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our Redemption draws nigh, not the time of fetting out from theGates of Hell; that's the time to finish our course with Joy, not the time to begin a holy Life. Alas! the ftrength and vigour which must be used in a heavenly Converfation is then gone, and Men are just upon the point of reckoning with God; their Accounts muft then be ready, not to make up: So that if thou art not ready now to take thy Spiritual concerns into ferious Confideration, thy heart will be hardned every day more and more, and the longer thou liveft, the lefs mind thou wilt have to fet about it; and if thou doeft not think it worth thy trouble, to spare now and then an hour from thy Worldly bulineffes, to mind this one thing neceffary, thou doeft as good as tell God, that thou wilt have none of his Heaven, and judgeft thy felf unworthy of Eternal Life.

O Sinner, the present time is the day of Salvation, this is the acceptable time, now ftrike, and thy fins will fall; now ftrive, and the Crown will be thine; now fall to work, and promise thy felf Eternal Reft: Thou canst call no time thine own but the prefent, that's only in thine hands; make use of that, and fave thy felf from this untoward Generation. Extricate thy felf from the delufions of the flesh, take courage, and be gone; ftay not in Sodom, now accept of Mercy, now lay up thy Treasure, and fecure thy right to the Tree of Life; now remember thy Creator, and God will remember thee when he makes up his Jewels, and fpare thee, as a Man would fpare his own Son that ferves him.

Hear

Hear then this, Men, Fathers, and Brethren! the God of your Fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath fent us to you, to tell you, that his Supper is ready, and the doors are open, and the Guests are come, and yet there is room; and that you may fill the room which is left, is the Meffage we come to acquaint you withal from him who delights not in the death of a finner, but would have him turn and live. Hear this, ye Great Ones, ye Nobles, ye Mighty Men, and confider your ways: Confider whether that voluptuous life you lead, is like that life which that Saviour, in whom you pretend to believe, doth prescribe in his Gofpel? Confider whether you are not obliged to practife all those Virtues and Duties that the meaner fort perform? And whether in framing to your felves a new way to Heaven, a way different from what the Word of God doth reprefent, you are like to be happy in those Castles of Air you build, and like to arrive to that Glory which you wish for, and hope to be received into? Confider what your pride and fenfuality will at laft conclude in? And whether you will dare to brave it at the great Tribunal, as now you do on Earth, where you have no body to controul you? Ye that are Magiftrates, whom Providence hath placed over others to execute Juftice, and to fhew a good example, Confider your ways. Confider how heavy your connivance at the most notorious fins, fins that offer to pluck even God out of his Throne, will lie upon your Confciences one day! Confider what hurt you

do,

do, how many Souls you ruine, by your debau ched and luxurious lives! Confider whether you can fatisfie God as eafily as you can do Man, and whether that injuftice, that oppreffion, that covetoufness, that lewdnefs you make nothing of now, are not fins weighty enough to bear you down into the burning Lake? Ye learned Men, whether Minifters, or others, who fee and know more than the Vulgar do, Confider your ways. Confider whether that great knowledge you have will not procure you double Stripes, if you improve it not into a higher degree of ferioufnefs than common people ufe; Confider what a ridiculous thing you make Religion, if, being perfwaded and convinced of the rationality of it, you do not exprefs the power of it in your Converfations. Confider whether building Heaven with your Voices, and Hell with your Behaviour and Deportment, will not bring down upon you the fevereft Plagues that are written in the Book of God! Ye that are Hearers of the Word, and frequent the Temple of the Lord, to be taught his Statutes, and his Ordinances, Confider your ways. Confider whether so many entreatings, warnings, reproofs, and admonitions, in feafon and out of feafon, which you take no notice of, will not be brought in one day as evidences to juftifie your everlasting condemnation? Confider how God is like to resent your barrenness and unfruitfulness under the richest means of Grace, under the droppings of his fatnefs! Confider how justly God may punish your not digefting and applying his Commands and Precepts to

your

do

your felves, with hardness and blindness of heart, and whether this Judgment be not more frequent than the World is aware of, and whether you not participate of that Judgment? Hear this, all ye that carry rational, Angelical Souls in your Breatts, Confider your ways. Confider what enflaving your Souls to vicious affections will come to, and whether they will not thrive better, be ing irradiated with Heavenly Light,than warmed by Hellish Lufts; and whether it will not be more for your credit to advance them to their primitive luftre and beauty, than lofe them by fin and vanity. Sirs, you ftand upon the brink of a bottomlefs pit; who but a Man, whofe brains are crack'd, would not look about himfelf? The least push or thruft fends you thither. Who would not take some pains to get into a Harbour? The Ship is ready to be caft away, the Mafts are split, it's leaking on every fide; who would not lay hold of a plank to fave himself from drowning? If you know not what to do with that power of Confideration God hath given you, marvel not if God takes it away; and fince you will not bethink your felves how to be freed from fin and mifery, protests in his anger, that you fhall not be able to make use of that power any more, in order to obtain Eternal Life; fince you will not take up that Sword of the Spirit, to cut the Cord of Sin and Difobedience, no wonder if God blunts and dulls the edge of it, that it fhall be of no ufe to you, when you would employ it. O Chriftians, there is no jefting with a merciful God; where the greatest mercy is fcorned Dd

and

and rejected, What can ye expect but the fevereft Judgments? Be wife therefore, before the black Decree be irreversibly Signed and Sealed against you; you'll blefs the hour and the day which bears the Date of your entire and fincere agreement to God's Will in this particular; and when you fhall find, by bleffed experience, that this ferious Confideration of your ways is the Gate to Paradife, you'll admire the Bounty, Wildom, and Goodnefs of God, that moved your hearts to embrace the motion, and you will not be able to forbear breaking out into finging the Song of Mofes, and the Song of the Lamb, Bleffing, Honour, and Glory be unto him that fits upon the Throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.

CHAP VIII.

Of Retirement and Prayer, the two great helps to Confideration. Retirement proved to be neceffary to make Confideration of our Spiritual State more quick and lively. Prayer calls in the affiftance of God's Spirit, and renders the work effe.tual. A Form of Prayer to be used upon this occafion.

WILL charitably fuppofe, that the p.receding Exhortation may have made fome Impreffion upon my Reader, and made him in fome meafu re, willing to think more of his Soul, and of the d anger it is in, and of his Eternal State,

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