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! friend? And even while
he is before the judge. how difficult is it! often to force him away from the
bar, while the cry of mercy, mercy, mercy, may be heard, though it be never so
unseasonable? A mere possibility that it may make some eager in it, and
unwilling to be silenced and removed.
2. Wilt thou not then, O Sinner! ere yet
execution is done, that execution which may perhaps be done this very day, wilt
thou not cast about in thy thoughts what measures may be taken for deliverance?
Yet what measures can be taken? Consider attentively, for it is an affair of
moment. Thy wisdom, thy power, thy eloquence, thy interest can never he exerted
on a greater occasion. If thou canst help thyself, do it. If thou hast any
secret source of relief, go not out of thyself for other assistance. If thou
hast any sacrifice to offer, if thou hast any strength to exert; yea, if thou
hast any allies on earth, or in the invisible world, who can defend or deliver
thee, take thy own way, so that thou mayest but be delivered at all, that we
may not see thy ruin. But say, O sinner! in the presence of God, what sacrifice
thou wilt present, what strength thou wilt exert, what allies thou wilt have
recourse to on so urgent, so hopeless an occasion. For hopeless I must indeed
pronounce it, if such methods are taken.
3. The justice of God is injured; hast thou any
atonement to make to it? If thou wast brought to an inquiry and proposal, like
that of an awakened sinner, "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow
myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with
calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with
ten thousands of rivers of oil?" (Mic. 6:6,7) Alas! wert thou as great a prince
as Solomon himself and couldst thou indeed purchase such sacrifices as these,
there would be no room to mention them. "Lebanon would not be sufficient to
burn, nor all the beasts thereof for a burnt-offering." (Isa. 40:18) Even under
that dispensation which admitted and required sacrifices in some cases, the
blood of bulls and of goats, though it exempted the offender from farther
temporal punishment, "could not take away sin," (Heb. 10:4) nor prevail by any
means to purge the conscience in the sight of God. And that soul that had "done
aught presumptuously" was not allowed to bring any sin-offering, or
trespass-offering at all, but was condemned to "die without mercy." (Num.
15:30) Now God and thine own conscience know that thine offences have not been
merely the errors of ignorance and inadvertency, but that thou hast sinned with
a high hand in repeated aggravated instances, as thou hast acknowledged
already. shouldst thou add, with the wretched sinner described above, "Shall I
give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my
soul?" (Mic. 6:7) What could the blood of a beloved child do in such a case,
but dye thy crimes so much the deeper and add a yet unknown horror to them?
Thou hast offended a Being of infinite majesty; and if that offence is to be
expiated by blood, it must be another kind of blood than that which flows in
the veins of thy children, or in thine own.
4. Wilt thou then suffer thyself till thou hast
made full satisfaction? But how shall that satisfaction be made? Shall it be by
any calamities to be endured in this mortal, momentary life? Is the justice of
God then esteemed so little a thing, that the sorrows of a few days should
suffice to answer its demands? Or dost thou think of future sufferings in the
invisible world? If thou dost, that is not deliverance; and with regard to
that, I may venture to say, when thou hast made full satisfaction, thou wilt be
released; when thou hast paid the uttermost farthing of that debt, thy
prison-doors shall be opened; but in the mean time thou must "make thy bed in
hell:" (Psa. 139:8) and, oh! unhappy man, wilt thou lie down there with a
secret hope that the moment will come when the rigor of Divine justice will not
be able to inflict any thing more than thou hast endured, and when thou mayest
claim thy discharge as a matter of right? It would indeed be well for thee if
thou couldst carry down with thee such a hope, false and flattering as it is;
but, alas! thou wilt see things in so just a light, that to have no comfort but
this will be eternal despair. That one word of thy sentence, "everlasting
fire;" that one declaration, "the worm dieth not, and the fire is not
quenched," will be sufficient to strike such a thought into black confusion,
and to over-whelm thee with hopeless agony and horror.
5. Or do you think that your future reformation
and diligence in duty for the time to come will procure your discharge from
this sentence? Take heed, sinner, what kind of obedience thou thinkest of
offering to a holy God. That must be spotless and complete which his infinite
sanctity can approve and accept, if he consider thee in thyself alone: there
must be no inconstancy, no forgetfulness, no mixture of sin attending it. And
wilt thou, enfeebled as thou art by so much original corruption and so many
sinful habits contracted by innumerable actual transgressions, undertake to
render such an obedience, and that for all the remainder or thy life! In vain
wouldst thou attempt it, even for one day. New guilt would immediately plunge
thee into new ruin. But if it did not, if from this moment to the very end of
thy life all were as complete obedience as the law of God required from Adam in
Paradise, would that be sufficient to cancel past guilt? Would it discharge an
old debt, that thou hast not contracted a new one? Offer this to thy neighbor,
and see if he will accept it for payment; and if he will not, wilt thou presume
to offer it to thy God?
6. But I will not multiply words on so plain a
subject. While I speak thus, time is passing away death presses on, and
judgment is approaching. And what can save thee from these awful scenes, or
what can protect thee in them? Can the world save thee--that vain delusive idol
of thy wishes and suits, to which thou alt sacrificing thine eternal hopes?
Well dost thou know that it will utterly forsake thee when thou needest it
most; and that not one of its enjoyments can be carried along with thee into
the invisible state, no, not so much as a trifle to remember it by, if thou
couldst desire to remember so inconstant and so treacherous a friend as the
world has been.
7. And when you are dead, or when you are dying,
can your sinful companions save you? Is there any one of them, if he were ever
so desirous of doing it, that "can give unto God a ransom for you," (Psa. 49:7)
to deliver you from going down to the grave, or from going down to hell? Alas!
you will probably be so sensible of this, that when you lie on the borders of
the grave you will be unwilling to see or to converse with those that were once
your favorite companions. They will afflict you rather than relieve you, even
then; how much less can they relieve you before the bar of God, when they arc
overwhelmed with their own condemnation!
8. As for the powers of darkness, you are sure
they will he far from having any ability or inclination to help you. Satan has
been watching and laboring for your destruction, and he will triumph in it. But
if there could he any thing of an amicable confederacy between you, what would
that be but an association in ruin? For the day of judgment of ungodly men will
also be the judgment of these rebellious spirits; and the fire into which thou,
O sinner, must depart, is that which was "prepared for the devil and his
angels."" (Matt. 25:41)
9. Will the celestial spirits then save thee?
Will they interpose their power or their prayers in thy favor? An interposition
of power, when sentence is gone forth against thee, were an act of rebellion
against heaven, which these holy and excellent creatures would abhor. And when
the final pleasure of the Judge is known, instead of interceding in vain for
the wretched criminal, they would rather, with ardent zeal for the glory of
their Lord, and cordial acquiescence in the determination of his wisdom and
justice, prepare to execute it. Yea, difficult as it may at present be to
conceive it, it is a certain truth, that the servants of Christ, who now most
tenderly love you, and most affectionately seek your salvation, not excepting
those who are allied to you in the nearest bonds of nature or of friendship,
even they shall put their amen to it. Now indeed their bowels yearn over you,
and their eyes pour out tears on your account. Now they expostulate with you,
and plead with God for you, if by any means, while yet there is hope, you may
"be plucked as a firebrand out of the burning." (Amos 4:11) But, alas! their
remonstrances you will not regard; and as for their prayers, what should they
ask for you? What but that you may see yourself to be undone; and that utterly
despairing of any help from yourself, or from any created power, you may lie
before God in humility and brokenness of heart; that, submitting yourself to
his righteous judgment and in an utter renunciation of all self-dependence and
of all creature dependence, you may lift up an humble look towards him, as
almost from the depths of hell, if peradventure he may have compassion upon
you, and may himself direct you to that only method of rescue, which, while
things continue as in present circumstances they are, neither earth, nor hell,
nor heaven can afford you.
The Lamentation of a Sinner in this miserable Condition.