things we preach to you were problematical;-if they were things which so far excited doubt and uncertainty in the mind, that we could not be assured of their reality;-if they were merely allowed, or forbidden, we should not be surprised at this insensibility. But do we not see persons in cold blood committing the most atrocious crimes, carrying on infamous intrigues, nourishing inveterate prejudices, handing them down from father to son, and making them the heritage of the family? Do we not see them committing those things in cold blood, and less shocked now at the enormity of their crimes, than they formerly were at the mere thought of them, and who are as insensible of all we say to affect them, as if we were repeating fables, or reciting frivolous tales? Whence does this proceed, my brethren ? From the same cause we have endeavoured to prove in our preceding discourses, that habits, if not corrected, become confirmed that the Holy Spirit withdraws; that he ceases to knock at the door of our hearts, and leaves us to ourselves when we resist his grace. These are seared consciences; they are fascinated minds; these are men given up to a spirit of delusion. Rom. i. 21. Their hearts are waxed gross; they have eyes, and they see not, they have hearts, and they do not understand. Isa. vi. 10. If the arguments already advanced in the preceding discourses, have been incapable of producing conviction, do not, at least, dispute with us what you see every day, and what passes before your eyes. Preachers, be not astonished after this, if your arguments, if your proofs, if

your demonstrations, if your exhortations, if your most tender and pathetic entreaties have little effect. God himself fights against you. You demonstrate, and God blinds their eyes; you exhort, and God hardens the heart; and that Spirit,—that Spirit who by his victorious power, endeavours to illuminate the simple, and make them that fear him to understand his secret ;-that Spirit, by the power of vengeance, hardens the others in their wilful insensibility.

This awful period often comes with greater rapidity than we think. When we speak of sinners who are become incorrigible, we understand not only the aged, who have run a course of fifty or sixty years in crimes, and in whom sin is become natural. We speak also of those less advanced in age; who have refused to devote to God the early years of youth; who have assumed the fashionable title of infidelity, and atheism; who are in effect, become atheists, and have imbibed prejudices, from which it is now impossible to move them. At first this was simply a want of zeal; then it became indifference, then followed coldness, and indolence, afterwards contempt of religion, and in the issue, the most obstinate and outrageous profaneness. I select cases which are yet susceptible of good impressions. They are providentially placed in open view to inspire you with holy fear; God has exposed them in his church as buoys and beacons, erected on the coast to warn the mariners; they say, keep your distance in passing here, fly this dreadful place, let the remains of this

shipwreck induce you to seek deep waters, and a safer course.

III. Let us produce a third example, and would to God that we had less authority for producing it, and fewer instructions on the subject! This is dying men;-an example which you adduce to harden yourselves in vice; but which, if properly understood, is much calculated to excite alarm. We see, in general, that every dying man, however wicked he may have been during life, seems to be converted on the approach of death; and we readily persuade ourselves that it is so in effect: and consequently, that there is no great difficulty in becoming regenerate in our last moments. But two things have always prejudiced me against a late repentance;-the characters, and the consequences.

First, the characters of this repentance. After acquiring some knowledge of the human heart, we fully perceive that there is nothing in it but what is extorted; that it is the fear of punishment, not the sentiments of religion and equity; that it is the approach of death, not an abhorrence of sin; that it is the terrors of hell, not the effusions of true zeal, which animate the heart. The sailor, while enjoying a favourable breeze, braves the Deity, uttering his blasphemies against Heaven, and apparently acknowledging no Providence but his profession and industry. The clouds become black; the sluices of heaven open; the lightnings flash in the air; the thunders become tremendous; the winds roar; the surge foams; the waves of the ocean seem to ascend to heaven; and heaven in turn seems to descend into

the abyss.

Conscience, alarmed by these terrific objects, and more so by the image of hell, and the expectation of immediate and inevitable death, endeavours to humble itself before the pursuing vengeance of God. of God. Blasphemy is changed to blessing, presumption to prayer, security to terror. This wicked man suddenly becomes a saint of the first class; and, as though he would deceive the Deity, after having deceived himself, he arrogates, as the reward of this false reform, admission into heaven, and claims the whole rewards of true repentance.

What! conversions of this kind dazzle Christians! What! sailors, whose tears and cries owe their origin to the presence of immediate danger, from which they would be saved! But it is not in the agitation produced by peril, that we may know whether we have sincere recourse to God. It is in tranquil and recollected moments that the soul can best examine and investigate its real condition. It is not when the world has quitted us, that we should begin like true Christians to quit the world; it is when the world smiles, and invites us to taste its charms.

What decides on those hasty resolutions are the consequences. Of all the saints that have been made in haste, you find scarcely one, on deliverance from danger, who fulfils the vows he has made. There is scarcely one who does not relapse into vice with the same rapidity with which he seemed to be saved; a most conclusive argument, that such conversions are not sincere. Had it been true zeal, and divine love which dictated all those professions and kindled that fire which seemed to burn, you would, no doubt,

have retained the effects; but finding no fruit of your fervent resolutions, we ought to be convinced that they were extorted. Can your heart thus pass in one moment from two extremes? Can it pass in one moment from repentance to obduracy, and from obduracy to repentance? Can it correct in one moment habits of vice, and assume habits of piety; and renounce with equal ease habits of piety, to resume habits of vice? The case of infants, whom the Creator introduces into life, ought to correct your judgment, concerning those from whom he takes it away.

To all these proofs, my brethren, which I am not permitted to state in all their lustre, I fear lest another should soon be added;-I fear lest a fourth example should convince the world how dangerous it is to delay conversion. This proof, this example is no other than the major part of yourselves. On considering the way of life which most of you follow, we find but too much cause for this awful conjecture. But should we see you, without alarm, run headlong into the abyss from which you cannot be delivered by never-ceasing lamentations and tears? No, my brethren, we will redouble our entreaties, we will make fresh exertions to press on your minds these important truths.

APPLICATION.

The first thing we require of you is to enter into your own heart, to do justice to yourselves, to confess that most of you are in the awful situation we have attacked; that you are nearly all guilty of de