The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul

   * PREFACE
        o THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF RELIGION IN THE SOUL.
             + CHAPTER I.
             + CHAPTER II.
             + CHAPTER III.
             + CHAPTER IV.
             + CHAPTER V.
             + CHAPTER VI.
             + CHAPTER VII.
             + CHAPTER VIII.
             + CHAPTER IX.
             + CHAPTER X.
             + CHAPTER XI.
             + CHAPTER XII.
             + CHAPTER XIII.
             + CHAPTER XIV.
             + CHAPTER XV.
             + CHAPTER XVI.
             + CHAPTER XVII.
             + CHAPTER XVIII.
             + CHAPTER XIX.
             + CHAPTER XX.
             + CHAPTER XXI.
             + CHAPTER XXII.
             + CHAPTER XXIII.
             + CHAPTER XXIV.
             + CHAPTER XXV.
             + CHAPTER XXVI.
             + CHAPTER XXVII.
             + CHAPTER XXVIII.
             + CHAPTER XXIX.
             + CHAPTER XXX.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

This electronic text is in the public domain.

                                     THE

                             RISE AND PROGRESS

                                     of

                            RELIGION IN THE SOUL

                         ILLUSTRATED IN A COURSE OF

                      SERIOUS AND PRACTICAL ADDRESSES

                              SUITED TO PERSONS

                    Of every Character and Circumstance:

                                   WITH A

                        DEVOUT MEDITATION, OR PRAYER,

                          SUBJOINED TO EACH CHAPTER

                         by PHILIP DODDRIDGE, D. D.

                                PUBLISHED BY

                        THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY,

                         150 NASSAU STREET NEW-YORK.

                            D. Faushaw, Printer.

                                   PREFACE

THE several hints given in the first chapter of this Treatise, which
contains a particular plan of the design, render it unnecessary to introduce
it with a long preface. My much honored friend, Dr. WATTS, had laid the
scheme, especially of the former part. But as those indispositions with
which God has been pleased to exercise him had forbid his hopes of being
able. to add this to his many labors of love to immortal soul; he was
pleased, in a very affectionate and importunate manner, to urge me to
undertake it: And I bless God with my whole heart, not only that he hath
carried me through this delightful task, (for such indeed I have found it)
but also that he hath spared that worthy and amiable person to see it
accomplished, and given him strength and spirit to review so considerable a
part of it. His approbation, expressed in stronger terms than modesty will
permit me to repeat, encourages me to hope that it is executed in such a
manner as may, by the Divine blessing, render it of some general service.
And I the rather hope it will be so, as it now comes abroad into the world,
not only with my own prayers and his, but also with those of many other
pious friends, which I have been particularly careful to engage for its
success.
     Into whatever hands this work may come; I must desire that, before any
pass their judgment upon it, they would please to read it through, that they
may discern the connexion between one part of it and another; which I the
rather request, because I have long observed that Christians of different
parties have been eagerly laying hold on particular parts of the system of
Divine truth, and have been contending about them, as if each had been all;
or as if the separation of the members from each other, and from the head,
were the preservation of the body, instead of its destruction. They have
been zealous to espouse the defence, and to maintain the honor and
usefulness of each apart whereas the honor, as well as the usefulness seems
to me to lie much in their connection, and suspicions have often arisen
betwixt the respective defenders of each, which have appeared as
unreasonable and absurd as if all the preparations for securing one part of
a ship in a storm were to be censured as a contrivance to sink the rest. I
pray God to give to all his ministers and people more and more of the spirit
of wisdom, and of love, and of a sound mind and to remove far from us those
mutual jealousies and animosities which hinder our acting with that
unanimity which is necessary in order to the successful carrying on of our
common warfare against the enemies of Christianity. We may be sure these
enemies will never fail to make their own advantage of our multiplied
divisions and severe contests with each other. But they must necessarily
lose both their ground and their influence, in proportion to the degree in
which the energy of Christian principles is felt to unite and transform the
heart of those by whom they are professed.
     I have studied in this Treatise the greatest plainness of speech, that
the lowest of my readers may, if possible, be able to uinderstand every
word; and I hope persons of a more elegant taste and refined education will
pardon what appeared to me so necessary a piece of charity. Such a care in
practical writings seems one important instance of that honoring all men,
which our amiable and condescending religion teaches us; and I have been
particularly obliged to my worthy patron for what he hath done to shortcn
some of the sentences, and to put my meaning into plainer and more familiar
words.
     I must add one remark here, which I heartily wish I had not omitted in
the first edition, viz. That though I do in this book consider my reader as
successively in a great variety of supposed circumstances, beginning with
those of a thoughtless sinner, and leading thim through several stages of
conviction, terror, &c. as what may be previous to his sincerely accepting
the Gospel, and devoting himself to the service of God; yet I would by no
means be thought to insinuate, that every one who is brought to that happy
resolution, arrives at it through those particular steps, or feels
agitations of mind equal in degree to those I have described. Some sense of
sin, and some serious and humbling apprehension of our danger and misery in
consequence of it, must indeed be necessary to dispose us to receive the
grace of the Gospel, and the Saviour who is there exhibited to our faith.
But God is pleased sometimes to begin the work of his grace in the heart
almost from the first dawning of reason, and to carry it on by such gentle
and insensible degrees, that very excellent persons, who have made the most
eminent attainments in the Divine life, have been unable to recount any
remarkable history of their conversion. And so far as I can learn, this is
most frequently the case with those of them who have enjoyed the benefit of
a pious education, when it has not been succeeded by a vicious and
licentious youth. God forbid, therefore, that any should be so insensible of
their own happiness as to fall into perplexity with relation to their
spiritual state, for want oft being able to trace such a rise of religion in
their minds as it was necessary on my plan for me to describe and exemplify
here. I have spoken my sentiments on this head so fully in the eighth of my
Sermons on Regeneration, that I think none who has read and remembers the
general contents of it can be ill danger of mistaking my meaning here. But
as it is very possible this book may fall into the hands or many who have
not read the other, and have no opportunity of consulting it, I thought it
proper to insert this caution in the preface to this; and I am much obliged
to that worthy and excellent person who kindly reminded me of the expediency
of doing it.
PHILIP DODDRIDGE

               THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF RELIGION IN THE SOUL.

                                 CHAPTER I.

    THE INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK WITH SOME GENERAL ACCOUNT OF ITS DESIGN.

1.2.That true religion is very rare, appears from comparing the nature of it
with the lives and characters of men around us.--3. The want of it, matter
of just lamentation.--4. To remedy this evil is the design of the ensuing
Treatise.--5. 6. To which, therefore, the Author earnestly bespeaks the
attention of the reader, as his own heart is deeply interested in it.--7.to
12. A general plan of the Work; of which the first fifteen chapters relate
chiefly to the Rise of Religion, and the remaining chapters to its
Progress,--Prayer for the success of the Work.

1. WHEN we look around us with an attentive eye, and consider the characters
and pursuits of men, we plainly see, that though, in the original
constitution of their natures, they only, of all the creatures that dwell on
the face of the earth, are capable of religion, yet many of them shamefully
neglect it. And whatever different notions people may entertain of what they
call religion, all must agree in owning that it is very far from being a
universal thing.
     2. Religion, in its most general view, is such a Sense of God in the
soul, and such a conviction of our obligations to him, and of our dependence
upon him, as shall engage us to make it our great care to conduct ourselves
in a manner which we have reason to believe will be pleasing to him. Now,
when we have given this plain account of religion, it is by no means
necessary that we should search among the savages of distant Pagan nations
to find instances of those who are strangers to it. When we view the conduct
of the generality of people at home, in a Christian and Protestant nation,
in a nation whose obligations to God have been singular, almost beyond those
of any other people under heaven, will any one presume to say that religion
has a universal reign among us? Will any one suppose that it prevails in
every life; that it reigns in every heart? Alas! the avowed infidelity, the
profanation of the name and day of God, the drunkenness, the lewdness, the
injustice, the falsehood, the pride, the prodigality, the base selfishness,
and stupid insensibility about the spiritual and eternal interests of
themselves and others, which so generally appear among us, loudly proclaim
the contrary. So that one would imagine, upon this view, that thousands and
tens of thousands thought the neglect, and even the contempt of religion,
were a glory, rather than a reproach. And where is the neighborhood, where
is the society, where is the happy family, consisting of any considerable
number, in which, on a more exact examination, we find reason to say,
"religion fills even this little circle?" Where is, perhaps, a freedom from
any gross and scandalous immoralities, an external decency of behavior, an
attendance on the outward forms of worship in public, and, here and there,
in the family; yet amidst all this, there is nothing which looks like the
genuine actings of the spiritual and divine life. There is no appearance of
love to God, no reverence of his presence, no desire of his favor as the
highest good: there is no cordial belief of the Gospel of salvation; no
eager solicitude to escape that condemnation which we have incurred by sin;
no hearty concern to secure that eternal life which Christ has purchased and
secured for his people, and which he freely promises to all who will receive
him. Alas! whatever the love of a friend, or even a parent can do; whatever
inclination there may be to hope all things, and believe all things the most
favorable, evidence to the contrary will force itself upon the mind, and
extort the unwilling conclusion, that, whatever else may be amiable in this
dear friend--in that favorite child--"religion dwells not in his breast."
     3. To a heart that firmly believes the Gospel, and in views persons and
things the light of eternity, this is one of the most mournful
considerations in the world. And indeed, to such a one, all other calamities
and evils of human nature appear trifles, when compared with this-the
absence of real religion, and that contrariety to it which reigns in so many
thousands of mankind. Let this be cured, and all the other evils will easily
be borne; nay, good will be extracted out of them. But if this continue, it
"bringeth forth fruit unto death;" (Rom. 7:5) and in consequence of it,
multitudes, who stare the entertainments of an indulgent Providence with us,
and are at least allied to us by the bond of the same common nature, must,
in a few years, be swept away into utter destruction, and be plunged, beyond
redemption, into everlasting burnings.
     4. I doubt not but there are many, under the various forms of religious
profession, who are not only lamenting this in public, if their office in
life calls them to an opportunity of doing it; but are likewise mourning
before God in secret, under a sense of this sad state of things; and who can
appeal to Him that searches all hearts as to the sincerity of their desires
to revive the languishing cause of vital Christianity and substantial piety.
And among the rest, the author of this treatise may with confidence say, it
is this which animates him to the present attempt, in the midst of so many
other cares and labors. For this he is willing to lay aside many of those
curious amusements in science which might suit his own private taste, and
perhaps open a way for some reputation in the learned world. For this be is
willing to wave the labored ornaments of speech, that be may, if possible,
descend to the capacity of the lowest part of mankind. For this he would
endeavor to convince the judgment, and to reach the heart of every reader:
and, in a word, for this, without any dread of the name of an enthusiast,
whoever may at random throw it out upon the occasion, he would, as it were,
enter with you into your closet, from day to day; and with all plainness and
freedom, as well as seriousness, would discourse to you of the great things,
which he has learned from the Christian revelation, and on which he
assuredly knows your everlasting happiness to depend; that, if you hitherto
have lived without religion, you may be now awakened to the consideration of
it, and may be instructed in its nature and importance; or that, if you are
already, through Divine grace, experimentally acquainted with it, you may be
assisted to make a farther progress.
     5. But he earnestly entreats this favor of you that, as it is plainly a
serious business we are entering upon, you would be pleased to give him a
serious and an active hearing. He entreats that these addresses, and these
meditations, may be perused at leisure, and be thought over in retirement;
and that you would do him and yourself the justice to believe the
representations which art here made, and the warnings which are here given.
to proceed from sincerity and love, from a heart that would not designedly
give one moment's unnecessary pain to the meanest creature on the face of
the earth, and much less to any human mind. If he be importunate, it is
because he at least imagines that there is just reason for it, and fears,
lest, amidst the multitudes who are undone by the utter neglect of religion,
and among those who are greatly damaged for want of a more resolute and
constant attendance to it, this may be the case of some into whose hands
this treatise may fall.
     6. He is a barbarian, and deserves not to be called a man, who can look
upon the sorrows of his fellow creatures without drawing out his soul unto
them and wishing, at least, that it were in the power of his hand to help
them. Surely earth would be a heaven to that man who could go about from
place to place scattering happiness wheresoever be came, though it were only
the body that he were capable of relieving, and though he could impart
nothing better than the happiness of a mortal life. But the happiness rises
in proportion to the nature and degree of the good which he imparts. Happy,
are we ready to say, were those honored servants of Christ, who, in the
early days of his church, were the benevolent and sympathizing instruments
of conveying miraculous healing to those whose cases seemed desperate; who
poured in upon the blind and the deaf the pleasures of light and sound, and
called up the dead to the flowers of action and enjoyment. But this is an
honor and happiness which it is not fit for God commonly to bestow on mortal
men. Yet there have been, in every age, and blessed be his name, there still
are those whom he has condescended to make his instruments in conveying
nobler and more lasting blessings than these to their fellow-creatures.
Death has long since veiled the eyes and stopped she ears of those who were
the subjects of miraculous healing, and recovered its empire over those who
were once recalled from the grave. But the souls who are prevailed upon to
receive the Gospel, live for ever. God has owned the labors of his faithful
ministers in every age to produce these blessed effects; and some of them
"being dead, yet speak" (Heb. 11:4) with power and success in this important
cause. Wonder not then, if, living and dying I be ambitions of this honor;
and if my mouth be freely opened, where I can truly say, "my heart is
enlarged." (2 Cor. 6:11)
     7. In forming my general plan, I have been solicitous that this little
treatise might, if possible, be useful to all its readers, and contain
something suitable to each. I will therefore take the man and the Christian
in a great variety of circumstances. I will first suppose myself addressing
one of the vast number of thoughtless creatures who have hitherto been
utterly unconcerned about religion, and will try what can be done, by all
plainness and earnestness of address, to awaken him from this fatal
lethargy, to a care (chap. 2), an affectionate and an immediate care about
it (chap. 3). I will labor to fix a deep and awful conviction of guilt upon
his conscience (chap. 4), and to strip him of his vain excuses and his
flattering hopes (chap. 5). I will read to him, O! that I could fix on his
heart that sentence, that dreadful sentence, which a righteous and an
Almighty God hath denounced against him as a sinner (chap. 6), and endeavor
to show him in how helpless a state he lies under this condemnation, as to
any capacity he has of delivering himself (chap 7). But I do not mean to
leave any in so terrible a situation: I will joyfully proclaim the glad
tidings of pardon and salvation by Christ Jesus our Lord, which is all the
support and confidence of my own soul (chap. 8). And then I will give some
general view of the way by which this salvation is to be obtained (chap. 9);
urging the sinner to accept of it as affectionately as I can (chap. 10);
though not thing can be sufficiently pathetic, where, as sin this matter,
the life of an immortal soul is in question.
     8. Too probable it is that some will, after all this, remain
insensible; and therefore that their sad case may not encumber the following
articles, I shall here take a solemn leave of them (chap. 11); and then
shall turn and address myself as compassionately as I can, to a most
contrary character; I mean, to a soul overwhelmed with a sense of the
greatness of its sins, and trembling under the burden, as if there were no
more hope for him in God (chap. 12). And that nothing may be omitted which
may give solid peace to the troubled spirit, I shall endeavor to guide its
inquiries as to the evidences of sincere repentance and faith (chap. 13);
which will be farther illustrated by a more particular view of the several
branches of the Christian temper, such as may serve at once to assist the
reader in judging whit he is, and to show him what he should labor to be
(chap. 14). This will naturally lead to a view of the need we have of the
influences of the blessed Spirit to assist us in the important and difficult
work of the true Christian, and of the encouragement we have to hope for
such divine assistance (chap. 15). In an humble dependence on which, I shall
then enter on the consideration of several cases which often occur in the
Christian life, in which particular addresses to the conscience may be
requisite and useful.
     9. As some peculiar difficulties and discouragements attend the first
entrance on a religious course, it will here be our first care to animate
the young convert against them (chap. 16). And that it may be done more
effectually, I shall urge a solemn dedication of himself to God (chap. 17),
to be confirmed by entering into a communion of the church, and an approach
to the sacred table (chap. 18). That these engagements may be more happily
fulfilled, we shall endeavor to draw a more particular plan of that devout,
regular and accurate course, which ought daily to be attended to (chap. 19).
And because the idea will probably rise so much higher than what is the
general practice, even of good men, we shall endeavor to persuade the reader
to make the attempt, hard as it may seem (chap. 20); and shall caution him
against various temptations, which might otherwise draw him aside to
negligence and sin (chap.21).
     10. Happy will it be for the reader, if these exhortations and cautions
be attended to with becoming regard; but as it is, alas! too probable that,
notwithstanding all, the infirmities of nature will sometimes prevail, we
shall consider the case of deadness and languor in religion, which often
steals upon us by sensible degrees (chap. 22); from whence there is too easy
a passage to that terrible one of a return into known and deliberate sin
(chap. 23). And as the one or the other of these tends in a proportionable
degree to provoke the blessed God to hide his face, and his injured Spirit
to withdraw, that melancholy condition will be taken into particular survey
(chap. 24). I shall then take notice also of the case of great and heavy
afflictions in life (chap. 25), a discipline which the best of men have
reason to expect, especially when they backslide from God and yield to their
spiritual enemies.
     11. Instances of this kind will, I fear, be too frequent; yet, I trust,
there will be many others, whose path, like the dawning light, will "shine
more and more unto the perfect day." (Prov. 4:18) And therefore we shall
endeavor, in the best manner we can, to assist the Christian in passing a
true judgment on the growth of grace in his heart (chap. 26), as we had done
before in judging of its sincerity. And as nothing conduces more to the
advancement of grace than the lively exercise of love to God, and a holy joy
in him, we shall here remind the real Christian of those mercies which tend
to excite that love and joy (chap. 27); and in the view of them to animate
him to those vigorous efforts of usefulness in life, which so well become
his character, and will have so happy an efficacy in brightening his crown
(chap. 28). Supposing him to act accordingly, we shall then labor to
illustrate and assist the delight with which he may look forward to the
awful solemnities of death and judgment (chap. 29). And shall close the
scene by accompanying him, as it were, to the nearest confines of that dark
valley through which he is to pass to glory; giving him such directions as
may seem most subservient to his honoring God and adorning religion by his
dying behavior (chap. 30). Nor am I without a pleasing hope, that, through
the Divine blessing and grace, I may be, in some instances, so successful as
to leave those triumphing in the views of judgment and eternity, and
glorifying God by a truly Christian life and death, whom I found trembling
in the apprehensions of future misery; or, perhaps, in a much more dangerous
and miserable condition than that I mean, entirely forgetting the prospect,
and sunk in the most stupid insensibility of those things, for an attendance
to which the human mind was formed, and in comparison of which all the
pursuits of this transitory life are emptier than wind and lighter than a
feather.
     12. Such a variety of heads must, to be sure, be handled but briefly,
as we intend to bring them within the bulk of a moderate volume. I shall
not, therefore, discuss them as a preacher might properly do in sermons, in
which the truths of religion are professedly to be explained and taught,
defended and improved, in a wide variety, and long detail of propositions,
arguments, objections, replies, and inferences, marshalled and numbered
under their distinct generals. I shall here speak in a looser and freer
manner, as a friend to a friend; just as I would do if I were to be in
person admitted to a private audience by one whom I tenderly loved, and
whose circumstances and character I knew to be like that which the title of
one chapter or another of this treatise describes. And when I have
discoursed with him a little while, which will seldom be so long as half an
hour, shill, as it were, step aside, and leave him to meditate on what he
has heard, or endeavor to assist him in such fervent addresses to God as it
may be proper to mingle with those meditations. In the mean time, I will
here take the liberty to pray over my reader and my work, and to commend it
solemnly to the Divine blessing, in token of my deep conviction of an entire
dependence upon it. And I am well persuaded that sentiments like these are
common, in the general, to every faithful minister to every real Christian.


A Prayer for the Success of this Work, in promoting the Rise and Progress of
                                  Religion.

     "O thou great eternal Original, and Author of all created being and
happiness! I adore thee, who hast made man a creature capable of religion,
and host bestowed this dignity and felicity upon our nature, that it may be
taught to say, Where is God our maker? (Job 35:10) I lament that degeneracy
spread over the whole human race, which has "turned our glory into shame,"
(Hos. 4:7) and has rendered the forgetfulness of God, unnatural as it is, so
common and so universal a disease. Holy Father, We know it is thy presence,
and thy teaching alone, that can reclaim thy wandering children, can impress
a sense of Divine things on the heart, and render that sense listing and
effectual. From thee proceed all goon purposes and desires; and this desire,
above all, of diffusing wisdom, piety, and happiness in this world. which
(though sunk in such deep apostacy) thine infinite mercy has not utterly
forsaken.
     "Thou `knowest, O Lord, the hearts of the children of men;' (2 Chron.
6:30) and an upright soul, in the midst of all the censures and suspicions
it may meet with, rejoices in thine intimate knowledge of its most secret
sentiments and principles of action. Thou knowest the sincerity and fervency
with which thine unworthy servant desires to spread the knowledge of thy
name, and the savor of thy Gospel, among all to whom this work may reach.
Thou knowest that hadst thou given him an abundance of this world, it would
have been, in his esteem, the noblest pleasure that abundance could have
afforded to have been thine almoner in distributing thy bounties to the
indigent and necessitous, and so causing the sorrowful heart to rejoice in
thy goodness, dispensed through his hands. Thou knowest, that, hadst thou
given him, either by ordinary or extraordinary methods, the gift of healing,
it would have been his daily delight to relieve the pains, the maladies, and
the infirmities of men's bodies; to have seen the languishing countenance
brightened by returning health and cheerfulness; and much more to have
beheld the roving, distracted mind reduced to calmness and serenity in the
exercise of its rational faculties. Yet happier, far happier wilt he think
himself, in those humble circumstances in which thy providence hath placed
him, if thou vouchsafe to honor these his feeble endeavors as the means of a
relieving and enriching men's minds; of recovering them from the madness of
a sinful state, and bringing back thy reasonable creatures to the knowledge,
the service, and the enjoyment of their God; or of improving those who are
already reduced.
     "O may it have that blessed influence on the person, whosoever he be,
that is now reading these lines, and all who may read or hear them! Let not
my Lord be angry if I presume to ask, that, however weak and contemptible
this work may seem in the eyes of the children of this world, and however
imperfect it really be, as well as the author of it unworthy, it may
nevertheless live before thee; and, through a divine power, be mighty to
produce the rise and progress of religion in the minds of multitudes in
distant places, and in generations yet to come! Impute it not, O God, as a
culpable ambition, if I desire that, whatever becomes of my name, about
which I wou1d not lose one thought before thee, this work, to which I am now
applying myself in thy strength, may be completed and propagated far abroad:
that it may reach to those that are yet unborn, and teach them thy name and
thy praise, when the author has long dwelt in the dust; that so, when he
shall appear before thee in the great day of final account, his joy may be
increased, and his crown brightened, by numbers before unknown to each
other, and to him! But if this petition be too great to be granted to one
who pretends no claim but thy sovereign grace to hope for being favored with
the least, give him to be, in thine Almighty hand, the blessed instrument of
converting and saving one soul; and if it be but one, and that the weakest
and meanest of those who are capable or receiving this address, it shall be
most thankfully accepted as a rich recompense for all the thought and labor
it may cost; and though it should be amidst a thousand disappointments with
respect to others, yet it shall be the subject of immortal songs of praise
to thee, O blessed God, for and by every soul whom, through the blood of
Jesus and the grace of thy Spirit, thou hast saved; and everlasting honors
shall be ascribed to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, by
the innumerable company of angels, and by the general assembly and church of
the first-born in heaven. Amen."

                                 CHAPTER II.

                        THE CARELESS SINNER AWAKENED.

1.2. It is too supposable a case that this Treatise may come into such
hands.--3. 4. Since many, not grossly vicious, fail under that
character.--5. 6. A more particular illustration of this case, with an
appeal to the reader, whether it be not his own.--7 to 9. Expostulation with
such.--10 to 12. More particularly--From acknowledged principles relating to
the Nature of Got, his universal presence, agency, and perfection.--13. From
a view of personal obligations to him.--14. From the danger Of this neglect,
when considered in its aspect on a future state.--15. An appeal to the
conscience as already convinced.--16. Transition to the subject of the next
chapter. The meditation of a sinner, who, having been long thoughtless,
begins to be awakened.

1. SHAMEFULLY and fatally as religion is neglected in the world, yet,
blessed be God, it has some sincere disciples, children of wisdom, by whom
even in this foolish and degenerate age, it "is justified:" (Matt. 9:18) who
having, by Divine grace, been brought to the knowledge of God in Christ,
have faithfully devoted their hearts to him, and, by a natural consequence,
are devoting their lives to his service. Could I be sure this Treatise would
fall into no hands but theirs, my work would be shorter, easier and more
pleasant.
     2. But among the thousands that neglect religion, it is more than
probable that some of my readers may be included; and I am so deeply
affected with their unhappy ease, that the temper of my heart, as well as
the proper method of my subject, leads me, in the first place, to address
myself to such: to apply to every one of them; and therefore to you, O
reader, whoever you are, who may come under the denomination of a careless
sinner.
     3. Be not, I beseech you angry at the name. The physicians of souls
must speak plainly, or they may murder those whom they should cure I would
make no harsh and unreasonable supposition. I would charge you with nothing
more than is absolutely necessary to convince you that you are the person to
whom I speak. I will not, therefore, imagine you to be a profane and
abandoned profligate. I will not suppose that you allow yourself to
blaspheme God, to dishonour his name by customary swearing, or grossly to
violate his Sabbath, or commonly to neglect the solemnities of his public
worship; I will not imagine that you have injured your neighbors, in their
lives, their chastity, or their possessions, either by violence or by fraud;
or that you have scandalously debased the rational nature of man, by that
vile intemperance which transforms us into the worst kind of brutes, or
something beneath them.
     4. In opposition to all this, I will suppose that you believe the
existence and providence of God, and the truth of Christianity as a
revelation from him: of which, if you have any doubt, I must desire that you
would immediately seek your satisfaction elsewhere*." I say immediately;
because not to believe it, is in effect to disbelieve it; and will make your
ruin equally certain, though perhaps it may leave it less aggravated than if
contempt and opposition had been added to suspicion and neglect. But
supposing you to be a nominal Christian, and not a deist or a skeptic, I
wilt also suppose your conduct among men to be not only blameless, but
amiable; and that they who know you most intimately, must acknowledge that
you are just and sober, humane and courteous, compassionate and liberal;
yet, with all this, you may "lack that one thing" (Mark 10: 21) on which
your eternal happiness depends.
     5. I beseech you, reader, whoever you are, that you would now look
seriously into your own heart, and ask it this one plain question; Am I
truly religious? Is the love of God the governing principle of my life? Do I
walk under the sense of his presence? Do I converse with him from day to
day, in the exercise of prayer and praise? And am I, on the whole, making
his service my business and my delight, regarding him as my master and my
father?
     6. It is my present business only to address myself to the person whose
conscience answers in the negative. And I would address, with equal
plainness and equal freedom, to high and low, to rich and poor: to you, who,
as the Scripture with a dreadful propriety expresses it, "live without God
in the world!" (Eph. 2:12) and while in words and forms you "own God, deny
him in your actions," (Tit. 1:16) and behave yourselves in the main, a few
external ceremonies only excepted, just as you would do if you believed and
were sure there is no God. Unhappy creature, whoever you are! your own heart
condemns you immediately! and how much more that "God who is greater than
your heart, and knoweth all things." (I John 3:20) He is in "secret," (Matt.
6:6) as well as in and words cannot express the delight with which his
children converse with him alone: but in secret you acknowledge him not: you
neither pray to him, nor praise him in your retirements. Accounts,
correspondences studies, may often bring you into your closet; but if
nothing but devotion were to be transacted there, it would be to you quite
an unfrequented place. And thus you go on from day to day in a continual
forgetfulness of God, and are as thoughtless about religion as if you had
long since demonstrated to yourself that it was a mere dream. If, indeed,
you are sick, you will perhaps cry to God for health in any extreme danger
you will lift up your eyes and voice for deliverance but as for the pardon
of sin, and the other blessings of the Gospel, you are not at all inwardly
solicitous about them; though you profess to believe that the Gospel is
divine, and the blessings of it eternal. All your thoughts, and all your
hours are divided between the business and the amusements of life; and if
now and then an awful providence or a serious sermon or book awakens you, it
is but a few days, or it may be a few hours, and you are the same careless
creature you ever were before. On the whole, you act as if you were resolved
to put it to the venture, and at your own expense to make the experiment,
whether the consequences of neglecting religion be indeed as terrible as its
ministers and friends have represented. Their remonstrances do indeed
sometimes force themselves upon you, as (considering the age and country in
which you live), it is hardly possible entirely to avoid them; but you have,
it may be, found out the art of Isaiah's people, "hearing to hear, and not
understand; and seeing to see, and not perceive your heart is waxed gross,
your eyes are closed, and your ears heavy." (Isa. 6:9,10) Under the very
ordinances of worship your thoughts "are at the ends of the earth." (Prov.
17:24) Every amusement of the imagination is welcome, if it may but lead
away your mind from so insipid and so disagreeable a subject as religion.
And probably the very last time you were in a worshipping assembly, you
managed just as you would have done if you had thought God knew nothing of
your behavior, or as if you did not think it worth one single care whether
he were pleased or displeased with it.
     7. Alas! is it then come to this, with all your belief of God, and
providence and Scripture, that religion is not worth a thought? That it is
not worth one hour's serious consideration and reflection, "what God and
Christ are, and what you yourselves are, and what you must hereafter be?"
Where then are your rational faculties? How are they employed, or rather how
are they stupefied and benumbed?
     8. The certainty and importance of the things of which I speak are so
evident, from the principles which you yourselves grant, that one might
almost set a child or an idiot to reason upon them. And yet they are
neglected by those who are grown up to understanding; and perhaps some of
them to such refinement of understanding that they would think themselves
greatly injured if they were not to be reckoned among the politer and more
learned pan of mankind.
     9. But it is not your neglect, sirs, that can destroy the being or
importance of such things as these. It may indeed destroy you, but it cannot
in the least affect them. Permit me, therefore, having been my-self
awakened, to come to each of you, and say, as the mariners did to Jonah
while asleep in the midst of a much less dangerous storm, "What meanest
thou, O sleeper? Arise and call upon thy God." (Jonah 1:6) Do you doubt as
to the reasonableness or necessity of doing it? "I will demand, and answer
me;" (Job 38:3) answer me to your own conscience, as one that must, ere
long, render another kind of account.
     10. You own that there is a God, and well you may, for you cannot open
your eyes but you must see the evident proofs of his being, his presence,
and his agency. You behold him around you in every object. You feel him
within you, if I may so speak, in every vein and in every nerve. You see and
you feel not only that he hath formed you with an exquisite wisdom which no
mortal man could ever fully explain or comprehend, but that he is
continually near you, wherever you are, and however you are employed, by day
or by night; "in hint you live, and move, and have your being." (Acts 17:28)
Common sense will tell you that it is not your own wisdom, and power, and
attention that causes your heart to beat and your blood to circulate; that
draws in and sends out that breath of life, that precarious breath of a most
uncertain life, "the is in your nostrils." (Isa. 2:22) These things are done
when you sleep, as well as in those waking moments when you think not of the
circulation of the blood, or of the necessity of breathing, or so much as
recollect that you have a heart or lungs. Now, what is this but the hand of
God, perpetually supporting and actuating those curious machines that he has
made?
     11. Nor is this his care limited to you; but if you look all around
you, far as your view can reach, you see it extending itself on every side:
and, oh! how much farther than you can trace it! Reflect on the light and
heat which the sun every where dispenses; on the air which surrounds all our
globe; on the right temperature on which the life of the whole human race
depends, and that of all the inferior creatures which dwell on the earth.
Think on the suitable and plentiful provisions made for man and beast; the
grass, the grain, the variety of fruits, and herbs, and flowers; every thing
that nourishes us, every thing that delights us, and say whether it does not
speak plainly and loudly that our Almighty Maker is near, and that he is
careful or us, and kind to us. And while all these things proclaim his
goodness, do not they also proclaim his power? For what power has any thing
comparable to that which furnishes out those gifts of royal bounty; and
which, unwearied and unchanged, produces continually, from day to day, and
from age to age, such astonishing and magnificent effects over the face of
the whole earth, and through all the regions of heaven?
     12. It is then evident that God is present, present with you at this
moment; even God your creator and preserver, God the creator and preserver
of the whole visible and invisible world. And is he not present as a most
observant and attentive being? "He that formed the eye, shall not he see? He
that planted the ear, shall not he hear? He that teaches man knowledge,"
that gives him his rational faculties, and pours in upon his opening mind
all the light it receives by them, "shall not he know?" (Psal. 94:9,10) He
who sees all the necessities of his creatures so seasonably to provide for
them, shall be not see their actions too; and seeing, shall he not judge
them? Has he given us a sense and discrimination of what is good and evil,
of what is true and false, of what is fair and deformed in temper and con
duct; and has he himself no discernment of these things? Trifle not with
your conscience, which tells you at once that he judges of it, and approves
or condemns as it is decent or indecent, reasonable or flu-reasonable; and
that the judgment which he passes is of infinite importance to all his
creatures.
     13. And now to apply all this to your own case; let me seriously ask
you, is it a decent and reasonable thing, that this great and glorious
Benefactor should be neglected by his rational creatures--by those that are
capable of attaining to some knowledge of him, and presenting to him some
homage? Is it decent and reasonable that he should be forgotten and
neglected by you? Are you alone, of all the works or his hands, forgotten or
neglected by him? O sinner, thoughtless as you are, you cannot dare to say
that, or even to think it. You need not go back to the he1pless days of your
infancy and childhood to convince you of the contrary. You need not, in
order to this, recollect the remarkable deliverances which perhaps were
wrought out for you many years ago. The repose of the last night, the
refreshment and comfort you have received this day; yea, the mercies you are
receiving this very moment bear witness to him; and yet you regard him not
ungrateful creature that you are! Could you have treated any human
benefactor thus? Could you have borne to neglect a kind parent, or any
generous friend, that had but for a few months acted the part of a parent to
you; to have taken no notice of him while in his presence; to have returned
him no thanks; to have had no contrivances to make some little
acknowledgment for all his goodness? Human nature, bad as it is, is not
fallen so low. Nay, the brutal nature is not so low as this. Surely every
domestic animal around you must shame such ingratitude. If you do but for a
few days take a little kind notice of a dog, and feed him with the refuse of
your table, he will wait upon you, and love to be near you; he will be eager
to follow you from place to place, and when, after a little absence you
return home, will try, by a thousand fond, transported motions, to tell you
how much he rejoices to see you again. Nay, brutes far less sagacious and
apprehensive have some sense of our kindness, and express it after their
way: as the blessed God condescends to observe, in this very view in which I
mention it, "The" dull "ox knows his owner, and the" stupid "ass his
master's crib." (Isa. 1: 3) What lamentable degeneracy therefore is it, that
you do not know-that you, who have been numbered among God's professed
people, do not and will not consider your numberless obligations to him.
     14. Surely, if you have any ingenuousness of temper, you must be
ashamed and grieved in the review; but if you have not, give me leave
farther to expostulate with you on this head, by setting it in something of
a different light. Can you think your-self safe, while you are acting a part
like this? Do you not in your conscience believe there will be a future
judgment? Do you not believe there is an invisible and eternal world? As
professed Christians, we all believe it; for it is no controverted point,
but displayed in Scripture with so clear an evidence, that, subtle and
ingenious as men are in error, they have riot yet found out a way to evade
it. And believing this, do you not see, that, while you are thus wandering
from God, "destruction and misery are in your way?" (Rom. 3:16) Will this
indolence and negligence of temper be any security to you? Will it guard you
from death? Will it excuse you from judgment? You might much more reasonably
expect that shutting your eyes would be a defence against the rage of a
devouring lion; or that looking another way should secure your body from
being pierced by a bullet or a sword; When God speaks of the extravagant
folly of some thoughtless creatures who would hearken to no admonition now
he adds, in a very awful manner, "In the latter day they shall consider it
perfectly." (Jer. 23:20) And is not this applicable to you? Must you not
sooner or later be brought to think of these things, whether you wilt or
not! And in the mean time do you not certainly know that timely and serious
reflection upon them is, through divine grace, the only way to prevent your
ruin!
     15. Yes, sinner, I need not multiply words on a subject like this. Your
conscience is already inwardly convinced, though your pride maybe unwilling
to own it. And to prove it, let me ask you one question more: Would you,
upon any terms and considerations whatever, come to a resolution absolutely
to dismiss all farther thought of religion, and all care about it, from this
day and hour, and to abide the consequences of that neglect? I believe
hardly any man living would be bold enough to determine upon this. I believe
most of my readers would be ready to tremble at the thought of it.
     16. But if it be necessary to take these things into consideration at
all, it is necessary to do it quickly; for life itself is not so very long
nor so certain, that a wise man should risk much upon its continuance. And I
hope to convince you when I have another hearing, that it is necessary to do
it immediately, and that next to the madness of resolving you will not think
of religion at all, is that of saying you will think of it hereafter. In the
meantime, pause art the hints which have been already given, and they will
prepare you to receive what is to be added on that head.


    The Meditation of a Sinner who was once thoughtless, but begins to be
                                  awakened.

     "Awake, O my forgetful soul, awake from these wandering dreams. Turn
thee from this chase of vanity, and for a little while be persuaded, by all
these considerations, to look forward, and to look upward, at least for a
few moments. Sufficient are the hours and days given to the labors and
amusements of life. Grudge not a short allotment of minutes, to view thyself
and thine own more immediate concerns: to reflect who and what thou art, how
it comes to pass that thou art here, and what thou must quickly be!
     "It is indeed as thou hast seen it now represented. O my soul! thou art
the creature of God, formed and furnished by him, and lodged in a body which
he provided, and which he supports; a body in which he intends thee only a
transitory abode. O! think how soon this `tabernacle' must be `dissolved,'
(2 Cor. 5:1) and thou must `return to God.' (Eccl. 12:7) And shall He, the
One, Infinite, Eternal, Ever-blessed, and Ever-glorious Being, shall He be
least of all regarded by thee? Wilt thou live and die with this character,
saying, by every action of every day, unto God, `Depart from me, for I
desire not the knowledge of thy ways?' (Job 21:14) The morning, the day, the
evening, the night, every period of time has its excuses for this neglect.
But O! my soul, what will these excuses appear when examined by his
penetrating eye! They may delude me, but they cannot impose upon him.
     "O thou injured, neglected, provoked Benefactor! when I think but for a
moment or two of all thy greatness and of all thy goodness, I am astonished
at this insensibility which has prevailed in my heart, and even still
prevails; I `blush and am confounded to lift up my face before thee.' (Ezra
9:6) On the most transient review, I `see that I have played the fool,' that
`I have erred exceedingly.' (I Sam. 26:21) And yet this stupid heart of mine
would make its having neglected thee so long a reason for going on to
neglect thee. I own it might justly be expected, that, with regard to thee,
every one of thy rational creatures should be all duty and love; that each
heart should be full of a sense of thy presence; and that a care to please
thee should swallow up every other care. Yet thou `hast not been in all my
thoughts;' (Psa. 10:4) and religion, the end and glory of my nature, has
been so strangely overlooked, that I have hardly ever seriously asked my own
heart what it is. I know, if matters rest here, I perish; yet I feel in my
perverse nature a secret indisposition to pursue these thoughts; a
proneness, if not entirely to dismiss them, yet to lay them aside side for
the present. My mind is perplexed and divided; but I am sure, thou, who
madest me, knowest what is best for me. I therefore beseech thee that thou
wilt, `for thy name's sake, lead me and guide me.' (Psa. 31:3) Let me not
delay till it is for ever too late. `Pluck me as a brand out of the
burning!' (Amos 4:11) O break this fatal enchantment that holds down my
affection to objects which my judgment comparatively despises! and let me,
at length, come into so happy a state of mind that I may not be afraid to
think of thee and of myself, and may not be tempted to wish that thou hadst
not made me, or that thou couldst for ever forget me; that it may not he my
best hope, to perish like the brutes.
     "If what I shall farther read here be agreeable to truth and reason, if
it be calculated to promote my happiness, and is to be regarded as an
intimation of thy will and pleasure to me, O God, let me hear and obey! Let
the words of thy servant, when pleading thy cause, be like goads to pierce
into my mind! and let me rather feel, and smart, than die! Let them be `as
nails fastened in a sure place;' (Eccl. 12:4) that whatever mysteries as yet
unknown, or whatever difficulties there be in religion, if it be necessary,
I may not finally neglect it; and that, if it be expedient to attend
immediately to it, I may no longer delay that attendance! And, O! let thy
grace teach me the lesson I am so slow to learn and conquer that strong
opposition which I feel in my heart against the very thought of it! Hear
these broken cries, for the sake of thy Son, who has taught and saved many a
creature as untractable as I, and can `out of stones raise up children unto
Abraham!' (Matt. 3:9) Amen."

                                CHAPTER III.

 THE AWAKENED SINNER URGED TO IMMEDIATE CONSIDERATION AND CAUTIONED AGAINST
                                   DELAY.

1. Sinners, when awakened, inclined to dismiss convictions for the
present.--2. An immediate regard to religion urged.--3. From the excellence
and pleasure of the thing itself.--4. From the uncertainty of that future
time on which sinners presume, compared with the sad consequences of being
cut off in sin.--5. From the immutability of God's present demands.--6. From
the tendency which delay has to make a compliance with these demands more
difficult than it is at present.--7. From. the danger of God's withdrawing
his Spirit, compared with the dreadful case of a sinner given up by it.--8.
Which probably is now the case of many.--9. Since, therefore, on the whole,
whatever ever the event be, delays may prove matter of lamentation.--10. The
chapter concludes with an exhortation against yielding to them; and a prayer
against temptations of that kind.

1. I HOPE my last address so far awakened the convictions of my reader, as
to bring him to this purpose, "that some time or other he would attend to
religious considerations." But give me leave to ask, earnestly and
pointedly, When shall that be? "Go thy way for this time, when I have a
convenient season I will call for thee," (Acts 24:25) was the language and
ruin of unhappy Felix, when he trembled under the reasonings and
expostulations of the apostle. The tempter presumed not to urge that he
should give up all thoughts of repentance and reformation; but only that,
considering the present hurry of his affairs, (as no doubt they were many)
he should defer it to another day. The artifice succeeded; and Felix was
undone.
     2. Will you, render, dismiss me thus? For your own sake, and out of
tender compassion to your perishing, immortal soul, I would not willingly
take up with such a dismission and excuse--no, not though you shall fix a
time; though you shall determine on the next year, or month, or week, or
day. I would turn upon you, with all the eagerness and tenderness of
friendly importunity, and entreat you to bring the matter to an issue even
now. For if you say, "I will think on these things tomorrow," I shall have
little hope; and shall conclude that all that I have hitherto urged, and all
that you have read, has been offered and viewed in vain.
     3. When I invite you to the care and practice of religion, it may seem
strange that it should be necessary for me affectionately to plead the cause
with you, in order to your immediate regard and compliance. What I am
inviting you to is so noble and excellent in itself, so well worthy of the
dignity of our rational nature so suitable to it, so manly and so wise, that
one would imagine you should take fire, as it were, at the first hearing of
it; yea, that so delightful a view should presently possess your whole soul
with a kind of indignation against your-self that you pursued it no sooner.
"May I lift up my eyes and my soul to God! May I devote my-self to him! May
I even now commence a friendship with him--a friendship which shall last for
ever, the security, the delight, the glory of this immortal nature of mine!
And shall I draw back and say, Nevertheless, let me not commence this
friendship too soon: let me live at least a few weeks or a few days longer
without God in the world?" Surely it would be much more reasonable to turn
inward, and say, "O my soul, on what vile husks hast thou been feeding,
while thy Heavenly Father has been forsaken and injured? Shall I desire to
multiply the days of my poverty, my scandal, and my misery?" On this
principle, surely an immediate return to God should in all reason be chosen,
rather than to play the fool any longer, and go on a little more to
displease God, and thereby starve and wound your own soul! even though your
continuance in life were ever so certain, and your capacity to return to God
and your duty ever so entirely in your power, now, and in every future
moment, through scores of years yet to come.
     4. But who and what are you, that you should lay your account for years
or for months to come? "What is your life? Is not even as a vapor, that
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away?" (Jam. 4:14) And what
is your security, or what is your peculiar warrant, that you should thus
depend upon the certainty of its continuance, and that so absolutely as to
venture, as it were, to pawn your soul upon it? Why, you will perhaps say,
"I am young, and in all my bloom and vigor; I see hundreds about me who are
more than double my age, and not a few of them who seem to think it too soon
to attend to religion yet."
     You view the living, and you talk thus. But I beseech you, think of the
dead. Return, in your thoughts, to those graves in which you have left some
of your young companions and your friends. You saw them awhile ago gay and
active, warm with life, and hopes, and schemes. And some of them would have
thought a friend strangely importunate that should have interrupted them in
their business and their pleasures, with a solemn lecture on death and
eternity. Yet they were then on the very borders of both. You have since
seen their corpses, or at least their coffins, and probably carried about
with you the badges of mourning which you received at their funerals. Those
once vigorous, and perhaps beautiful bodies of theirs, now lie moldering in
the dust, as senseless and helpless as the most decrepit pieces of human
nature which fourscore years ever brought down to it. And, what is
infinitely more to be regarded, their souls, whether prepared for this great
change, or thoughtless of it, have made their appearance before God, and are
at this moment fixed, either in heaven or in hell. Now let me seriously ask
you, would it be miraculous. Or would it be strange, if such an event should
befall you? How are you sure that some fatal disease will not this day begin
to work in your veins? How are you sure that you shall ever be capable of
reading or thinking any more, if you do not attend to what you now read, and
pursue the thought which is now offering itself to your mind? This sudden
alteration may at least possibly happen; and if it does, it will be to you a
terrible one indeed. To be thus surprised into the presence of a forgotten
God; to be torn away, at once, from a world to which your whole heart and
soul has been riveted--a world which has engrossed all your thoughts and
cares, all your desires and pursuits; and be fixed in a state which you
never could be so far persuaded to think of, as to spend so much as one hour
in serious preparation for it: how must you even shudder at the apprehension
of it, and with what horror must it fill you? It seems matter of wonder that
in such circumstances you are not almost distracted with the thoughts of the
uncertainty of life, and are not even ready to die for fear of death. To
trifle with God any longer, after so solemn an admonition as this, would be
a circumstance of additional provocation, which, after all the rest, might
be fatal; nor is there any thing you can expect in such a case, but that he
should cut you off immediately, and teach other thoughtless creatures, by
your ruin, what a hazardous experiment they make when they act as you are
acting.
     5. And will you, after all, run this desperate risk? For what
imaginable purpose can you do it? Do you think the business of religion will
become less necessary or more easy by your delay? You know that it will not.
You know, that whatever the blessed God demands now, he will also demand
twenty or thirty years hence, if you should live to see the time. God has
fixed his method, in which he will pardon and accept sinners in his Gospel.
And will he ever alter that method? Or if he will not, can men alter it? You
like not to think of repenting and humbling yourself before God, to receive
righteousness and life from his free grace in Christ; and you, above all,
dislike the thought of returning to God in the ways of holy obedience. But
will lie ever dispense with any of these, and publish a new Gospel, with
promises of life and salvation to impenitent unbelieving sinners, if they
will but call themselves Christians, and submit to a few external rites? How
long do you think you might wait for such a change in the constitution of
things? You know death will come upon you, and you cannot but know, in your
own conscience, that a general dissolution will come upon the world long
before God can thus deny himself, and contradict all his perfections and all
his declarations;
     6. Or if his demands continue the same, as they assuredly will, do you
think any thing which is now disagreeable to you in them, will be less
disagreeable hereafter than it is at present? Shall you love to sin less,
when it becomes more habitual to you, and when your conscience is yet more
enfeebled arid debauched? If you are running with the footmen and fainting,
shall you be able "to contend with the horsemen?" (Jer. 12:5) Surely you
cannot imagine it. You will not say, in any distemper which threatened your
life, "I will stay till I grow a little worse, and then I will apply to a
physician: I will let my disease get a little more rooting in my vitals, and
then I will try what can be done to remove it." No, it is only where the
life of the soul is concerned that men think thus wildly: the life and
health of the body appear too precious to be thus trifled away.
     7. If; after such desperate experiments, you are ever recovered, it
must be by an operation of Divine grace on your soul yet more powerful and
more wonderful in proportion to the increasing inveteracy of your spiritual
maladies. And can you expect that the Holy Spirit should be more ready to
assist you, in consequence of your having so shamefully trifled with him,
and affronted him? He is now, in some measure, moving on your heart. If you
feel any secret relentings in it upon what you read, it is a sign that you
are not yet utterly forsaken. But who can tell whether these are not the
last touches he will ever give to a heart so long hardened against him? Who
can tell, but God may this day "swear, in his wrath, that you shall not
enter into his rest?" (Heb. 3:18) I have been telling you that you may
immediately die. You own it is possible you may. And can you think of any
thing more terrible? Yes, sinner, I will tell you of one thing more dreadful
than immediate death and immediate damnation. The blessed God may say, "As
for that wretched creature, who has so long trifled with me and provoked me,
let him still live; let him live in the midst of prosperity and plenty; let
him live under the purest and the most powerful ordinances of the Gospel
too; that he may abuse them to aggravate his condemnation, and die under
sevenfold guilt and a sevenfold curse. I will not give him the grace to
think of his ways for one serious moment more; but he shall go on from bad
to worse, filling up the measure of his iniquities, till death and
destruction seize him in an unexpected hour, and `wrath come upon him to the
uttermost.'" (1 Thess. 2:16)
     8. You think this is an uncommon case; but I fear it is much otherwise.
I fear there are few congregations where the word of God has been
faith-fully preached, and where it has long been despised, especially by
those whom it had once awakened, in which the eye of God does not see a
number of such wretched souls; though it is impossible for us, in this
mortal state, to pronounce upon the case who they are.
     9. I pretend not to say how he will deal with you, O reader! whether he
will immediately cut you off; or seal you up under final hardness and
impenitency of heart, or whether his grace may at length awaken you to
consider your ways, and return to him, even when your heart is grown yet
more obdurate than it is at present. For to his Almighty grace nothing is
hard, not even to transform a rock of marble into a man or a saint. But this
I will confidently say, that if you delay any longer, the time will come
when you will bitterly repent of that delay, and either lament it before God
in the anguish of your heart here or curse your own folly and madness in
hell, yea, when will wish that, dreadful as hell is, you had rather fallen
into it sooner, than have lived in the midst of so many abused mercies, to
render the degree of your punishment more insupportable, and your sense of
it more exquisitely tormenting.
     10. I do therefore earnestly exhort you, in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and by the worth, and, if I may so speak, by the blood of your
immortal and perishing soul, that you delay not a day or an hour longer. Far
from "giving sleep to your eye; or slumber to tour eyelids," (Prov. 6:4) in
the continued neglect of this important concern, take with you, even now,
"words, and turn unto the Lord;" (Hos. 14:2) and before you quit the place
where you now are, fall upon your knees in his sacred presence, and pour out
your heart in such language, or at least to some such purpose as this:

A Prayer for one who is tempted to delay applying to Religion, though under
some conviction of its importance.

     "O thou righteous and holy Sovereign of heaven and earth! thou God, `in
whose hand my breath is, and whose are all my ways!' (Dan. 5:23) I confess I
have been far from glorifying thee, or conducting myself according to the
intimations or the declarations of thy will. I have therefore reason to
adore thy forbearance and goodness, that thou hast not long since stopped my
breath, and cut me off from the land of the living. I adore thy patience.
that I have not, months and years ago, been an inhabitant of hell, where ten
thousand delaying sinners are now lamenting their folly, and will be
lamenting it for ever. But, O God, how possible is it that this trifling
heart of mine may at length betray me into the same ruin! and then, alas!
into a ruin aggravated by all this patience and forbearance of thine! I am
convinced that, sooner or later, religion must be my serious care, or I am
undone. And yet my foolish heart draws back from the yoke; yet I stretch
myself upon the bed of sloth, and cry out for `a little more sleep, a little
more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep.' (Prov. 6:10)
Thus does my corrupt heart plead for its own indulgence against the
conviction of my better judgment. What shall I say? O Lord, save me from
myself! Save me from the artifices and deceitfulness of sin! Save me from
the treachery of this perverse and degenerate nature of mine, and fix upon
my mind what I have now been reading!
     "O Lord, I am not now instructed in truths which were before quite
unknown. Often have I been warned of the uncertainty of life, and the great
uncertainty of the day of salvation. And I have formed some light purposes,
and have begun to take a few irresolute steps in my way toward a return to
thee. But, alas! I have been only, as it were, fluttering about religion,
and have never fixed upon it. All my resolutions have been scattered like
smoke, or dispersed like a cloudy vapor before the wind. O that thou wouldst
now bring these things home to my heart, with a more powerful conviction
than it hath ever yet felt? O that thou would pursue me with them, even when
flee from them! If I should even grow mad enough to endeavor to escape them
any more, may thy Spirit address me in the language of effectual terror, and
add all the most powerful methods which thou knowest to be necessary to
awaken me from this lethargy, which must otherwise be mortal! May the sound
of these things be in mine ears `when I go out, and when I come in, when I
lie down, and when I rise up!' (Deut. 6:7) And if the repose of the night
and the business of the day he for a while interrupted by the impression, be
it so, O God! if I may but thereby carry on my business with thee to better
purpose, and at length secure a repose in thee, instead of all that terror
which I now find when `I think upon God, and I am troubled.' (Psal. 77:3)
     "O Lord, `my flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy
judgments.' (Psal. 119:120) I am afraid lest, even now that I have begun to
think of religion, thou shouldst cut me off in this critical and important
moment, before my thoughts grow to any ripeness, and blast in eternal death
the first buddings and openings of it in my mind. But O spare me, I
earnestly entreat thee: for thy mercies' sake, Spare me a little longer! It
may be, through thy grace I shall return. It may be, if thou continuest thy
patience towards me while longer, there may be `some better fruit produced
by this cumberer of the ground.' (Luke 13:7) And may the remembrance of that
long forbearance which thou hast already exercised towards me prevent my
continuing to trifle with thee, and with my soul! From this day, O Lord,
from this hour, from this moment, may I be able to date more lasting
impressions of religion than have ever yet been made upon my heart by all
that I have ever read, or all that I have heard. Amen."

                                 CHAPTER IV.

                     THE SINNER ARRAIGNED AND CONVICTED.

1. Conviction of guilt necessary.--2. A charge of rebellion against God
advanced.--3. Where it is shown--that all men are born under God's law.--4.
That no man hath perfectly kept it.--5. An appeal to the reader's conscience
on this head, that he hath not.--6. That to have broken it, is an evil
inexpressibly great.--7. Illustrated by a more particular view of the
aggravations of this guilt, arising--from knowledge.--8. From divine favors
received.--9. From convictions of conscience overborne.--10. From the
strivings of God's Spirit resisted.--11.. From vows and resolutions
broken.--12. The charges summed up, and left upon the sinner's
conscience.--The sinner's confession under a general conviction of guilt.

1. AS I am attempting to lead you to true religion and not merely to some
superficial form of it, I am sensible I can do it no otherwise than in the
way of deep humiliation. And therefore supposing you are persuaded, through
the divine blessing on what you have before read, to take it into
consideration, I would now endeavor, in the first place, with all the
seriousness I can, to make you heartily sensible of your guilt before God.
For I well know, that, unless you are convinced of this, and affected with
the conviction, all the provisions of Gospel grace will be slighted, and
your soul infallibly destroyed, in the midst of the noblest means appointed
for its recovery. I am fully persuaded that thousands live and die in a
course of sin, without feeling upon their hearts any sense that they are
sinners, though they cannot, for shame, but own it in words. And therefore
let me deal faithfully with you, though I may seem to deal roughly; for
complaisance is not to give law to addresses in which the life of your soul
is concerned.
     2. Permit me therefore, O sinner, to consider myself at this time as an
advocate for God, as one employed in his name to plead against thee and to
charge thee with nothing less than being a rebel and a traitor against the
Sovereign Majesty or heaven and earth. However thou mayest be dignified or
distinguished among men; if the noblest blood run in thy veins; if thy seat
were among princes, and thine arm were "the terror of the mighty in the land
of the living," (Ezek. 32:27) it would be necessary thou shouldst be told
plainly, thou hast broken the laws of the King of kings and by the breach of
them art become obnoxious to his righteous condemnation.
     3. Your conscience tells you that you were born the natural subject of
God, born under the indispensable obligations of his law. For it is most
apparent that the constitution of your rational nature, which makes you
capable of receiving law from God, binds you to obey it. And it is equally
evident and certain that you have not exactly obeyed this law, nay, that you
have violated it in many aggravated instances.
     4. Will you dare to deny this? Will you dare to assert your innocence?
Remember, it must be a complete innocence; yea, and a perfect righteousness
too, or it can stand you in no stead, farther than to prove, that, though a
condemned sinner, you are not quite so criminal as some others, and will not
have quite so hot a place in hell as they. And when this is considered, will
you plead not guilty to the charge? Search the records of your own
conscience, for God searcheth them: ask it seriously, "Have you never in
your life sinned against God?" Solomon declared, that in his days "there was
not a just man upon earth, who did good and sinned not;" (Eccl. 7:20) and
the apostle Paul, "that all had sinned and come short of the glory of God"
(Rom. 3:23) "that both Jews and Gentiles (which you know, comprehend the
whole human race) were all under sin." (Rom. 3:9) And can you pretend any
imaginable reason to believe the world is grown so much better since their
days, that any should now plead their own case as an exception? Or will you,
however, presume to arise in the face of the omniscient Majesty of heaven,
and say, I am the man?
     5. Supposing, as before, you have been free from those gross acts of
immorality which are so pernicious to society that they have generally been
punishable by human laws; can you pretend that you have not, in smaller
instances, violated the rules of piety, of temperance, and charity? Is there
any one person, who has intimately known you, that would not be able to
testify you had said or done something amiss! Or if others could not convict
you, would not your own heart do it! Does it not prove you guilty of pride,
of passion, of sensuality, of an excessive fondness of the world and its
enjoyments? of murmuring, or at least of secretly repining against God,
under the strokes of an afflictive providence; of misspending a great deal
of your time; abusing the gifts of God's bounty to vain, if not, in some
instances, to pernicious purposes; of mocking him when you have pretended to
engage in his worship, "drawing near to him with your mouth and your lips
while your heart has been far front him?" (Isa. 29:13) Does not conscience
condemn you of some one breach of the law at least? And by one breach of it
you are, in a sense, a Scriptural sense, "become guilty of all," (Jam. 2:19)
and are as incapable of being justified before God, by any obedience of your
own, as if you had committed ten thousand offences. But, in reality, there
are ten thousand and more chargeable to your account. When you come to
reflect on all your sins of negligence, as we as on those of commission; on
all the instances in which you have "failed to do good when it was in the
power of your hand to do it;" (Prov. 3:27) on all the instances in which
acts of devotion have been omitted, especially in secret; and on all those
cases in which you have shown a stupid disregard to the honor of God, and to
the temporal and eternal happiness of your fellow-creatures: when all these,
I say, are reviewed, the number will swell beyond all possibility of
account, and force you to cry out, "Mine iniquities are more than the hairs
of my head." (Psal. 40:12) They will appear in such a light before you, that
your own heart will charge you with countless multitudes; and how much more,
"then, that God, who is greater than your heart, and knoweth all things!" (1
John 3:20)
     6. And say, sinner, is it a little thing that you have presumed to set
light by the authority of the God of heaven, and to violate his law, if it
had been by mere carelessness and inattention? How much more heinous,
therefore, is the guilt, when in an many instances you hare done it
knowingly and willfully! Give me leave seriously to ask you, and let me
entreat you to ask your own soul, "Against whom hast thou magnified thyself?
Against whom hast thou exalted thy voice," (2 Kings 19:22) or "lifted up thy
rebellious hand?" On whose law, O sinner, hast thou presumed to trample? and
whose friendship, and whose enmity, hast thou thereby dared to affront! Is
it a man like thyself that thou host insulted? Is it only a temporal
monarch--only one "who can kill thy body, and then hath no more that he can
do?" (Luke, 12:4)
     Nay, sinner, thou wouldst not have dared to treat a temporal prince as
thou hast treated the "King Eternal, Immortal," and "Invisible." (1 Tim.
1:17) No price could have hired thee to deal by the majesty of an earthly
sovereign, as thou bast dealt by that God before whom the cherubim and
seraphim are continually bowing. Not one opposing or complaining, disputing
or murmuring word is heard among all the celestial legions, when the
intimations of his will are published to them. And who art thou, O wretched
man! who art thou, that thou shouldst oppose him? That thou shouldst oppose
and provoke a God of infinite power and terror, who needs but exert one
single act of his sovereign will, and thou art in a moment stripped of every
possession; cut off from every hope; destroyed and rooted up from existence,
if that were his pleasure; or, what is inconceivably conceivably worse,
consigned over to the severest and most lasting agonies? Yet this is the God
whom thou hast offended, whom thou hast affronted to his nice, presuming to
violate his express laws in his very presence. This is the God before whom
thou standest as a convicted criminal; convicted not of one or two
particular offenses, but of thousands and ten thousands; of a course and
series of rebellion and provocations, in which thou hast persisted more or
less ever since thou want born, and the particulars of which have been
attended with almost every conceivable circumstance of aggravation. Reflect
on particulars, and deny the charge if you can.
     7. If knowledge be an aggravation of guilt, thy guilt, O sinner, is
greatly aggravated! For thou wast born in Emmanuel's land, and God hath
"written to thee the great things of his law," yet "thou hast accounted them
as a strange thing." (Hos. 8:12) Thou hast "known to do good, and hast not
done it;" (James 4:17) and therefore to thee the omission of it has been sin
indeed. "Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard?" (Isa. 30:28) Wast thou
not early taught the will of God? Hast thou not since received repeated
lessons, by which it has been inculcated again and again, in public and in
private, by preaching and reading the word of God? Nay, hath not thy duty
been in some instances so plain, that, even without any instruction it all,
thine own reason might easily have inferred at? And hast thou not also been
warned of the consequences of disobedience? Hast thou not "known the
righteous judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of
death?" Yet, thou hast, perhaps, "not only done the same, but hast had
pleasure in those that do them;" (Rom. 1:32) hast chosen them for thy most
intimate friends and companions; so as hereby to strengthen, by the force of
example and converse, the hands of each other in your iniquities.
     8. Nay more, if Divine love and mercy be any aggravation of the sins
committed against it, thy crimes, O sinner, are heinously aggravated. Must
thou not acknowledge it, O foolish creature and unwise! Hast thou not been
"nourished and brought up by him as his child, and yet hast rebelled against
him?" (Isa. 1:2) Did not God "take you out of the womb?" (Psal. 22:9) Did he
not watch over you in your infant days, and guard you from a multitude of
dangers which the most careful parent or nurse could not have observed or
warded off? Has he not given you your rational powers? and is it not by him
you have been favored with every opportunity of improving them? Has he not
every day supplied your wants with an unwearied liberality, and added, with
respect to many who will read this, the delicacies of life to its necessary
supports? Has he not "heard you cry when trouble came upon you?" (Job 27:9)
and frequently appeared for your deliverance, when in the distress of nature
you have called upon him for help? Has be not rescued you from ruin, when it
seemed just ready to swallow you up; and healed your diseases, when it
seemed to all about you, that the residue of your days was cut off in the
midst? (Psal. 102:24) Or, if it has not been so, is not this long-continued
and uninterrupted health, which you have enjoyed for so many years, to be
acknowledged as an equivalent obligation? Look around upon all your
possessions, and say, what one thing have you in the world which his
goodness did not give you, and which he hath not thus far preserved to you?
Add to all this, the kind notice of his will which he hath sent you; the
tender expostulations which he hath used with you, to bring you to a wiser
and better temper; and the discoveries and gracious invitations of his
Gospel which you have heard, and which you have despised; and then say,
whether your rebellion has not been aggravated by the vilest ingratitude,
and whether that aggravation can be accounted small?
     9. Again, if it be any aggravation of Sin to be committed against
conscience, thy crimes, O sinner! have been so aggravated. Consult the
records of it, and then dispute the fact if you can. "There is a spirit in
man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding;" (Job
32:8) and that understanding will act, and a secret conviction or being
accountable to its Maker and Preserver is inseparable from the actings of
it. It is easy to object to human remonstrances, and to give things false
colorings before him; but the heart often condemns, while the tongue
excuses. Have you not often found it so? Has not conscience remonstrated
against your past conduct, and have not these remonstrances been very
painful too! I have been assured, by a gentleman of undoubted credit, that,
when he was in the pursuit of all the gayest sensualities of life, and was
reckoned one of the happiest of mankind, he has seen a dog come into the
room where he was among his merry companions, and has groaned inwardly and
said, "O! that I had been that dog!" And hast thou, O sinner, felt nothing
like this? Has thy conscience been so stupified, so "seared with a hot
iron," (1 Tim. 4:2) that it has never cried out for any of the violences
which have been done it? Has it never warned thee of the fatal consequences
of what thou hast done in opposition to it? These warnings are, in effect,
the voice of God; they are the admonitions which he gave thee by his
vicegerent in thy breast. And when his sentence for thy evil works is
executed upon thee in everlasting death, thou shalt hear that voice speaking
to thee again in a louder tone and a severer accent than before; and thou
shalt be tormented with its upbraiding through eternity, because thou
wouldst not, in time, hearken to its admonitions.
     10. Let me add farther, if it be any aggravation that sin has been
committed after God has been moving by his Spirit on the mind, surely your
sin has been attended with that aggravation too. Under the Mosaic
dispensation, dark and imperfect as it was, the Spirit strove with the Jews
else Stephen could not have charged it upon them, that through all their
generations "they had always resisted him." (Acts 7:51) Now, surely, we may
much more reasonably apprehend that he strives with sinners under the
Gospel. And have you never experienced any thing of this kind, even when
there has been no external circumstance to awaken you, nor any pious teacher
near you? Have you never perceived some secret impulse upon your mind,
leading you to think of religion, urging you to an immediate consideration
or it, sweetly inviting you to make trial of it, and warning you, that you
would lament this stupid neglect? O sinner, why were not these happy motions
attended to? Why did you not, as it were, spread out all the sail of your
soul to catch that heavenly, that favorable breeze? But you have carelessly
neglected it: you have overborne these kind influences. How reasonably then
might the sentence have gone forth in righteous displeasure, "My Spirit
shall no more strive." (Gen. 6:3) And indeed who can say that it is not
already gone forth? If you feel no secret agitation of mind, no remorse, no
awakening while you read such a remonstrance as this, there will be room,
great room to suspect it.
     11. There is indeed one aggravation more, which may not attend your
guilt--I mean that of being committed against solemn covenant engagements: a
circumstance which has lain heavy on the consciences of many, who perhaps in
the main series of their lives have served God with great integrity. But let
me call you to think to what this is owing. Is it not that you have never
personally made any solemn profession of devoting yourself to God at
all--have never done any thing which has appeared to your own apprehension
an act by which you have made a covenant with him, though you have heard so
much of his covenant, though you have been so solemnly and so tenderly
invited to it? And in this view, how monstrous must this circumstance
appear, which at first was mentioned as some alleviation of guilt! Yet I
must add that you are not, perhaps, altogether so free from guilt on this
head as you may at first imagine. Has your heart been, even from your youth,
hardened to so uncommon a degree that you have never cried to God in any
season of danger and difficulty? And did you never mingle vows with those
cries? Did you never promise, that, if God would hear and help you in that
hour of extremity, you would forsake your sins, and serve him as long as you
lived? He heard and helped you, or you had not been reading these lines;
and, by such deliverance, did as it were bind down your vows upon you; and
therefore your guilt, in the violation of them, remains before him, though
you are stupid enough to forget them. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is
overlooked by him; and the day will come, when the record shall be laid
before you too.
     12. And now, O sinner, think seriously with thyself what defence thou
wilt make to all this. Prepare thine apology; call thy witnesses; make thine
appeal from him whom thou hast thus offended, to some superior judge, if
such there be. Alas! those apologies are so weal: and vain, that one of thy
fellow-worms may easily detect and confound them; as I will endeavor
presently to show thee. But thy foreboding conscience already knows the
issue. Thou art convicted, convicted of the most aggravated offences. Thou
"hast not humbled thine heart, but lined up thyself against the Lord of
heaven," (Dan. 5:22,23) and "thy sentence shall come forth from his
presence." (Psal. 17:2) Thou hast violated his known laws; thou hast
despised and abused his numberless mercies; thou hast affronted conscience,
his vicegerent in thy soul; thou hast resisted and grieved his Spirit; thou
hast trifled with him in all thy pretended submissions; and, in one word,
and that his own, "thou hast done evil things as thou couldst." (Jer. 3:5)
Thousands are no doubt already in hell whose guilt never equaled thine; and
it is astonishing that God hath spared there to read this representation of
thy case, or to make any pause upon it. O waste not so precious a moment,
but enter attentively, and as humbly us thou canst, into these reflections
which suit a case so lamentable and so terrible as thine.


          Confession of a Sinner convinced in general of his Guilt.

     "O God! thou injured Sovereign, thou all-penetrating and Almighty
Judge! what shall I say to this charge! Shall I pretend I am wronged by it,
and stand on the defence in thy presence? I dare not do it; for `thou
knowest my foolishness, and none of my sins are hid from thee.' Psal. 69:5)
My conscience tells me that a denial of my crimes would only increase them,
and add new fuel to the fire of thy deserved wrath. `If I justify myself,
mine own mouth will condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it will also prove me
perverse;' (Job 9:20) `for innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine
iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up: they
are,' as I have been told in thy name, `more than the hairs of my head;
therefore my heart faileth me.' (Psal. 40:12) I am more guilty than it is
possible for another to declare or represent. My heart speaks more than any
other accuser. And thou, O Lord, art much greater than my heart, and knowest
all things. (1 John 3:20)
     "What has my life been but a course of rebellion against thee? It is
not this or that particular action alone I have to lament. Nothing has been
right in its principles, and views, and ends. My whole soul has been
disordered. All my thoughts, my affections, my desires, my pursuits have
been wretchedly alienated from thee. I have acted as if I had hated thee,
who art infinitely the loveliest of all beings; as if I had been contriving
how I might tempt thee to the uttermost, and weary out thy patience,
marvelous as it is. My actions have been evil, my words yet more evil than
they! and, O blessed God, my heart, how much more corrupt than either! What
an inexhausted fountain of sin has there been in it! A fountain of original
corruption, which mingled its bitter streams with the days of early
childhood; and which, alas! flows on even to this day, beyond what actions
or words could express. I see this to have, been the case with regard to
what I can particularly survey. But, oh! how many months and years have I
forgotten, concerning which I only know this in the general, that they are
much like those I can remember; except it be, that I have been growing worse
and worse, and provoking thy patience more and more, though every new
exercise of it was more and more wonderful.
     "And how am I astonished that thy forbearance is still continued! it is
because thou art `God, and not man.' (Hos. 11:9) Had I, a sinful worm, been
thus injured, I could not have endured it. Had I been a prince, I had long
since done justice on any rebel whose crimes had borne but a distant
resemblance to mine. Had I been a parent, I had long since cast off the
ungrateful child who had made me such a return as I have all my life long
been making to thee, O thou Father of my spirit! The flame of natural
affection would have been extinguished, and his sight and his very name
would have become hateful to me. Why then, O Lord, am I not `cast out from
thy presence?' (Jer. 52:3) Why am I not sealed up under an irreversible
sentence of destruction! That I live, I owe to thine indulgence. But, oh! if
there be yet any way of deliverance, if there be yet any hope for so guilty
a creature, may it be opened upon me by thy Gospel and thy grace! And if any
farther alarm, humiliation, or terror be necessary to my security and
salvation, may I meet them and bear them all! Wound my heart, O Lord, so
that thou wilt but afterwards `heal it;' and break it in pieces, if thou
wilt but at length condescend to bind it up." (Hos.6:1)

                                 CHAPTER V.

                   THE SINNER STRIPPED OF HIS VAIN PLEAS.

1,2. The vanity of those pleas which sinners may secretly confide in, is so
apparent that they will be ashamed at last to mention them before God.--3.
Such as, that they descended from pious us parents.--4. That they had
attended to the speculative part of religion.--5. That they had entertained
sound notion..--6. 7. That they had expressed a zealous regard to religion,
and attended the outward forms of worship with those they apprehended the
purest churches.--8. That they had been free from gross immoralities.--9.
That they did not think the consequences of neglecting religion would have
been so fatal.-- 10. That they could not do otherwise then they did.--11.
Conclusion. With the meditation of a convinced sinner giving up his vain
pleas before God

1. MY last discourse left the sinner in very alarming and very pitiable
circumstances; a criminal convicted at the bar of God, disarmed of all
pretences to perfect innocence and sinless obedience, and consequently
obnoxious to the sentence of a holy law, which can make no allowance for any
transgression, no not for the least; but pronounces death and a curse
against every act of disobedience: how much more then against those
numberless and aggravated acts of rebellion, of which, O sinner! thy
conscience hath condemned thee before God? I would hope Some of my readers
will ingenuously fall under the conviction, and not think of making any
apology; for sure I am, that, humbly to plead guilty at the divine bar, is
the most decent, and, all things considered, the most prudent thing that can
be done in such an unhappy state. Yet I know the treachery and the
self-flattery of a sinful and corrupted heart. I know what excuses it makes,
and how, when it is driven from one refuge, it flies to another, to fortify
itself against conviction, and to persuade, not merely another, but itself,
"That if it has been in some instances to blame, it is not quite so criminal
as was represented; that there are at least considerations that plead in its
favor, which, if they cannot justify, will in some degree excuse." A secret
reserve of this kind, sometimes perhaps scarcely formed into a distinct
reflection, breaks the force of conviction, and often prevents that deep
humiliation before God which is the happiest token of approaching
deliverance. I will therefore examine into some of these particulars; and
for that purpose would seriously ask thee, O sinner! what thou hast to offer
in arrest or judgment? What plea thou canst urge for thyself; why the
sentence of God should not go forth against thee, and why thou shouldst not
fall into the hands of his justice?
     2. But this I must premise, that the question is not; how wouldst thou
answer to me, a weak sinful worm like thyself, who am shortly to stand with
thee at the same bar? and "the Lord grant that I may find mercy of the Lord
in that day," (2 Tim. 1:18) but, what wilt thou reply to thy Judge? What
couldst thou plead, if thou wast now actually before his tribunal, where, to
multiply vain words, and to frame idle apologies, would be but to increase
thy guilt and provocation? Surely, the very thought of his presence must
supersede a thousand of those trifling excuses which now sometimes impose on
"a generation that are pure in their own eyes," though they "are not washed
from their filthiness!" (Prov. 30:12) or while they are conscious of their
impurities, "trust in words that cannot profit," (Jer 7:8) and "lean upon
broken reeds." (Isa. 36:6)
     3. You will not to be sure, in such a condition, plead "that you are
descended from pious parents." That was indeed your privilege; and wo be to
you that you have abused it, and "forsaken the God of your fathers." (2
Chron. 7:22) Ishmael was immediately descended from Abraham, the friend of
God, and Esau was the son of Isaac, who was born according to the promise:
yet you know they were both cut off from the blessing to which they
apprehended they had a kind of hereditary claim. You may remember that our
Lord does not only speak of one who would call "Abraham father," who
"tormented in flames," (Luke 16:24) but expressly declares that many of the
children of the kingdom shall be shut out of it; and when others come from
the most distant parts to sit down in it, shall be distinguished from their
companions in misery only by louder accents of lamentation, and more furious
"gnashing of teeth." (Matt. 8:11,12)
     4. Nor will you then presume to plead "that you had exercised your
thoughts about the speculative parts of religion." For to what end can this
serve, but to increase your condemnation? Since you have broken God's law,
since you have contradicted the most obvious and apparent obligations of
religion, to have inquired into it, and argued upon it, is a circumstance
that proves your guilt more audacious. What! did you think religion was
merely an exercise of men's wit, and the amusement of their curiosity? If
you argued about it on the principles of common sense, you must have judged
and proved it to be a practical thing; and if it was so, why did yen not
practice accordingly? You knew the particular branches of it; and why then
did you not attend to every one of them? To have pleaded an unavoidable
ignorance would have been their happiest plea that could have remained for
you; nay, an actual, though faulty ignorance, would have been some little
allay of your guilt. But if; by your own confession, you have "known your
Master's will, and have not done it," you bear witness against yourself,
that you deserve to be "beaten with many stripes." (Luke, 12:47)
     5. Nor yet, again, will it suffice to say "that you have had right
notions both of the doctrines and the precepts of religion." Your advantage
for practicing it was therefore the greater; but understanding and acting
right can never go for the same thing in the judgment of God or of man. In
"believing there is one God," you have done well; but the "devils also
believe and tremble." (Jam. 2:19) In acknowledging Christ to be the Son of
God and the Holy One, you have done well too; but you know the unclean
spirits made this very orthodox confession; (Luke 4:34,41) and yet they are
"reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the
great day." (Jude, ver. 6) And will you place any secret confidence in that
which might be pleaded by the infernal spirits as well as by you?
     6. But perhaps you may think of pleading that "you have actually done
something in religion." Having judged what faith was the soundest, and what
worship the purest, "you entered yourself into those societies where such
articles of faith were professed, and such forms of worship were practiced:
and among these you have signalized yourself by exactness of your
attendance, by the zeal with which you have espoused their cause, and by the
earnestness with which you have contended for such principles and
practices." O sinner! I much fear that this zeal of thine about the
circumstantials of religion will swell thine account, rather than be allowed
in abatement of it. He that searches thine heart knows from whence it arose,
and how far it extended. Perhaps be sees that it was all hypocrisy, an
artful veil under which thou wast carrying on thy mean designs for this
world, while the sacred name of God and religion were profaned and
prostituted in the basest manner: and if so, thou art cursed with a
distinguished curse for so daring an insult on the Divine omniscience as
well as justice. Or perhaps the earnestness with which you have been
"contending for the faith and worship which was once delivered to the
saints," (Jude, ver. 3) or which, it is possible, you may have rashly
concluded to be that, might be mere pride and bitterness of spirit; and all
the zeal you have expressed might possibly arise from a confidence of your
own judgment, from an impatience of contradiction, or some secret malignity
of spirit, which delighteth itself in condemning, and even in worrying
others; yea, which, if I may be al1owed the expression, fiercely preys upon
religion, as the tiger upon the lamb, to turn it into a nature most contrary
to its own. And shall this screen you before the great tribunal? Shall it
not rather awaken the displeasure it is pleaded to avert?
     7. But say that this zeal for notions and forms has been ever so well
intended, and, so far as it has gone ever so well conducted too; what will
that avail toward vindicating thee in so many instances or negligence and
disobedience as are recorded against thee in the book of God's remembrance?
Were the revealed doctrines of the Gospel to be earnestly maintained, (as
indeed they ought) and was the great practical purpose for which they were
revealed to be forgot? Was the very mint, and anise, and cummin to be
tithed; and were "the weightier matters of the law to be omitted," (Matt.
23:23) even that love to God which is its "first and great command?" (Matt.
22:38) O! how wilt thou be able to vindicate even the justest sentence thou
hast passed on others for their infidelity, or for their disobedience,
without being "condemned out of thine own mouth?" (Luke 19:22)
     8. Will you then plead "your fair moral character, your works of
righteousness and of mercy?" Had your obedience to the law of God been
complete, the plea might be allowed as important and valid. But I have
supposed, and proved above, that conscience testifies to the contrary; and
you will not now dare to contradict it. I add farther, had these works of
yours, which you now urge, proceeded from a sincere love to God, and a
genuine faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you would not have thought of
pleading them any otherwise than as an evidence of your interest in the
Gospel-covenant and in the blessings of it, procured by the righteousness
and blood of the Redeemer; and that faith, had it been sincere, would have
been attended with such deep humility, and with such solemn apprehensions of
the Divine holiness and glory, that, instead of pleading any works of your
own before God, you would rather have implored his pardon for the mixture of
sinful imperfection attending the very best of them. Now, as you are a
stranger to this humbling and sanctifying principle, (which here in this
address I suppose my reader to be) it is absolutely necessary you should be
plainly and faithfully told, that neither sobriety, nor honesty, nor
humanity will justify you before the tribunal of God, when he "lays judgment
to the line, and righteousness to the plummet," (Isa. 28:17) and examines
all your actions and all your thoughts with the strictest severity. You have
not been a drunkard, an adulterer, or a robber. So far it is well. You stand
before a righteous God, who will do you ample justice, and therefore will
not condemn you for drunkenness, adultery, or robbery; but you have
forgotten him, your Parent and your Benefactor; you have "cast off fear, and
restrained prayer before him;" (Job 15:4) you have despised the blood of his
Son, and all the immortal blessings that he purchased with it. For this,
therefore, you are judged, and condemned. And as for any thing that has
looked like virtue and humanity in your temper and conduct, the exercise of
it has in great measure been its own reward, if there were any thing more
than form and artifice in it; and the various bounties of Divine Providence
to you, amidst all your numberless provocations, have been a thousand times
more than an equivalent for such defective and imperfect virtues as these.
You remain therefore chargeable with the guilt of a thousand offences, for
which you have no excuse, though there are some other instances in which you
did not grossly offend. And those good works in which you have been so ready
to trust, will no more vindicate you in his awful presence, than a man's
kindness to his poor neighbors would be allowed as a plea in arrest of
judgment, when he stood convicted of high treason against his prince.
     9. But you will, perhaps, be ready to say, "you did not expect all
this: you did not think the consequences of neglecting religion would have
been so fatal." And why did you not think it? Why did you not examine more
attentively and more impartially? Why did you suffer the pride and folly of
your vain heart to take up with such superficial appearances, and trust the
light suggestions of your own prejudiced mind against the express
declaration of the word of God? Had you reflected on his character as the
supreme Governor of the world, you would have seen the necessity of such a
day of retribution as we are now referring to. Had you regarded the
Scripture, the divine authority of which you professed to believe, every
page might have taught you to expect it. "You did not think of religion!"
and of what were you thinking when you forgot or neglected it? Had you so
much employment of another kind? Of what kind, I beseech you! What end could
you propose, by any thing else, of equal moment? Nay, with all your
engagements, conscience will tell you that there have been seasons when, for
want of thought, time and life have been a burden to you; yet you guarded
against thought as against an enemy, and cast up, as it were, an
entrenchment of inconsideration around you on every side, as if it had been
to defend you from the most dangerous invasion. God knew you were
thoughtless, and therefore he sent you "line upon line, and precept upon
precept," (Isa. 28:10) in such plain language that it needed no genius or
study to understand it. He tried you too with afflictions as well as with
mercies, to awaken you out of your fatal lethargy; and yet, when awakened,
you would lie down again upon the bed of sloth. And now, pleasing as your
dreams might be, "you must lie down in sorrow." (Isa. 50:11) Reflection has
at last overtaken you, and must be heard as a tormentor, since it might not
be heard as a friend.
     10. But some may perhaps imagine that one important apology is yet
unheard, and that there may be room to say, "you were, by the necessity of
your nature, impelled to those things which are now charged upon you as
crimes; and that it was not in your power to have avoided them, in the
circumstances in which you were placed." If this will do any thing, it
indeed promises to do much--so much that it will amount to nothing. If I
were disposed to answer you upon the folly and madness of your own
principles. I might say that the same consideration which proves it was
necessary for you to offend, proves also that it is necessary for God to
punish you; and that, indeed, he cannot but do it: and I might farther say
with an excellent writer, "that the same principles which destroy the
injustice of sins, destroy the injustice of punishment too." But if you
cannot admit this; if you should still reply, in spite of principle, that it
must be unjust to punish you for an action utterly and absolutely
unavoidable, I really think you would answer right. But in that answer you
will contradict your own scheme, as I observed above; and I leave your
conscience to judge what sort of a scheme that must be which would make all
kind of punishment unjust; for the argument will on the whole be the same,
whether with regard to human punishment or divine. It is a scheme full of
confusion and horror. You would not, I am sure, take it from a servant who
had robbed you and then fired your house; you would never inwardly believe
that he could not have helped it or think that he had fairly excused himself
by suck a plea; and I am persuaded you would be so far from presuming to
offer it to God at the great day, that you would not venture to turn it into
a prayer even now. Imagine that you saw a malefactor dying with such words
as these in his mouth: "O God! it is true I did indeed rob and murder my
fellow-creatures; but thou knowest, that, as my circumstances were ordered,
I could not do otherwise; my will was irresistibly determined by the motives
which thou didst set before me, and I could as well have shaken the
foundations of the earth, or darkened the sun in the firmament, as have
resisted the impulse which bore me on." I put it to your conscience whether
you would not look on such a speech as this with detestation, as one
enormity added to another. Yet, if the excuse would have any weight in. your
mouth, it would have equal weight in his; or would be equally applicable to
any, the most shocking occasions. But indeed it is so contrary to the
plainest principles of common reason, that I can-hardly persuade myself that
any one could seriously and thoroughly believe it; and should imagine my
time very ill employed here if I were to set myself to combat those
pretences to argument by which the wantonness of human wit has attempted to
varnish it over.
     11. You-see then, on the whole, the vanity of all your pleas; and how
easily the most plausible or them might be silenced by a mortal man like
yourself; how much more then by Him who searches all hearts, and can; in a
moment, flash in upon the conscience a most powerful and irresistible
conviction? What then can you do, while you stand convicted in the presence
of God? What should you do, but hold your peace under an inward sense of
your inexcusable guilt, and prepare yourself to hear the sentence which his
law pronounces against you? You must feel the execution of it, if the Gospel
does not at length deliver you; and you must feel something of the terror of
it before you can be excited to seek to that Gospel for deliverance.

The Meditation of a convinced Sinner giving up his vain pleas before God.

     "Deplorable condition to which I am indeed reduced! I hare sinned, and
`what shall I say unto thee, O thou Preserver of men?' (Job 7:20) What shall
I dare to say? Fool that I was, to amuse myself with such trifling excuses
as these, and to imagine they could have any weight in thy tremendous
presence, or that I should be able so much as to mention them there. I
cannot presume to do it. I am silent and confounded: my hopes, alas! are
slain, and my soul itself is ready to die too, so far as an immortal soul
can die; and I am almost ready to say, O that it could die entirely! I am
indeed a criminal in the hands of justice, quite disarmed, and stripped of
the weapons in which I trusted. Dissimulation can only add provocation to
provocation. I will therefore plainly and freely own it. I have acted as if
I thought God was `altogether such a one as myself:' but he hath said, `I
will reprove thee; I will set thy sins in order before thine eyes;' (Psal.
50:21) will marshal them in battle array. And, oh! what a terrible kind of
host do they appear! and how do they surround me beyond any possibility of
an escape! O my soul they have, as it were, taken thee prisoner, and they
are bearing thee away to the divine tribunal.
     "Thou must appear before it! thou must see the awful, the eternal
Judge, who `tries the very reins,' (Jer. 27:10) and who needs no other
evidence, for he has `himself been witness to all thy rebellion.' (Jer.
29:23) Thou must see him, O my soul! sitting in judgment upon thee; and,
when He is strict to `mark iniquity,' (Psal. 130:8) how wilt thou `answer
him for one of a thousand!' (Job 9:3) And if thou canst not answer him, in
what language will he speak to thee! Lord, as things at present stand, I can
expect no other language than that or condemnation. And what a condemnation
is it! Let me reflect upon it! Let me read my sentence before I hear it
finally and irreversibly passed. I know he has recorded it in his word, and
I know, in the general, that the representation is made with gracious
design. I know that be would have us alarmed, that we may not be destroyed.
Speak to me, therefore, O God! while thou speakest not for the last time,
and in circumstances when thou wilt hear me no more. Speak in the language
of effectual error, so that it be not to speak me into final despair. And
let thy word, however painful in its operation, be `quick and powerful and
sharper than any two-edged sword.' (Heb. 4:12) Let me not vainly flatter
myself let me not be left a wretched prey to those `who would prophecy
smooth things to me,' (Isa. 30:10) till I am sealed up under wrath, and feel
thy justice piercing my soul, and `the poison of thine arrows drinking up
all my spirits.' (Job 6:4)
     "Before I enter upon the particular view, I know, in the general, that
`it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.' (Heb.
10:31) O thou living God! in one sense I am already fallen into thine hands.
I am become obnoxious to thy displeasure, justly obnoxious to it and
whatever thy sentence may be, when it comes forth from thy presence (Psal.
17:2) I must condemn myself and justify thee. Thou canst not treat file with
more severity than mine iniquities have deserved; and how bitter soever that
cup of trembling may be (Isa. 51:17) which thou shalt appoint for me, I give
judgment against myself, that I deserve `to wring out the very dregs of
it.'" (Psal. 75:8)

                                 CHAPTER VI.

                            THE SINNER SENTENCED.

1,2.The sinner called upon to hear his sentence.--3. God's law does now in
general pronounce a curse.--4. It pronounces death.--5. And being turned
into hell.--6. The judgement day shall come.--7.8. The solemnity of that
grand process described according to scriptural representations of it.--9.
With a particular illustration of the sentence, "Depart, accursed," &c.--10.
The execution wilt certainly and immediately follow.--11. The sinner warned
to prepare for enduring it. The reflection of a sinner struck with the
terror of his sentence.

1. HEAR, O sinner! and I will speak (Job 42:4.) yet once more, as in the
name of God, of God thine Almighty Judge, who, if thou dost not attend to
his servants, will, ere long, speak unto thee in a more immediate manner,
with an energy and terror which thou shalt not be able to resist.
     2. Thou hast been convicted, as in his presence. Thy pleas have been
overruled, or rather they have been silenced. It appears before God, it
appears to thine own conscience that thou hast nothing more to offer in
arrest of judgment; therefore hear thy sentence, and summon up, if thou
canst, all the powers of thy soul to bear the execution of it. "It is,"
indeed, a very small thing "to be judged of man's judgment;" but "he who now
judgeth thee is the Lord." (1 Cor. 4:3,4) Hear, therefore, and tremble,
while I tell thee how he will speak to thee; or rather, while I show thee,
from express Scripture, how he doth even now speak, and what is the
authentic and recorded sentence of his word, even of his word who hath said,
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one tittle of my word shall ever
pass away." (Matt. 5:18)
     3. The law of God speaks not to thee alone, O sinner! nor to thee by
any particular address; but in a most universal language it speaks to all
transgressors, and levels its terrors against all offences, great or small,
without any exception. And this is its language: "Cursed is everyone that
continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do
them." (Gal. 3:10) This is its voice to the whole world; and this it speaks
to thee. Its awful contents are thy personal concern, O reader! and thy
conscience knows it. Far from continuing in all things that are written
therein to do them, thou canst not but be sensible that "innumerable evils
have encompassed thee about." (Psa. 40:12) It is then manifest thou art the
man whom it condemns: thou art even now "cursed with a curse," as God
emphatically speaks, (Mal 3:9.) with the curse of the Most High God; yea,
"all the curses which are written in the book of the law" are pointed
against thee. (Deut. 29:20) God may righteously execute any of them upon
thee in a moment; and though thou at present feelest none of them, yet, if
infinite mercy do not prevent, it is but a little while and they will "come
into thy bowels like water," till thou art burst asunder with them, and
shall penetrate "like oil into thy bones." (Psa. 109:18)
     4. Thus saith the Lord, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." (Ezek.
18:4) But thou hast sinned, and therefore thou art under a sentence of
death. And, O unhappy creature, of what a death! What will the end of these
things be? That the agonies of dissolving nature shall seize thee, and thy
soul shall be torn away from thy languishing body, and thou "return to the
dust from whence thou wast taken." (Psal. 104:29) This is indeed one awful
effect of sin. In these affecting characters has God, through all nations
and all ages of men, written the awful register and memorial of his holy
abhorrence of it, and righteous displeasure against it. But, alas! all this
solemn pomp and horror of dying is but the opening of the dreadful scene. It
is a rough kind of stroke, by which the fetters are knocked off when the
criminal is led out to torture and execution.
     5. Thus saith the Lord, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, even all
the nations that forget God." (Psal. 9:17) Though there be whole nations of
them, their multitudes and their power shall be no defence to them. They
shall be driven into hell together--into that flaming prison which divine
vengeance hath prepared-into "Tophet, which is ordained of old, even for
royal sinners" as well as for others; so little can any human distinction
protect! "He hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much
wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, shall kindle it;"
(Isa. 30:33) and the flaming torrent shall flow in upon it so fast, that it
shall be turned into a sea of liquid fire; or, as the Scripture also
expresses it, "a lake burning with fire and brimstone" for ever. (Rev. 21:8)
"This is the second death," and the death to which thou, O sinner! by the
word of God art doomed;
     6. And shall this sentence stand upon record in vain! Shall the law
speak it, and the Gospel speak it? and shall it never be pronounced more
audibly? and will God never require and execute the punishment? He will O
sinner! require it; and he will execute it, though he may seem for a while
to delay. For well dost thou know that "he hath appointed a day in which he
will judge the" whole "world in righteousness, by that Man whom he hath
ordained, of which he hath given assurance in having raised him from the
dead." (Acts 17.31) And when God judgeth the world, O reader! whoever thou
aft, he will judge thee. And while I remind thee of it, I would also
remember that he will judge me. And "knowing the terror of the Lord," (2 Cor
5:11) that I may "deliver my own soul," (Ezek. 33:9) I would, with all
plainness and sincerity, labor to deliver thine.
     7. I therefore repeat the solemn warning: Then, O sinner! shalt "stand
before the judgment-seat of Christ." (2 Cor. 5:10) Thou shalt see that
pompous appearance, the description of which is grown so familiar to thee
that the repetition of it makes no impression on thy mind. But surely,
stupid as thou now art, the shrill trumpet of the archangel shall shake thy
very soul: and if nothing else can awaken and alarm thee, the convulsions
and flames of a dissolving world shall do it.
     8. Dost thou really think that the intent of Christ's final appearance
is only to recover his people from the grave, and to raise them to glory and
happiness? Whatever assurance thou hast that there shall be "a resurrection
of the just," thou hast the same that there shall also be "a resurrection or
the unjust;" (Acts, 24:15) that "he shall separate" the rising dead "one
from another, as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats," (Matt.
25:32) with equal certainty, and with infinitely greater ease. Or can you
imagine that he will only make an example of some flagrant and notorious
sinners, when it is said that "all the dead," both "small and great," shall
"stand before God;" (Rev. 20:12) and that even "he who knew not his Master's
will," and consequently seems of all others to have had the fairest excuse
for his omission to obey it, yet even "he," for that very omission, "shall
be beaten," though "with fewer stripes?" (Luke 12:48) Or can you think that
a sentence, to be delivered with so much pomp and majesty, a sentence by
which the righteous judgment of God is to be revealed, and to have its most
conspicuous and final triumph, will be inconsiderable, or the punishment to
which it shall consign the sinner be slight or tolerable? There would have
been little reason to apprehend that, even if we had been left barely to our
own conjectures what that sentence should be. But this is far from being the
case: our Lard Jesus Christ, in his infinite condescension and compassion,
has been pleased to give us a copy of the sentence, and no doubt a most
exact copy; and the words which contain it are worthy of being inscribed on
every heart. "The King," amidst all the splendor and dignity in which he
shall them appear, "shall say unto those on his right hand, Come, ye blessed
of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world!" (Matt. 25:34) And "where the word of a king is, there is power"
indeed. (Eccles. 8:4) And these words have a power which may justly animate
the heart of the humble Christian under the most overwhelming sorrow, and
may fill him "with joy unspeakable and fall of glory." (1 Pet. 1:8) To be
pronounced the blessed of the Lord! to be called to a kingdom! to the
immediate, the everlasting inheritance of it; and of such a kingdom! so well
prepared, so glorious, so complete, so exquisitely fitted for the delight
and entertainment of such creatures, so formed and so renewed that it shall
appear worthy the eternal counsels of God to have contrived it, worthy his
eternal love to have prepared it, and to have delighted himself with the
views of bestowing it upon his people: behold a blessed hope indeed! a
lively, glorious hope, to which we are "begotten again by the resurrection
of Christ from the dead," (I Pet.1:3) and formed by the sanctifying
influence of the Spirit of God upon our minds. But it is a hope from which
thou, O sinner! art at present excluded; and methinks that it might be
grievous to reflect, "These gracious words shall Christ speak to some, to
multitudes--but not to me; on me there is no blessedness pronounced; for me
there is no kingdom prepared." But is that all? Alas! sinner, our Lord hath
given thee a dreadful counterpart to this. He has told us what he will say
to thee, if thou continuest what thou art--to thee, and all the nations of
the impenitent and unbelieving world, be they ever so numerous, be the rank
of particular criminals ever so great. He shall say to the "kings of the
earth" who have been rebels against him, to "the great and rich men, and the
chief captains and the mighty men," as well as to "every bondman and every
freeman" or inferior rank, (Rev. 9:15) "Depart front me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." (Matt. 25:41) Oh!
pause upon these weighty words, that thou mayest enter into something of the
importance of them
     9. He will say, "Depart:" you shall be driven from his presence with
disgrace and infamy: "from him," the source of life and blessedness, in a
nearness to whom all the inhabitants of heaven continually rejoice; you
shall "depart," accursed: you have broken God's law, and its curse falls
upon you; and you are and shall he under that curse, that abiding curse;
from that day forward you shall be regarded by God and all his creatures as
an accursed and abominable thing, as the most detestable and the most
miserable part of the creation. You shall go "into fire;" and, oh! consider
into what fire! Is it merely into one fierce blaze which shall consume you
in a moment, though with exquisite pain? That were terrible. But, oh! such
terrors are not to be named with these. Thine, sinner, "is everlasting
fire." It is that which our Lord hath in such awful terms described as
prevailing there, "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not
quenched;" and again, in wonderful compassion, a third time, "where their
worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched," (Mark 9:44, 46, 48) Nor was
it originally prepared or principally intended for you: it was "prepared for
the devil and his angels;" for those first grand rebels who were,
immediately upon their fall, doomed to it: and since you have taken part
with them in their apostacy, you must sink with them into that flaming ruin,
and sink so much the deeper, as you have despised the Savior, who was never
offered to them. These must be your companions and your tormentors, with
whom you must dwell forever. And is it I that say this? or says not the law
and the Gospel the same? Does not the Lord Jesus Christ expressly say, who
is the "faithful and true witness," (Rev. 3:14) even he who himself is to
pronounce the sentence?
     10. And when it is thus pronounced, and pronounced by him, shall it not
also be executed? Who could imagine the contrary? Who could imagine there
should be all this pompous declaration to fill the mind only with vain
terror, and that this sentence should vanish into smoke? You may easily
apprehend that this would be a greater reproach to the Divine administration
than if sentence were never to be passed. And therefore we might easily have
inferred the execution of it, from the process of the preceding judgment.
But lest the treacherous heart of a sinner should deceive him with so vain a
hope, the assurance of that execution is immediately added in very memorable
terms. It shall be done: it shall immediately be done. Then on that very
day, while the sound of it is yet in their ears, "the wicked shall go away
into everlasting punishment;" (Matt. 25:46) and thou, O reader! whoever thou
art, being found in their number, shalt go away with them; shalt be driven
on among all these wretched multitudes and plunged with them into eternal
ruin. The wide gates of hell shall be open to receive thee: they shall be
shut upon thee for ever, to enclose thee, and be fast barred by the Almighty
hand of divine justice, to prevent all hope, all possibility of escape for
ever.
     11. And now "prepare" thyself "to meet the Lord thy God." (Amos 4:12)
Summon up all the resolution of thy mind to endure such a sentence such an
execution as this: for "he will not meet thee as a man;" (Isa. 47:36)
whoseheart may sometimes fail him when about to exert a needful act of
severity, so that compassion may prevail against reason and justice. No, he
will meet thee as a God, whose schemes and purposes are all immovable as
iris throne. I therefore testify to thee in his name this day, that if God
be true, he will thus speak; and that if he be able, he will thus act. And
on supposition of thy continuance in thine impenitence and unbelief, thou
art brought into this miserable case, that if God be not either false or
weak, thou art undone, thou art eternally undone.

The Reflection of a Sinner struck with the Terror of his Sentence.

     "Wretch that I am, What shall I do, or whither shall I flee? `I arm
weighed in the balance, and and found wanting.' (Dan. 5:27) This is indeed
my doom; the doom I am to expect from the mouth of Christ himself, from the
mouth of him that died for the redemption and salvation of men. Dreadful
sentence! and so much the more dreadful when considered in that view! To
what shall I look to save me from it? To whom shall I call? Shall I say to
the rocks, fall upon me, and to the hills, cover me? (Luke 23:30) What
should I gain by that? Were I indeed overwhelmed with rocks and mountains,
they could not conceal me from the notice of his eye; and his hand could
reach me with as much ease there as any where else.
     "Wretch indeed that I am! O that I had never been born! O that I had
never known the dignity and prerogative of the rational nature? Fatal
prerogative indeed, that renders me obnoxious to condemnation and wrath! O
that I had never been instructed in the will of God at all rather than that,
being thus instructed, I should have disregarded and transgressed it! Would
to God I had been allied to the meanest of the human race, to them that come
nearest to the state of the brutes, rather than that I should have had my
lot in cultivated Life, amidst so many of the improvements of reason, and
(dreadful reflection!) amidst so many of the advantages of religion tool and
thus to have perverted all to my own destruction! O that God would take away
this rational soul! but, alas! it will live for ever, will live to feel the
agonies of eternal death. Why have I seen the beauties and glories of a
world like this, to exchange it for that flaming prison! Why have I tasted
so many of my Creator's bounties, to wring out at last the dregs of his
wrath! Why have I known the delights of social life and friendly converse,
to exchange them for the horrid company of devils and damned spirits in
hell! Oh! `who can dwell with them in devouring flames? who can lie down'
with them `in everlasting, everlasting, everlasting burnings?' (Isa. 33:14)
     "But whom have I to blame in all this but my-self? What have I to
accuse but my own stupid incorrigible folly? On what is all this terrible
ruin to be charged, but on this one fatal, cursed cause that having broken
God's law. I rejected his Gospel too;
     "Yet stay, O my soul, in the midst of all these doleful foreboding
complaints. Can I say that I have finally rejected the Gospel? Am I not to
this day under the sound of it? The sentence is not yet gone forth against
me in so determinate a manner as to be utterly irreversible. Through all
this gloomy prospect one ray of hope breaks in, and it is possible I may yet
be delivered.
     "Reviving thought! Rejoice in it, O my soul! though it be with
trembling, and turn immediately to that God, who, though provoked by ten
thousand offences, has not yet 'sworn in his wrath that thou shalt never be
permitted to hold further intercourse with him., or to `enter into his rest'
(Psal. 95 11)
     "I do then, O blessed Lord! prostrate myself in the dust before thee, I
own I am a condemned and miserable creature. But my language is that of the
humble publican, `God be merciful to me a sinner!' (Luke 18:13) Some general
and confused apprehensions I have of a way by which I may possibly escape. O
God, whatever that way is, show it me, I beseech thee! Point it out so
plainly that I may not be able to mistake it! And. oh! reconcile my heart to
it, be it ever so humbling, be it ever so painful!
     "Surely, Lord, I have much to learn; but be thou my teacher! Stay for a
little moment thine uplifted hand, and in thine infinite compassion delay
the stroke till I inquire a little farther how I may finally avoid it!"

                                CHAPTER VII.

            THE HELPLESS STATE OF THE SINNER UNDER CONDEMNATION.

1.2. The sinner urged to consider how he can be saved from this impending
ruin.--3 Not by any thing he can offer.--4. Nor by any thing he can
endure.--5 Nor by any thing hr can do in the course of future duty.--6-8.
Nor by any alliance with fellow-sinners on earth or in hell.--9. Nor by any
interposition or intercession of angels or saints in his favor. Hint of the
only method to be afterwards more largely explained. The lamentation of a
sinner in this miserable condition.

1. SINNER, thou hast heard the sentence of God as it stands upon record in
his sacred and immutable word; and wilt thou lie down under its in
everlasting despair? wilt thou make no attempt to be delivered from it, when
it speaks nothing less than eternal death to thy soul? If a criminal,
condemned by human laws, has but the least shadow of hope that he may
escape, he is all attention to it. If there be a friend who be thinks can
help him, with what strong importunity does be entreat! the interposition of
that! fr