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.