyself in a conceit that all is well with thee while thou remainest unsanctified?
Alas, for such sinners! must they perish at last by hundreds? What course shall I use with them that I have not tried? What shall I do for the daughter of my people 2” O Lord God, help. Alas, shall I leave them thus? If they will not hear me, yet do thou hear me. O that they may yet live in thy sight! Lord, save them, or they perish. My heart would melt to see their houses on fire when they were fast asleep in. their beds; and shall not my soul be moved within me to see them falling into endless perdition? Lord, have compassion, and save them out of the burning: put forth thy divine power, and the work will be done.
CHAPTER IV.