Imatges de pàgina
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drunk no more; but avoid the place and occasion of it. Cast away your lusts and sinful pleasures with detestation. Curse and swear and rail no more: and if you have wronged any, restore as Zaccheus did. If you will commit again your old sins, what blessing can you expect on the means for conversion?

VI. Presently, if possible, change your company.Not by forsaking your necessary relations, but your unnecessary sinful companions; and join yourselves with those that fear the Lord.

VII. Deliver up yourselves to the Lord Jesus as the Physician of your souls, that he may pardon you by his blood, and sanctify you by his Spirit; by his word and ministers, the instruments of his Spirit. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; there is no coming to the Father but by him.(0) Nor is there any other name under heaven by which you can be saved.(p) Study therefore his person and nature, and what he has done and suffered for you, and what he is to you; and what he will be; and how he is fitted to the full supply of all your necessities.

VIII. If you mean indeed to turn and live, do it without delay. If you be not willing to turn to-day, you are not willing to do it at all. Remember, you are all this while in your blood; under the guilt of many thousand sins, and under God's wrath, and you stand at the very brink of hell; there is but a step between you and death. And this is not a case for a man to be quiet in. Up therefore presently, and fly for your lives; as you would be gone out of your house, if it were all on fire over your head. O, if you did but know what danger you live in, and what daily unspeakable loss you do sustain, and what a safer and sweeter life you might live, you would not stand trifling, but presently turn. Multitudes miscarry who wilfully delay, when they are convinced that it must be done. Your lives are short and uncertain; and what a case are you in, if you die before you thoroughly turn? You have staid too long already, and (0) John xiv. 6.

(p) Acts iv. 12.

wronged God too long; sin gets strength and rooting while you delay. Your conversion will grow more hard and doubtful. You have much to do, and therefore put not all off to the last, lest God forsake you, and give you up to yourselves, and then you are undone for ever.

IX. If you will turn and live, do it unreservedly, absolutely, and universally. Think not to capitulate with Christ, and divide your heart betwixt him and the world; and to part with some sins, and keep the rest. 1s is but self-deluding: you must forsake all you have, or else you cannot be his disciples.(q) If you will not take God and heaven for your portion, and lay all below at the feet of Christ, but must needs also have your good things here, and have an earthly portion, and God and glory is not enough for you,—it is in vain to dream of salvation on these terms; for it will not be. If you seem ever so religious, if yet it be but outside righteousness, this is as certain a way to death, as open profaneness, though it be plausible.

X. If you will turn and live, do it resolvedly, and stand not still deliberating, as if it were a doubtful case. Stand not wavering, as if you were yet uncertain whether God or the flesh be the better master; or whether heaven or hell be the better end; or whether sin or holiness be the better way. But away with your former lusts, and presently, habitually, fixedly resolve: be not one day of one mind, and the next of another; but be at a point with all the world, and resolvedly give up yourselves and all you have to God. Now, while you are hearing or reading this, resolve. Before you sleep another night, resolve. Before you stir from the place, resolve. Before Satan have time to take you off, resolve. You never turn indeed till you do resolve; and that with a firm and unchangeable resolution.

And now I have done my part in this work, that you may turn at the call of God, and live. What will become of it, I cannot tell. I have cast the seed at God's command, but it is not in my power to give the (q) Luke xiv. 26, 33.

increase. I can go no farther with my message; I cannot bring it to your heart, or make it work; l'cannot do your parts for you, to entertain it. I cannot do God's part, by opening your heart to cause you to entertain it: nor can I show you heaven or hell to your eye-sight, nor give you new and tender hearts.

But, O thou that art the gracious Father of spirits, thou hast sworn thou delightest not in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn and live; deny not thy blessing to these persuasions and directions, and suffer not thine enemies to triumph in thy sight, and the great deceiver of souls to prevail against thy Son, thy Spirit, and thy Word. O pity poor, unconverted sinners, that have no hearts to pity or help themselves: command the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the dead to live, and let not sin and death be able to resist thee. Awake the secure, resolve the unresolved, confirm the wavering: and let the eyes of sinners that read these lines, be next employed in weeping ever their sins; and bring them to themselves, and to thy Son, before their sins have brought them to perdition. If thou say but the word, these poor endeavours shall prosper, to the winning of many a soul to their everlasting joy, and thine everlasting glory. Amen.

DIRECTIONS TO SINNERS,

That are purposed to turn, and are under the work of Conversion, that it miscarry not.

THE first and greatest matter in the seeking after the salvation of our souls, is to be sure that we lay the foundation well, and that the work of conver sion be thoroughly wrought. To this end I have already used many persuasions with the unconverted to return, thinking all other directions vain, till we have persuaded men to a consent and willingness to practise them. And in the end of that discourse, I added a few directions for the use of such as are willing to be conyerted. But because I know that this is a matter of exceeding consequence, I dare not thus leave it, before I have added some further directions, to prevent the miscarrying of this work where it is begun. And lest I should lose my labour, through the unpreparedness of the reader, I shall give you first some preparing considerations, which may awaken you to the practice of the directions which I shall give you.

Consider first, That half-conversions are the undoing of many thousand souls. If you are but like Agrippa,(r) almost persuaded to be Christians, you will be but almost saved. Many a thousand that are now past help, have had the word come near them and cast them into a fear, and made some stir and trouble in their souls, awakening their consciences, and forcing them to some good purposes and promises; yea, and bringing them to the performance of a half-reformation: but this is not it that will serve your turn. Many have been so much changed, as not to be far from the kingdom of God, and yet came short of it.(s) There (s) Mark xii. 34.

(r) Acts xxvi. 28.

is no promise in scripture that you shall be pardoned, if you almost repent and believe; or be saved, if you be almost sanctified and obedient: but, on the contrary, the Lord hath plainly resolved, that you must turn or die, though you almost turn; and repent or perish, though you almost repent; and that you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven, without conversion and a new birth, though you come ever so near it. God hath resolved upon the terms of your salvation; and it is in vain to hope for salvation upon any other terms. God will not change nor come down to your terms. It is you that must change and come quite over to his terms, or you are lost for ever. If you come ever so near them, you are but lost men if you come not up to them. The Lord well knew what he did, when he made his covenant and law, and he imposed nothing on the sons of men but what his infinite wisdom told him it was fit for him to impose; and he will not now compound with sinners, and take less than he requireth; that is, less than the pre-eminency in their hearts; nor will he ever come down to any lower terms with you, than those which he propounded to you in his gospel. And therefore, poor sinners, as you love your souls, do not stand dodging and halving with God; but give up yourselves entirely to him; and do not stop at the beginning of conversion, but go through with it, till you are become new creatures indeed; or you are undone when you have done all. A half unsound convert will as certainly perish as a drunkard or a whoremonger; though his torment may not be so great.

2. Consider also, That if you do not go through with the work when you are upon it, you may perhaps make it more difficult than it was before ever you meddled with it, and make it a very doubtful case whether ever it will be done. As it is with a wound or other sore; if you tamper with it with salves that are not agreeable to it, or are disorderly applied, or you skin it over before it be searched to the bottom, it must be opened again, and will cost you double pain before it be cured. Or, as I have seen it with

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