Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages;
— Isaiah 49:8
For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.
— 2 Corinthians 6:2
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
— Isaiah 61:2
Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
— Matthew 13:13-15
For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?
— Jonah 3:6-9
Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
— Isaiah 55:6-7
An Alarm to the Unconverted, by Joseph Alleine. The following contains the Introduction and Chapters One through Six of his work.
AN EARNEST INVITATION TO SINNERS TO TURN TO GOD, IN ORDER TO THEIR ETERNAL SALVATION.
DEARLY beloved and longed for, I gladly acknowledge I am a debtor to you all; and I am concerned, because I would like to be found a good steward to the household of God, giving to every one his portion. But the physician is most solicitous for those patients whose case is most doubtful and hazardous; and the father’s tender mercies are especially turned towards his dying child. The numbers of unconverted souls among you call for my most earnest compassions and hasty diligence to pluck them out of the burning. Jude 23 And therefore, I will first apply myself along these lines to these.
But where will I fetch my arguments from, or how will I choose my words? Lord, with what will I woo them? With what will I win them? Oh, if I could only tell! I would write to them in tears. I would weep out every argument. I would empty my veins for ink. I would petition them on my knees — truly were I able, I would. Oh, how thankful I would be if they would be prevailed upon to repent and turn!
How long have I travailed in birth with you? Gal. 4.19 How frequently have I courted you? How often would I have gathered you? Mat 23.37 How instant have I been with you? This is what I have prayed for and studied for, for many years: that I might bring you to God. Oh, that I might do it! Will you still be entreated? Oh, what a happy man you might make me if you would only listen to me, and allow me to carry you over to Jesus Christ! “But, Lord, how insufficient I am for this work! I have been many a year wooing for you, but the damsel would not go with me. Lord, what kind of task have you set me to do? Alas! With what will I pierce the scales of Leviathan, or make the heart that is hard as stone to feel; hard as a piece of millstone? Should I go and press my mouth to the grave, and expect the dead to obey me and come forth? Will I make an oration to the rocks, or declaim to the mountains, and think I will move them by arguments? Will I make the blind see? From the beginning of the world, it was not heard of that a man had opened the eyes of the blind. But you, O Lord, can pierce the scales, and prick the heart of the sinner. I can only shoot at rovers,1and draw the bow at a risk; you direct the arrow between the joints of the harness, and kill the sin, and save the soul of a sinner who looks upon these labours.” But I must apply to you, the one to whom I am sent: yet I am at a loss. I wish to God I knew how to work with you! Should I hesitate at the difficulty of it? God knows, you yourselves are my witnesses, how I have followed you in private, as well as in public, and have brought the gospel to your doors, testifying to you the necessity of the new birth, and persuading you to look for a sound and thorough change over time. Beloved, I have not acted out a part among you in order to serve my own advantage: our gospel is not yes and no. Haven’t you heard the same truths from the pulpit, by public labours, by private letters, and by personal instruction? Brothers, I am of the same mind as ever: that holiness is the best choice, that there is no entering into heaven except by the straight passages of the second birth, that without holiness you will never see God.Heb 12.14 Ah, my beloved! Refresh my tender mercies in the Lord. If there is any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, any tenderness and mercies, fulfil my joy. Now give yourselves to the Lord.2Cor 8.5 Now set yourselves to seek him. Now set up the Lord Jesus in your hearts, and set him up in your houses. Now come in and kiss the son, Psa 2.12 and embrace the offers of mercy; touch his sceptre and live; why will you die? I don’t beg for myself, but I would willingly have you happy: this is the prize I run for and the mark I aim at. My soul’s desire and prayer for you is that you may be saved. Rom 10.1 The famous Lycurgus,2having instituted the strictest and most wholesome laws for his people, told them he was compelled to go on a journey away from them. He got them to bind themselves in an oath that his laws would be observed until his return. This being done, he wen into voluntary banishment and never returned. Why? So that, by virtue of their oath, they might be engaged to perpetually observe his laws. I think I would be glad to endure the hard conditions which he endured though I love you tenderly so that I might engage you thoroughly to obey the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dearly beloved, would you gladden the heart of your minister? Why then, embrace the counsels of the Lord by me: forego your sins; set to prayer; increase the worship of God in your families; keep your distance from the corruptions of the times. What greater joy for a minister than to hear of souls that are born to Christ by him, and that his children walk in the truth! 2Joh 4 Brothers, I beseech you, allow me friendly openness, and freedom with regard to your deepest concerns. I am not playing the orator to make a learned speech to you, nor am I dressing my dish with eloquence by which to please you. These lines are embarked on a weighty errand indeed, namely, to convince, convert, and save you. I am not baiting my hook with rhetoric, nor am I fishing for your applause, but for your souls. My work is not to please you, but to save you; nor is my business with your fancies, but with your hearts. If I don’t have your hearts, I have nothing. If I were to please your ears, I would sing another song. If I were to preach myself, I would steer another course: I could then tell you a smoother tale: I would make you pillows, and speak peace to you: for how can Ahab love his Micaiah who always prophecies evil concerning him?1Kng 22.8 But how much better are the wounds of a friend, than the fair speeches of the harlot who flatters with her lips until the arrow strikes through the liver and hunts for the precious life? Pro 7.21-23; 6.26 If I were to quiet a crying infant, I might sing him into a pleasant mood, and rock him asleep: but when the child has fallen into the fire, the parent takes another course: he will not go to still him with a song or a trifle. I know if we don’t make haste with you, you are lost: if we cannot get your consent to arise and come away, you will perish forever: if there is no conversion, there is no salvation. I must get your goodwill, or else I will leave you miserable.
But here the difficulty of my work again recurs to me. “Lord, choose my stones out of the rock.” 1Sam. 17.40, 45 I come in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel. I come out like the stripling David — not to wrestle with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world.Eph, 6.12 This day, let the Lord strike the Philistine, and strip the strong man of his armour, and allow me to fetch the captives out of his hand. Lord, choose my words, choose my weapons for me; and when I put my hand into the bag and take a stone from it, and sling it, carry it to the mark and make it sink, not into the forehead,1Sam. 17.49 but into the heart of the unconverted sinner, and knock him to the ground. As with Saul, in his so happy fall,Act 9.4 you have sent me as Abraham sent his servant, to obtain a wife for my master, your Son. Gen 24.4 But my discouraged soul is ready to fear that the woman will not be willing to follow me. Lord God of my master, I pray you send me good speed this day, and show kindness to my master, and send your angel before me, and prosper my way, that I may obtain a wife for your Son,Gen 24.12 that just as your servant did not rest until he had brought Isaac and Rebekah together, so I may be successful in bringing Christ and the souls of my people together before we part.”
But I turn to you. Some of you don’t know what I mean by conversion, and so it would be in vain to persuade you of something you don’t understand; therefore, for your sakes, I will show you what this conversion is. Others cherish secret hopes of mercy, even though they continue as they are in sin; and for them I must show the necessity of conversion. Others are likely to harden themselves with an empty conceit that they are converted already; to them I must show the marks of the unconverted. Others, because they feel no harm, fear none — and so they sleep on top of the mast; to them I will show the misery of the unconverted. Others sit still, because they don’t see their way out; to them I will show the means of conversion. And finally, for the enlivening of all, I will close with the motives for conversion.
CHAP. I — SHOWING THE NEGATIVE, WHAT CONVERSION IS NOT, AND CORRECTING SOME MISTAKES ABOUT IT.
LET the blind Samaritans worship what they don’t know; Joh 4.22 let the heathen Athenians superscribe their altar to the unknown God; Act 17.23 let the guileful Papists commend the mother of destructionHos. 4.6 as the mother of devotion. Those who know man’s constitution, and the nature of the reasonable soul’s operation, must know that understanding has dominion in the soul; thus one who works rationally at conversion must labour to let the light in here. Ignorantis non est consensus.3And therefore, so you may not mistake me, I will show you what I mean by the conversion which I persuade you to endeavour after.
It is said that when Jupiter4let down the golden chaplets5from heaven, all but one were stolen; upon which to avoid losing a relic of such great esteem they made five others so like it, that if any were wickedly minded enough to steal that one too, they would not be able to discern which it was. And truly, my beloved, the devil has made many counterfeits of this conversion, and cheats one with this, and another with that: and he has such a craft and artifice in this mystery of deceits, that if it were possible he would deceive the very elect. Now, so that I may cure the damnable mistakes of some who think they are converted when they are not, as well as remove the troubles and fears of others who think they are not converted when they are, I will show you the nature of conversion, both negatively what it is not, and positively what it is. We will begin with the negative.
1. It is not taking on the profession of Christianity. Doubtless Christianity is more than a name. If we hear Paul, it does not lie in words but in power.1Cor 4.20 If ceasing to be Jews and Pagans, and verbally professing to be Christians, had been true conversion this is all that some understood it to be, then who would make better Christians than those of Sardis and Laodicea? These were all Christians by verbal profession, and so they had a name to identify them; but because they only had a name, they are condemned by Christ who threatened to spit them out.Rev 3.16 Aren’t there many who name the name of the Lord Jesus, and yet don’t depart from iniquity? 2Tim 2.19 who profess they know God, but by their works they deny him? Tit. 1.16 And will God receive these as true converts merely because they turned to the Christian religion? What! Converts from sin who still live in sin? It is a visible contradiction. Surely if the lamp of their profession had served the turn, the foolish virgins would never have been shut out.Mat 25.3, 12 We find that not only those who profess Christ, but also preachers of Christ, and wonder-workers, are turned away because they are evil-workers.Mat 7.22-23
2. It is not being washed in the laver of regeneration, or putting on the badge of Christ in baptism. Many take the press money,6and wear the uniform of Christ, yet they never stand to their colours, or follow their leader. Ananias, Saphira, and Magus were each baptized, as well as the rest. It is absurd that so many confuse deceiving with being deceived! They dream that effectual grace is necessarily tied to the external administration of baptism which revives the Popish tenet of the sacraments working grace in us ex opere operato7; and so every infant would be regenerated not only sacramento tenus,8sacramentally, but really and properly. From this, men fancy they were regenerated when they were baptized; thus they need no further work.
But if this were so, then all who were baptized in their infancy must necessarily be saved, because the promise of pardon and salvation is made to all those who are converted and regenerated.9Our calling, and our sanctification as to its beginnings or our conversion which are the same things, differently conceived and expressed are just the middle link in the golden chain. They are fastened to election at the one end, and glorification at the other.10The silver cord may not be broken, nor may the connection between salvation and sanctification, between grace and glory, be impiously violated.Mat 5.8 If we were indeed born again, it is to an incorruptible inheritance, reserved in heaven for us; and the divine power is engaged to keep us for it.1Pet 1.5 If the regenerate may perish in their sins in the end, then we will no longer say His seed remains in someone who is born of God, and that he cannot sin 1Joh 3.9 i.e. sin unto death, nor that it is impossible to deceive the very elect. Mat 24.24 And indeed, if this were true, then to see our names written in heaven, all we need to do is search the church register to see if we were baptized. I would keep my certificate of baptism as my best evidence for heaven, and a wet finger would assure my gracious state. Men would do well to carry a certificate of their baptism with the register’s signature on it just as the philosopher would be buried with the bishop’s bond in his hand, which he had given him in order to receive his alms in another world; when they died, upon seeing this certificate, there would be no doubt they would be admitted into heaven.
In short, if there is nothing more necessary to conversion or regeneration than to be turned to the Christian religion, or to be baptized in infancy, this will fly directly in the face of Mat 7.14, as well as multitudes of others. We will no longer say, Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way; Mat 7.14 for if all who were baptized and of the true religion are saved, then the door has become heavenly wide; and we will then say,“Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to life.” If this is true, then whole parishes, indeed, whole countries and whole kingdoms may go in side by side; and we will no longer teach that the righteous are scarcely saved, or that there is need of such a stir in taking the kingdom of heaven by violence, and striving to enter in. Surely if the way is as easy as many make it, there is little more necessary than to be regenerated in our baptism and cry God mercy, and be absolved by the minister at our end; it is more hassle than we need to put ourselves to in such running, seeking, knocking, fighting, and wrestling, as the word requires as necessary to salvation. Secondly, If this is true, we will no longer say, Few find it; indeed, we will rather say, Few miss it: we will no longer say of the many that are called, that few are chosen,Mat 22.14 and that even of professing Israel, only a remnant will be saved.Rom 11.5 If this doctrine is true, we will not say any longer with the disciples, Who then will be saved? Rather, who then will not be saved? If a man is called a brother that is, a Christian and he is baptized, even though he is a fornicator, or a railer, or covetous, or a drunkard, he will still inherit the kingdom of God.1Cor 5.11; 6.9-10
But the Arminian will reply, Such as these, though they received regenerating grace in baptism, have since fallen away and must be renewed again, or else they cannot be saved.
I answer,
1. That there is an infallible connection between regeneration and salvation, as we have already shown; I itch to further evidence it, but that it goes against my intended brevity.
2. Then men must be born again, which carries a great deal of absurdity in its very face. And why may not men be twice born in nature as well as in grace? Why not as great an absurdity to be twice re-generated as to be twice generated? But
3. and above all, this allows the thing I contend for: that whatever men receive or pretend to receive in baptism, if they are afterwards found to be grossly ignorant, profane, nominal, or without the power of godliness, they must be born again, or else be shut out of the kingdom of God. So then, they must have more to plead for themselves than their baptismal regeneration.
Well, in this you see all are agreed that more or less is received in baptism if when men come of age they are evidently unsanctified; they must be renewed again by a thorough and powerful change, or else they cannot escape the damnation of hell. Friends and brothers, don’t be deceived; God is not mocked.Gal. 6.7 Whether it is your baptism, or whatever else you pretend, I tell you from the living God, that if any of you are prayerless persons,Joh 15.14 or unclean, or malicious, or covetous, or riotous, or a scoffer, or a lover of evil company;Pro 13.20 in a word, if you are not holy, strict, and self denying Christians;11you cannot be saved unless you are transformed by a further work upon you, and renewed again by repentance.
Thus I have shown that it is not enough to evidence that a man is regenerate merely because he has been baptized; effectual grace does not necessarily accompany baptism, as some have vainly asserted. But I must answer one objection before I pass.
Obj. The sacraments certainly attain their ends when men do not ponere obicem,12or lay some obstructions, which infants do not.13 Ans. I answer that it is not the purpose of baptism to regenerate.
1. Because then there would be no reason why it should be confined only to the seed of believers; for both the law of God, and the nature of charity, requires us to use the means of conversion for all, as far as we have opportunity. Were this true, there is no better charity than to catch the children of Turks and Heathens and baptize them, and dispatch them to heaven out of hand; like the bloody wretches that made the poor Protestants to save their lives swear they would come to mass, and that they would never depart from it; and then they put them to death immediately, saying they would hang them while in a good mind.
2. Because it presupposes regeneration, and therefore it cannot be intended to confer it. In all the express instances in scripture, we find that baptism assumes their repentance, belief, and receipt the Holy Ghost.14It would be no little absurdity to imagine that baptism was instituted for an end of which not one of the first subjects was capable; for they were all adult persons, and supposed to have faith and repentance, just as they professed; and their children were not baptized until after them, in their own right. Were this doctrine true, baptism would make disciples; but we find that scripture declares them such beforehand. Mat 28.19
3. Because baptism is only a seal of the covenant, it cannot convey the benefits except according to the tenor of the covenant to which the seal is set. Now the covenant is conditional; therefore the seal conveys conditionally. The covenant requires faith and repentance as the conditions of the grand benefits: pardon and life.Act 16.31; 3.19 And what the covenant does not convey except upon these conditions, the seal cannot. So baptism presupposes faith and repentance in the subject, without which it neither does nor can convey the saving benefits; otherwise the seal would convey contrary to the tenor of the covenant to which it is affixed.
3. It does not lie in moral righteousness. — This does not exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, and therefore it cannot bring us to the kingdom of God.Mat 5.20 Paul, while unconverted, was blameless as to the righteousness which is in the law.Phi 3.6 None could say, your eye is black. The self-judge could say, I am no extortioner, adulterer, unjust, etc. Luk 18.11 You must have something more than all this to show, or else however you may justify yourself God will condemn you. I don’t condemn morality, but I warn you not to rest here. Piety includes morality, just as Christianity includes humanity, and grace includes reason; but we must not divide the tables.
4. It does not consist in external conformity to the rules of piety. It is too obvious that men may have a form of godliness without the power of it.2Tim 3.5 Men may pray long,Mat 23.14 and fast often,Luk 18.12 and hear gladly,Mar 6.20 and be very ambitious in the service of God, even though it is costly and expensive,Isa 1.11 and yet be strangers to conversion. They must plead more than that they keep their church, give alms, and pray, if they are to prove themselves sound converts. There is no outward service that a hypocrite cannot do; even to the point of giving all his goods to the poor, and his members to the fire.1Cor 13.3
5. It does not lie in chaining up corruption by education, human laws, or the force of obligatory affliction. It is too common and easy to mistake education for grace; but if this were enough, who was a better man than Joash? While Jehoiada his uncle lived, he was ambitious in God’s service, and he calls upon him to repair the house of the Lord.2Kng 12.2, 7 But all this while it was nothing more than good education; for when his good tutor was taken out of the way, he appears to have been a wolf chained up, for he falls into idolatry.
6. In short, it does not consist in illumination. or conviction: in a superficial change, or partial reformation: An apostate may be a man enlightened,Heb 6.4 a Felix who trembles under convictions,Act 24.25 and a Herod who amends many things.Mar 6.20 But it is one thing to have sin alarmed only by convictions, and another to have it captivated and crucified by converting grace. Many, because their consciences have been troubled for their sins, think their case is well; they miserably mistake conviction for conversion. Cain might have passed for a convert among these, because he ran up and down the world like a man distracted under the rage of a guilty conscience till, with building and business, he had worn it away.Gen 4.13-14 ff. Others think that, because they have given up their riotous ways, and have broken away from evil company, or from some particular lust, and they are reduced to sobriety and civility, that they are now real converts. They forget that there is a vast difference between being sanctified and civilized; many seek to enter into the kingdom of heaven,Luk 13.24 and are not far from it,Mar 12.34 and almost arrive at Christianity;Act 26.28 yet they fall short in the end. While conscience holds the whip over them, many will pray, hear, read, and forbear their delightful sins; but no sooner is this lion asleep, than they are at their vomit again. Who was more religious than the Jews when God’s hand was upon them?Psa 78.34-35 But as soon as the affliction ended, they forgot God, and showed their religion was a fit,16 Psa 78.36-37 You may have disgorged a troublesome sin that will not sit well in your stomach, or escaped many of the grosser pollutions of the world; yet all the while, you have not changed your swinish nature. 2Pet 2.20, 22
You may cast the lead out of its rude mass into the more attractive proportions of a plant, and then into the shape of a beast, and from that into the form and features of a man; but all the while it is still only lead. In the same way, a man may pass through various transformations, from ignorance to knowledge, from profaneness to civility, and from there to a form of religion; and all this while he is still carnal and unregenerate, as long as his nature remains unchanged.
Application. Hear then, O sinners! Hear as you would live: so come and hear.Isa 55.3 Why would you so wilfully deceive yourselves, or build your hopes upon the sand? I know whoever goes to pluck away your hopes will find it hard work. It must seem ungrateful to you, and truly it is not pleasing to me. I set about it as a surgeon when he must cut off a putrified member from his well-beloved friend; he must do it by force, but with an aching heart, a pitying eye, a trembling hand. Yet understand me, brothers: I am only taking down the delapidated house, which will otherwise speedily fall by itself, and bury you in the rubbish that I may build good, and strong, and firm forever. The hope of the wicked will perish if God is true to his word.Pro 11.7 Would you not be better off, O sinner, to let the word convince you now, in time, and to let go of your self-deluding hopes, than to have death open your eyes too late, and find yourself in hell before you are aware?
I would be a false and a faithless shepherd if I did not tell you that, if you have built your hopes on no better grounds than these forementioned, you are still in your sins. Let your consciences speak: what is it that you will plead for yourselves? Is it that you wear Christ’s uniform? That you bear his name? That you belong to the visible church? That you know the points of religion? That you are civilized; that you perform religious duties, are just in your dealings, and your conscience has been troubled for your sins? I tell you from the Lord, these pleas will never be accepted at God’s bar. All this, though good in themselves, will not prove you are converted, and so it will not suffice for your salvation. Oh, look around you, and think of turning speedily and soundly. Set to praying, and reading, and studying your own hearts; don’t rest until God has made thorough work with you; for you must be other men, or else you are lost men. But if these types fall short of conversion, what will I say about the profane sinner? It may be that he will scarcely turn his eyes or lend his ears to this discourse. But if any such sinner is reading this, or within hearing ot if, he must know from the Lord that made him, that he is far from the kingdom of God. May a man be civilized and not converted? What then of the drunkard and glutton? May a man keep company with the wise virgins, and yet be shut out? Is it not much more likely that a companion of fools will be destroyed? Pro 13.20 May a man be true and just in his dealings with others, and yet not be justified by God? What then will become of you, O wretched man, whose conscience tells you that you are false in your trade, and false to your word, and take advantage by a lying tongue? If men who are enlightened, and perform holy duties, and yet go down to perdition for resting in them, and stay on this side of conversion, then what will become of you, O miserable families that live without God in the world? And what of you, O wretched sinners with whom God is scarcely in your thoughts, you who are so ignorant that you cannot pray, or so careless that you will not? Oh, repent, and be converted! Break off your sins with righteousness; flee to Christ for pardoning and renewing grace; surrender yourselves to him, to walk with him in holiness, or else you will never see God. Oh, that you would take the warnings of God! In his name I once more admonish you, Turn at my reproof,Pro 1.23 forsake the foolish and live.Pro 9.6 Be sober, righteous, and godly.Tit. 2.12 Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, you double-minded.Jas. 4.8 Cease to do evil; learn to do well. Isa 1.16-17 But if you continue as you are, you must die.Eze 33.11
CHAP. II — SHOWING POSITIVELY WHAT CONVERSION IS.
I am not permitted to leave you with your eyes half open, like the one who saw men like trees walking.Mar 8.24 The word is profitable for doctrine as well as reproof,2Tim 3.16 And therefore, having conducted you this far past the shelves and rocks of so many dangerous mistakes, I would guide you at length into the harbour of truth.
Conversion then in short lies in the thorough change both of the heart and life. I will briefly describe it in its nature and causes.
1 . The author is the Spirit of God. And therefore it is called the sanctification of the Spirit,2Thes 2.13 and the renewing of the Holy Ghost,Tit. 3.5 yet not excluding the other Persons in the Trinity: for the apostle teaches us to bless the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for he has caused us to be born again;1Pet 1.3 and Christ is said to give repentance to Israel,Act 5.31 and he is called the everlasting Father; Isa 9.6 and we are his seed, and the children which God has given him.17Oh, blessed birth! Seven cities contended for the birth of Homer, but the whole Trinity fathers the new creature. Yet this work is principally ascribed to the Holy Ghost, and so we are said to be born of the Spirit.Joh 3.8
So then, it is a work above man’s power.
We are born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.Joh 1.13 Never think you can convert yourself: if you would ever be savingly converted, you must despair of doing it in your own strength.Jer 13.93 It is a resurrection from the dead,18a new creation,19 a work of absolute ominipotence.Eph 1.19 Are these not beyond the reach of human power? If you have no more than you had by your first birth a good nature, a meek and chaste temper, etc., then you are a stranger to true conversion. This is a supernatural work.
2. The moving cause is either internal, or external. The internal mover is free grace alone: Not by works of righteousness which we have done; but of his own mercy he saved us by the renewing of the Holy Ghost.Tit. 3.5 Of his own will he bore us. Jas. 1.18 We are chosen and called to sanctification, not because of it.Eph 1.4 God finds nothing in a man to turn his heart, but to turn his stomach; there is enough to provoke his loathing, but nothing to provoke his love. Look back at yourself, O Christian. Take your verminous rags; look at yourself in your blood.Eze 16.6 Oh, reflect upon your swinish nature, your filthy swill, your once-beloved mire!2Pet 2.22 Can you think of your trough and draught without loathing? Open your tomb.Mat 23.27 Aren’t you struck almost dead with the hellish damp? Behold your putrid soul, your loathsome members.
Oh, insufferable stench, if you would only smell your own putrefaction! Psa 14.3 Behold your ghastly visage, your crawling lusts, your slime and corruption. Don’t your own clothes abhor you? Job 9.31 How then could holiness and purity love you? Be astonished at this, O heavens; be moved, O earth! Jer 2.12 Who is it that must cry, Grace! grace! Zech. 4.7 Hear and blush, you children of the Most High; O you unthankful generation! Blush that free grace is no longer in your mouths, or in your thoughts: it is no longer adored, admired, and commended by such as you. One would think you would do nothing but praise and admire God, whatever you are. How can you rationalize so as to forget such grace, or pass it over with a slight and rare mention? What besides free grace would move God to love you, unless hostility could do it, or deformity could do it, unless vomit or rottenness could do it? How affectionately does Peter lift up his hands? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who of his abundant mercy has caused us to be born again.1Pet 1.3 How emotionally does Paul magnify the free mercy of God? God, who is rich in mercy, has made us alive together with Christ because of his great love with which he loved us: by grace you are saved.Eph 2.4-5 The external mover is the merit and intersession of the blessed Jesus. He has obtained gifts for the rebellious;Psa 68.18 and it is through him that God works in us what is well-pleasing in his sight.Heb 13.21
Through him, all spiritual blessings are bestowed upon us in heavenly things,Eph 1.3 He interceded for the elect that don’t believe, Joh 12.20 Every convert is the fruit of Christ’s suffering,Isa 53.11 Oh, never was infant born into the world with the difficulty that Christ endured for us! How emphatically he groans in his suffering! All the pains that he suffered on his cross were our birth-pains,Act 2.24 the pulls and throws that Christ endured for us. He became sanctification for us,1Cor 1.30 He sanctified himself that is, he set himself apart as a sacrifice so that we may be sanctified,Joh 17.19 We are sanctified through the offering of his body, once for all. Heb 10.10 Except for his own pity, then, and the merit and intercession of Christ, nothing prevails upon God to bestow converting grace on us. If you are a new creature, you know to whom you owe it: to Christ’s pangs and prayers. From this comes the natural affection of a believer for Christ. The foal does not run after the dam more naturally, nor the suckling for the teats, than a believer runs to Jesus Christ. And where else should you go? If anyone in the world can show more for your heart than Christ can, let them carry it. Does Satan? Does the world court you? Does sin sue for your heart? Were these crucified for you? 1Cor 1.13 O Christian, love and serve the Lord while you have a being. Don’t even the Publicans love those who love them, and show kindness to those who are kind to them? Mat 5.46-47
3. The instrument is either personal or real. The personal is the ministry: In Christ, I became your father through the gospel.1Cor 4.15 Christ’s ministers are those sent to open men’s eyes, and turn them to God.Act 26.18 O unthankful world, little do you know what you are doing while you are persecuting the messengers of the Lord: it is their business under Christ to save you. Whom have you reproached and blasphemed? Against whom have you exalted your voice, and lifted your eyes on high? Isa 37.23 Those who show you the way of salvation are the servants of the most high God. Act 16.17 And is this how you repay them, O foolish and unwise? Deut. 32.6 O sons of ingratitude, against whom do you sport yourselves? Against whom do you make faces, and stick out your tongue? Isa 57.4 These are the instruments that God uses to convert and save you; and yet you spit in the face of your physicians, and throw your pilots over-board? Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. The real instrument is the word: We were born by the word of truth: This is what enlightens the eyes, converts the soul,Psa 19.7-8 makes us wise unto salvation.2Tim 3.15 This is the incorruptible seed by which we are born again.1Pet 1.23 If we are washed, it is by the word;Eph 5.26 if we are sanctified, it is through the truth.Joh 17.17
This is what generates faith, and regenerates us.Rom 10.17; Jas. 1.18 O you saints, how you should love the word! For you have been converted by this: O you sinners, how you should ply the word! For you must be converted by this: no other ordinary means but this. You that have felt its renewing power, make much of it while you live; be forever thankful for it: tie it around your necks; write it on your hands; store it in your hearts. Pro 6.21-22 When you go, let it lead you; when you sleep, let it keep you; when you wake, let it talk with you. Say with holy David, I will never forget your precepts, for you have made me alive by them.Psa 119.93 You that are unconverted, read the word with diligence; flock to it where it is powerfully preached; fill the porches like the multitude of impotent, blind, lame, and withered who were waiting for the moving of the water.Joh 5.3 Pray for the coming of the Spirit in the word. Come off your knees to the sermon; and come to your knees from the sermon. The seed does not prosper, because it is not watered by prayers and tears, nor is it covered by meditation.
4. The final cause is man’s salvation and God’s glory. We are chosen through sanctification to salvation,2Thes 2.13 called that we might be glorified,Rom 8.30 but especially, that God might be glorified,Isa 60.21 that we would display his praises,1Pet 2.9 and be fruitful in good works.Col. 1.10 O Christian, don’t forget the end of your calling: let your light shine,Mat 5.16 let your lamp burn; let your fruits be good, and many, and in season;Psa 1.3 let all your plans align with God’s, that he may be magnified in you,Phi 1.20 Why should God regret that he has made you a Christian, as in the time of the old world when he regretted that he made men? Gen 6.6 Why should you be an eye-sore in his orchard by your unfruitfulness? Luk 13 or a son that causes shame: a grief to your father, and a bitterness to the woman who bore you? Pro 17.25; 10.5 Let the womb bless her that bore you.Pro 17.21 One who fathers a fool does it to his sorrow; and the father of a fool has no joy.
5. The subject is the elect sinner in all his parts and powers, members and mind. God calls only those he predestines.Rom 8.30 None are drawn to Christ by their calling, nor do they come to him by believing, except his sheep — those whom the Father has given him.Joh 6.37, 44 Effectual calling runs parallel with eternal election.2Pet 1.10 You begin at the wrong end if you dispute first about your election. Prove your conversion, and then never doubt of your election; or can you not yet prove it? Focus on a present and complete turning. Whatever God’s purposes are, though secret, I am sure his promises are plain. How desperately rebels argue! If I am elected, I will be saved, no matter what I will; and if I am not, I will be damned, no matter what I can. Perverse sinner, will you begin where you should end?
Is the word not before you? What does it say? Repent and be converted, so that your sins may be blotted out.Act 3.19 If you mortify the deeds of the body, you will live.Rom 8.13. Believe and be saved.Act 16.31 What can be plainer? Don’t stand still, disputing about your election, but set to repenting and believing. Cry to God for converting grace. Revealed things belong to you; busy yourself in these. It is just as one well said that those who will not feed on the plain food of the word, will be choked with the bones. Whatever God’s purposes are, I am sure his promises are true. Whatever the decrees of heaven may be, I am sure that if I repent and believe, I will be saved; and I am sure that if I don’t repent, I will be damned. Is this not plain ground here for you, and would you still run upon the rocks?
More particularly, this change of conversion passes throughout the whole subject. A carnal person may have some shreds of good morality, a little close to the list; but he is never good throughout the whole cloth, throughout the whole body of holiness and Christianity. Feel him a little further near the ridge, and you will see he is only a deceitful piece. Conversion is not repairing the old building; instead, it takes everything down and erects a new structure: it is not putting in a patch, or sewing on a list of holiness; instead, with the true convert, holiness is woven into all his powers, principles, and practice. The sincere Christian is quite a new fabric from the foundation to the top-stone, all fire-new.20He is a new man,Eph 4.24 a new creature. All things have become new .2 Cor 5.17 Conversion is a deep work, a heart work;21it turns everything upside down, and places a man in a new world. It goes throughout men, throughout the mind, throughout the members, throughout the activities of the whole life.
1. Throughout the mind. It makes a universal change within. First, It turns the balance of the judgment, so that God and his glory outweigh all carnal and worldly interest.22It opens the eye of the mind, and makes the scales of its native ignorance fall off; it turns men from darkness to light.23The man that saw no danger in his condition before, now concludes he is lost and forever undone Act 2.37 unless he is renewed by the power of grace. One who formerly thought there was little harm in sin, now comes to see it as the chief of evils; he sees the unreasonableness, the unrighteousness, the deformity and filthiness that is in sin, so that he is frightened by it, loathes it, dreads it, flees it, and even abhors himself for it.24For one who could see little sin in himself before, and could find nothing to confess except for a few gross and glaring evils, sin now revives his conscience.Rom 7.9 He sees the rottenness of his heart, and the desperate and deep pollution of his whole nature: he cries, Unclean, unclean.Lev. 13.45 Lord, purge me with hyssop, wash me thoroughly, create in me a new heart.Psa 51.2, 7, 10 He sees himself altogether filthy,Psa 14.3 corrupt, both root and tree.Mat 7.17-18 He writes “unclean” on all his parts, and powers, and performances.26 He discovers the nasty corners he was never aware of, and sees the blasphemy and theft, murder and adultery that is in his heart, and of which he was ignorant before. Up to this point, he saw no form or attractiveness in Christ, no beauty that he should desire him; but now he finds the hidden treasure, and he will sell everything to buy this field.27Christ is the pearl he seeks, sin the puddle he loathes. Now, according to this new light, this man is of another mind than he was before, another judgment. Now God is everything to him; he has none like him in heaven or earth.Psa 73.25 He prefers him truly before all the world: God’s favour is his life; the light of his countenance is more than corn, or wine and oil the good that he formerly enquired after and set his heart upon.Psa 4.6-7 Now, let all the world be set on one side, and God alone on the other; let the harlot put on her paint and gallantry, and present herself to the soul in all the glory of her kingdoms as when Satan would have tempted our Saviour with her.
Yet the soul will not fall down and worship her, but will prefer a naked, yes, a crucified and persecuted Christ, before her. Even a hypocrite might come to yield a general assent to this, that it is the chief good; yes, the wiser heathens some of them have at last stumbled upon this: but there is a difference between the absolute and the comparative judgment of the understanding. No hypocrite comes so far as to look upon God as the most desirable and suitable good to him, and at that point, acquiesces in him. This was the convert’s voice: The Lord is my portion, says my soul: Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides you. God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.Psa 73.26; Lam. 3.24
Secondly, It turns the bias of the will, both as to means and ends.
1. The intention of the will is altered.29Now the man has new ends and plans: now he intends to have God above all; and he desires and designs nothing in all the world so much as that Christ may be magnified in him.Phi 1.20 He considers himself more happy in this than in all that the earth could yield: that he may be serviceable to Christ, and bring him glory in his generation. This is the mark he aims at, so that the name of Jesus may be great in the world, and that all the sheaves of his brothers may bow to this sheaf.
Reader, do you read this, and never ask yourself whether it is that way with you? Pause awhile, and breathe on this great concern.
2. The election also is changed, so that he chooses another way.Psa 119.13. He rests upon God as his blessedness; and upon Christ as the principal; and upon holiness as the subordinate means to bring him to God.30He chooses Jesus for his Lord.Col. 2.6 He is not merely forced into Christ by the storm; nor does he take Christ for a bare necessity, as the man who begged from the gallows that he would rather take a wife than the noose; but it is a free choice. This match is not made out of fright, as with the terrified conscience, or a dying sinner who will seemingly do anything for Christ he only takes Christ rather than hell; rather, he deliberately resolves that Christ is his best choice,Phi 1.23 and he would rather choose him than all the good of this world, even if he might enjoy it while he could. Again, he takes holiness for his path; he does not submit to it out of mere necessity, but he likes and loves it. I have chosen the way of your precepts.Psa 119.173 He takes God’s testimonies, not as his bondage, but as his heritage, indeed, his heritage forever,Psa 119.111 He does not consider them his burden, but his bliss; not his cords, but his cordials.31He not only hears, but he takes up Christ’s yoke: he does not take holiness like the stomach takes the loathed medicine, which it swallows rather than die; instead, he takes it like the hungry man takes his beloved food: no time passes so sweetly with him as the time he spends in the exercise of holiness; these are both his aliment and his element, the desire of his eyes and the joy of his heart. Put it to your conscience as you go along, whether you are that man? O happy man, if this is your case! But see you are thorough and impartial in the search.
Thirdly, It turns the bent of the affections,2Cor 7.11. These all run in an new channel: the Jordan is now driven back, and the water runs upwards against its natural course.
Christ is his hope,1Tim 1.1, this is his prize;Phi 3.8 here is his eye; here is his heart. He is content to throw everything overboard as the merchant does in the storm when he is about to perish, so he may but keep this jewel. The first of his desires is not after gold, but grace;Phi 3.13 he hungers after it, he seeks it as he would seek silver, he digs for it as he would for hidden treasure: he would rather be gracious than be great: he would rather be the holiest man on earth than the most learned, most famous, or most prosperous. While carnal, he said,“Oh, if I were only in great esteem, and rolled in wealth, and swam in pleasure; if my debts were paid, and I and mine were provided for, then I would be a happy man.” But now the tune has changed: Oh, says the convert, if only I had my corruptions subdued; if I had such measures of grace, such fellowship with God, then even if I were poor and despised, I would not care; I would consider myself a blessed man. Reader, is this the language of your soul?
His joys are changed. He rejoices in the ways of God’s testimonies as much as he would in all riches.Psa 119.14 He delights in the law of the Lord, which he once little savoured. He has no such joy as he does in thoughts of Christ, the fruition of his company, and the prosperity of his people. His cares are quite altered. He was once set on the world, and any scraps of spare time nothing too often was enough for his soul. Now he gives up caring for the donkeys, and sets his heart on the kingdom. Now his cry is, What shall I do to be saved? Act 16.30 His great concern is how to secure his soul. Oh, how he would bless you if you could only put away his doubts of this!
His fears are not so much of suffering, but of sinning.Heb 11.25-26 Once he was afraid of nothing so much as the loss of his estate, or esteem, the pleasure of friends, the frowns of the great: nothing sounded so terrible to him as pain, or poverty, or disgrace. Now these are little to him in comparison to God’s dishonour or displeasure. How warily he walks, lest he tread on a snare! He always fears: he looks before and behind; he has his eye upon his heart and he often looks over his shoulder lest he be overtaken with sin.33It kills his heart to think of losing God’s favour; this he dreads as his only undoing; Psa 51.11-12; Psa 119.7
No thought in the world pinches him and pains him so much as to think of parting with Christ. His love runs a new course. My love was crucified said holy Ignatius, that is, my Christ. This is my beloved, says the spouse,Song 5.16 How often Augustine pours his love upon Christ! O eternal blessedness, etc. He can find no words sweet enough. Let me see you, O light of my eyes. Come, O you joy of my spirit. Let me behold you, Oh, the gladness of my heart. Let me love you, O the life of my soul. Appear to me, O my great delight, my sweet comfort, my God, my life, and the whole glory of my soul. Let me find you, O desire of my heart! Let me hold you, love of my soul! Let me embrace you, O heavenly bridegroom! Let me possess you. His sorrows now have a new vent.2Cor 7.9-10 The view of his sins and the sight of a Christ crucified that scarcely stirred him before, now deeply affect his heart! His hatred boils, his anger burns against sin.Psa 119.104 He has no patience with himself; he calls himself a fool, and a beast, and he thinks any name is too good for him when his indignation is stirred up against sin.34He could once swill in it with exceeding pleasure; now he loathes the thought of returning to it as much as he loathes licking the filthiest vomit. Commune, then, with your own heart; pay attention to the common and general current of your affections, whether they are towards God in Christ above all other concerns. Indeed, sudden and strong commotions of the affections and sensitivities, are often found in hypocrites, especially where the natural constitution leads to that. By contrast, the sanctified are often without tangible stirrings of the affections where their temper is more relaxed, unemotional, and detached. The question is whether the judgment and will are firmly determined for God above all other good — whether real or apparent; if the affections sincerely follow their choice and conduct, even though not as strongly and sensibly as desired, there is no doubt that the change is a saving change.
2. Throughout the members. Those who were the instruments of sin before, have now become the holy utensils of Christ’s living temple.35 Someone who before made a vulgarity or a cask of his body, now possesses his vessel in sanctification and honour, in temperance, chastity and sobriety, and has dedicated it to the Lord. The eye that once was a wandering, wanton, haughty, and covetous eye, is now employed as if by Mary, weeping over her sins,Luk 7.38 beholding God in his works,Psa 8.3 reading his word,Act 8.30 searching for objects of mercy, and opportunities to serve. The ear that was once open to Satan’s call, and like a vitiated palate relished nothing more than filthy or scintillating talk and the fool’s laughter, is now drilled to the door of Christ’s house, and open to his discipline: it says, Speak, Lord, for your servant hears: it cries with him, Veniat verbum domini;37it waits for his word as for rain, and relishes them more than the appointed food,Job 23.12 and more than honey and the honey-comb. Psa 19.10 The head that was the shop of worldly designs, is now filled with other matters, and set upon the study of God’s will;38the man beats his head, not so much about his gain but about his duty. The thoughts and cares that now fill his head are principally how he may please God and flee sin.
His heart that was a pig-sty of filthy lusts, has become an altar of incense where the fire of divine love is ever kept, and from which the daily sacrifice of prayer and praises, and the sweet incense of holy desires, exclamations, and pantings, are continually ascending.The mouth has become a well of life,Pro 18.21 his tongue like choice silver, and his lips feed many.Pro 10.20-21 Now the salt of grace has seasoned his speech and eaten out the corruption,Col. 4.6, and cleansed the mouth from his filthy communication, flattery, boasting, criticizing, lying, swearing, and backbitingthat once came like flashes out of the hell that was in the heart.Jas. 3.6-7 The throat, that was once an open tomb,Rom 3.13 now sends forth the sweet breath of prayer and holy discourse; and the man speaks another tongue than the language of Canaan; he never does so well as when talking of God and Christ, and the matters of another world. His mouth brings forth wisdom; his tongue has become the silver trumpet of his Maker’s praise, his glory, and the best member that he has.
Now, here the hypocrite will hesitate. He may speak like an angel, but he has a covetous eye, or he has the gain of unrighteousness in his hand; or else his hand is clean, but his heart is full of rottenness,Mat 23.27 and immoderate cares; it is a veritable oven of lust, a shop of pride, and the seat of malice. It may be, as with Nebuchadnezzar’s Image, that he has a golden head — a great deal of knowledge — but his feet are clay: his affections are worldly; he regards earthly things, and his way and his walk are sensual and carnal. If you follow him to his secret haunts, his footsteps will be found in some by-paths of sin. The work of conversion in him is not pervasive. 3. Throughout the activities, or the life and practice. The new man takes a new course; Eph 2.2-3 His citizenship is in heaven,Phi 3.20 No sooner does Christ call him by effectual grace, than he becomes a follower of Christ.Mat 4.20 When God has given him a new heart, and written his law in his mind, he immediately walks in God’s statutes and keeps his judgments,Eze 36.26-27 Though sin may dwell in him God knows it is a wearisome and unwelcome guest, it no longer has dominion over him.Rom 6.7, 14 He has his fruit leading to holiness;Rom 6.22 and though he makes many a blot, yet the law and life of Jesus is what he eyes as his copy;40he has an unfeigned respect for all God’s commandments.Psa 119.6 His conscience is pricked even by little sins and little duties.Psa 119.113 His infirmities which he cannot help, although he would, are his soul’s burden; they are like the dust in a man’s eye which, though tiny, is more than a little troublesome. O man! Can you read this, and not inwardly examine your own soul? The sincere convert is not one man at church, and another man at home; he is not a saint on his knees, and a cheat in his shop; he will not tithe mint and cummin, and neglect mercy, and judgment, and the weighty matters of the law; he does not pretend piety, and neglect morality.Mat 23.14 Instead, he turns from all his sins, and he keeps all God’s statutes,Eze 18.21 even though not perfectly except in his desire and endeavour. Yet he is sincere in not giving himself permission to breach any.Rom 7.15 Now he delights in the word, and he sets himself to prayer, and he opens his hand if he is able, and gives to the hungry.41He ends his sins by righteousness, and his iniquities by showing mercy to the poor;Dan. 4.27 he has a good conscience, and he is willing to live honestly in all things,Heb 13.18 and to keep himself without offence towards God and men. Act 24.16 Here again you find the deficiency of many who profess Christ, who consider themselves good Christians. They are selective in the law,Mal 2.9 beginning with the cheap and easy duties of religion; but they don’t finish the work. They are like a cake that isn’t turned: it is half toasted and half-raw. You may find them strict in their words, and punctual in their dealings; but they don’t exercise themselves toward godliness; they are strangers to self-examination, and governing their hearts. You may find them duly at the church; but if you follow them to their families, you will see little besides the world being minded; or if they have a course of family-duties, follow them to their private room, and you will find their souls are little looked after. It may be they seem otherwise religious, but they don’t bridle their tongues, and so their religion is in vain.Jas. 1.26 It may be they align private and family prayer; but follow them to their shops, and you will find them in the trade of lying, or in some covert and habitual way of deceit. Thus the hypocrite is not comprehensive in the course of his obedience. So much for the subject of conversion.
6. There are things from which or to which we turn.
1. The things from which we turn in this motion of conversion are sin, Satan, the world, and our own righteousness.
First, Sin. When a man is converted, he is done forever with sin, yes, with all sin;Psa 119.128 but most of all he is done with his own sins, and especially with his secret sin.Psa 18.23 Sin is now the butt of his indignation.2Cor 7.11 He thirsts to bathe his hands in the blood of his sins. His sins set abroach42his sorrows: it is sin that pierces him and wounds him; he feels it like a thorn in his side, like a thorn in his eyes; he groans and struggles under it; not just nominally, but emotionally he cries out, O wretched man! He is not impatient about any burden so much as his sin,Psa 40.12 If God were to give him his choice, he would choose any affliction so that he might be rid of sin; he feels it like cutting gravel in his shoes, stabbing and paining him as he goes.
Before conversion, he thought lightly of sin: he cherished it in his heart as Uriah cherished his lamb: he nourished it, and it grew up with him; it ate, as it were, of his own meat, and drank from his own cup, and it lay on his chest, and was like a daughter to him43: but when God opens his eyes by conversion, he throws it away with abhorrence,Isa 30.22 just as a man would do with a loathsome toad which he hugged close to his chest in the dark, thinking it was some pretty and harmless bird. When a man is savingly changed, he is not only deeply convinced of the danger, but of the defilement of sin. And oh, how earnest he is to be purified by God! He loathes himself for his sins.Eze 36.31 He runs to Christ and throws himself into the fountain because of his sin and uncleanness.Zech. 13.1 If he falls, what a frenzy there is to get clean again! He flies to the word, and washes, and rubs, and rinses, labouring to cleanse himself from all filthiness both of flesh and spirit: he abhors his once-beloved sin,Psa 18.23 just as a cleanly nature abhors the trough and mire in which pigs are seen delighting.
The sound convert is heartily engaged against sin; he wrestles with it, he wars against it. He is too often foiled, but he never yields the cause, nor lays down the weapons. Instead, he gets up and gets to it again while he has breath in his body. He never allows quiet possession: he makes no peace; he gives no quarter. He falls upon it, fires upon it, and is disturbed by it with continual alarm. He can forgive his other enemies; he can pity them and pray for them; Act 7.60 But here he is implacable; here he is set upon revenge. He hunts for the precious life. His eye will not pity, his hand will not spare, even though it is a right hand or a right eye. Whether it is a lucrative sin that delights his nature, or makes him esteemed with carnal friends, he would rather throw his gain down the sewer, see his popularity fall, or have the flower of pleasure wither in his hand, than let himself continue in any known way of sin.Luk 19.8 He grants no indulgence; he gives no toleration. Instead, he confronts sin wherever he meets it, and frowns upon it with this unwelcoming salute, Have I found you, O my enemy?
Reader, has conscience been at work while you have been looking over these lines? Have you pondered these things in your heart? Have you searched the book within, to see if these things are so? If not, read it again, and make your conscience say whether it is this way with you. Have you crucified your flesh with its affections and lusts? Have you not only confessed, but forsaken all sin in your fervent desires, and the regular practice of every deliberate and wilful sin in your life? If not, you are still unconverted. Doesn’t conscience fly in your face as you read this? Doesn’t it tell you that you are living a lie for your own advantage, that you use deceit in your calling, that there is some way of secret wantonness in which you live? Well then, don’t deceive yourself: you are poisoned by bitterness, and bound in iniquity.Act 8.23 Doesn’t your unbridled tongue, your brutish intemperance, your wicked company, your neglect of prayer and of hearing and reading the word, now testify against you, and say, We are your works, and we will follow you? Or, if I have not hit you right, doesn’t the bird within tell them there is such and such a way that you know is evil, yet to gain some carnal consideration, you tolerate it, and you are willing to spare it? If this is your case, then you are unregenerate to this day, and you must be changed, or else condemned.
Secondly, Satan. Conversion binds the strong man;Mat 12.29 it spoils his armour, throws out his goods, and turns men from the power of Satan to God.Act 26.18 Before, the devil would no sooner hold up his finger to the sinner to call him to his wicked company, to sinful games and filthy delights, than he quickly followed like an ox to the slaughter, like a fool to the correction of the stocks, like the bird that hastens to the prey, not knowing that his life is at stake. Before, no sooner would Satan bid him lie than he quickly had a lie on the tip of his tongue.Act 5.3 No sooner would Satan offer a wanton object, than he would be stung with lust. The devil could do more with him than God could! If the devil said,“Away with these family duties,”you could be sure they would be rarely performed in his house. If the devil said,“Away with this strictness, this preciseness,” he would keep far from it. If he told him,“There’s no need for these private duties,” he would rarely perform them day to day. But now that he is converted, he serves another master, and takes quite another course.1Pet 4.4 He goes and comes at Christ’s beckon.Col. 3.24 Satan may sometimes catch his foot in a trap, but he will no longer be a willing captive. He watches for the snares and baits of Satan, and he studies to become acquainted with his tricks. He is very suspicious of his plots, and watches what crosses his path, in case Satan has some plot against him: he wrestles against principalities and powers.Eph 6.12 He considers the messenger of Satan as men consider the messenger of death: he keeps his eye on his enemy,1Pet 5.8 and takes care in his duties, to prevent Satan from gaining a foothold.
Thirdly, The World. Before having a sound faith, a man is overcome by the world. He bows down to mammon; or he idolizes his own reputation; or else he loves pleasure more than God. 2Tim 3.4 Here is the root of man’s misery caused by the fall: he is attracted to the creature instead of to God, and he gives the creature that esteem, confidence and affection that he owes to God alone.44 O miserable man! What a deformed monster sin has made you! God made you little lower than the angels, and he made sin little better than the devils.Joh 6.70; 8.44 But the monster has his head and heart where his feet should be, and his feet kick against heaven. Everything is out of place. The world that was formed to serve you, has come to rule you; and the deceitful harlot has bewitched you with her enchantments, and made you bow down and serve her.
But converting grace sets everything in order again. It puts God in the throne and makes the world his footstool.Psa 73.25 It puts Christ in the heart and the world under his feet.45So Paul says, I have been crucified to the world, and the world to me.Gal. 6.14 Before this change, his cry was, Who will show us any worldly good? But now he sings another tune: Lord, lift up the light of your countenance upon me, and whoever wants to, take the corn and wine.Psa 4.6-7 Before, his heart’s delight and contentment were in the world. Then, his song was, Soul, take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry; you have many good things laid up for many years: but now all this is withered, and there is no attraction that he desires. He is attuned with the sweet Psalmist of Israel, The Lord is the portion of my inheritance; the lines have fallen to me in a fair place; I have a good inheritance.Psa 16.5-6 He blesses himself, and boasts in God;46nothing else gives him contentment. He has written “vanity” and “vexation” on all his worldly enjoyments;Ecc 1, 2 he considers all human excellencies but loss and dung. Phi 3.7-8 He now chases life and immortality.Rom 2.7 He trades it all for grace and glory, and he pursues an incorruptible crown.1Cor 9.25 His heart is set to seek the Lord.47He seeks first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness. Religion is no longer an incidental matter with him, but is his main concern.48The gaudy idol has now become like Nehushtan;2Kng 18.4 he gets up and treads on it, like Diogenes trampled on Plato’s hangings saying, Calco Platonis fastum.49Before, the world ruled him; he would do more for gain than godliness,1Tim 6.6 and more to please his friend or his flesh than to please the God that made him. God had to stand by until the world was served first. But now all else must stand by: he hates his father, his mother, life and all in comparison to Christ. Luk 1.26
Well then, pause a little, and look within yourself: doesn’t this intimately concern you? You pretend you are for Christ, but doesn’t the world rule you? Don’t you take more real delight and contentment in the world than in him? Don’t you find yourself more at ease when the world is on your mind, and you are surrounded by carnal delights, than when your are retired in private to prayer and meditation, or when you are attending to God’s word and worship? There is no surer evidence of an unconverted state than to have the things of the world uppermost in our aims, love, and estimation.Joh 2.15; Jas. 4.4 With the sound convert, Christ is supreme. How dear is this name to him? How precious is its savour? 50The name of Jesus is engraved on his heart;Gal. 4.19 it lies like a sachet of myrrh on his breast.Song 1.13-14 Once Christ is savingly revealed to him, honour is but air, and laughter is but madness, and mammon falls over like Dagon fell before the ark, with its hands and head broken off on the threshold.1Sam 5.4 Here is the pearl of great price to the true convert; here is his treasure; here is his hope;Mat 13.44-45 this is his glory: My beloved is mine, and I am his.51Oh, it is sweeter to him to be able to say,“Christ is mine,” than if he could say,“The kingdom is mine,” or “the Indies are mine.”
Fourthly, Your own Righteousness. Before conversion, man seeks to cover himself with his own fig leaves,Phi 3.16 and to make himself whole by his own duties.Mic. 6.6-7 He is apt to trust in himself,Luk 16.15; 18.9 and set up his own righteousness, and to reckon his tokens for gold, and not submit to the righteousness of God.Rom 10.3 But conversion changes his mind. Now he throws away his filthy rags, and he considers his own righteousness as a menstruous cloth; he throws it off as a man would shed the verminous tatters of a nasty beggar.Isa 64.7 Now he is brought into a poverty of spirit;Mat 5.3 he complains about and condemns himself,Rom 7 and his entire inventory is poor, miserable, wretched, blind, and naked.Rev 3.17 He sees a world of iniquity in his holy things, and he calls his once idolized righteousness merely flesh, and loss, and dogs’ meat. He would not be found righteous in himself for a thousand worlds.Phi 3.4; 7-9 His finger ever touches his sores,Psa 51.3 his sins, his wants. Now he begins to set a high price on Christ’s righteousness; he sees in every duty his need of Christ, to justify both his person and his performances; he cannot live without him; he cannot pray without him; Christ must go with him, or else he cannot come into the presence of God. He leans on the hand of Christ, and so he bows himself in the house of his God. He accounts himself a lost and undone man without him; his life is hidden in Christ, as the life of a man is hidden in the heart. He is fixed upon Christ, just as the roots of a tree spread in the earth for stability and nutriment. Before, the news of Christ was a stale and sapless thing; but now how sweet Christ is! Augustine could not relish his previously much-admired Cicero, because he could not find the name of Christ. When he speaks of and to his Christ, how pathetically he cries, all in one breath, Dulcissime, amantis. benignis. caris. etc. quando te videbo? quando satiabo de pulchritudine tua? Medit. c. 37 O most sweet, most loving, most kind, most dear, most precious, most desired, most lovely, most fair, etc.. In a word, the voice of the convert says with the martyr: None but Christ, none but Christ.
2. The terms to which we are turned, are either ultimate or subordinate, and also mediate. The ultimate is God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, whom the true convert takes as his all-sufficient and eternal blessedness. A man is never truly sanctified until his heart is truly set on God above all things as his portion and chief good. These are the natural breathings of a believer’s heart: you are my portion.Psa 119.57 My soul makes her boast in the Lord.Psa 34.2 My expectation is from him; he alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence: In God is my salvation and my glory, the rock of my strength; and my refuge is in God.Psa 62.1-2; 5-7; 18.1-2 Is it an issue for you, as to whether you are converted or not? Then let your soul and all that is within you attend to it now! Have you taken God for your happiness? Where does the contentment of your heart lie? Where does your choicest comfort come from? Come then! And with Abraham, lift up your eyes eastward, and westward, and northward, and southward, and look around you: what would you have in heaven or earth to make you happy? If God were to give you your choice, as he gave it to Solomon, or if he were to say to you as Ahasuerus said to Esther, What do you wish, and what is your request? It will be granted to you. Est 5.3 What would you ask for? Go into the gardens of pleasure and gather all the fragrant flowers from there; would these content you? Go to the treasures of mammon; suppose you might deluge yourself with these things: go to the towers, to the trophies of honour; what would you think of being a man of renown, and having a name like the name of the great men of the earth? Would any of this, all of this, suffice to make you consider yourself a happy man? If so, then certainly you are carnal and unconverted. If not, go further; wade into the divine excellencies, the store of God’s mercies, his hidden power, the unfathomable deeps of his all-sufficiency. Does this suit you best and please you most? Do you say, It is good to be here;Mat 17.4 here I will stay; here I will live and die? Will you let all the world go rather than this? Then it is well between God and you: you are happy, O man! You are happy that you were ever born: if God can make you happy, then you must be happy, for you have affirmed that the Lord is your God.Deut. 26.17 Do you say to Christ, as he says to us, your Father will be my Father, and your God my God? Joh 20.17 Here is the turning point: a nominal Christian never rests in God. But converting grace does that work, and so it cures the fatal misery of the fall by turning the heart from its idols to the living God.1Thes 1.9 Now the soul will say, Lord, where else would I go? You have the words of eternal life.Joh 6.68 Here he centers, and here he settles. Oh, it is like the entrance to heaven for him to see his interest in God. When he discovers this, he says, Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.Psa 116.7 He is even ready to express Simeon’s song, Lord, now let your servant depart in peace,Luk 2.29 and he says with Jacob, when his old heart was revived at the welcome tidings, It is enough;Gen 45.28 when he sees that he has God to go to in covenant, this is all his salvation and all his desire.2Sam. 23.5
Man, is this your case? Have you experienced this? Why then, you are blessed of the Lord! God has been at work with you; he has laid hold of your heart by the power of converting grace, or else you would never have done this. The mediate term of conversion is either principal, or less principal. The principal is Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man;1Tim 2.5 his work is to bring us to God.1Pet 3.18 61 He is the way to the Father.Joh 14.6 He is the only plank on which we may escape, the only door by which we may enter,Joh 10.9. Conversion brings the soul to Christ,Col. 2.6 to accept him as the only means to life, the only way, the only name given under heaven.Act 4.12 He doesn’t look for salvation in any other but him, nor in any other with him; he throws himself on Christ alone, like someone would throw himself with spread arms upon the sea. Here, says the convinced sinner here I will venture, and if I perish, I perish; if I die, I will die here. But, Lord, don’t allow me to perish under the pitying eyes of your mercy. Do not entreat me to leave you, or turn from following you.Ruth 1.16 Here I throw myself: if you kick me, if you kill me,Job 13.15 I will not go from your door. Thus the poor soul ventures on Christ, and resolvedly adheres to him. Before conversion, the man made light of Christ; he minded his farm, friends, and merchandise more than Christ.Mat 22.5 Now Christ is like essential food to him: he is his daily bread, the life of his heart, the staff of his life.Phi 3.9 His great intent is that Christ might be magnified in him.Phi 1.20 His heart once said, as they said to the spouse, What makes your beloved more valuable than another? Song 5.9 Before, he found more sweetness in drunken company, wicked games, and earthly delights, than he found in Christ. He took religion for a fancy, and the talk of great enjoyments for an idle dream. But now, to live is Christ to him. He treats lightly all that he considered precious before, because of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ.Phi 3.8 All of Christ is accepted by the sincere convert. He loves not only the wages, but the work of Christ;Rom 7.12 he loves not only the benefits, but the burden of Christ: he is willing not only to tread out the corn, but to pull under the yoke; he takes up the commands of Christ and, yes, the cross of Christ.Mat 11.28; 16.24 The unsound convert half-heartedly follows Christ: he is all for the salvation of Christ, but not the sanctification; he is for the privileges, but he doesn’t appreciate the person of Christ; he separates the offices of Christ from the benefits of Christ. This is an error at its foundation. Whoever loves life, let him beware here. This is a fatal mistake which you have been warned about often, and yet there is none more common. Jesus is a sweet name, but men don’t love the Lord Jesus sincerely.Eph 6.24 They will not have him as God offers him: to be their Prince and Saviour.Act 5.31 They divide what God has joined, King and Priest. Indeed, they won’t accept the salvation of Christ as he intends it; they divide it. Every man votes for salvation from suffering; but they don’t desire to be saved from sinning. They want their lives saved, but they want to keep their lusts. Indeed, many again divide their salvation here. They are content to have only some of their sins destroyed; but they cannot leave the lap of Delilah, or divorce their beloved Herodias. They cannot be cruel to the right eye, or right hand: the Lord must pardon them in this thing.2Kng 5.18 Oh, be infinitely careful here; your souls depend on it. The sound convert takes the whole Christ, and takes him for all intent and purposes — without exceptions, limitations, or reservations. He is willing to have Christ on his terms, on any terms. He is willing to have the dominion of Christ, as well as deliverance by Christ. He says with Paul, Lord, what would you have me do? Act 9.6 Anything, Lord. He sends a blank contract for Christ to set down his own conditions.
The less principal is the laws, ordinances, and ways of Christ. The heart that was once set against these, and could not endure the strictness of these bonds, the severity of these ways, now falls in love with them, and chooses them as its rule and guide forever.Psa 119.111- 112
Four things I observe God works in every sound convert, with reference to the laws and ways of Christ. If you will be faithful to your own souls, you may come to know your estates by these. Therefore keep your eyes on your hearts as you go along.
1. The judgment is led to approve of them, and subscribe to them as most righteous, and most reasonable.55The mind is brought to love the ways of God; and to consider the corrupt prejudices that were once against them as unreasonable and intolerable; they are now removed.
The understanding assents to them all as holy, just, and good.Rom 7.12 David is consumed with these excellencies of God’s laws. He expounds on them in praises, both as to their inherent qualities and also as to their admirable effects. Psa 19.8-10, etc. There is a twofold judgment of the understanding: judicium absolutum, & comparatum. The absolute judgment is when a man thinks such a course is best in general, but not for him, or not under his present circumstances; pro hic, et nunc.56Now a godly man’s judgment favors the ways of God, not only absolutely, but comparatively as well: he thinks them not only best in general, but best for him: he looks upon the rules of religion not only as tolerable, but desirable: indeed, more desirable than gold, fine gold; yes, much fine gold.Psa 19.10 His judgment is decidedly determined that it is best to be holy, that it is best to be strict, that in itself this is the most eligible course; and for him it is the wisest, and most rational and desirable choice. Hear the godly man’s judgment: I know, O Lord, that your judgments are right. I love your commandments above gold: yes, above fine gold. I esteem all your precepts concerning all things to be right, and I hate every false way.Psa 119.127-128 Note that he approved of all that God required, and he disallowed all that God forbid: Your judgments are righteous, O Lord, and upright. Your testimonies that you have commanded are righteous and very faithful. Your word is true from the beginning, and every one of your righteous judgments endures forever.57See how readily and fully he subscribes to them; he declares his assent and consent to it, and all and everything that it contained.
2. The desire of the heart is to know the whole mind of Christ.58He would not leave one sin undiscovered, or be ignorant of one required duty. It is the natural and earnest breathing of a sanctified heart: Lord, if there is any way of wickedness in me, disclose it. What I don’t know, teach me; and if I have done iniquity, I will do it no more. The unsound convert is willingly ignorant;2Pet 3.5 he does not love to come to the light.Joh 3.20 He wants to hold onto a particular sin, and therefore he is loth to know it is a sin, and he will not let the light in at that window. The gracious heart is willing to know the whole latitude and compass of his Maker’s law.59He fully accepts the word that convinces him of any duty that he did not know or mind before, or that discloses any sin that lay hidden before.Psa 119.11
3. The free and resolved choice of the will is determined for the ways of Christ above all the pleasures of sin and prosperities of the world.Psa 119.103, 127, 162 His consent is not extorted by some extreme anguish, nor is it only a sudden and hasty resolve; instead, he is deliberately purposed, and he freely chooses.60True, the flesh will rebel, yet the prevailing part of his will is for Christ’s laws and government; so that he takes them up, not as his toil or burden, but as his bliss.61 While the unsanctified convert walks in Christ’s ways as if he is in chains and fetters, the true convert does them naturally;62he considers Christ’s laws to be his liberty.63He is willing to wear the beauties of holiness,Psa 110.3 and he has this inseparable mark: that if he had his choice, he would rather live a strict and holy life, than the most prosperous and flourishing life in the world. 1Sam. 10.26 A band of men went with Saul, whose hearts God had touched.64When God touches the hearts of his chosen, they quickly follow Christ,Mat 4.22 and though drawn they freely run after him,Song 1.4 and willingly offer themselves to the Lord’s service;2Chr 7.16 they seek him with their whole heart. 2Chr 15.15 Fear has its use, but this is not the main motivation of a sanctified heart. Christ does not keep his subjects by force, but is king of a willing people. They are through his grace freely resolved to serve him; they do it by choice, not as slaves. They are like the son or spouse who is motivated by love and a loyal mind. In a word, the laws of Christ are the convert’s love,65his desire,66his delight,67and his continual study.
4. The bent of his course is directed to keep God’s statutes.Psa 119.4, 8, 167-168 It is the daily care of his life to walk with God. He seeks great things; he has noble intents even though he falls short: he aims at nothing less than perfection: he desires it, he reaches after it, he would not rest in any tent of grace until he was quite rid of sin, and had perfect holiness.Phi 3.11-14 Here the hypocrite’s rottenness may be discovered. He desires holiness as one said well only as a bridge to heaven; he earnestly enquires what the least is that will serve his aims; if he can get just enough to obtain heaven, this is all he cares for. But the sound convert desires holiness for holiness’ sake,69and not only for heaven’s sake. He is not satisfied only with what might save him from hell, but he desires the highest ground: yet desires are not enough. What is your way and your course? Is the drift and scope of your life altered? Is holiness your trade, and is religion your business?70If not, you are short of sound conversion.
Application. And is the conversion we have described absolutely necessity for salvation? If so, then be informed: 1. That straight is the gate, and narrow is the way that leads to life. 2. That there are few that find it. 3. That there is need of a divine power to savingly convert a sinner to Jesus Christ.
Again then, be exhorted to look within yourself. What does your conscience say? Does it begin to bite? Does it twitch as you go? Is this your judgment, and this your choice, and this your way that we have described? If so, then it is well. But does your heart condemn you, and tell you there is such a sin you live in against your conscience? Does it tell you there is a secret way of wickedness which you make no bones about? Or a duty that your conscience ignores? Does your conscience carry you to your private room, and tell you how seldom you pray and read there? Does it carry you to your family and show you the charge of God, and the souls of your children and servants that you neglect there? Does your conscience lead you to your shop, or your trade, and tell you of some hidden iniquity there? Does it carry you into the liquor store, or the tavern, and go around in your ear because of the loose company you keep there, and the precious time you misspend there; for the talents of God which you throw down this sinkhole; for your gambling and drunkenness, etc.? Does it carry you into your secret chamber and read you a curtain lecture?71 O conscience! Do your duty. In the name of the living God, I command you to discharge your office: lay hold of this sinner, fall upon him, arrest him, apprehend him, undeceive him. What! Will you flatter and soothe him while he still lives in his sins? Awake, O conscience! What do you mean, O sleeper? What! Do you never have a reproof in your mouth?
What! Will this soul die in his careless neglect of God and eternity, and you stay completely silent? What! Will he still go on in his trespasses and yet have peace? Oh, rouse yourself and do your work! Let the preacher in your chest speak out! Cry aloud and don’t hold back: lift up your voice like a trumpet; don’t let the blood of this soul be on your hands!
CHAP. III — THE NECESSITY OF CONVERSION.
It may be that you are ready to say, What does this stir mean? And you are apt to wonder why I follow you with such earnestness, continually ringing one lesson in your ears, That you should repent and be converted.Act 3.19 But I must say to you, as Ruth said to Naomi, Don’t entreat me to leave you, nor to turn aside from following you.Ruth 1.16 Were it a matter of indifference, I would never make so much of it: if you might be saved as you are, I would gladly leave you alone. But wouldn’t you have me anxious for you when I see you ready to perish? As the Lord lives, before whom I stand, I don’t have the least hopes to see one of your faces in heaven unless you are converted: I utterly despair of your salvation, unless you are persuaded to thoroughly turn, and surrender to God in holiness and newness of life. Hasn’t God said, Unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God? Joh 3.3 And yet you wonder why your ministers so openly labor in childbirth with you? Gal 4.19 Don’t think it strange that I am so sincere with you to pursue holiness, and that I long to see the image of God on you: no one has ever or will ever enter heaven by any way other than this. The conversion described is not a high shelf that only taller Christians can reach; rather, every soul that is saved passes through this universal change. In a passage of the noble Roman72, when he was hastening with corn to the city in the famine, and the mariners were loth to set sail in foul weather, he says to them, Necessarium est navigare, non est necessarinm vivere; “our voyage is more necessary than our lives.” What do you consider necessary? Is your bread necessary? Is your breath necessary? Then your conversion is much more necessary. Indeed this is the unum necessarium,“the one thing necessary.” Your estate is not necessary; you may sell it all for the pearl of great price, and yet gain by the purchase.Mat 13.46 Your life is not necessary; you may part with it for Christ, to your infinite advantage. Your esteem is not necessary: you may be reproached for the name of Christ and yet be happy; indeed, happier in reproach than in repute.73But your conversion is necessary; your damnation is conditioned on it. In that case, don’t you need to look about you? Your making or your marring for all eternity depends on this one point!
But I will more particularly show the necessity of it in five things; for without conversion,
I. Your being is in vain. Isn’t it a pity that you are good for nothing, an unprofitable burden on the earth, a wart or a cyst in the body of the universe? This is what you are while you remain unconverted; for you cannot fulfil the purpose of your being. Is it not for the divine pleasure that you exist and were created? Rev 4.11 Didn’t he make you for himself? Pro 16.4 Are you a man, and do you have reason? Well then, think to yourself why your being exists, and where it came from. Behold God’s workmanship in your body and ask yourself,“To what end did God rear this fabric?” Consider the noble faculties of your heaven-born soul: to what end did God bestow these excellencies? To no other end than you should please yourself and gratify your senses? Did God send men into the world, like a swallow, only to gather a few sticks and dirt, and build their nests, and breed their young, and then fly away? The heathens could see further than this! Are you so fearfully and wonderfully made,Psa 139.14 and yet you don’t think to yourself,“Surely it was for some noble and exalted end”? O man! Set your reason in the chair a little while. Isn’t it a pity that such a fine fabric should be raised in vain? Truly, you are in vain, unless you are made for God: better you had no existence, than not to exist for him.
Do you want to serve your end? Then you must repent and be converted. Without this, you are to no purpose; indeed, you are to bad purpose.
First, To no purpose. An unconverted man is like a fine musical instrument that has every string broken, or is out of tune; the Spirit of the living God must repair and turn it by the grace of regeneration, and sweetly move it by the power of actuating grace; otherwise your prayers will only be howlings, and all your services will make no music in the ears of the most Holy.74All of your powers and faculties are so corrupt in your natural state, that unless you are purged from dead works, you cannot serve the living God.Heb 9.14; Tit. 1.15 An unsanctified man cannot work the work of God.
1. He has no skill in it. He is as completely unskilled in the work as he is in the word of righteousness.Heb 5.13 There are great mysteries in the practices as well as the principles of godliness; now, the unregenerate man doesn’t know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,75You may as well expect someone who never learned the alphabet to read, or expect good lute music from someone who never set his hand to the instrument, as to expect a natural man to do any pleasing service to the Lord. He must first be taught by God Joh 6.45 to pray,Luk 11.1 to profit,Isa 48.17, and to go, Hos. 11.3 or else he will be at a complete loss.
2. He has no strength for it. How weak is his heart? Eze 16.30 He tires quickly. The Sabbath, is such a weariness to him! Mal 1.13 He has no strength;Rom 5.6 indeed, he is stark dead in sin. Eph 2.5 73
3. He has no mind for it. He doesn’t desire knowledge of God’s ways.Job 21.14 He doesn’t know them, and he doesn’t care to know them;Psa 82.5 he does not know, nor will he understand.
4. He has neither suitable instruments nor materials for it. A man may as well hew marble without tools, or paint a portrait without colours or brush, or build without materials, as to perform any acceptable service without the graces of the Spirit — which are both the materials and the instruments in the work. Giving alms is not a service of God but of conceit, unless it is given out by the hand of divine love. What is the prayer of our lips without grace in the heart, except a lifeless carcass? What are all our confessions, unless they are exercises of godly sorrow and unfeigned repentance? What are our petitions, unless they are motivated all along by holy desires and faith in divine attributes and promises? What are our praises and thanksgivings, unless they are from the love of God and a holy gratitude, and a heartfelt sense of God’s mercies? So that a man may as well expect the trees to speak, or look for logic from the brutes, or motion from the dead, as to expect any service from the unconverted that is holy and acceptable to God. When the tree is evil, how can the fruit be good? Mat 7.18
Secondly, To bad purpose. The unconverted soul is a veritable cage of unclean birds,Rev 18.2 a sepulchre full of corruption and rottenness,76a loathsome carcass full of crawling worms that emits a hellish and most malodorous stench in the nostrils of God. Oh, dreadful case! Don’t you yet see a change that is needed? Wouldn’t it have grieved someone to see the golden consecrated vessels of God’s temple turned into quaffing bowls of drunkenness, and polluted with the service of idols? Dan. 5.2-3 Was it that kind of an abomination to the Jews when Antiochus set up the image of a pig at the entrance of the temple? 77How much more abominable then would it have been for the temple itself to be turned into a stable or a sty, and to have the Holy of Holies served like the house of Baal, to have the image of God taken down, and be turned into a draught-house? 2Kng 10.27 This is the condition of the unregenerate; all of your members are turned into instruments of unrighteousness,Rom 6.19 and servants of Satan; and your inmost powers are turned into receptacles of uncleanness.78 You may see whether good guests are within by what comes out: For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies, etc. This blackguard discovers what a hell there is within. Oh, insufferable abuse! To see a heaven-born soul abased to the filthiest drudgery; to see the glory of God’s creation, the chief of the ways of God, the lord of the universe, lapping with the prodigal at the trough, or licking up with greediness the most loathsome vomit!
Was it that kind of lamentation to see those who fed delicately, sitting desolate in the streets; and to see the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, treated as earthen pitchers; and those that were clothed in scarlet, embracing dunghills? Lam. 4.2, 5 Isn’t it much more fearful to see the only thing that has immortality in this lower world, and that carries the stamp of God, to become like a vessel in which there is no pleasure? Jer 22.28 which is just a modest expression of the vessel men put to the most sordid use. Oh, intolerable indignity! It would be better if you were dashed into a thousand pieces, than to continue to be abused in so filthy a service.
II. Not only man, but the whole visible creation is in vain without conversion. Beloved, God has made all the visible creatures in heaven and earth for the service of man; and man alone is the spokesman for all the rest. Man is in the universe like the tongue is in the body: it speaks for all the members. The other creatures cannot praise their Maker, except by dumb signs and hints to man that he should speak for them. Man is as it were the high priest of God’s creation, to offer the sacrifice of praise for all his fellow-creatures.Psa 147-148, 150 The Lord God expects a tribute of praise from all his works.Psa 103.22 Now all the rest bring their tribute to man, and pay it by his hand. So then, if man is false, faithless, and selfish, God is wronged by all, and he will have no active glory from his works.
Oh, what a dreadful thought to think! That God should build such a world as this, and lay out such infinite power, and wisdom, and goodness upon it, and all in vain: and man should be guilty, in the end, of robbing and depriving him of the glory of all. Oh, think of this! While you are unconverted, all the offices of the creatures are in vain with regard to you: your meat nourishes you in vain, the sun shines his light on you in vain, the stars that serve you in their courses by their most powerful though hidden influence,79do it in vain; your clothes warm you in vain; your beast carries you in vain: in a word, the unwearied labour, and continual activity of the whole creation is in vain with regard to to you. The service of all the creatures that drudge for you and yield their strength to you so that you would serve their Maker with them is all but lost labour. Hence the whole creation groans under the abuse of this unsanctified worldRom 8.22 that perverts them to serve their own lusts, quite contrary to the very purpose of their being.
III. Without this, your religion is in vain.Jas. 1.26 All your religious performances are but lost; for they can neither please God,
Rom 8.8, nor save your soul,1Cor 13.2-3 which are the very ends of religion. No matter how gilded your services may be, God takes no pleasure in them.80Isn’t it dreadful when a man’s sacrifices are like murder and his prayers are like a whiff of abomination? 81Many who are convicted of this think they will do a little mending, that a few prayers and alms will save everything again. But alas, sirs! While your hearts remain unsanctified, your duties will not pass muster. Jehu was punctual, and yet all he did was rejected because his heart was not upright.82Paul was blameless, and yet while he was unconverted, everything he did was loss.Phi 3.6-7 Men think that their service to God is worth much; and so they hold it up to him,83as if to make him indebted to them for it; when in fact being unsanctified, their duties cannot be accepted. O soul! Don’t think when your sins pursue you, that a little praying and adjusting of your course will pacify God: you must begin with your heart; if that is not renewed, you can no more please God than someone who, having unspeakably offended you, brought you his vomit in a dish to pacify you; or having fallen into the mire, thought to reconcile you with his loathsome embraces. It is a great misery to labour in the fire. The poets could not invent a worse hell for Sisyphus than to continually roll the barrel up the hill, and quickly have it roll down again, and thus renew his labour. God threatens it as the greatest of temporal judgments, that sinners should build and not inhabit, plant and not gather, and have their labours eaten by strangers.Deut. 28.30, 38-40 Isn’t it a great a misery to lose the fruit of our common labours, to sow in vain, and to build in vain? How much more misery is it to lose all our efforts in religion: to pray, and bear, and fast in vain? This is an undoing, and an eternal loss. Don’t be deceived: if you continue in your sinful state, though you spread out your hands to him, God will hide his eye; though you offer many prayers, he will not hear.Isa 1.15 If a man without skill sets about doing our work, and he mars it, even though he took great pains with it, we will give him little thanks. God will be worshipped in the prescribed manner.1Chr 15.13 If a servant does our work, but contrary to our orders, then he will receive lashes rather than praise. God’s work must be done according to God’s mind, or he will not be pleased; and this cannot be done unless it is done with a holy heart. 2Chr 25.2
IV. Without this, your hopes are in vain.84The Lord has rejected your confidences. Jer 2.37
First, your hopes of comfort here are in vain. It is not only necessary to the safety, but to the comfort of your condition, that you be converted. Without this, you will not know peace.Isa 59.8 Without the fear of God, you cannot have the comforts of the Holy Ghost.Act 9.31 God speaks peace only to his people and to his saints.Psa 85.8 If you have a false peace while continuing in your sins, it is not of God’s speaking, and thus you may guess the author. Sin is a real sickness, Isa 1.5 indeed, it is the worst of sickness; it is a leprosy in the head,Lev. 13.44 a plague in the heart.1Kng 8.31 It is brokenness in the bones.Psa 51.8 It pierces, it wounds, it racks, it torments. 1Tim 1.10 A man might as well expect ease while his diseases are most severe, or when his bones are out of joint, as to expect true comfort while he is still in his sins.
O wretched man! You can have no ease in this case except what comes from the deadliness of the disease! You will have the poor sick man saying in his lightheadedness that he is well, when you see death in his face: he will say he needs to be up and about his business, when the very next step is likely to be into the grave. The unsanctified often see nothing amiss. They think they are whole and they don’t call for the physician; but this shows the danger of their case. Sin naturally breeds distempers and disturbances in the soul. What kind of continual tempest and commotion is there in a discontented mind? What kind of consuming evil is inordinate desire? What is passion but a high fever in the mind? What is lust but a fire in the bones? What is pride, but a deadly conceit? Or covetousness, but an insatiable and insufferable thirst? Or malice and envy, but venom in the very heart? Spiritual sloth is but a scurvy in the mind, and carnal security is a mortal lethargy. And how can a soul that is under so many diseases have true comfort? But converting grace cures — and so it eases the mind and prepares the soul for a settled standing and immortal peace: Great peace have those who love your commandments, and nothing will offend them.Psa 119.165 These are the ways of wisdom that afford pleasure and peace.Pro 3.17 David had infinitely more pleasure in the word than in all the delight of his court. The conscience cannot be truly pacified until it is soundly purified. Heb 10.22 Cursed is that peace that is maintained in a path of sin.Deut. 29.19-20 Two sorts of peace are more to be dreaded than all the troubles in the world: peace with sin, and peace in sin.
Secondly, your hopes of salvation hereafter are in vain; indeed, they are worse than in vain. They are most injurious to God, and most pernicious to yourself. There is death, desperation, and blasphemy in the center of this hope.
1. There is death in it. Your confidence will be rooted out of your tabernacles; God will tear it up, root and branch it will bring you to the king of terrors.Job 18.14 Though you may lean upon this house, it will not stand,Job 8.15 but will prove to be like a ruinous building which, when a man trusts it, will fall down around his ears.
2. There is desperation in it. Where is the hope of the hypocrite when God takes away his soul? Job 27.8 At that point, his hope comes to an end forever. Indeed, the hope of the righteous has an end too, but it is not a destructive end — it is a perfective end; his hope ends in fruition, while others end in frustration.Pro 10.28 The godly says at death, It is finished; but the wicked says, It is perished — and in sad earnest, he grieves for himself, as Job mistakenly did Where now is my hope? He has destroyed me; I am gone, and my hope is uprooted like a tree.Job 19.10 But the righteous has hope in his death. Pro 14.32 When nature is dying, his hopes are living; when his body is languishing; his hopes are flourishing; his hope is a living hope;1Pet 1.3 to him it is a lively hope, but to others it is a dying, indeed, a damning and soul-undoing hope. When a wicked man dies, his expectation will perish, and the hope of unjust men perishes.Pro 40.7 It will be cut off, and prove to be like a spider’s web Job 8.14 which he spins out of his own innards; but then comes death with the broom and it takes it all down; and so there is an eternal end to his confidence in which he trusted. For the eyes of the wicked will fail, and their hope will be like giving up the ghost.Job 11.20 Wicked men are settled in their carnal hope, and will not be beaten out of it: they hold it tight and will not let it go. But death will indeed knock it from their fingers. Even though we cannot undeceive them, death and judgment will. When death shoots his arrow through your liver, it will let out your soul and your hopes together. The unsanctified have hope only in this life;1Cor 15.19 and therefore, of all men, they are most miserable: When death comes, it lets them out into the amazing gulf of endless desperation.
3. There is blasphemy in it. To hope we will be saved even though we continue unconverted, is to hope that we will prove God a liar. He told you that despite being as merciful and pitying as he is, he will never save you if you go on in ignorance, or in a course of unrighteousness.86In a word, he told you that whatever you may be or do, nothing will save you unless you are new creatures.Gal. 6.15 Now, to say God is merciful, and that we hope he will nevertheless save us, is to say in effect that we hope God will not do what he says. However, we may not set God’s attributes at variance with each other: God is resolved to glorify mercy, but not at the expense of truth — as the presumptuous sinner will find to his everlasting sorrow. Obj. But we hope in Jesus Christ; we put our whole hope in God; and therefore we don’t doubt that we will be saved.
Ans. 1. This is not to hope in Christ, but against Christ. To hope to see the kingdom of God without being born again, to hope to find eternal life in the broad way, is to hope that Christ will prove to be a false prophet. It is David’s plea, I hope in your word;Psa 119.81 but this other hope is against the word. Show me a word of Christ that affirms your hope that he will save you in your ignorance, or in your profane neglect of his service, and I won’t try to shake your confidence.
Ans. 2. God rejects this hope with abhorrence. Those condemned by the prophet continued in their sins; yet the text says they will lean upon the Lord.Mic 3.11 God will not bear to be made a prop to men in their sins: the Lord rejected those presumptuous sinners who still went on in their trespasses; and yet they wanted to fasten themselves on the God of Israel.Isa 48.1-2 Just as a man would do, God will shake off the briars that cling to his garment as one man well said.
Ans. 3. If your hope is anything of worth, it will purify you from your sins;1Joh 3.3 but cursed is that hope that cherishes men in their sins.
Obj. Would you have us despair?
Ans. You must despair of ever coming to heaven as you are,Act 2.37 that is, while you remain unconverted. You must despair ever to see the face of God without holiness; but you must by no means despair of finding mercy upon your thorough repentance and conversion; neither must you despair of attaining to repentance and conversion by the use of God’s means.
V. Without this, all that Christ has done and suffered will be in vain for you.87That is, in no way will it lead to your salvation. Many urge this as a sufficient ground for their hopes: that Christ died for sinners. But I must tell you that Christ never died to save impenitent and unconverted sinners those who continue in sin.2Tim 2.19 A great divine in his private dealings with others tended to ask two questions: 1. What has Christ done for you? 2. What has Christ worked in you? Without the application of the Spirit in regeneration, we can have no saving interest in the benefits of redemption. I tell you from the Lord, that Christ himself cannot save you if you continue in this condition.
First, It would be against his trust. The Mediator is the Servant of the Father.Isa 42.1 He shows his commission from him, acts in his name, and pleads his command for his justification.88God has committed all things to him, entrusted his own glory and the salvation of the elect to him. Accordingly, Christ gave his Father an account of both parts of his trust before he left the world. Joh 17.4, 6, 12 Now Christ would quite betray his Father’s glory, his greatest trust, if he were to save men in their sins; for this would first, overturn all his Father’s directions, and second, this would violate all his attributes.
1st, Overturn all his directions.
This is their order: that men should be brought through sanctification unto salvation.90He has chosen them to be holy.Eph 1.4 They are elected to pardon and life through sanctification.1Pet 1.2 If you can repeal the law of God’s immutable counsel, or destroy the one whom the Father has sealed, going directly against his commission, then and not otherwise may you get to heaven in this condition. To hope that Christ will save you while you remain unconverted is to hope that Christ will falsify his trust. He never did nor will he ever save one soul except those whom the Father has given him in election, and has drawn to him by effectual calling.Joh 6.34, 37 Be assured, Christ will save none in a way that is contrary to his Father’s will. Joh 6.38
2dly, Violate all his attributes.
1. It violates His justice: the righteousness of God’s judgment lies in rendering to all according to their works.Rom 2.5-6. Now, if men were to sow to the flesh, and yet reap everlasting life from the Spirit,Gal. 6.7-8 where would the glory of divine justice be found, since it would be given to the wicked according to their works of unrighteousness?
2. It violates His holiness. If God were not only to save sinners, but save them in their sins,92his most pure and strict holiness would be badly defaced. The unsanctified person is, in the eyes of God’s holiness, worse than a pig or a viper.93Now, what cleanly nature could endure having filthy pigs bed and board with him in his parlour or bed chamber? It would violate the infinite purity of the divine nature to have such unsanctified persons dwell with him. They cannot stand in his judgment; they cannot abide in his presence.Psa 1.5; 5.4-5 If holy David would not endure them in his house, or even in his sight,Psa 101.3, 7 why would we think God will? If he were to take men as they are from the trough to the table, from the harlot’s lips, from the sty and draff94, to the glory of heaven, the world would think that God is not as separated from sin, nor dislikes it so much, as we are told. They would conclude God is just like them which they wickedly did, mistaking the forbearance of God as license.Psa 50.21
3. It violates His veracity: God has declared from heaven that, if anyone says he has peace, though he goes on in the imagination of his heart, God’s wrath will smoke against that man. Deut. 29.19-20 Only those who confess and forsake their sins will find mercy.Pro 28.13 Those who ascend his hill must have clean hands and a pure heart.Psa 24.3-4 Where would God’s truth be if, despite all this, he were to bring men to salvation without conversion? O desperate sinner, who dares to hope that Christ will make his Father a liar, and nullify his word to save you!
4. It violates His wisdom: this would be to throw away the choicest mercies on those who would not value them, nor were in any way suited to them.
First, They would not value them. The unsanctified sinner puts little price upon God’s great salvation.Mat 22.5 He sets no more by Christ, than the healthy set by the physician.Mat 9.12 He does not prize his balm nor value his cure; he tramples on his blood.Heb 10.29 Now, would it be wise to force pardon and life on those who would give God no thanks for these things? When he has forbidden us to do it, would the all-wise God throw his holy things to dogs, or throw his pearls to swine, who would only turn and rend him if they could? Mat 7.6 This would make mercy despised indeed! Wisdom requires that life be given in a way that is suited to God’s honour, and that God provides to secure his own glory as well as man’s felicity. It would dishonor God to set his jewels on the snouts of swine continuing on, and to bestow his choicest riches on those who have more pleasure in their swill than in the heavenly delights he offers. God would lose the praise and glory of his grace if he threw it away on those who were not only unworthy of it, but unwilling to receive it.
Secondly, They are in no way suited to them. The divine wisdom is seen in suiting things to each other: the means to the end, the object to the faculty, the quality of the gift to the capacity of the receiver. Now, if Christ were to bring the unregenerate sinner to heaven, that sinner could receive no more felicity there than a beast could receive if you were to bring it into a beautiful room, to the society of learned men, and to a well-furnished table; the poor thing would much rather be grazing in the field with his fellow brutes. Alas! What would an unsanctified creature do in heaven? He could not be content there, because nothing suits him. The place does not suit him: he would be but piscis in arido, i.e. quite out of his element, like a pig in the parlour, or a fish out of water. The company does not suit him: what communion does darkness have with light, corruption with perfection, or filth and rottenness with glory and immortality? The employment does not suit him: the anthems of heaven don’t fit his mouth; they don’t suit his ear. Can you charm your beast with music, or would you bring him to your organ, and expect him to make a melody, or keep tune with the skilful choir? Or even if he has the skill, he would not have the will; and so he could find no pleasure in it, no more than a nauseous stomach finds in the meat on which it has just been stuffed. Spread your table with delicacies before a languishing patient, and it will only be an offence to him. Alas! If a man thinks a sermon is long, and he says of the Sabbath, How tiresome this is! Mal 1.13 then how miserable would he be if he was held to that for eternity?
5. It violates His immutability, or his omniscience, or his ominipotence. It is enacted in the conclave of heaven, and registered in the decrees of the court above, that none but the pure in heart will ever see God.Mat 5.8 This is stored away, and it is sealed among his treasures. Now, if Christ brings anyone to heaven who is still unconverted, either he must get them in without his Father’s knowledge and then where is his Father’s omniscience?, or against his will and then where is his ominipotence?, or else he must change his will and then where is his immutability?. Sinner, will you not yet give up your vain hope of being saved in this condition? Says Bildad, Will the earth be forsaken for you, or the rocks moved out of their place? Job 18.4 May I reason with you in this way much more? Will the laws of heaven be reversed for you? Will the everlasting foundations be overturned for you? Will Christ put out the eye of his Father’s omniscience, or shorten the arm of his eternal power for you? Will divine justice be violated for you? Or the brightness of the glory of his holiness be blemished for you? Oh, the impossibility, the absurdity and blasphemy that exists in such confidence! To think Christ would ever save you in this condition, is to turn your Saviour into a sinner, and to do more wrong to the infinite Majesty than all the wicked on earth or devils in hell ever did or could do; and would you still not give up such a blasphemous hope?
Secondly, It would be against his word. We need not say, Who will ascend into heaven, to bring down Christ from above? or, who will descend into the deep, to bring up Christ from beneath? the word is near us.Rom 10.6-8 Are you agreed that Christ will end the controversy? Hear then his own words: Unless you are converted, you will by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven. Mat 18.3 You must be born again.Joh 3.7 If I don’t wash yourself, you have no part in me.Joh 13.8 Repent, or perish.Luk 13.3 One would think that one word from Christ is enough; but how often and earnestly he reiterates it! Truly, truly, Unless a man is born again, he will not see the kingdom of God.Joh 3.3, 5 Yes, he not only asserts it, but he proves the necessity of the new birth. Because of the fleshliness and filthiness of man’s first birth,Joh 3.6 man is no more fit for heaven than the beast is fit for the chamber of the king’s presence. And will you still believe your own presumptuous confidence, directly against Christ’s words? He would have to go against the law of his kingdom, and the rule of his judgment, to save you in such a condition.
Thirdly, It would be against his oath. He has lifted his hand to heaven. He has sworn that those who remain in unbelief, and don’t know his ways, that is, those who are ignorant of them, or disobedient to them will not enter into his rest. And will you not yet believe, O sinner, that he is in earnest? Can you hope he will recant for you? The covenant of grace is confirmed by an oath, and sealed by blood; but all of this must be made void, and another way to heaven must be found, if you are to be saved, living and dying while yet unsanctified. God has come to his lowest and last terms with man; he has condescended as far as he could with honour; he has set up his pillars with a Ne plus ultra.97Men cannot be saved while unconverted, unless they can get another covenant made, and have the whole frame of the gospel altered which was established forever with such dreadful solemnities. And wouldn’t this be a misplaced hope?
Fourthly, This would be against his honour. God shows his love to the sinner so as to show his hatred toward sin also. Therefore, whoever names the name of Jesus must depart from iniquity 2Tim 2.19 and deny all ungodliness. Whoever hopes for life by Christ, must purify himself just as Christ is pure,98otherwise Christ will be thought to favour sin. The Lord Jesus would have all the world know, though he pardons sin, he will not protect it. If holy David says, Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity,Psa 6.8 and shuts the doors against them,Psa 101.7 then should we not much more expect it because of Christ’s holiness? Would it honour him to have dogs sit at the table, or to lodge pigs with his children, or to have Abraham’s bosom become a nest of vipers?
Fifthly, This would be against his offices. God has exalted Christ to be a Prince and a Saviour. Act 5.31 He would act against both offices if he were to save men in their sins. It is the office of a king, Parcere subjectis & debellare superbos: To be a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to those who do well,Rom 13.3-4. He is a minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath on the one who does evil. Now, would Christ favour the ungodly continuing the metaphor, by taking those to reign with him who would not have Christ to reign over them? Luk 19.27 This would be quite against his office: he therefore reigns so as to put his enemies under his feet.1Cor 15.24 Now, if he were to place them in his bosom, he would betray the purposes of his regal power. It belongs to Christ, as a king, to subdue the hearts and slay the lusts of his chosen. Psa 45.5; 110.3 What king would take rebels into his court, who are in open hostility toward him? What would this be but to betray life, kingdom, government, and all together? If Christ is a king, then he must have homage, honour, subjection, etc. Mal 1.6 Now, to save men while they remain in their natural hostility toward him, would be to obscure his dignity, lose his authority, bring contempt on his government, and sell his dearly-bought rights for nothing. Again, just as Christ would not be a Prince if he were to do this, neither would he be a Saviour; for his salvation is spiritual: he is called “Jesus” because he saves his people from their sins.Mat 1.21 So, if he were to save them in their sins, he would be neither Lord nor Jesus. To save men from the punishment and not from the power of sin, would be to do half his work, and he would be an imperfect Saviour.
His office as the deliverer, is to turn away ungodliness from Jacob.Rom 11.26 He is sent to bless men in turning them from their iniquities,Act 3.26 to make an end of sin.Dan. 9.24 So he would destroy his own plans, and nullify his offices, if he saved men who remain in their unconverted state.
Application. Arise, then! What do you mean, O sleeper? Awake, O secure sinner, lest you be consumed in your iniquities! Say as the lepers do, If we sit here we will die.2Kng 7.3-4 Truly, it is no more certain that you are now out of hell, than you will speedily be in it, unless you repent and are converted. There is just this one door for you to escape by. Arise, then, O sluggard, and shake off your excuses. How long will you slumber, and fold your hands to sleep? Pro 6.10-11 Will you lie down in the midst of the sea, or sleep on top of the mast? Pro 23.34 There is no other remedy; you either turn or burn. There is an unchangeable need to change your condition unless you are resolved to endure the worst of it, and contest it with the Almighty. If you love your life, O man, arise and come away! I think I see the Lord Jesus laying his merciful hands on you in holy fierceness; I think he does it as the angels did to Lot.Gen 19.15-17 Then the angels hurried Lot, saying, Arise, lest you be consumed. And while he lingered, the men grabbed his hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him outside the city, and said, Escape for your life! Don’t stay in any of the plain — escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed!
Oh, how wilful your destruction will be, if you still harden yourself in your sinful state! But none of you can say you have not had fair warning. Yet I think I cannot tell how to leave you this way. It is not enough for me to have delivered my own soul. What! Will I go away without finishing my errand? Will none of you arise and follow me? Have I been speaking all this while to the wind? Have I been charming the deaf adder, or allaying the tumbling ocean with arguments? Do I speak to trees and rocks, or to men? To the tombs and monuments of the dead, or to a living audience? If you are men, and not senseless stocks, then stand still, and consider where you are going. If you have the reason and understanding of men, then don’t dare to run into the flames, and fall into hell with your eyes open. Instead, just think to yourselves, and set to the work of repentance. What! You are men, and yet you run into the pit when even the beasts will not be forced into it? What! You are endued with reason, and yet you dally with death and hell, and the vengeance of the Almighty?! Are men not distinguished from the brutes in this: that they have the foresight and care to provide for things to come? And will you not hasten your escape from eternal torment? Oh, show yourselves to be men, and let reason prevail with you! Is it reasonable for you to contend against the Lord your Maker? Isa 45.9 Or to harden yourselves against his wordJob 9.4 as though the Strength of Israel would lie to you? 1 Sam. 15.29
Is it reasonable that an understanding creature would lose, indeed, live quite against the very purpose of his being, and be like a broken pitcher that is fit only for the dunghill? Is it tolerable that the only thing in this world that God has made capable of knowing his will, and of bringing him glory, should still live in ignorance of his Maker, and be unserviceable to his use; indeed, that he should be engaged against him, and spit venom in the face of his Creator? Hear heavens, and give ear, O earth, and let the senseless creatures judge whether this is reason: that man, when God has nourished and brought him up, should rebel against him? Isa 1.2 Judge yourselves: is it a reasonable undertaking for briars and thorns to set themselves in battle against the devouring fire? Isa 27.4 Or for the potsherd of the earth to strive against his Maker?99If you say this is reason, surely the eye of reason has been put out. But if this is not reason, then there is no reason for you to continue as you are; rather it is entirely reasonable for you to immediately repent and turn.
What will I say? I could exhaust myself in this argument. Oh, if only you would listen to me so that you would quickly set a new course! Will you not be made clean? When will that be? What! Will nobody be persuaded? Reader, will I at least prevail with you? Will you sit down and consider the forementioned arguments, and debate whether it is best to turn? Come, let us reason together:
Is it good for you to be in this condition? Will you sit still while the tide rolls in on you? Is it good for you to test whether God is as good as his word, and harden yourself in the conceit that all is well with you while you remain unsanctified? But I know you will not be persuaded; most will stay as they are, and do as they have done. I know the drunkard will return to his vomit, and the deceiver will return to his deceit, and the lustful wanton will return to his dalliance. Alas! I must leave you where you were — in your ignorance or looseness, or in your lifeless formality and your customary devotions! However, I will sit down and bemoan my fruitless labours, and sigh over my perishing hearers. Oh, distracted sinners! What will their end be? What will they do in the day of his visitation? Where will they flee for help? Where will they leave their glory? Isa 10.3 How powerfully sin has bewitched them! How effectually the god of this world has blinded them! How strong their delusion is! How uncircumcised their ears are! How obdurated100their hearts are! Satan has them at his beck and call: but how long may I call and get no answer? I may dispute with them year after year, and all they give me is the hearing. They must and will have their sins, say what I will. Though I tell them there is death in the cup, they still lift it to their lips: though I tell them it is the broad way, and that it ends in destruction, they still travel on it: I warn them, yet I cannot win them. Sometimes I think the mercies of God will melt them, and his winning invitations will overcome them; but I find them just as they were. Sometimes I think that the terror of the Lord will persuade them; yet this won’t do it either. They approve the word, enjoy the sermon, and commend the preacher; but they still live as they did. They will not deny me, but they will not obey me either. They flock to the word of God, and they sit before me as his people, and they hear my words, but they will not do them. They value and plead for ministers. To them I am like omeone who has a pleasant voice and sings a lovely song; yet I cannot get them to come under Christ’s yoke. They love me, and say they will do anything for me; but for my life, I cannot persuade them to leave their sins, to forego their evil company, their intemperance, their unjust gain, etc. I cannot prevail with them to establish prayer in their families and in their studies, yet they promise me, like the disobedient son that said, I go, sir; but did not.Mat 21.30 I cannot persuade them to learn the principles of religion, though they will die without knowledge.Job 36.12 I tell them of their misery, but they believe it is well enough: if I tell them that, for particular reasons, I fear that their state is bad, they think I am critical. Or if they are awakened for the moment, they are quickly lulled asleep again by Satan, and they lose the sense of it all.
Alas for my poor hearers! Must they perish by the hundreds in the end, when ministers would so willingly save them? What course will I use with them that I have not tried? What will I do for the daughter of my people? Jer 9.7 O Lord God, help! Alas! Would I leave them this way? If they will not hear me, at least you hear me: Oh, that they might still live in your sight! Lord, save them, or else they perish! My heart would melt to see their houses on fire around them while they were fast asleep in their beds; and shouldn’t my soul be moved within me to see them falling into endless perdition? Lord, have compassion, and save them from the burning: put forth your divine power and the work will be done: but as for me, I cannot prevail.
CHAP. IV — SHOWING THE MARKS OF THE UNCONVERTED.
As long as we keep aloof in general statements, little fruit can be expected: the execution is done in the hand-fight. David is not awakened by the prophet as he hovers at a distance in insinuating parables: the prophet is forced to close with him, and tell him directly, you are the man. Few will deny the necessity of the new birth in words; but they have self-deluding confidence that the work is not to be done now. And because they know they are free from that gross hypocrisy that takes up religion merely for appearance in order to deceive others, and to veil their wicked plans, they are confident of their sincerity. They don’t suspect they have that closer hypocrisy where the greatest danger lies by which a man deceives his own soul.Jas. 1.26 But man’s deceitful heart is such a matchless cheat, and self-delusion is so reigning and so fatal a disease, that I don’t know which is greater: the difficulty, the dislike, or the necessity of undeceiving them, which is my present task. Alas for my unconverted hearers: they must either be undeceived, or undone. But how will this be effected? Hic labor, hoc opus est. Help, O all-searching light, and let your discerning eye discover the rotten foundation of the self-deceiver; and lead me, Lord God, as you did the prophet, into the chambers of imagery, and dig through the wall of sinners’ hearts, and discover the hidden abominations that are lurking out of sight in the dark. Oh, send your angel before me to open the assorted wards of their hearts, as you sent him before Peter; and make even the iron gates fly open of their own accord. And as Jonathan no sooner tasted the honey than his eyes were enlightened, so grant, O Lord, that when the poor deceived souls with whom I must deal, look upon these lines, their minds may be illuminated, and their consciences convicted and awakened, so that they may see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and be converted; and you may heal them. This must be premised before we proceed to the discovery: it is most certain that men may have a confident persuasion that their hearts and states are good, and yet they are unsound. Hear the Truth Himself, who shows in Laodicea’s case that men may be wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, and yet they do not know it; indeed, they may be confident they are rich and increased in grace.Rev 3.17 There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet they are not washed from their filthiness.Pro 30.12 Who was better persuaded of his case than Paul while he still remained unconverted? Rom 7.9 Those who mistake a strong confidence for sufficient evidence are miserably deceived. Those who have no better proof that they are converted than a strong persuasion are certainly still strangers to conversion.
But to get closer to the issue, as it was said of the adherents of antichrist, so it is said here: some unconverted carry their marks more openly in their foreheads; and some carry them more covertly in their hands. The apostle considers some on whom he writes the sentence of death to be in the following dreadful catagories, which I beg you to pay attention to with all diligence.Eph 5.5-6 For you know this: that no whoremonger, or unclean person, or covetous man who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words; for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience. Rev 21.8
But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers. and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, will have their place in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.1Cor 6.9-10 Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don’t be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers nor the effeminate,102nor those who abuse themselves with men,103nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, will inherit the kingdom of God. See Gal. 5.19-21 Woe to those who have their names written in these red scrolls:104such may know as certainly as if God had told them from heaven, that they are unsanctified and they cannot be saved in this condition. There are then the following sorts that are unconverted beyond dispute: they carry their marks openly in their foreheads.
1. The unclean. These are always counted among the goats, and have their names whoever he left out in all the forementioned lists. Eph 5.5; Rev 21.8; 1Cor 5.9, 19
2. The covetous. These are always branded as idolaters, and the doors of the kingdom are shut against them by name. Eph 5.5; Col. 3.5; 1Cor 6.9-10
3. Drunkards. Not only those who drink away their reason, but along with this, indeed, above all this, those who are addicted to strong drink. The Lord fills his mouth with woes against these, and he declares that they have no inheritance in the kingdom of God. Isa 5.11- 12, 22; Gal. 5.31
4. Liars. The God that cannot lie has told them that there is no place for them in his kingdom, no entrance into his hill; instead, their portion is with the father of lies whose children they are in the lake of burnings. Psa 15.1-2; Rev 21.8, 27; Joh 8.44; Pro 6.17
5. Swearers. The end of these, without deep and speedy repentance, is swift destruction and most certain and unavoidable condemnation. Jas. 5.12; Zech. 5.1-3
6. Railers and backbiters, those who love to criticize their neighbours, and fling all the dirt they can in his face, or else wound him secretly behind his back. Psa 15.1, 3; 1Cor 6.10; 5.11
7. Thieves, extortioners, oppressors, who grind the poor and over stretch their brothers when they have them at an advantage: these must know that God is the avenger of all these.1Thes 4.6 Hear, O you false, and purloining, and wasteful servants! Hear, O you deceitful tradesmen! Hear your sentence: God will certainly hold shut his door against you, and turn your treasures of unrighteousness into the treasures of wrath, and make your ill-gotten silver and gold torment you like burning metal in your innards.1Cor 6.9-10, Jas. 5.2-3
8. All that typically live in the profane neglect of God’s worship, those who don’t hear his word, who don’t call on his name, who withhold prayer before God, who don’t mind their own soul, nor their family’s souls, but live without God in the world.Joh 8.47; 15.4; Psa 14.4; 79.6; Eph 2.12; 4.18
9. Those who are frequenters and lovers of evil company; God has declared he will destroy all such people, and that they will never enter into the hill of his rest. Pro 13.20; Psa 15.4; Pro 9.6
10. Scoffers at religion, those who scorn strict living, and laugh at the messengers and diligent servants of the Lord and their holy profession, and amuse themselves with the weakness and failings of those who profess Christ: hear, you despisers; hear your dreadful doom. Pro 19.29; 2Chr 36.16; Pro 3.24
Sinner, consider diligently whether you are included among these ranks — for if this is your case, you are poisoned by bitterness, and bound by iniquity105; for all these persons carry their marks openly in their foreheads, and they are undoubtedly the sons of death. And if so, may the Lord pity our poor congregations. Oh, how few would be left when these ten sorts are excluded? Alas, on how many doors, and on how many faces must we write, Lord, have mercy upon us! Sirs, what rationalization can you make to maintain your confidence in your good estate when God from heaven decides against you, and pronounces that you are in a state of damnation? I would reason with you, as God reasons with them; How can you say, “I am not polluted?” Jer 2.3 See your way in the valley, know what you have done. Isn’t your conscience aware of your deceitful tricks, of your chamber-pranks, of your way of lying? Indeed, aren’t your friends, family, neighbours, witnesses to your profane neglect of God’s worship, to your covetous practices, to your envious and malicious carriage? Might they not point at you saying, “There goes a gaming prodigal; there goes a drunken Nabal, a companion of evil-doers; there goes a railer, or a scoffer, a loose liver?” Beloved, God has written it as if with a sun-beam, in the book from which you must be judged, that these are not the blemishes of his children, and that none such as these unless they are renewed by converting grace will ever escape the damnation of hell. Oh, that anyone like this among you would now be persuaded to repent and turn from all your transgressions, or else iniquity will be your ruin! Eze 18.30 Alas for poor hardened sinners! Must I leave you in the end where you were before? Must I leave the tipler106still at the ale-bench? Must I leave the wanton still at his dalliance? Must I leave the malicious still in his venom, and the drunkard still at his vomit? You must know that you have been warned, and that I am clear of your blood. And whether men will hear, or whether they will resist, I will leave these scriptures with them, either as thunder-bolts to awaken them, or as searing irons to harden them as reprobates: Psa 68.21 God will wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of anyone who continues in his trespasses.Pro 29.1 Being often reproved, one who stiffens his neck will suddenly be destroyed, and without remedy.Pro 1.24, etc. Because I have called and you refused, because I have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, etc. I will laugh at your calamity when your destruction comes like a whirlwind.
And now I imagine, many will begin to bless themselves, and think all is well, because they cannot be spotted with the grosser evils mentioned above. But I must further tell you, that there is another sort of unsanctified person, those who don’t carry their marks openly on their foreheads, but carry them more secretly and covertly in their hands. These frequently deceive themselves and others, and pass for good Christians when they are all the while unsound at their core. Many pass undiscovered until death and judgment bring everything to light. Those self-deceivers seem to come even to heaven’s gate, confident of their admission, and yet they are turned away in the end. Mat 7.22 Brothers, beloved, I beg you deeply to lay to heart and to firmly retain this awakening consideration: that multitudes go wrong by the hand of some secret sin that is not only hidden from others, but for lack of watching their own hearts even from themselves. A man may be free from open pollutions, and yet die at last by the fatal hand of some unobserved iniquity. And there are these twelve hidden sins by which numbers of souls go down into the chambers of death. You must search carefully for these, and take them as black marks wherever they are found; they reveal a graceless and unconverted estate. Just as you love your lives, read carefully, and with a holy jealousy for yourselves, lest you be one of the persons described here:
1. Gross ignorance. Ah, how many poor souls this sin kills in the darkHos. 4.6 while they sincerely think they have good hearts, and are on their way to heaven! This is the murderer who dispatches thousands silently when poor hearts! they suspect nothing, and don’t see the hand that harms them. You will find, whatever excuses you have for ignorance, that it is a soul-undoing evil.107Ah! Would it not have saddened a man’s heart to see that woeful spectacle, when the poor Protestants were shut up as a group in a barn, and a butcher comes with his inhuman hands, warm in human blood, and leads them one by one, blindfolded, to a block where he slew them poor innocents! one after another by the scores in cold blood?108But how much more should our hearts bleed to think of the hundreds who attend great congregations, and whom Ignorance butchers in secret, leading them blindfolded to the block? Beware to ensure this is not your case; do not plead ignorance! If you spare that sin, know that it will not spare you. Will a man keep a murderer in his heart?
2. Secret reservations in following Christ. To forsake all for Christ, to hate father and mother for him — yes, even a man’s own life — this is a hard saying.Luk 14.6 Some will do much, but they will not be of the sort of religion that deprives them of anything; they will never be entirely devoted to Christ, nor fully resigned to him; they must have their sweet sins. They will do themselves no harm, and so they have secret exceptions for life, liberty, or estate. Many take Christ by merely raising their hand, and never consider his self-denying terms, nor do they count the cost. This error in the foundation mars everything, and secretly ruins them forever.Luk 14.28; Mat 13.21
3. Formality in religion. Many stop at the bark of the tree, and rest on the outside of religion, in the external performances of their holy duties.Mat 23.25 This most effectively deceives men; it more certainly undoes them than open looseness, as it did in the Pharisees’ case.Mat 23.31 They hear, they fast, they pray, they give charity; and so they believe their situation must be good.Luk 18.11 Thus resting in the outward work, but falling short of the heart-work — the inward power and vitality of religion — in the end, they fall from the flattering hopes and confident persuasions that they are on their way to heaven, and into the flames.Mat 7.22-23 Oh, it is a dreadful case when a man’s religion serves only to harden him, and effectively deludes and deceives his own soul!
4. The prevalence of false ends in holy duties.Mat 23.25 This was the bane of the Pharisees. Oh, how many a poor soul is undone by this, and drops into hell before he discerns his mistake! He performs good duties, and so he thinks all is well. He doesn’t perceive that he is motivated by carnal ends all the while. It is too true, that even with the truly sanctified, many carnal ends will often creep in. But they are matters he hates and that humiliate him; they never become habitually prevalent with him, nor do they bear the greatest influence.109But when the main thing that ordinarily drives a man to religious duties is some carnal end — to satisfy his conscience, to get the reputation of being religious, to be seen by men, to show off his own gifts and roles, to avoid the criticism of a profane and irreligious person, etc. — this discloses an unsound heart.110O Christians, if you want to avoid self-deceit, then see that you mind not only your acts, but along with them, indeed, above all, your ends.
5. Trusting in their own righteousness.Luk 18.9 This is a soul-undoing mischief.Rom 10.3 When men trust in their own righteousness, they do indeed reject Christ’s. Beloved, you need to watch on every hand — for not only may your sins undo you, but your duties. It may be you never thought of this, but a man may just as certainly fail by his seeming righteousness, and supposed graces, as he does by gross sins. He does this when he trusts in these things as his righteousness before God, to satisfy God’s justice, appease his wrath, procure his favour, and obtain his own pardon. This puts Christ out of office; it makes a saviour of his own duties and graces. Beware of this, O professors of Christ! Though you are much involved in duties, this one fly will spoil all the ointment. When you have done your most and your best, be sure to remove yourselves to Christ; consider your own righteousness as rags.Psa 143.3; Phi 3.8; Isa 64.6; Neh. 13.22
6. A secret hostility against the strictness of religion. Many moral persons, punctual in their formal devotions, still have a bitter hostility against strictness; they hate the life and power of religion.111 They don’t like this aggressiveness, that men are so stirred up by religion. They condemn the strictness of religion as an aberration, indiscretion, and intemperate zeal. With them, a lively preacher or a lively Christian is over-enthusiastic. These men don’t love holiness as holiness if they did, they would love the extremes of holiness. Therefore, they are undoubtedly rotten at heart, whatever good opinion they may have of themselves.
7. Resting at a certain level of religion. When they have enough to save them as they suppose they have they look no further; and so they show themselves short of the true grace that always makes men aspire to further perfection.Phi 3.13; Pro 4.18
8. The predominant love of the world. This is the sure evidence of an unsanctified heart.112But how close this sin lurks, often under a pleasing cover of open profession! Luk 8.14 Indeed, such a power of deceit exists in this sin, that many times, when everybody else can see the man’s worldliness and covetousness, he cannot see it himself. He has so many masks, and excuses, and pretences for his love of the world, that he blinds his own eyes, and he perishes in his self-deceit. How many professors of Christ are found here, with whom the world has more of their hearts and affections than Christ? How many long for earthly things, and are thereby evidently after the flesh, and likely to end in destruction? 113Yet ask these men, and they will tell you confidently that they prize Christ above all, God forbid otherwise! They don’t see their own earthly-mindedness for lack of a close observation of the working of their own hearts. If they only searched carefully, they would quickly find that their greatest contentment is in the world,Luk 12.19 and their greatest care and main endeavour is to get and secure the world. This is the certain disclosure of an unconverted sinner. May those who profess Christ take earnest heed, so they will not perish by the hand of this unobserved sin. Men may be, and often are, kept from Christ as effectually by the inordinate love of lawful comforts, as they are by the most unlawful course of behavior.Mat 22.5; Luk 14.18-20, 24
9. Reigning malice and envy against those who disrespect or injure them.1Joh 2.9, 11 Oh, how many who seem to be religious remember injuries, and carry grudges, and return to men as good as they get: rendering evil for evil, loving to take revenge, wishing evil to those who wrong them. All of this is directly against the rule of the gospel, the pattern of Christ, and the nature of God.114 Doubtless, when this evil is kept boiling in the heart, and is not hated, resisted, and mortified, but instead habitually prevails, then that person is in the very poison of bitterness, and in a state of death.Mat 18.34-35; 1Joh 3.14-15 Reader, does nothing of this apply to you? Are you in none of the mentioned ranks? Oh, search and search again; take your heart solemnly to task. Woe to you if after your profession of faith, you are found under the power of ignorance, lost in formality, drowned in earthly-mindedness, envenomed with malice, exalted in the worth of your own righteousness, leavened with hypocrisy and with carnal ends in God’s service, or embittered against strictness. This would be a sad discovery, that all your religion is in vain. But I must proceed.
10. Unmortified pride. When men love the praise of men more than the praise of God, and they set their hearts on men’s esteem, applause, and approbation, it is most certain that they are still in their sins, and strangers to true conversion.115When men don’t see, or complain, or groan under the pride of their own hearts, it is a sign they are stark-dead in sin. Oh, how secretly this sin lives and reigns in many hearts and they don’t know it; they are complete strangers to themselves! Joh 9.40
11. The prevailing love of pleasure.2Tim 3.4 This is a black mark. When men give the flesh the liberty that it craves, and they pamper and please it and don’t deny and restrain it; when their great delight is in gratifying their bellies and pleasing their senses: whatever appearance they may have of true religion, all of it is unsound.116A flesh-pleasing life cannot be pleasing to God; Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh. They are careful to oppose it and keep it under control as their enemy.Gal. 5.24; 1Cor 9.25-27
12. Carnal security, or a presumptuous and ungrounded confidence that their condition is already good.Rev 3.17 Many cry peace and safety, when sudden destruction is coming upon them. 1Thes 5.3 This is what kept the foolish virgins sleeping when they should have been working; it kept them on their beds when they should have been at the markets.117They didn’t notice their lack of oil until the bridegroom had come; while they went to buy it, the door was shut. And oh, that these foolish virgins had no successors! Where is the place, indeed, where is the house where these sorts don’t dwell? Men cherish in themselves a hope that their condition is good, basing it on ever so slight grounds; and so they don’t seek to change. By this failure, they perish in their sins. Are you at peace? Show me the grounds on which your peace is based? Is it a scriptural peace? Can you show the distinguishing marks of a sound believer?
Can you evidence that you have something more than any hypocrite in the world would have? If not, then fear this peace more than any other trouble. Know that a carnal peace commonly proves the greatest mortal enemy of the soulj. While it smiles and kisses, and speaks nicely to you, it fatally strikes you under the fifth rib.118 By this time I think I hear my reader crying out with the disciples, Who then will be saved? Remove from our congregations the ten sorts of openly profane, and then remove the twelve sorts of covert self-deceivers, and tell me whether a remnant is left to be saved? How few sheep will be left when all these are separated out and placed among the goats? For my part, of all my numerous hearers, I have no hope to see any of them in heaven who are found among these twenty-two sorts mentioned here — unless they are brought into another condition by sound conversion.
Application. And now, Conscience, perform your office: speak out, and drive it home to the one who hears or reads these lines. If you find any of these marks on him, you must pronounce him utterly unclean.Lev. 13.44 Don’t lie: don’t speak peace to anyone to whom God speaks no peace. Don’t let lust bribe you, or self-love; don’t let carnal prejudice blind you. I subpoena you from the court of heaven, to come and give evidence: I require you, in the name of God, to go with me to search the suspected house. Because you will answer at your peril, give a true report of the state and condition of the one who reads this book. Conscience, will you utterly hold your peace at such a time as this? I adjure you by the living God, tell us the truth.Mat 26.63 Is the man converted, or is he not? Does he allow himself to continue in any way of sin, or does he not? Does he truly love, please, prize, and delight in God above all other things, or not? Come, put it to the test. How long will this soul live in uncertainty? O conscience, bring in your verdict. Is this man a new man, or is he not? How do you find it? Has a thorough and mighty change transpired in him, or not? When was the time? Where was the place? Or by what means was this thorough change of the new birth worked in his soul? Speak, conscience! Or if you cannot tell the time and place, can you show scripture evidence that the work is done? Has the man ever been removed from his false foundation, from the false hopes and false peace in which once he trusted? Has he been deeply convicted of sin, of his lost and undone condition, and has he been brought out of himself, and away from his sins, to surrender himself entirely to Jesus Christ? Or do you find him to this day under the power of ignorance, or in the mire of profaneness? Have you found on him the gains of unrighteousness? Do you find him a stranger to prayer; does he neglect the word; is he a lover of this present world? Do you often catch him in a lie? Do you find his heart fermented with malice, or burning with lust, or pursuing his covetousness? Speak plainly to all the mentioned particulars: can you acquit this man, this woman, from being any of the twenty-two sorts described here? If he is found in any of them, then set him aside; his portion is not with the saints. He must be converted and made a new creature, or else he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Beloved, don’t betray yourselves; don’t deceive your own hearts, or set your hands to your own ruin by wilfully blinding yourselves. Set up a tribunal in your own breasts. Bring the word and conscience together. To the law, and to the testimony! Isa 8.20. Hear what the word concludes about your condition. Oh, follow the search until you have discovered how your case stands. Make a mistake here, and you will perish: such is the treachery of the heart, the subtilty of the tempter, and the deceitfulness of sin.119All conspire to flatter and deceive the soul. Besides that, it is so common and easy to be mistaken; it is a thousand to one that you will be deceived unless you are very careful, and thorough, and impartial in the enquiry into your spiritual condition. Oh, therefore apply yourself to your work; get to the bottom of it; search for it with candles; weigh yourselves in the balance; come to the standard of the sanctuary;Lev 27.3 bring your coin to the touchstone. You have the worst cheats in the world to deal with: a world of counterfeit coin is going around; happy is the one who does not take tokens for gold.121Satan is the master of deceits; he can draw life like; he is perfect in the trade. There is nothing he cannot imitate: you cannot wish for any grace that he cannot fit you to a tee with a counterfeit. Trade warily then: look at every piece you take. Be suspicious; don’t trust so much as your own hearts. Run to God to search you and try you, to examine you and prove your heart.122If other helps don’t suffice to resolve it, and you are still at a loss, open your case faithfully to some godly and faithful minister.Mal 2.7 Don’t rest until you have put the business of your eternal welfare out of question. 2Pet 1.10 O searcher of hearts, put this soul upon the quest, and help him in the search.
CHAP. V — SHOWING THE MISERIES OF THE UNCONVERTED.
So unspeakably dreadful is the case of every unconverted soul, that I have sometimes thought, if we could only convince men they are still unregenerate, the work on this matter would be done. But sadly, I experience that such a spirit of sloth and slumber123possesses the unsanctified, that though they are convinced they are still unconverted, yet they often carelessly sit still. Through the pursuit of sensual pleasures, or the hurry of worldly business, or the noise and clamour of earthly cares, lusts, and affections,Luk 8.14 the voice of conscience is drowned out. Men go no further than some cold wishes, and a general intent to repent and amend.Act 24.25 It is therefore highly necessary that I not only convince men they are unconverted, but also try to bring them to a sense of the fearful misery of this estate. But here I find myself aground at the start. What tongue can sufficiently tell the heirs of hell about their misery if it were not Dives in that flame? Luk 16.24 Where is the ready writer whose pen can decypher the misery of those who are without God in the world? Eph 2.12 This cannot be fully done unless we knew the infinite ocean of bliss and perfection that is in God, which a state of sin excludes men from knowing. Who knows says Moses the power of your anger? Psa 90.11 How will I tell men what I don’t know? Yet the little we know, one would think, would shake the heart of a man who had the least degree of spiritual life and sense. But this is the more imposing difficulty: I am to speak to those who are without sense. Alas, this is not the least of man’s misery: he is dead, stark dead in trespasses and sins.Eph 2.1 If I could bring paradise into view, or present the kingdom of heaven as well as the tempter presented the kingdoms of the world and all their glory to our Saviour; or if I could disclose the face of the deep and devouring gulph of Tophet124in all its terrors, and open the gates of the infernal furnace, alas, he has no eyes to see it!Matt 13.14-15 If I could vividly paint the beauties of holiness, or the glory of the gospel; or if I could bring into view the more than diabolical deformity and ugliness of sin, he could no more judge the loveliness and beauty of the one, nor the filthiness and hatefulness of the other, than a blind man could judge colours. He is alienated from the life of God through the ignorance brought on him by the blindness of his heart. Eph 4.18 He neither does, nor can he know the things of God, because they are spiritually discerned.1Cor 2.14 His eyes cannot be savingly opened except by converting grace.Act 26.18 He is a child of darkness, and he walks in darkness;1Joh 1.6 indeed, the light in him is darkness.Mat 6.2-3 Will I ring his death-knell, or read his sentence, or sound in his ear the terrible trumpet of God’s judgments that one would think should make both his ears tingle, and throw him into a fit like Belshazzar’s125— even appall his face, and loosen his joints, and make his knees knock together? Yet, alas! he does not perceive me; he has no ears to hear. Or will I call all the daughters of music to sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb? Still he would not be stirred. Will I allure him with the joyful sound, and lovely song, and glad tidings of the gospel? Or with the sweetest and most inviting calls, comforts, and cordials of the divine promises that are so exceedingly great and precious? It will not savingly affect him unless I can find him ears,Mat 13.15 and not just tell him the news. Will I set before him the feast of fat things, the wine of wisdom, the bread of God, the tree of life, or the hidden manna? He has no appetite for them, and no mind for them.126If I were to press the choicest grapes, the heavenly clusters of gospel privileges, and afford him the richest wine of God’s own cellar, indeed, of Christ’s own side;Joh 19.34 or if I were to set before him the delicious honeycomb of God’s testimonies,Psa 19.10 alas! he has no taste to discern them. Will I invite the dead to rise and eat the banquet of their own funerals? Well, the dead in sin are no better able to savour the holy food with which the Lord of life has spread his table. What then will I do? Will I burn the brimstone of hell at his nostrils? Or will I open the box of very precious nard that fills the whole house of this universe with its perfume,127and hope that the savour of Christ’s ointment and the smell of his garments will attract him? Psa 45.8 Alas! Dead sinners are like dumb idols: they have mouths, but they don’t speak; they have eyes, but they don’t see; they have ears, but they don’t hear; they have noses, but they don’t smell; they have hands, but they don’t touch; they have feet, but they don’t walk, nor can they speak through their throat.Psa 115.5-7 They are destitute of all spiritual sense and motion.
But let me try the sense that leaves us last, and draw the sword of the Word. Yet lay into him as I will, even if I were to choose my arrows from God’s quiver, and direct them at his heart, nevertheless he does not feel it. How could he? He is past feeling! Eph 4.19 Even though the wrath of God abides on him, and he has the mountainous weight of thousands of sins upon him, still he goes up and down as light as if nothing ailed him.Rom 7.9 In a word, he carries a dead soul in a living body; his flesh is but the walking coffin of a corrupted mind that is twice dead,Jude 12 rotting in the slime and putrefaction of his nauseating lusts.Mat 23.27-28 Which way then will I come at the miserable objects with whom I have to deal? Who will make the heart of stone relent,Zec 11.12 or the lifeless carcass feel and move? It is God that is able to raise up children for Abraham out of stones,Mat 3.9 who raises the dead,2Cor 1.9 and melts the mountains,Nah. 1.5 and brings water out of flintrock.Deut. 8.15 He loves to work beyond the hopes and belief of man; he peoples his church with dry bones, and plants his orchard with dry sticks. He is able to do this. Therefore I bow my knee to the most high God.Eph 3.14 As our Saviour prayed at the sepulchre of Lazarus,Joh 11.38, 41 and as the Shunammite ran to the man of God for her dead child,2Kng 4.25 so your mourning minister kneels around your graves, and carries you in the arms of prayer to that God in whom your help is found.
O you all-powerful Jehovah, who works and none can stop you; who has the keys of hell and death;Rev 1.18 pity the dead souls who lie here entombed, and roll away the grave-stone, and say, as you said to Lazarus when he was already stinking, Come forth! Lighten this darkness O inaccessible light, and let the day-spring from on high visit the dark region of the dead to whom I speak: for you can open the eyes that death itself has closed: you who formed the ear, can restore the hearing: say to these ears, Ephphatha, and they will be opened. Give eyes to see your excellencies, a taste that may relish your sweetness, a scent that may savour your ointments, a feeling that may sense the privilege of your favour, the burden of your wrath, the intolerable weight of unpardoned sin; and command your servants to prophesy to the dry bones. And let the effects of this prophecy be as when your prophet prophesied the valley of dry bones into a living army, exceedingly great: The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones. He said to me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say to them, O you dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and you will live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you; and you will live, and you will know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, Prophesy to the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind,‘Thus says the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood up upon their feet, an exceedingly great army. Eze 37.1, etc.
But, as I am able, I must proceed now to unfold that misery which I confess, no tongue can unfold, no heart can sufficiently comprehend. Know, therefore, that while you are unconverted,
I. The infinite God is engaged against you.
It is no small part of your misery that you are without God.Eph 2.12 Micah ran crying after the Danites, You have taken away my gods, and what have I left? Jdg 18.23-24 Oh, what a mourning you must then lift up, you who are without God, who can lay no claim to him without daring to usurp! You may say of God as Sheba said of David, We have no part in David, nor have we an inheritance in the son of Jesse.2Sam. 20.1 What a pitiful and piercing moan is Saul’s extremity! The Philistines are upon me, and God has departed from me.1Sam 28.15 Sinners, what will you do in the day of his visitation? Where will you flee for help? Where will you leave your riches? Isa 10.3 What will you do when the Philistines are upon you; when the world takes its eternal leave of you; when you must bid your friends, houses, and lands farewell forevermore? What will you do then, I ask, you who don’t have God to go to? Will you call on him then? Will you cry to him for help? Alas! He will not own you.Pro 1.28-29 He will not admit any knowledge of you, but will send you packing with, I never knew you.Mat 7.23 Those who know what it is to have God to go to, to live upon, they know a little what a fearful misery it is to be without God. This is what made that holy man cry out, Let me have a God or nothing. Let me know him, and his will, and what will please him, and how I may come to enjoy him; or I would rather I never had an understanding to know anything, etc.128But you are not only without God, but God is against you.129Oh, if God would only be neutral, as though he did not own or help the poor sinner, his case would not be so deeply miserable. Even if God were to surrender the poor creature to the will of all his enemies, to do the worst with him; even if he were to deliver him over to the tormentsMat 18.34 so that devils would tear and torture him to their utmost power and skill, yet this would not be half so fearful. But God will set himself against the sinner, and believe it, It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.Heb 10.31 There is no friend like him, and no enemy like him. As much as heaven is above the earth, and ominipotence above impotency, and infinity above nullity — so much more horrible is it to fall into the hands of the living God than into the paws of bears or lions, indeed, furies or devils. God himself will be your tormentor. Your destruction will come from the presence of the Lord. 2Thes 1.9 Tophet is deep and large, and the breath of the Lord kindles it like a stream of brimstone.Isa 30.33 If God is against you, who will be for you? If one man sins against another, the judge will judge him: but if a man sins against the Lord, who will entreat for him? 1Sam. 2.25 You, even you, are to be feared; and who will stand in your sight once you are angry? Psa 76.7 Who is that god who will deliver you out of his hands? Dan. 3.15 Can Mammon? Riches will not profit in the day of wrath.Pro 11.4 Can kings or warriors? No, they will cry to the mountains and to the rocks to fall on us, and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath has come, and who will be able to stand? Rev 6.15-17 Sinner, I think this should pierce your heart like a dagger: to know that God is your enemy. Oh, where will you go? Where will you find shelter? There is no hope for you unless you lay down your weapon, plead out your pardon, and get Christ to stand as your friend and make your peace. If it were not for this, you might go into some howling wilderness and pine there in sorrow, with anguished heart and horrible despair. But in Christ there is a possibility of mercy for you, yes, a proffer of mercy to you; that you may have God be more for you than he is now against you. But if you will not forsake your sins, nor turn thoroughly and purposely to God by a sound conversion, the wrath of God abides on you; and he proclaims that he is against you, as in the prophet: Therefore, thus says the Lord God, Behold I, even I, am against you. Eze 5.8
1. His face is against you. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them.Psa 34.16 Woe to those whom God sets his face against. When he but looked upon the host of the Egyptians, how terrible was the consequence! I will set my face against that man, and I will make him a sign, and a proverb, and will cut him off from the midst of my people, and you will know that I am the Lord.Eze 14.8
2. His heart is against you: He hates all the workers of iniquity.
Man, does your heart not tremble to think of being an object of God’s hatred? Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be inclined towards this people: throw them out of my sight. Jer 15.1 My soul loathed them, and their souls also abhorred me. Zech. 11.8
3. His hand is against you. 1Sam. 12.14-15 All his attributes are against you:
First, His justice is like a flaming sword, unsheathed against you. If I whet my glittering sword, and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to my adversaries, and will reward those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, etc. Deut. 32.41-42 So strict is justice, that it will by no means clear the guilty.Ex. 34.7 God will not discharge you; he will not hold you guiltless.Ex. 20.7 Rather, he will require the whole debt from you personally, unless you can make a scripture-claim to Christ, and to his satisfaction. When the enlightened sinner looks on justice and sees the balance in which he must be weighed, and the sword by which he must be executed, he feels an earthquake in his breast. But Satan keeps this out of sight, and he persuades the soul while he can, that the Lord is made up entirely of mercy, and so he lulls the soul to sleep in sin. Divine justice is very strict; it must have satisfaction to the last penny; it pronounces indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, to every soul that does evil.Rom 2.8-9 It curses every one who does not continue to do everything that is written in the law.Gal. 3.10
The justice of God, to the unpardoned sinner who has any sense of his misery, is more terrible than the sight of the bailiff or creditor is to the bankrupt debtor; than judge and bench are to the robber; or irons and gallows are to the guilty murderer. “When justice sits upon life and death, oh, what dreadful work it makes with the wretched sinner! Bind him hand and foot; throw him into utter darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.Mat 22.13 Depart from me you cursed, into everlasting fire.Mat 25.41 This is the terrible sentence that justice pronounces. Sinner, why must you be tried by this severe justice? As God lives, you will hear this death sentence unless you repent and are converted.
Secondly, The holiness of God is full of antipathy against you.Psa 5.4-5 He is not only angry with you as he may be with his own children, but he has a fixed, rooted, habitual displeasure against you; he loathes you,Zech. 11.8, and he loathes what you do, even though he may have commanded the substance of it.130It is as if a man gave his servant very good meat to prepare; yet if the servant mingled filth or poison with it, the man would not touch it. God’s nature is infinitely contrary to sin, and so he can but hate a sinner who is out of Christ. Oh, what a misery this is, to be out of the favour, indeed, under the hatred of God!131God might as easily lay aside his nature, and cease to be God, as not to oppose you, and detest you, unless you are changed and renewed by grace. O sinner, how dare you think of the bright and radiant sun of purity, or think upon the beauties, the glory of holiness that is in God! Even the stars are not pure in his sight.Job 25.5 He humbles himself to behold things in the heavens.Psa 113.6 Oh, those light and sparkling eyes of his! What they spy in you! Nor do you have any part in Christ for which he would plead for you. I think you would cry out, astonished like the Bethshemites, Who can stand before this holy Lord God? 1Sam. 6.20
Thirdly, The power of God is mounted like a mighty cannon against you. The glory of God’s power is displayed in the horrific confusion and destruction of those who don’t obey the gospel.2Thes 1.8-9 He will make his power known in them.Rom 9.22 How mightily he can torment them! For this end he raises them up: that he might make his power known.Rom 9.17 O man, are you able to make a good contest with your Maker? It is no more than a silly reed against the cedars of God, or a little rowboat against the tumbling ocean, or children’s bubbles against the blustering winds. Sinner, the power of God’s anger is against you!Psa 90.11 Power and anger together make fearful work. It would be better if you had all the world in arms against you, than to have the power of God against you. There is no escaping his hands, no escaping his prison.
“Who can understand the thunder of his power?” Job 26.14 Unhappy is the man who would understand it by experiencing it! “If he would contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand times. He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against him and prospered? He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it. He overturns them in his anger. He shakes the earth out of her place and its pillars tremble. He commands the sun and it does not rise; and he seals up the stars. Behold, he takes away and who can stop him? Who will say to him, What are you doing? If God will not withdraw his anger, the proud helpers bend under him.” Job 9.3-7, 12-13 And are you a fit match for such an antagonist? Oh, consider this — you who forget God — lest he tear you in pieces and there is none to deliver you.Psa 50.22 Submit to mercy. Don’t let dust and stubble stand against the Almighty. Don’t set briars and thorns against him in battle, lest he go through them and consume them together; but lay hold of his strength, that you may make peace with him.Isa 27.4-5 Woe to him that strives with his Maker,Isa 45.9
Fourthly, The wisdom of God is set to ruin you. He has fixed his arrows, and prepared the instruments of death, and made everything ready.Psa 7.12-13 His plans are against you to devise your destruction.Jer 18.11 He laughs to himself to see how you will be taken and ensnared in the evil day.Psa 37.13 The Lord will laugh at him, for he sees that his day is coming. He sees how you will come down mightily in a moment; how you will wring your hands, and tear your hair, and eat your flesh, and gnash your teeth out of anguish and an astonished heart, when you see you have fallen without remedy into the pit of destruction.
Fifthly, The truth of God is sworn against you.Psa 95.11 If he is true and faithful, you must perish if you go on this way.Luk 13.3 Unless he is false to his word, you must die unless you repent.Eze 33.11 If we don’t believe, he still abides faithful; he cannot deny himself;2Tim 2.13 that is, he is faithful to his threats as well as to his promises. And if we don’t believe, he will show his faithfulness in our confusion. God has told you as plain as it can be spoken, that if he does not wash you, you have no part in him;Joh 13.8 that if you live after the flesh, you will die;Rom 8.13 that unless you are converted, you will in no way enter into the kingdom of heaven.Mat 18.3 And he remains faithful: he cannot deny himself. Beloved, just as the immutable faithfulness of God in his promise and oath affords believers strong consolation,Heb 6.18 it also affords un-believers strong consternation and confusion. O sinner, tell me: what rationalizations do you make when you think of all the threats of God’s word that stand on record against you? Do you believe their truth, or not? If not, then you are a wretched infidel, and not a Christian; therefore give up the name and the hopes of a Christian. But if you do believe them, then you must have a heart of steel that you can calmly walk up and down when the truth and faithfulness of God is engaged to destroy you! If God Almighty can do it, then you will surely perish and be damned. Why man, the whole book of God testifies against you while you remain unsanctified: it condemns you on every page. It is like Ezekiel’s scroll to you: written inside and out with lamentation, and mourning, and woe.Eze 2.9-10 And all this will surely come upon you, and overtake you,Deut. 28.15 unless you repent. Heaven and earth will pass away, but not one jot or tittle of this word will ever pass away. Now put all this together, and tell me if the case of the unconverted is not deplorably miserable? Just as we read of those who bound themselves by an oath and a curse to kill Paul,Act 23.12 so you must know, O sinner, to your terror, that all the attributes of the infinite God are bound in an oath to destroy you.Heb 3.28 O man! What will you do? Where will you flee? If God’s omniscience can find you, you will not escape. If the true and faithful God will keep his oath, then you must perish unless you believe and repent. If the Almighty has the power to torment you, you will be perfectly miserable in soul and body for all eternity, unless it is prevented by your speedy conversion.
II. The whole creation of God is against you. The whole creation says Paul groans and travails in pain.Rom 8.22 But what is it that the creation groans under? Why, the tearful abuse that it is subject to in serving the lusts of unsanctified men. And what is it that the creation groans for? Why, for freedom and liberty from this abuse: for the creature is unwillingly subject to this bondage.Rom 8.19-21 If the unreasonable and inanimate creatures had speech and reason, they would cry out under it as insufferable bondage to be abused by the ungodly, contrary to their natures and contrary to the ends that the great Creator made them for. A passage from an eminent divine133 says,“The liquor that the drunkard drinks, if it had a man’s reason to know how shamefully it is being abused and spoiled, it would groan in the barrels against the drunkard; it would groan in the cup against him; groan in his throat and in his belly against him; it would fly in his face, if it could speak. And if God were to open the mouths of the creatures, as he opened the mouth of Balaam’s ass, the proud man’s garments on his back would groan against him. There is no such creature that, if it had reason to know how it is abused, would not groan against the man until he converted. The land would groan to bear him; the air would groan to give him breath; their houses would groan to lodge them; their beds would groan to ease them; their food would groan to nourish them; their clothes would groan to cover them; and the creature would groan to give them any help and comfort, as long as they live in sin against God.” I think this should be a terror to an unconverted soul: to think that he is a burden to the creation.Luk 13.7
Cut it down, why should it encumber the ground? If the poor inanimate creatures could only speak, they would say to the ungodly, as Moses said to Israel, Must we fetch you water out of the rock, you rebels? Num. 20.10 Your food would say,“Lord, must I nourish such a wretch as this, and yield my strength for him to dishonour you with it? No, I would rather choke him, if you will give me permission.” The very air would say,“Lord, must I give this man breath to set his tongue against heaven, and scorn your people, and vent his pride, and wrath, and filthy communication, and belch out oaths and blasphemy against you? No, if you just say the word, he will be breathless for me.” His poor beast would say,“Lord, must I carry him for his wicked plans? No, I will break his bones; I would rather end his days, if I may only have your permission.” The earth groans under a wicked man, and hell groans for him, until death satisfies both and unburdens the earth, and shuts the mouth of hell with him. While the Lord of hosts is against you, be sure the hosts of the Lord are against you, and all the creatures as it were are up in arms against you until, upon your conversion, the controversy between God and you ends, and a covenant of peace with the creatures is made for you.
III. The roaring lion has his full power upon you.1Pet 5.8 You are held fast in the paw of that lion which is greedy to devour you. You are in the snare of the devil, led captive by him at his will.2Tim 2.26 This is the spirit that works in the children of disobedience.Eph 2.2 They are his drudges,135and they do his lusts. He is the ruler of darkness of this world,Eph 6.12, that is, the ruler of ignorant sinners who live in darkness. You pity the poor Indians that worship the devil as their God, but seldom think this is your own case. Why, it is the common misery of all the unsanctified, that the devil is their God. 2Cor 4.4 They don’t intend to pay him homage and worship him; they would defy him and anyone who said this about them; yet all the while they serve him; they come and go at his beck, and they live under his government. You are servants of the one to whom you yield yourselves as obedient servants.Rom 6.16 Oh, how many then will be found real servants of the devil, who consider themselves the children of God! The devil no sooner offers a sinful delight, or an opportunity for your unlawful advantage, than you embrace it. If he suggests a lie or he prompts you to revenge, you readily obey. If he forbids you to read or to pray, you listen to him. Therefore you are his servants. Indeed, he lies behind the curtain; he acts in the dark, and sinners don’t see who sets them to work. But all the while he leads them on a string. Doubtless the liar does not intend it to be a service to Satan, but to his own advantage; yet it is Satan that stands in the corner unobserved, and puts the thing into his heart.136 Unquestionably, when Judas sold his Master for money, and when the Chaldeans and Sabeans plundered Job, they did not intend to do the devil a favor; they intended only to satisfy their own covetous thirst; yet it was the devil that actuated them in their wickedness. Men may indeed be slaves and common drudges for the devil, and never know it. In fact, they may think they enjoy a happy liberty.2Pet 2.19 Are you still in ignorance, and not yet turned from darkness to light? Why, you are under the power of Satan! Act 26.18 Do you live in the ordinary and wilful practice of any known sin? Then know that you are of the devil.1Joh 3.8 Do you live in strife, or envy, or malice? Truly he is your father.Joh 8.40-41 Oh, dreadful case! However Satan may provide his slaves with various pleasures,Tit. 3.3 it is merely to roll them into endless perdition. The serpent comes with the apple in his mouth, Oh, but as with Eve you don’t see the deadly sting in his tail. The one who is now the tempter, will be one day your tormenter. Oh, that I could let you see how black a master you serve, how filthy a drudgery you do, how merciless a tyrant you gratify! His whole pleasure is to put you to work to make your perdition and damnation sure, and to heat the furnace hotter and hotter in which you must burn for millions and millions of ages.
IV. The guilt of your sins lies like a mountain upon you. Poor soul! You don’t feel it, but this is what seals your misery. While unconverted, none of your sins are blotted out,Act 3.19 they are all on the score against you: regeneration and remission are never separated; the unsanctified are unquestionably unjustified and unpardoned.138Beloved, it is a fearful thing to be in debt, but above all to be in God’s debt; for there is no arrest so formidable as his, no prison so horrible as his. Look upon an enlightened sinner, who feels the weight of his own guilt: Oh, how frightful are his looks, how fearful are his complaints! His comforts are turned into wormwood,139his moisture into drought,Psa 32.4 and sleep has departed from his eyes.Gen 31.40 He is a terror to himself and to all that are around him. He is ready to envy the very stones that lie in the street because they are senseless, and don’t feel his misery. He wishes he had been a dog, or a toad, or a serpent, rather than a man, because then death would have put an end to his misery; whereas now it will be just the beginning of what will know no end.
However light you may make of it now, you will one day find the guilt of unpardoned sin to be a heavy burden. This is a millstone that breaks whoever falls on it; and on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.Mat 21.44 What work it made for our Saviour! It pressed the very blood out of his veins, and broke all his bones. If it did this in the green tree, what will it do in the dry? Oh, think of your ease later. Can you think of this threat without trembling: You will die in your sins? Joh 8.24 Oh, it would be better for you to die in a prison, or to die in a ditch or a dungeon, than die in your sins. If death would take away your sins too, just as it will take away all your other comforts, it would be some mitigation. But your sins will follow you when your friends leave you, and all your worldly enjoyments say good-bye to you. Your sins will not die with you140as a prisoner’s other debts will. Instead, they will go to judgment with you, to be your accusers there: and they will go to hell with you, to be your tormentors there. Better to have many fiends and furies around you, than to have your sins fall upon you, and fasten to you. Oh, the work that these will make for you! Look over your debts in time! How much are you in the ledgers of every one of God’s laws? Every one of God’s commandments is ready to arrest you, and take you by the throat for the innumerable bonds it has on you. What will you do then, when they accumulate against you? Hold open the eyes of your conscience to consider this, so that you may despair of yourself and be driven to Christ, and flee for refuge to lay hold of the hope that is set before you. Heb 6.18
V. Your raging lusts miserably enslave you. While unconverted, you are a servant to sin. It reigns over you and holds you under its dominion, until you are brought within the bonds of God’s covenant.141Now there’s no other tyrant like sin. Oh, the filthy and fearful work that it engages its servants in! Would it not pierce a man’s heart to see a company of poor creatures drudging and toiling, to carry both kindling and fuel for their own burning? Why, this is the employment of sin’s drudges: even while they bless themselves in their unrighteous gains, even while they swing and swill in pleasures, they are but treasuring up wrath and vengeance for their eternal burnings; they are but storing up powder and bullets, and adding to the pile of Tophet, pouring oil on the fire to make the flame rage all the fiercer. Who would serve a master whose work is drudgery, and whose wages is death? Rom 6.23 What a woeful spectacle was that poor wretch who was possessed with the legion! Wouldn’t it have grieved your heart to see him among the tombs, cutting and wounding himself? Mar 5.5 This is your case; such is your work; every stroke is a thrust at your heart.1Tim 6.10 Conscience is now asleep, but when death and judgment bring you to your senses, then you will feel the raging pain and anguish of every wound. The convicted sinner is a tangible instance of the miserable bondage of sin: conscience flies upon him, and tells him what the end of these things will be: and yet he is such a slave to his lust, that he must continue, even though he sees it will be his endless perdition. And when temptation comes, lust gets the bit in his mouth, breaks all the cords of his vows and promises, and carries him headlong to his own destruction.
VI. The furnace of eternal vengeance is heated — ready for you.Isa 30.33 Hell and destruction open their mouths for you, they gape for you, they groan for you,Isa 5.14 waiting with a greedy eye as you stand on the brink, and when you drop in. If the wrath of man is like the roaring of a lion,Pro 20.2 and heavier than sand,Pro 27.3 then what is the wrath of the infinite God? Nebuchadnezzar in his fiery rage commanded the burning furnace to be heated seven times hotter. If that furnace was fierce enough to burn even those who drew near to throw the three children in,Dan. 3.19, 22 then how hot is the burning oven of the Almighty’s fury? Mal 4.1 Surely this is seventy times seven more fierce. What do you think, O man, of becoming a bundle of sticks in hell for all eternity? Can your heart endure, or can your hand be strong in the day when I will deal with you? says the Lord of hosts.Eze 22.14 Can you dwell with everlasting burnings? Can you abide the consuming fire, when you are like a glowing iron in hell, and your whole body and soul are as perfectly possessed by God’s burning vengeance, as the fiery sparkling iron is when heated in the fiercest forge? Ezek 22.20 If you cannot bear God’s whip, how then will you endure his scorpion? If you are crushed, and ready to wish yourself dead under the weight of his finger, how then will you bear the weight of his thighs? The most patient man who ever was, cursed the day he was born,Job. 3.1 and even wished death to come and end his misery when God let out just one little drop of his wrath. Job. 7.15-16 How then will you endure when God pours out all of his vials, and sets himself against you to torment you? When he makes your conscience the tunnel by which he pours his burning wrath into your soul forever? And when he fills all your powers as full of torment as they are now filled with sin? When immortality will be your misery; and to die the death of a brute, and be swallowed into the gulph of annihilation, will be such a felicity that an eternity of wishes and an ocean of tears will never purchase it? Now you can put off the evil day, and you can laugh and be merry, and forget the terror of the Lord.2Cor 5.11 But then how will you hold out, or hold up, when God throws you into a bed of torments,Rev 2.21 and makes you lie down in sorrows?Isa 1.11 How will you hold out when screams and blasphemy are your only music and the wine of God’s wrath, which is poured without mixture into the cup of his indignation, is your only drink? Rev 14.10 How will you hold out when you draw your breath in the flames, and the horrid stench of sulphur is your only perfume? In a word, when the smoke of your torment ascends forever and ever, and you have no rest night nor day — no rest in your conscience, no ease in your bones; instead, you will be an execration, an astonishment, a curse and a reproach forevermore! Jer 42.18 O sinner! Stop here, and consider! If you are a man, and not a senseless block, consider! Think to yourself where you stand. Why, you’re on the very brink of this furnace! As the Lord lives, and your soul lives, there is just a step between you and this.1Sam. 20.3 You don’t know when you lie down, whether you may be in that furnace before the morning. You don’t know when you rise, whether you may drop into it before the night. Do you dare make light of this? Will you go on in such a dreadful condition as if nothing ailed you? If you put it off and say it doesn’t affect you, look over the foregoing chapter again, and tell me the truth: are none of these black marks found on you? Don’t blind your eyes; don’t deceive yourself; see your misery while you may still prevent it. Think what it is to be a vile outcast, a damned reprobate, a vessel of wrath into which the Lord will pour his tormenting fury as long as the man has a being.Rom 9.22 Divine wrath is a fierce,Deut. 32.22 devouring,Isa 33.14 everlasting,Mat 25.41 unquenchable fire,Mat 3.12 and your soul and body must be the fuel on which it will feed forever — unless you consider your ways, and speedily turn to the Lord by sound conversion. Those who have only been singed by this fire, and had no more than the smell of it on them, oh, what amazing spectacles they have been! Whose heart would not have melted to hear Spira’s142outcries? Or to have seen Chaloner,143that monument of justice, worn to skin and bones, blaspheming the God of heaven, cursing himself, and continually crying out, Oh, torture, torture, torture! Oh, torture,
torture! It was as if the flames of wrath had already taken hold on him. To have heard Rogers144crying out, I have had a little pleasure, but now I must go to hell forevermore; wishing only for this mitigation: that God would just let him lie burning forever behind the back of that fire on the earth — still bringing this sad conclusion, after whatever else was said to afford him some hope,“I must go to hell, I must go to the furnace of hell for millions of millions of ages!” Oh, if the fears and forethought of the wrath to come is so terrible, so intolerable, what is the feel of it? Sinner, it is in vain to flatter you; this would only summon you into the unquenchable fire. Know from the living God that here you must lie; you must dwell with these burnings until immortality dies and immutability changes; until eternity runs out and ominipotence is no longer able to torment — unless in good earnest you are renewed throughout by sanctifying grace.
VII. The law discharges all its threats and curses at you.145Oh, how dreadfully it thunders! It spits fire and brimstone in your face: its words are like drawn swords and the sharp arrows of the mighty: it demands satisfaction to the utmost, and it cries,“Justice, justice!” It speaks blood and war against you, wounds and death. The execration, plagues, and deaths that this murdering piece is loaded with! Deut. 28.15-16, etc. You are the target at which this shot is leveled, O man! Run away to the stronghold!Zech. 9.12 Run away from your sins and hasten to the sanctuary, to the city of refuge,Heb 13.13 even the Lord Jesus Christ. Hide yourself in him, or else you are lost and without any hope of recovery.
VIII. The gospel itself binds on you the sentence of eternal damnation.Mar 16.16 If you continue in your impenitent and unconverted state, know that the gospel announces a much worse condemnation than would ever have been levied for the transgression only of the first covenant. Isn’t it dreadful to have the gospel fill its mouth with threats, thunder, and damnation, and to have the Lord roar from mount Sion against you? Joel 3.16 Hear the terror of the Lord: He that does not believe will be damned. Unless you repent, you will all perish.Luk 13.3 Isn’t this the condemnation: that light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light? Joh 3.19 The wrath of God abides on the one who does not believe, Joh 3.36. If the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received its just reward, then how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Heb 2.2-3
Anyone that despised Moses’ law died without mercy: how much worse punishment will someone be thought worthy of, who has trampled underfoot the Son of God? Heb 10.28-29
Application. Is this true indeed? Is this your misery? Yes, it is as true as God is true. Better open your eyes and see it now while you may remedy it, than blind and harden yourself till, to your eternal sorrow, you feel what you would not believe. And if it is true, then what do you mean by loitering and lingering in such a state? Alas for you, poor man! Sin has effectually undone you. It has deprived and despoiled you even of your reason to look after your own everlasting good. O miserable caitiff!146What stupidity and senselessness has surprised you! Oh let me kick and awake this sleeper who dwells within the walls of this flesh. Is there a soul here, a rational understanding soul? Or are you only a walking ghost, a senseless lump? Are you a reasonable soul and yet so brutish that you forget your immortal soul, and think you are like the beasts who perish? Are you turned into flesh so that you savour nothing but gratifying your senses, and making provision for your flesh? Or else, having enough reason to understand the eternity of your future estate, do you still make light of being everlastingly miserable? This is so far below a brute, and so much worse! It’s acting against reason rather than acting without it. O unhappy soul! You were the glory of man, the friend of angels, and the image of God! You were God’s representative in the world, and had supremacy among the creatures, and dominion over your Maker’s works! Have you now become a slave to your appetites, a slave to so base an idol as your belly? And you do it for no higher felicity than to fill yourself with the vapor of man’s applause, or heaping together a little refined earth which is no more suitable to your spiritual and immortal nature than dirt and sticks? Oh, why don’t you think where you will be forever? Death is at hand; the Judge is at the door! Jas. 5.9 Just a little while, and time will be no more.Rev 10.5-6 And you would run the risk of continuing in such a state which, if you are overtaken, you are irrecoverably miserable? Come then! Arise and attend to your immediate concerns. Tell me, where are you going? What! Will you live in such a course of life, in which every act is a step toward perdition, and you don’t know whether you may make your bed in hell the next night? Oh, if you have a spark of reason, then consider and turn! Listen to your true friend, who wants to show you your present misery so that you might make your escape in time, and be eternally happy. Hear what the Lord says, Do you not fear me? says the Lord: will you not tremble at my presence? Jer 5.22 O sinners, do you make light of the wrath to come? Mat 3.7 I am sure there is a time coming when you will not make light of it. Why, the devils themselves believe and tremble,Jas. 2.19 What! Are you more hardened than they? Will you run along the cliff’s edge? Will you play at the asp’s hole? Will you put your hand on the cokatrice’s147den? Will you dance around the fire until you are burnt? Or dally with devouring wrath as if you were indifferent whether you escape it or endure it? O madness of folly! You are Solomon’s madman, who throws fire brands, and arrows, and death, and says, I was only joking! Pro 26.18- 19 There is nothing so oblivious as the wilful sinner,Luk 15.17 who goes on in his unconverted estate, without sense, as if nothing ailed him. The man who runs into the cannon’s mouth, who gambles with his blood, or spends his life in frolic, is sensible, sober, and serious, compared to the one who continues in his trespasses.Psa 68.21 For he stretches out his hand against God, and stiffens himself against the Almighty. He runs at him, stubbornly, on the thick embossments of his shield.Job. 15.25-26. Is it wisdom to dally with the second death, or to venture into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone Rev 21.8 as if you were only going to wash yourself, or swim for your recreation? Will you, as it were, fetch your cloak, and jump into the eternal flames, like children jump through the bonfire? What will I say? I can find no expression, no comparison, by which to present the dreadful indifference of that soul who goes on in sin. Awake, awake! Eph 5.14 O sinner! Arise and take your flight! There is only one door that you may flee by, and that is the narrow door of conversion and the new birth. Unless you turn sincerely from all your sins, and come into Jesus Christ, and take him for the Lord your righteousness, and walk in him in holiness and newness of life, then as the Lord lives, it is no more certain that you are now out of hell, than you will without fail be in it just a few days and nights from now. Oh, set your heart to think of your case. Is it not your everlasting misery or else your welfare that deserves a little consideration? Look again over the miseries of the unconverted. If the Lord has not spoken by me, then disregard me; but if it is the very word of God that all this misery lies upon you, the what a state you are in! Does it make sense for someone to live in such a condition, and not make all possible haste to prevent his utter ruin? O man! Who has bewitched you,Gal. 3.1 that in the matters of this present life you are wise enough to forecast your business, foresee your danger, and prevent your mischief; but in matters of everlasting consequence you are deficient and careless, as if they little concerned you? Why is it nothing to you to have all the attributes of God engaged against you? Can you do well without his favour? Can you escape his hands, or endure his vengeance? Do you hear the creation groaning under you, and hell groaning for you, and yet think your case is good enough? Are you in the paw of the lion, under the power of corruption, in the dark and smelly prison, fettered with your lusts, working out your own damnation, and this isn’t worth considering? Will you make light of all the terrors of the law, of all its curses and thunderbolts, as if they were just the sound of children’s pop-guns, or as if you were going to wage war with their paper pellets? Do you laugh at hell and destruction? Or can you drink the envenomed cup of the Almighty’s fury, as if it were just a common potion?
Gird your loins now like a man, for I will demand of you, and you answer me:Job 40.7 are you such a Leviathan that the scales of your pride will keep your Maker from coming after you? Will you consider his arrows as straw, and the instruments of death as rotten wood? Are you chief of all the children of pride, that you should consider his arrows stubble, and laugh at the shaking of his spear? Are you made without fear, and do you disdain his barbed irons? Job 41 Are you like the horse that paws in the valley, and rejoices in his strength — who goes out to meet the armed men? Do you mock fear, and are not frightened? Don’t you turn from God’s sword when his quiver rattles against you, or from his glittering spear and shield? Job 39.21-23 Well, if the threats and calls of the Word will neither frighten nor awaken you, then I am sure death and judgment will. Oh, what will you do when the Lord comes out against you, and in his fury he falls upon you, and you feel what you read here? When Daniel’s enemies were cast into the den of lions — they and their wives and their children — the lions had mastery over them, and broke all their bones into pieces before they ever got to the bottom of the den.Dan. 6.24 What then will be done to you when you fall into the hands of the living God? When he grips you in his iron arms, and grinds and crushes you to a thousand pieces in his wrath? Don’t contend with God then. Repent and be converted now, so none of this will come upon you.Isa 55.6-7 Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
CHAP. VI — DIRECTIONS FOR CONVERSION.
Mark 10.17. And one came, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good master, what must I do that I may inherit eternal life? BEFORE you read these directions, I advise you — indeed, I charge you before God and his holy angels — to resolve to follow them as far as your conscience is convinced they are agreeable to God’s word and to your estate; call in his assistance and blessing so that they may succeed. And because I have sought the Lord, and consulted his precepts as to what advice to give you, you must entertain it with that awe, reverence, and purpose of obedience that the word of the living God requires. Now then, attend to my words; set your heart to all that I will testify to you this day, for it is not an empty thing; it is your life.Deut. 32.46- 47 This is the end of all that has been spoken up to now: to get you to begin turning and making use of God’s means for your conversion. I would not trouble you or torment you before the time148with forethoughts of your eternal misery, except to have you make your escape from it. If you were imprisoned in your present misery without remedy, it would only be mercy to leave you alone, so that you might enjoy that small and poor comfort you are capable of here in this world. But you may yet be happy, if you don’t wilfully refuse the means of your recovery. Behold, I hold open that door to you. Arise! Take your flight! I place the way of life before you: walk in it and you will live and not die.149It sorrows me to think you would be your own murderers, and throw yourselves headlong into the pit, when God and men cry out to you, as Peter cried out to his master, spare yourself. A noble virgin151that attended the court of Spain was wickedly ravished by the king; and upon hearing of it, the duke, her father, was roused to revenge. He called the Moors to his aid. When they had executed his plan, they miserably wasted and stripped the country. The virgin, taking this disaster to heart badly, shut herself up in a tower belonging to her father’s house, and desired that her father and mother might be called to her. Crying out to them of her own wretchedness, that she should have been the cause of so much misery and the desolation to her country to satisfy the revenge of her injury, she told them she was resolved to be avenged upon herself. Her father and mother begged her to pity herself and them, but nothing would prevail; she took her leave of them, and threw herself off the battlements, and so perished before their faces. The wilful self-destruction of ungodly men is just this way. The God that made them pleads with them, and cries out to them, as Paul cried out to the distraught jailor when he was about to murder himself, Do yourself no harm! The ministers of Christ forewarn them, and chase them, and would willingly have them back. But alas! No expostulations or protests will prevail; men will hurl themselves into perdition while pity itself looks on. What will I say? Would it not grieve a person with any humanity, if in the time of a virulent plague, he had a medicine that would infallibly cure the entire country, and recover the most hopeless patients — and yet his friends and neighbours were dying by the hundreds around him because they would not use it? Men and brothers, though you carry the certain symptoms in your faces, yet I have a remedy that will cure you all, that will cure without fail. Just follow just these few directions, and if you don’t then win heaven, I will be content to lose it. Hear then, sinner! If you would ever be converted and saved, embrace the following counsel.
Direct. I. Settle it for yourself, as an undoubted truth, that it is impossible for you to ever get to heaven in your unconverted state. Can any other but Christ save you? And he tells you that he will never do it unless you are regenerated and converted.152Does he not keep the keys of heaven, and can you get in without his permission? It must be without his permission if you are ever to get there in your natural condition, without a sound and thorough renovation.
Direct. II. Labour to get a thorough sight, and a lively sense, and feeling of your sins. Until men are weary and heavy-laden, and pricked at the heart, and stark sick of sin, they will not come to Christ in his way for ease and cure; nor will they ask, What will we do? 153They must admit to themselves that they are dead men, before they will come to Christ that they may have life.Joh 5.40 Labour, therefore, to set all your sins in order before you; never be afraid to look at them, but let your spirit make a diligent search.Psa 77.6 Enquire into your heart and into your life; thoroughly examine yourself and all your ways Psa 119.59 so that you may make a full discovery of them. Call in the help of God’s Spirit, sensing your own inability to do it, for it is his proper work to convict us of sin.Joh 16.8 Spread everything before the face of your conscience, until your heart and eyes are set abroach.154Don’t stop striving with God and your own soul, until it cries out under the sense of your sins, as the enlightened jailor did: What must I do to be saved? Act 16.30 Do it to this purpose. Meditate on the numerousness of your sins. David’s heart failed when he thought of this, and considered that he had more sins than hairs.Psa 40.12 This made him cry out at the multitude of God’s tender mercies.Psa 51.1 The loathsome carcass doesn’t swarm with crawling worms more hatefully than an unsanctified soul swarms with filthy lusts. They fill his head, his heart, his eyes and his mouth. Look backward: where was ever the place, and when was ever the time, in which you did not sin? Look inward: what part or power can you find in your soul or body, that is not poisoned with sin? What duty do you ever perform in which that poison is not spilled? Oh, how great is the sum of your debts, you who all your life have been running up the books,155and never did or can pay off one penny of your debt! Look over the sin of your nature and all its cursed brood, the sins of your life: call to mind your omissions, commissions, the sins of your thoughts, of your words, of your actions, the sins of your youth, the sins of your years, etc. Don’t be like a desperate bankrupt, who is afraid to look over his books. Read the records of your conscience carefully. These books must be opened sooner or later. Rev 20.12 Meditate on the aggravations of your sins,156as grand enemies against the God of your life, and against the life of your soul. In a word, they are the public enemies of all mankind. David, Ezra, Daniel, and the good Levites, pondered the aggravations of their sins by considering their injuriousness to God, their opposition to his good and righteous laws, and the mercies and warnings that they were committed against! 157Oh, the work that sin has made in the world. This is the enemy that has brought in death, that has robbed and enslaved man, that undid the devil, and that dug the pit of hell.158 This is the enemy that has turned the creation upside down, and sown dissention between man and the creatures, between man and man; indeed, between man and himself, setting the sensual part against the rational, the will against the judgment, lust against conscience; indeed, worst of all, between God and man, making the lapsed sinner both hateful to God, and the one who hates him.Zech. 11.8 O man! How can you make so light of sin? This is the traitor that sucked the blood of the Son of God, that sold him, that mocked him, that scourged him, that spit in his face, that dug into his hands, that pierced his side, that pressed his soul, that mangled his body, that never left until he had bound him, condemned him, nailed him, crucified him, and put him to open shame.Isa 53.4-6 This is that deadly poison, so powerful in its operation, that one drop of it shed on the root of mankind has corrupted, spoiled, poisoned, and undone his whole race at once.Rom 5.18-19 This is the common butcher, the bloody executioner, that has killed the prophets, burnt the martyrs, murdered all the apostles, all the patriarchs, all the kings and potentates, that has destroyed cities, swallowed empires, butchered and devoured whole nations. Whichever weapon it was done by, sin did the execution.Rom 6.23 Do you still think it is just a small thing? If Adam and all his children could be dug out of their graves, and their bodies piled up to heaven, and an inquest were held, what matchless murderer would be guilty of all this blood? It would be all found in the skirts of sin. Study the nature of sin until your heart is brought to fear and loathe it. And meditate on the aggravations of your particular sin, how you have sinned against all God’s warnings, against your own prayers, against mercies, against corrections, against clearest light, against freest love, against your own resolutions, against promises, vows, and covenants of better obedience, etc. Charge your heart with these things, drive it home until it blushes for shame and is brought out of all good opinion of itself. Ezra 9.6 Meditate upon the desert of sin.159It cries up to heaven, it calls for vengeance;Gen 18.21 its due wages is death and damnation: it pulls the curse of God upon the soul and body.160The least sinful word or thought puts you under the infinite wrath of God Almighty.161Oh, what a load of wrath, what a weight of curses, what treasure of vengeance have all the millions of your sins then deserved? 162Oh, judge yourself, that the Lord may not judge you.1Cor 11.31 Meditate on the deformity and defilement of sin; It is as black as hell, the very image and likeness of the devil that is drawn upon the soul.1Joh 3.8, 10 It would more frighten you to see yourself in the hateful deformity of your nature, than to see the devil. There is no mire so unclean, no vomit so loathsome, no carcass or carrion so offensive, no plague or leprosy so nauseating as sin. That is what you are all rolling in. You are covered with its odious filth, a filth by which you are rendered more displeasing to the pure and holy nature of the glorious God, than the most filthy object composed of whatever would be most hateful to all your senses.Job 15.15-16 Could you clasp a toad to your chest? Could you cherish it, and take delight in it? You are just as opposed to the pure and perfect holiness of the divine nature, just as loathsome to it, as that toad is to you,Mat 3.33 until you are purified by the blood of Jesus and the power of renewing grace.
Set aside all other sins; fix your eye on these two:
1. The sin of your nature. It serves little purpose to lop off the branches,while the root of original corruption remains untouched. In vain, men empty the stream while the fountain is still running that fills it up again. Let the ax of your repentance along with David’s go to the root of sin.Psa 51.5 Study how deep, how close, how permanent your natural pollution is, how universal it is, until you cry out with Paul’s passion at your body of death.Rom 7.24 Look into your parts and powers, and see what unclean vessels, what styes, what dunghills, what sinks they have become. Heu miser, quid sum? Vas sterquilinii, concha putredinis: plenus foetore & horror.August. Solil. c. 8. The heart is never soundly broken until it is convinced through and through of the heinousness of original sin. Fix your thoughts here. This is what makes you opposed to all good, and prone to all evil.Rom 7.15 It spills blindness, pride, prejudice, and unbelief into your mind; hostility, inconstancy, and obstinacy into your will; inordinate heats and colds into your affections; insensibilty, numbness, and unfaithfulness into your conscience; slipperiness into your memory. In a word, it has disordered every wheel of your soul; it has made what should be a habitation of holiness into a hell of iniquity.Jas. 3.6 This is what has defiled, corrupted, and perverted all your members, and turned them into weapons of unrighteousness, and servants of sin.Rom 6.19 This is what has filled the head with carnal and corrupt plans,Mic. 2.1 the hand with sinful practices,Isa 1.15 the eyes with wandering and wantonness,2Pet 2.14
and the tongue with deadly poison.Jas. 3.8 It has opened the ears to tales, flattery, and filthy communication, and shut them against the instruction of life.Zech. 7.11-12 It has turned your heart into a mint and a forge for sin, and a cursed womb for every deadly conception,Mat 15.19 It pours out its wickedness without ceasing,2Pet 2.14 as naturally, freely, and unweariedly as a fountain pours out its waters,Jer 6.7 or the raging sea tosses out mire and dirt.Isa 57.20 And will you still be in love with yourself, and tell us any longer of your good heart? Oh, never stop meditating on this desperate contagion of original corruption until, along with Ephraim, you grieve for yourself;Jer 31.18 and with deepest shame and sorrow, you strike your breast as the Publican did; Luk 18.13 and with Job, you abhor yourself and repent in dust and ashes.Job 42.6, 22
2. The particular evil that you are most addicted to. Discover all its aggravations;163drive home to your heart all of God’s threats against it. Repentance drives the whole herd before it, but it especially sticks the arrow in the beloved sin, and singles this out above the rest in order to run it down,Psa 18.23 Oh, labour to make this sin odious to your soul, and double your guards and your resolutions against it, because this sin most dishonours God, and endangers you.
Direct. III. Strive to affect your heart with a deep sense of your present misery, Read over the foregoing chapter again and again; get it out of the book and into your heart. Remember when you lie down, that for all you know you may awake in flames; and when you rise up, that by the next night you may be making your bed in hell. Is it acceptable to live in such a fearful state, to stand tottering upon the brink of the bottomless pit, and to live at the mercy of every disease that, if you succumbed, it would send you immediately into the flames? Suppose you saw a condemned wretch hanging over Nebuchadnezzar’s burning fiery furnace by nothing but a twine-thread which was ready to break any moment. Wouldn’t your heart tremble for such a person? Why, if you are still unconverted, then you are that man, and this is your case. O man or woman who reads this, what if the thread of your life were to break? You don’t know whether it will be the next night, or indeed, the next moment. Where would you be then? Where would you drop? Truly, upon the snap of just this thread, if you die in your present state, you would fall into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone where you must lie scalding and sweltering in a fiery ocean as long as God exists. Doesn’t your soul tremble as you read this? Don’t your tears wet the paper, and your heart throb in your chest? Don’t you yet begin to strike your breast, and think to yourself what need you have of a change? Oh, what is your heart made of?
Have you not only lost all regard for God, but are without any love and pity for yourself? Oh, study your misery until your heart cries out for Christ as earnestly as a drowning man cries for a boat, or the wounded cries for a surgeon. Men must come to see the danger, and feel the sting of their deadly sores and sickness, or else Christ will be a physician of no value to them. Mat 9.12 The man-slayer hastens to the city of refuge when he is pursued by the avenger of blood. So too, men must be hounded out of themselves, or they will not come to Christ. It was distress and extremity that made the prodigal think of returning home.Luk 15.16-17 While Laodicea thinks she is rich, increased in goods and in need of nothing, there is little hope. She must be deeply convinced of her wretchedness, blindness, poverty, and nakedness before she will come to Christ for gold, raiment, and eye-salve.Rev 3.17- 18 Therefore hold the eyes of your conscience open; amplify your misery as much as possible; don’t flee the sight of it just because you fear it will fill you with terror. The sense of your misery is just the festering of the wound which is needed for its cure. Better to fear the torments that abide with you now, than feel them hereafter.
Direct. IV. Settle it in your heart that you are forever unable to recover yourself. Never think that your praying, reading, hearing, confessing, or amending will cure you. These must be attended to, but you are undone if you rest in them for salvation.Rom 10.3 You are a lost man if you hope to escape drowning on any other plank than Jesus Christ. Act 4.12 You must unlearn yourself, and renounce your own wisdom, your own righteousness, your own strength, and throw yourself wholly upon Christ, just as a swimmer must throw himself upon the water, or else you cannot escape. While men trust in themselves, and establish their own righteousness, and have confidence in the flesh, they will not come savingly to Christ.164You must know that your gain is but loss and dung, your strength is but weakness, your righteousness is but rags and rottenness, before there will be an effectual closure between Christ and you.165Can the lifeless carcass shake off its grave-clothes and loose the bonds of death? Only then might you recover yourself, for you are dead in trespasses and sins, and under an impossible burden of acceptably serving your Maker in this condition.166Therefore, when you go to pray or meditate, or do any of the duties to which you are directed here, leave yourself; call in the help of the Spirit; despair of doing anything that would be pleasing to God if done in your own strength. Yet don’t neglect your duty: lie at the pool and wait in the path of the Spirit.Joh 5.1-8 While the Eunuch was reading, then the Holy Ghost sent Philip to him;Act 8.28-29 when the disciples were praying,Act 4.31 and when Cornelius and his friends were hearing,Act 10.44 then the Holy Ghost fell upon them and filled them all. Strive to give yourself up to Christ; strive to pray, strive to meditate, strive a thousand times over. Try to do it as well as you can, and while you are endeavouring to do your duty, the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and help you do what you are utterly unable to do by yourself.Pro 1.24
Direct. V. Renounce all your sins without delay. If you yield yourself to the practice of any sin, you are undone.Rom 6.17 You hope in vain for life by Christ unless you depart from your iniquity.2Tim 2.19 Forsake your sins, or else you cannot find mercy.Pro 28.13 You cannot be married to Christ unless you are divorced from sin. Turn over the traitor or you can have no peace with heaven. Throw the head of Sheba over the wall; don’t keep Delilah in your lap. You must part with your sins, or else with your soul. Spare but one sin, and God will not spare you. Never make excuses: either your sins must die, or you must die for them.Psa 68.21 If you allow one sin, though just a little one, a secret one, even though you plead necessity, and have a hundred justifications and excuses for it, the life of your soul must be exchanged for the life of that sin.Eze 18.21 And won’t that be dearly bought? O sinner! Hear and consider: if you will part with your sins, God will give you his Christ. Isn’t this a fair exchange? I testify to you this day that if you perish, it is not because there was never a Saviour provided, nor a life tendered, but because you preferred as the Jews did the murderer before your Saviour, sin before Christ, and you loved darkness rather than light.Joh 3.10 Search your heart therefore with candles, as the Jews searched their houses for leaven before the Passover. Labour to discover your sins. Enter into your closet and consider,“What evil have I lived in? What duty have I neglected towards God? What sin have I lived in against my brother?” And now strike the dagger through the heart of your sins, as Joab did through Absalom’s.2Sam 18.14 Never stand contemplating your sin, or hiding the morsel under your tongue.Job 20.12 Spit it out as poison, with fear and detestation. Alas! What do you think your sins will do for you, that you would hesitate at parting with them? They will flatter you, but they will also undo you and cut your throat while they smile at you, and poison you; while they please you and arm the justice and wrath of the infinite God against you. They will open hell for you, and pile up fuel to burn you. Behold the gallows they have prepared for you. Oh, serve them like Haman, and give them the execution they would otherwise have given you. Away with them, crucify them, and let only Christ be Lord over you.
Direct. VI. Solemnly choose God for your portion and blessedness. Deut. 26 With all possible devotion and veneration, avouch that the Lord is your God. Put the world with all its glory, paint, and gallantry, with all its pleasures and promotions on the one hand; and put God with all his infinite excellencies and perfections on the other; and see that you deliberately make your choice.Josh. 24.15 Take your rest in God.Joh 6.68 Sit down under his shadow.Song 2.3 Let his promises and perfections turn the scale against all the world. Settle it in your heart that the Lord is an all-sufficient portion, and that you cannot be miserable while you have God to live upon: take him for your shield and your exceeding great reward. God alone is more than all the world. Content yourself with him. Let others carry the preferments and glory of the world. You place your happiness in finding his favour and the light of his countenance. Psa 4.6-7 Poor sinner! You have fallen away from God, and you have engaged his power and wrath against you. Still, know that out of his abundant grace, he offers to be your God again in Christ.2Cor 6.17-18 What do you say, man? Will you have the Lord for your God? Take this counsel and you will have him: come to him by his Christ.Joh 14.6 Renounce the idols of your own pleasures, gain, and reputation.1Thes 1.9 Let these be pulled off the throne, and set God’s interest uppermost in your heart. Take him, as God, to be highest in your affections, estimations, and intentions, for he will not tolerate having any other set above him.168In a word, you must take him in all his personal relations, and in all his essential perfections.
First, in all his personal relations. God the Father must be taken for your Father.Jer 3.4, 19, 22 Oh, come to him with the prodigal’s plea,“Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight. I am not worthy to be called your Son. But since by your wonderful mercy you are pleased to take me as your child, even though I am a dog, a pig, a devil, I solemnly take you for my Father. I commend myself to your care. I trust to your providence, and toss my burden on your shoulders. I depend on your provision, and I submit to your corrections. I trust under the shadow of your wings. I hide in your chambers, and I fly to your name. I renounce all confidence in myself. I repose my confidence in you. I depose my concerns with you. I will be for you, and for no other.”
Again, God the Son must be taken as your Saviour, as your Redeemer and righteousness.Joh 1.12 He must be accepted as the only way to the Father, and the only means of life.Heb 7.25 Oh then, put off the raiment of your captivity — put on the wedding garment, and go and marry yourself to Jesus Christ. “Lord I am yours, and all that I have: my body, my soul, my name, my estate. I send a bill of divorce to my other lovers. I give my heart to you. I will be yours undividedly, yours everlastingly. I will put your name on all I have, and use it only as your goods, as your loan, during your leave, resigning all to you. I will have no king but you. Reign over me: other Lords have had dominion over me, but now I will make mention only of your name.
I hereby take an oath of fealty to you, promising and vowing to serve, love, and fear you above all other competitors. I disavow my own righteousness, and I despair of ever being pardoned and saved for my own duties or graces. I lean only on your all-sufficient sacrifice and intercession for pardon, life, and acceptance before God. I take you for my only guide and instructor, resolving to be led and directed by you, and to wait for your counsel. Yours will be my driving voice.”
Lastly, God the Spirit must be taken for your Sanctifier,169for your advocate, your counsellor, your comforter, the teacher in your ignorance, and the pledge and earnest of your inheritance.170Awake, north wind, and come forth; blow upon my garden.Song 4.16 “Come, Spirit of the Most High; here is a house for you; here is a temple for you: rest here forever; dwell here, and rest here. Look, I release possession to you, full possession. I send you the keys of my heart, that everything may be for your use, that you may put your goods and your grace into your every room. I release the use of it all to you, so that every faculty, and every member may be your instrument to work righteousness, and to do the will of my Father which is in heaven.”
Secondly. In all his essential perfections. Consider how the Lord has revealed himself to you in his word. Will you take him as such a God?
O sinner! Here is the most blessed news that ever came to the sons of men: the Lord will be your God if you will only close with him in his excellencies.171Will you have the merciful, gracious, sin-pardoning God to be your God? Oh, yes, says the sinner I am undone otherwise. But God further tells you, I am the holy and sin-hating God. If you would be owned as one of my people, then you must be holy:1Pet 1.16 holy in heart, holy in life. You must put away all your iniquities, no matter how dear, how natural, how necessary to maintain your fleshly interest. Unless you distance your sin, I cannot be your God. Throw out the leaven; put away the evil of your doings; cease to do evil; learn to do well; or else I can have nothing to do with you.Isa 1.16-18 Bring out my enemies, or else there is no peace to be had with me. What does your heart answer? “Lord, I desire to have you as such a God. I desire to be holy as you are holy, to be made a partaker of your holiness. I love you, not only for your goodness and mercy, but for your holiness and purity. I take your holiness for my happiness. Oh, be a fountain of holiness to me; set the stamp and impress of your holiness on me. I will thankfully part with all my sins at your command. I forsake my wilful sins at once; and for my infirmities that I cannot get rid of, even though I desire to, I will strive against them by every means. I detest them, and pray and war against them, and I will never let them have quiet rest in my soul.” Beloved, whoever thus accepts the Lord for his God, will have him.
Again, he tells you, I am the all-sufficient God. Gen 17.1 Will you lay everything at my feet, and give it up to my disposition, and take me for your only portion? Will you own and honour my all-sufficiency? Will you take me as your happiness and treasure, your hope and bliss? I am a sun and a shield, all in one. Will you have me for your all? 172Now, what do you say to this? Does your mouth water for the onions and flesh-pots of Egypt? Are you loth to exchange the earthly happiness for a part in God? And though you would be glad to have God and the world too, is it possible for you to think of having him and nothing but him? Or would you rather consort with the earth below, if God would only let you keep it as long as you wanted? This is a fearful sign. But now, if you are willing, sell everything for the pearl of great price.Mat 13.46 Does your heart answer,“Lord, I desire no other portion but you. Take the corn, and the wine, and the oil, whoever wants them, that I may have the light of your countenance. Psa 4.6-7 I fix on you for my happiness; I gladly venture myself on you, and trust myself with you. I set my hopes in you. I take up my rest with you. Let me hear you say,‘I am your God, your salvation,’ and I have enough — all I wish for. I will make no terms with you except for yourself. Let me but have you for sure. Let me be able to make my claim, and see my title to you.
As for other things, I leave them to you. Give me more or less, anything or nothing, and I will be satisfied in my God.” If this is your heart’s answer, then take him thus, and he is your own. Again, he tells you, I am the sovereign Lord. If you will have me for your God, you must give me the supremacy.Mat 6.24 I will not be an underling; you must not make me a second to sin, or to any worldly interest. If you will be my people, I must have the rule over you. You must not live at your own whims. Will you come under my yoke? Will you bow to my government? Will you submit to my discipline, to my word, to my rod? Sinner, what do you say to this? “Lord, I would rather be at your command, than live by my own whims. I would rather have your will be done than mine. I approve of and consent to your laws, and I consider it my privilege to lie under them. And even though the flesh rebels and often breaks its boundaries, I am resolved to take no other Lord but you. I willingly take the oath of your supremacy, and I acknowledge you for my Liege Sovereign. I resolve all my days to pay to you the tributes of worship, obedience, love and service, and to live to you as the end of my life.” This is a right acceptance of God. To be short, he tells you, I am the true and faithful God. If you would have me for your God, then you must be content to trust me.173Will you risk yourselves upon my word, and depend on my faithfulness, and take my bond for your security?
Will you be content to follow me, in poverty, reproach, and affliction here, to see much going out and little coming in, and to wait until the next world for your preferment? Mat 9.21 I deal upon trust. Will you be content to labour, and to suffer, and to wait for your returns until the resurrection of the just? Luk 14.14 The womb of the promise will not quickly yield: will you have the patience to wait? Heb 10.36 Now, beloved, what do you say to this? Will you have this God for your God? Will you be content to live by faith, and trust him for an unseen happiness, an unseen heaven, and an unseen glory? Do your hearts answer,“Lord, we will venture ourselves upon you; we commit ourselves to you; we rest on you; we know whom we have trusted; we are willing to take your word; we will prefer your promises before our own possessions, and the hopes of heaven before all the enjoyments of the earth; we will await your leisure. Do what you will here, so that we may have but your faithful promise for heaven hereafter.” If you can in truth, and upon deliberation, accept God in this way, then he will be yours. Thus, in a right conversion to God, you must close with him in a way suitable to his excellencies. But when men embrace his mercy, yet still love sin and hate holiness and purity; or when they take him for their benefactor, but not for their sovereign; or for their patron, but not for their portion — this is not a thorough or a sound conversion.
Direct. VII. Accept the Lord Jesus in all his offices, with all his inconveniences, as yours. Christ may be had on these terms. Sinner, you have undone yourself, and you are plunged into the ditch of most deplorable misery which you will never be able to climb out of. But Jesus Christ is able and ready to help you, and he freely tenders himself to you.174No matter how many, or however great or long continuing your sins may be, yet you will most certainly be pardoned and saved if you don’t wretchedly neglect the offer that is hereby made to you in the name of God. The Lord Jesus calls to you to look to him and be saved.Isa 45.22 Come to him and he will in no way throw you out.Joh 6.37 Yes, he is your suiter, and he beseeches you to be reconciled.2Cor 5.20 He cries in the streets; he knocks at your door; he woos you to accept him and live with him.175If you die, it is because you would not come to him for life.Joh 5.40 Now accept an offered Christ, and you are forever made. Give your consent to him now, and the match is made; all the world cannot hinder it. Don’t stay back because of your unworthiness. Man, I tell you that nothing in all the world can undo you but your own unwillingness. Speak, man! Do you want the match? Will you have Christ in all his relations to be yours: your king, your priest, your prophet? Will you have him with all his inconveniences? Don’t take Christ by raising your hand, but sit down first and count the cost.
Will you lay everything at his feet? Will you be content to take every risk with him? Will you take your lot with him, fall where it may? Will you deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him? Are you deliberately, understandingly, freely, fixedly determined to cling to him in all times and conditions? If so, my soul for yours. You will never perish,Joh 3.16 but you have passed from death to life.Joh 5.24 Here lies the main point of your salvation: that you are found in your covenant-closure with Jesus Christ: and therefore, if you love yourself, see that you are faithful to God and to your soul here.
Direct. VIII. Resign all your powers and faculties, your whole interest, to be his. They gave themselves to the Lord.2Cor 8.5 Present your bodies as a living sacrifice.Rom 12.1 The Lord does not seek what is yours, but you. Therefore, resign your body with all its members to him, and your soul with all its powers, so that he may be glorified in your body and in your spirit which are his. 2Cor 6.20 In a right closure with Christ, all the faculties surrender to him. The judgment subscribes,“Lord, you are worthy of all acceptance, chief of ten thousand; happy is the man who finds you. All things that could be desired are not to be compared with you,” Pro 3.13-15 The understanding lays aside its corrupt reasonings and cavils, and its prejudices against Christ and his ways. It is now past questioning and disputing. It throws it away for Christ, against all the world.
It concludes that it is good to be here. It sees such a treasure in this field, such a value in this pearl, that it is worth it all.Mat 13.44 “Oh, here is the richest bargain I ever made; here is the richest prize that man was ever offered; here is the most sovereign remedy that mercy ever prepared. He is worthy of my esteem, worthy of my choice, worthy of my love, worthy to be embraced, adored, and admired forevermore.Rev 5.12 I approve of his articles; his terms are righteous and reasonable, full of equity and mercy.” Again, the will resigns: it no longer stands wavering, or wishing and woulding, but is peremptorily determined: “Lord, your love has overcome me; you have won me, and you will have me. Come in, Lord; I freely open to you. I consent to be saved in your own way; you will have anything — you will have it all — let me have but you.” The memory surrenders to Christ: “ Lord, here is a store-house for you: out with this trash, lay in the treasure. Let me be a granary, a repository of your truth, your promises, your providences.” The conscience comes in: “Lord, I will always side with you, I will be your faithful register. I will warn him when the sinner is tempted, and strike him when you are offended. I will witness for you, and judge for you, and guide him into your ways, and will never let sin have quiet in this soul.” The affections also come in to Christ: “Oh, says love, I am sick for you. Oh, says desire, now I have my longing: here is the satisfaction I searched for; here is the desire of nations; here is bread for me, and balm for me — all that I want.” Fear bows the knee with awe and veneration: “Welcome, Lord. To you will I pay my homage; your word and your rod will command my actions; I will reverence and adore you; I will fall down before you and worship.” Grief likewise joins in: “Lord, your displeasure and your dishonor, your people’s calamities and my own iniquities, will be what bursts me apart. I will mourn when you are offended. I will weep when your cause is wounded.” Anger likewise comes in for Christ: “Lord, nothing so enrages me as my folly against you — that I should be so duped and bewitched as to listen to the flatteries of sin, and the temptations of Satan against you.” Hatred, too, will side with Christ: “I protest mortal hostility with your enemies, that I will never be friends with your foes. I vow an immortal quarrel with every sin. I will give no quarter; I will make no peace.” Thus let all your powers surrender to Jesus Christ. Again, you must surrender your whole interest to him. If there is anything you withhold from Christ, it will be your undoing.Luk 14.33 Unless you forsake all in preparation and resolution of your heart you cannot be his disciple. You must hate father and mother, yes, and your own life too, in comparison to him, and as far as it competes with him.178In a word, you must give him yourself, and all that you have, without reservation, or else you can have no part in him.
Direct. IX, Choose the laws of Christ as the rule of your words, thoughts, and actions.Psa 119.30 This is the true convert’s choice. But here remember these two rules,
1. You must choose them all. There is no coming to heaven by partial obedience: read Psa 119.6, 128, 160; Eze 18.21.179 None may think it is enough to take the cheap and easy part of religion, and leave behind the duties that are costly and self-denying, those which grate upon the interests of the flesh. You must take all or none. A sincere convert, though his conscience makes most of the greatest sins and the weightiest duties, yet it also makes much of little sins and all duties.Psa 119.6, 113; Mat 23.23
2. For all times: in prosperity and in adversity, whether it rains or shines. A true convert is resolved in his way. He will stick to his choice and not set his back to the wind or join the religion of the times. I have stuck to your testimonies. I have inclined my heart to perform your statutes always, even to the end. I have taken your testimonies as a heritage forever.Psa 119.31, 111, 117, 44, 93 I will respect your statutes continually. This must not be done just by raising the hand, but deliberately and understandingly. The disobedient son said, I go, sir; but he did not.Mat 24.30 How nicely they promised,“All that the Lord our God will speak to you, we will do it;” and they spoke as if they meant it: but when it came to trial, it was found that such a heart was not in them to do what they promised. Deut. 5.27, 29 If you would be sincere in closing with the laws and ways of Christ, then
First, study the meaning, latitude, and compass of them. Remember that they are spiritual: they reach the very thoughts and inclinations of the heart, so that if you would walk by this rule, then your very thoughts and inward motivations must be under their governance. Again, they are very strict and self-denying, quite against the grain of your natural inclinations.Mat 16.24 You must take the strait gate, the narrow way, and be content to have the flesh curbed from the liberty it desires.Mat 7.14 In a word, remember they are comprehensive. For your commandment is exceedingly broad.Psa 119.96
Secondly, don’t rest in generalities there is much deceit in that. Instead, bring your heart down to the particular commands of Christ. Those Jews in the prophet seemed as well-resolved as any in the world, and they called God to witness that they meant what they said: but they stuck to generalities. When God’s command crossed their inclinations, they would not obey. Jer 42.1-6 with Jer 43.2 Take the assembly’s larger catechism;180see their excellent and most succinct exposition of the commandments, and take it to heart. Are you resolved in the strength of Christ to set upon the conscientious practice of every duty you find required of you there, and to set yourself against every sin that you find forbidden there? This is the way to be found blameless in God’s statutes, so that you may never be ashamed. Psa 119.80
Thirdly, notice the special duties that your heart is most against, and the special sins that it is most inclined to commit, and see whether your heart is truly resolved to perform the one and forego the other. What do you say to your private sin, your lucrative sin? What do you say to your costly, hazardous, and flesh-displeasing duties? If you hesitate here, and don’t resolve by the grace of God to oppose your flesh, and get to it, then you are unsound. Psa 18.23, and 119.6
Direct. X. Let all of this be completed in a solemn covenant between God and your soul.
For your help in this, take these few directions.
First, Set apart some time, more than once, to be spent in secret before the Lord:
1. Earnestly seek his special assistance and gracious acceptance of you.
2. Distinctly consider all the terms and conditions of the covenant proposed on the next page.
3. Search your heart to see whether you are sincerely willing to forsake all your sins and resign yourself, body and soul, to God and to his service — to serve him in holiness and righteousness all the days of your life.
Secondly, Put your spirit in the most serious frame possible, suitable to a transaction of so high an importance.
Thirdly, Lay hold of the covenant of God; rely on his promise of giving grace and strength by which you may then be enabled to perform your promise. Don’t trust your own strength, or the strength of your own resolutions, but take hold of his strength.
Fourthly, Resolve to be faithful; having engaged your heart, opened your mouth, and subscribed with your hand to the Lord, now resolve in his strength to never go back.
Lastly, Being thus prepared, set upon the work at some convenient time set apart for the purpose. In the most solemn manner possible, as if the Lord were visibly present before your eyes, fall down on your knees, and stretching your hands toward heaven, open your heart to the Lord in these or similar words:
PROPOSED COVENANT
O MOST dreadful God! For the passion of your Son, I beg you to accept your poor prodigal who is now prostrating himself at your door. I have fallen from you by my iniquity. I am by nature a son of death, and a thousandfold more the child of hell by my wicked practice.182But by your infinite grace, you have promised your grace to me in Christ, if I will only turn to you with all my heart. Therefore, upon the call of your gospel, I have now come in; and throwing down my weapons, I submit myself to your mercy.
Because you require as the condition of my peace with you, that I put away my idols, and defy all your enemies which I acknowledge I have wickedly sided with against you, I hereby renounce them all from the bottom of my heart, firmly covenanting with you not to allow myself to continue in any known sin, but to conscientiously use all the means that I know you have prescribed for the death and utter destruction of all my corruptions.183And because I have formerly, inordinately, and idolatrously placed my affections on the world, I hereby resign my heart to you who made it, and humbly vow before your glorious Majesty, that this is the firm resolution of my heart. I do sincerely desire grace from you, so that when you call me to it, I may practise my resolution, through your assistance, to forsake all that is dear to me in this world rather than turn from you to the ways of sin. And I will watch against all its temptations, whether in prosperity or adversity, lest they withdraw my heart from you. I beg you also to help me against the temptations of Satan, to whose wicked suggestions I resolve, by your grace, never to yield myself as a servant. And because my own righteousness is but menstruous rags, I renounce all confidence in it, and acknowledge that, of myself, I am a hopeless, helpless, undone creature, without righteousness or strength.
Out of your bottomless mercy, you have most graciously offered to me, a wretched sinner, to again be my God through Christ, if I would accept it from you. Therefore, I call heaven and earth to witness this day that I hereby solemnly avouch that you are the Lord my God; and with all possible veneration, bowing the neck of my soul under the feet of your most sacred majesty, I hereby take you, Lord Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for my portion and my chief good;185and I surrender myself, body and soul, to be your servant, promising and vowing to serve you in holiness and righteousness all the days of my life.
And since you have appointed the Lord Jesus Christ as the only means of coming to you, I hereby, on the bended knees of my soul, accept him as the only new and living way by which sinners may have access to you; and I hereby solemnly join myself in marriage covenant to him.
O blessed Jesus, I come to you hungry and hardly of use. I am poor, wretched,miserable, blind, and naked: a most loathsome, polluted wretch, a guilty, condemned malefactor, forever unworthy to wash the feet of the servants of my Lord, much less to be solemnly married to the King of Glory. But because such is your unparalleled love, I hereby accept you with all my power, and take you for my head and husband, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, for all times and conditions, to love, honor, and obey you before all others; and I vow this to the death. I embrace you in all your offices. I renounce my own unworthiness, and I hereby avow that you are the Lord my righteousness. I renounce my own wisdom, and here take you for my only guide: I renounce my own will, and take your will for my law.
And since you have told me that I must suffer if I reign, I hereby covenant with you to take my lot as it falls with you; by your grace assisting me, I will run all risks with you, truly supposing that neither life nor death will part you and me.Rom 8.35-39 And because you have been pleased to give me your holy laws as the rule of my life,187the way in which I should walk to your kingdom, I hereby willingly put my neck under your yoke, and set my shoulder to your burden. Subscribing to all your laws as holy, just, and good, I solemnly take them as the rule of my words, thoughts, and actions, promising that though my flesh may contradict and rebel, yet I will endeavor to order and govern my whole life according to your direction, and I will not allow myself to neglect anything that I know is my duty.
Only because I am subject to many failings through the frailty of my flesh, I am bold to humbly avow that forbidden miscarriages that are contrary to the settled bent and resolution of my heart, will not void this covenant; for so you have said. Now, Almighty God, searcher of hearts, you know that I make this covenant with you this day without any known guile or reservation; I beg you, that if you spy any flaw or falsehood in it, you would disclose it to me, and help me to do it rightly. And now, glory be to you, O God the Father, whom I will be bold from this day forward to look upon as my God and Father, that you found such a way to recover undone sinners. Glory be to you, O God the Son, who have loved me and washed me from my sins in your own blood; you have now become my Saviour and Redeemer. Glory be to you, O God the Holy Ghost who, by the finger of your almighty power, have turned around my heart from sin to God. O dreadful Jehovah, the Lord God Omnipotent, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! You have now become my covenant friend, and through your infinite grace, I have become your covenant servant. Amen. So be it. And let the covenant which I have made on earth, be ratified in heaven.
THE AUTHOR’S ADVICE.
I advise you to make this covenant not only in heart, but in word; not only in word, but in writing; and that you would, with all possible reverence, spread the writing before the Lord, as if you were presenting it to him as your act and deed. And when you have done this, set your hand to it; keep it as a memorial of the solemn transactions that have passed between God and you, so that you may return to it upon your doubts and temptations.
Direct. XI. Beware delaying your conversion: set upon a speedy and present turning. I made haste and did not delay.Psa 119.60 Remember and tremble at the sad instance of the foolish virgins who did not come until the door of mercy was shut, Mat 25 and of a convicted Felix who put off Paul until another season — and we don’t find that he had another season. Act 14.25 Oh, come in while it is called today, lest you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin;Heb 3.13 lest the day of grace be over, and the things that belong to your peace are hidden from your eyes. Now mercy is wooing you: now Christ is waiting to be gracious to you and the Spirit of God is striving with you: now ministers are calling; now your conscience is stirring; now the market is open and oil may be had: you have an opportunity to buy; now Christ is to be had for the taking. Oh, shake hands on these offers of grace; now or never! If you make light of this offer, God may swear in his wrath that you will never taste his supper.Luk 14.24
Direct. XII. Attend conscientiously to the word as the appointed means for your conversion.
Don’t attend to it thoughtlessly, but conscientiously, and with this desire, design, hope and expectation: that you may be converted by it. Come to every sermon you hear with this thought: “Oh, I hope God will now come in: I hope this day may be the time, and that this may be the man by whom God will bring me home.” When you come to the ordinances189, lift up your heart to God in this way: “Lord, let this be the Sabbath, let this be the season in which I receive renewing grace. Oh, let it be said that today such a one was born to you.”
Obj. You may say,“I have been a longtime hearer of the word, and yet it has not led to my conversion.”
Ans. Yes, but you have not attended to it as a means for your conversion, nor with that intent; nor were you praying for and expecting that this would be the happy effect of it.
Direct. XIII. Shake hands with the Spirit when he begins to work upon your heart. When he convicts, don’t stifle it, but join in with him and beg the Lord to carry on these convictions to conversion. Do not quench the Spirit; don’t reject him, don’t resist him.
Beware of smothering your convictions with evil company, or worldly business. When you are troubled by sin, and by fears about your eternal state, beg God that these may not leave you until they have thoroughly worked your heart away from sin, and worked it over to Jesus Christ. Say to him,“Strike home, Lord; don’t leave the work half-done. You see that I am not yet wounded enough, that I am not troubled enough — wound me deeper still, Lord. Oh, get to the bottom of my corruption; spill the life-blood of my sin.” Thus yield yourself to the workings of the Spirit, and hoist your sails to his gusts.
Direct. XIV. Set upon the constant and diligent use of serious and fervent prayer. One who neglects prayer is a profane and unsanctified sinner.Job 15.4 The one who is not constant in prayer, is just a hypocrite Job 27.10 unless the omission of prayer is contrary to his ordinary habit, and he is under the force of some immediate temptation. This is one of the first evidences of conversion: it sets men to praying.Act 9.11 Therefore set to this duty: let never a day pass by in which you have not, morning and evening, set apart some time for solemn prayer in private. Call your family together daily and duly as well, to worship God with you. Woe to you if they are found among the families that don’t call on God’s name.Jer 10.25 But cold and lifeless devotions will not even reach half-way to heaven. Be fervent and importunate; importunity will carry it; but without force, the kingdom of heaven will not be taken.Mat 11.12
You must strive to enter.Luk 13.24 You must wrestle with tears and with supplications, as Jacob did, if you mean to carry away the blessing.Gen 32.24 with Hos. 12.4 You are forever undone without grace, and therefore you must get to it, and resolve to take no denial. The man who is likeliest to win grace is fixed in this resolution: “Well, I must have grace: and I will never give up until I have grace; and I will never stop seeking, and waiting, and striving with God, and with my own heart, until he renews me by the power of his grace.”
Obj. But God does not hear sinners; their prayer is an abomination.
Ans. We must distinguish between sinners. 1 There are resolved sinners: God does abhor their prayers. 2 There are returning sinners: these God will come out to, and meet them with mercy though still far off.Luk 15.20 Though the prayers of the unsanctified cannot have full acceptance, God has still done much at the request of such men. Such as he did at Ahab’s humiliation, and Nineveh’s fast.190Surely you may go as far as these did, even though you have no grace. How do you know; perhaps you will hurry your suit, as they did theirs. Indeed, is he not far more likely to grant you your desire than theirs, since you ask in the name of Christ? And it is not for temporal blessings, as they asked for, but for things much more pleasing to him; namely, aren’t you asking for Christ, for grace and pardon, so that you may be justified, sanctified, renewed, and equipped to serve him? Turn to these soul-encouraging scriptures: Pro 2.1-6; Luke 11.9-13; Pro 8.34-35.191
Isn’t it good comfort that he calls you? Mar 10.49 Does he provide you the means, and yet you think he will mock you? Doubtless, he will not fail you, if you don’t want to fail yourself. Oh, pray and don’t faint.Luk 18.1 A person of great quality who offended the Duke of Buckingham, the King’s great favorite, was admitted into his presence. After a long wait, he prostrated himself at his feet, saying, I am resolved never to rise again, until I have obtained your Grace’s favor. By that posture he overcame him. Throw yourself at the feet of God with such resolve. It is for your life; therefore follow after him and don’t give up. Resolve that you will not be put off with bones, or with common mercies. What if God doesn’t immediately open to you? Isn’t grace worth waiting for? Knock and wait, and no doubt mercy will come sooner or later. And know this, that you have the very same encouragement to seek and to wait that the saints now in glory once had; for they once were in your very situation and they have done so well. Will you not go to the same door, and wait upon your God in the same manner?
Direct. XV. Forsake your evil company,192and resist the occasions of sin.193You will never be turned from sin, until you decline and forego the temptations of sin.1Pet 2.11
I don’t expect your conversion from sin until you begin some self denial, such as fleeing the occasions of sin. If you nibble at the bait, and play on the brink, and tamper and meddle with the snare, your soul will surely be taken. Where God in his providence unavoidably exposes men to temptations, and the occasions are such that we cannot remove them, we may expect special assistance in the use of his means. But when we tempt God by running into danger, he will not support us when we are tempted. Of all temptations, one of the most fatal and pernicious is evil company. Oh, what hopeful beginnings these have often stifled! Oh, the souls, the estates, the families, the towns that these have ruined! How many a poor sinner has been enlightened and convicted, and has been nearly ready to give the devil the slip, and has even escaped the snare, and yet wicked company has pulled him back into it in the end, and made him seven-fold more the child of hell. In one word, I have no hopes for you unless you shake off your evil company. Christ speaks to you as he does to them in another circumstance, If you seek me, then let these go their way.Joh 18.8 Your life depends on it: forsake these, or else you cannot live.Pro 9.6 Will you be worse than the beast by continuing on when you see the Lord with a drawn sword in the way? Num. 22.33 Let this sentence be written in capitals on your conscience,
A COMPANION OF FOOLS WILL BE DESTROYED.Pro 13.20 The Lord has spoken it, and who will reverse it? Will you run upon194 destruction, when God himself forewarns you? If God ever changes your heart, it will be seen in the change of your company. Oh, fear and flee this gulf by which so many thousands of souls have been swallowed into perdition. It will be hard for you, indeed, to make your escape. Your companions will mock you for your religion, and they will consider ways to fill you with prejudices against strictness as being ridiculous and comfortless. They will flatter and allure you. But remember the warnings of the Holy Ghost: My son, if sinners entice you, don’t consent. If they say,‘Come with us — throw your lot in with us,’ don’t walk in their way; keep your foot from their path; avoid it; don’t go near it; turn from it and go away. For the way of the wicked is like darkness; they don’t know what they stumble over. They lay in wait for their own blood; they lurk secretly to take their own lives.195My soul is distraught to think how many of my hearers are likely to perish by this wretched mischief, both they and their houses — there are haunting images of such places and company by which they are drawn into sin. Once more I admonish you, as Moses admonished Israel, And he spoke to the congregation saying, Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men. Num. 16.26 Oh, flee from them as you would flee from those who have plague sores running on their foreheads. These are the devil’s panders and decoys; if you don’t make your escape, they will summon you into perdition, and will prove your eternal ruin.
Direct. XVI. Lastly, Set apart a day to humble your soul in secret by fasting and prayer, to work the sense of your sins and miseries upon your heart. Read over the Assembly’s exposition of the commands. Write down the duties you have omitted, and the sins you have committed against every commandment. Thus make a catalogue of your sins. With shame and sorrow, spread them before the Lord. If your heart truly agrees to the terms, then join yourself solemnly to the Lord with the covenant provided under the tenth direction above.197May the Lord grant you mercy in his sight.
Thus I have told you what you must do to be saved. Will you now obey the voice of the Lord? Will you arise, and set to your work? O man, what answer will you give? What excuses will you make if you were to perish in the end through sheer wilfulness, when you have known the way of life? I don’t fear you will fail, unless your own idleness undoes you in the end by neglecting the use of the means that are so plainly prescribed here. Rouse up, O sluggard, and apply yourself to the work! Do it, and the Lord will be with you.
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