Use 2

USE II.

Let it then be a word of warning and terror to impenitent sinners under the Gospel, and I know none that carries more of dread in it, if well understood and believed, let all such then consider,

1. You are all foolish in your natural estate. Whatever vain opinion you have of your own wisdom, which is indeed but an indication of your folly, according to (Proverbs 26:16), the sluggard is wiser in his own conceit, than seven men that can render a reason; yet this is a great truth of all men as they come into the world in their natural estate (Job 11:12), vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild asses colt. The wise man gives in the true character of every child of Adam, as he is in himself, from the beginning to the end (Ecclesiastes 9:3), the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

2. If you live and die such, you shall never stand in God's sight; your doom is determined and pronounced: and you have the reason given in the words following our text, you hate all the workers of iniquity. And if God hates you, you have reason to expect that he will separate you from his presence. You have a fearful account given you, of the condition of those who add impenitency to iniquity (Psalms 7:12, &c.), if he turn not, he will whet his sword; he has bent his bow, and made it ready, &c.

3. God affords you the means of grace as a remedy to cure you of your foolishness: the great design of the Gospel and ordinances, is to show men the right way, to recover of their madness, and be made wise. This is the usefulness of the word of God (2 Timothy 3:15), the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise to salvation. They that have them not must needs die without knowledge, it is the main design of the means to point us to this; God gives pastors to feed men with knowledge and understanding (Jeremiah 3:15). What he says of his Proverbs, may be applied to the whole book of God (Proverbs 2:3-4), to know wisdom, and instruction, &c.

4. If you perish in your impenitency under these means, you will never be cured. Sinners, by their hardness of heart, withstand the efficacy of the Word and ordinances; and when once it comes to that, that sinners do practically say, as they did expressly (Jeremiah 44:16), as to the word which you speak to us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken to you; their case is next to desperate. We have God therefore expostulating with such (Psalms 94:8), you fools, when will you be wise? These are the only means which God has appointed to bring sinners to their right minds; and if the operation be contrary, it argues their case to be deplorable. Hence that complaint of our Savior (Matthew 23:37-38), Jerusalem, &c. how often would I have gathered, &c. but you would not: therefore is your house left to you desolate.

5. However you now despise instruction, yet you will mourn for it at last. It will be a dreadful thing to lose God's presence for ever, though now you can say to him depart, yet when it comes to be your lot indeed to lose all your hope of his favor, this will be inconceivable bitterness: and nothing will make it more bitter than to think, I had a day of grace, wisdom himself pleaded with me, stretched out his hands all the day long to me; I heard the precious truths of the Gospel, I was told of my miserable state, entreated to consider of it, offered help out of it; was waited upon with line upon line, striven with, both by parents, and godly friends, and faithful ministers, and by the Spirit himself together with them: I was told what it would come to; and yet I despised, I scorned, I would have mine own ways, and grew the more resolute in them, and now I am but filled with my own devices, and made to eat of the fruit of my own ways. And how dreadful an echo of conscience will this be? And yet we are told that thus it will be in the end (Proverbs 5:11, &c.), and you mourn at last, &c. and say, how have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof? &c.

6. Hence think what a doom is hastening upon you, and what an execution will follow that. You must very shortly appear before God; your day of grace will soon be at an end; the time is drawing near when God will say that his Spirit shall strive no more with you; the ax which lies at the root all this while, will cut you down, you must hear your terrible Judge say, depart from me, I know you not, you worker of iniquity: and when that word is once past, the sentence will take place. And where must you go, when you depart from him, but to everlasting burnings? to the worm that dies not, to the fire that is not quenched, to eternal torments, to dwell with the devils and damned, and feel the endless impressions of the fury of a provoked God? And can your hearts endure? Let these terrors of the Lord work on your hearts and persuade them.

And to that end,

1. Be convinced of your folly and madness. As long as you are wise in your own esteem, there is no hope that ever you should be so indeed; or so much as comply with the means that are made use of to render you so; it is the remark in (Proverbs 26:12), do you see a man that is wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him. Conversion begins at conviction; and men are led to that conviction by consideration, as (Ezekiel 18:28), because he considers, and turns away from his transgressions, &c. And think how unreasonable a thing it is to choose sin before holiness, to prefer unprofitable vanities, before the glories of the everlasting kingdom: to gratify your lusts, and undo your souls; for a few moments pleasure, in the gratification of the senses, to suffer eternal separation from God, and the fearful impressions of his insupportable wrath.

Deeply resent your danger. Think it not a small and inconsiderable thing to lose God's gracious presence; and take heed of counting it a light matter to be thrust out of it, after all the offers of it that have been made to you, and advantages that have been put into your hands to gain it, and the importunate entreaties with which it has been urged upon you, have been neglected, and despised by you. Yes, solemnly consider, that you can in nothing more dishonour God, or provoke him to hasten your woe day, and speedily to put you out of his sight at the farthest distance, than by hardening of your hearts against all his calls and warnings.

Be often pondering what a God you have to do withal. He is a great and a terrible God; if you lose his favor, and procure his anger to burn upon you, you will certainly fall before it. What says he? "You, even those are to be feared; and who may stand in your sight when once you are angry?" (Psalm 76:7). He is a holy God; he hates, and is resolved signally to testify his displeasure at sin; and woe to those that must be made the monuments of that displeasure of his, better had it been for them, if they had never been born. He is a just God, and he will not suffer the righteousness of his law to fail; and if bold sinners will thrust themselves upon the sword's point, they shall feel the smart of it, to their confusion. He is a true God, and faithful to his threatenings as well as to his promises, and if he has said, that the foolish shall not stand in his sight, let all impenitent sinners look to themselves, for they shall find that the Strength of Israel is not a man that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should repent.

Let the consideration of all this make you hasty, and in earnest to fly to God for his Spirit and grace to make you wise. This is the right improvement that sinners ought to make of the terrors of the Lord: it should make them afraid of the wrath of God, and put them into trembling at the apprehension of their danger; and by this fear to be stimulated to an uneasiness and restlessness in their present condition, and cause them to cry aloud to God, for his pity and help, and by his Holy Spirit to work in them that great change by which they may be turned from folly to wisdom, from darkness to his marvelous light, from sin to God. And let the dread of such a misery as this separation will certainly produce, be a spur to quicken you to make no more delays, lest while you despise the mercy offered, and trifle away a precious day of grace which you enjoy, you pull down vengeance on your own heads, and be put beyond hope for ever.

And to make you the more earnest, look on, and take warning by every awful monument of God's displeasure on this account. There are those judgments of his in the world, which he designs to be exemplary, for the rousing up of secure sinners, and terrifying of them under the apprehension of his holiness therein displayed. When any are left by God to themselves, and by their own naughtiness run themselves upon the sword of civil justice, and must be cut off by it, God would have all Israel to hear, and fear, and do no more so presumptuously. Such a one we have now, in the providence of God set before us; and the Lord give us all the grace to learn by it, and let young ones in a special manner, and more peculiarly, such as are in their sins, and leading a course, possibly as vile and abominable as that was which led her into this snare; take warning from this, and let it be a solemn admonition to you: let her history be your caution, lest God be provoked to make you a history too.

And now let me direct my speech to her, but let all sinners in the congregation take warning by it, and not look upon themselves unconcerned. Let me then say to you, that your own sin has found you out, and God has made you a spectacle to the world, of his righteous indignation. Your life is forfeited as to man; you are made a curse, and may not be suffered to live, but must be cut off, lest otherwise the judgments of God should fall upon the land. But still there is hope in Israel concerning this thing, with regard to your poor immortal soul; though you must flee to the pit, and no man may stay you; yet Sovereign Grace can say of you, as (Job 33:24), "Deliver her from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom:" only know and be assured, that if ever you be saved, you must be converted; and in order to your being converted, you must be humbled. And for your help, I have five things to advise you about; and do you look up to God, that you may be enabled solemnly to entertain them.

Think what an egregious fool you have been; if ever God shew you mercy, he will imprint this thought on your heart very deep. Remember then, you were born and brought up in a Land of Uprightness, in the Valley of Vision, where Christ and Salvation by him has been published. You were admitted in your childhood to partake in the privileges of the Gospel Covenant; and have been by Baptism sealed to the service of God, and devoted to be for him and no other. You have doubtless had many private warnings and counsels given you by your parents, and kindred, and godly neighbours. You have sat under the clear dispensations of the Word of God, in which you have been many a time over, told of your sinful courses, and the certain destruction that they would lead you to, if you held on in them, and been solemnly advised to break off your sins by repentance; and all arguments have been used with you to persuade you of the necessity and happiness of your so doing. You have seen and heard of the falls of others, and of the misery which they brought themselves into thereby. You have been yourself left by God to fall into scandalous sins, and warned thereby to beware and not to go on, lest some worse thing should befall you; and yet how have you despised instruction, and scorned reproofs, and more desperately resolved in your own ways and courses, until the holy God was provoked to leave you up to your self, and withhold his restraining grace from you, and so suffer you, by your unaccountable madness, to lay your self open to the sword of justice, and you must now die, as one that would not be instructed. And you may well reflect on that expostulation, and think, that you hear God so saying to you (Jeremiah 2:17), have you not procured this to your self, in that you have forsaken the Lord your God, when he led you by the way? Cry out then bitterly of this your own foolishness.

Be convinced of the amazing danger which you have exposed your self to, by your fearful hardness of heart; and tremble to think, that this hardness that you are under the power of, may be judicial. I am sure it is so sometimes, in God's righteous judgment, with such as God has spoken to, used many endeavours with, but they would not receive his advice: affected hardness is very often punished in this life, with inflicted hardness; as (Psalms 81:11, 12), my people would not hearken to my voice, and Israel would none of me. So I gave them up to their own hearts' lusts, and they walked in their own counsels; and what more fearful plague can befall any soul on this side of Hell? Had not your heart been dreadful hardened, would you not have taken warning by the first fall which God left you to, to have avoided evermore exposing of your self to such another; no, would it not have driven you to have sought to God for grace to prevent you, and for forgiveness and peace through the blood of Christ? Had not your heart been desperately obdurate, would you, when by your most egregious wickedness, you had again fallen into your former sin, have run your self over such a precipice as this, to expose your self, by adding of murder to whoredoms, to have your life taken away from you by the hand of justice; but rather have sought your peace with God? Had not your heart been harder than an adamant, would not the horridness of that sin of murder, which without all reason, and by an unaccountable desperateness you precipitated your self into, have made you to relent? Whereas instead of discovering a broken heart, and a contrite spirit, upon a reflection on it, your whole carriage both before and at your trial, and at the very pronouncing of a sentence of death upon you, has been such, and so stupendous, as has put a grief of heart, into all that fear God, who have either seen it, or heard of it; and what do you think this impenitency will lead to at length, if God do not graciously heal you of it?

See what a little time you have left you, and how soon your case will be determined for eternity. I know, that there is never a bold and secure sinner in the congregation, who can tell but that he may be cited before God's tribunal, sooner than you shall, and had therefore need to see to his own concern: but this you know, that you are dead in the law, and may every day expect to have the warrant signed, and warning given you to go to execution. Well; bethink your self; no more opportunity for the securing your soul's eternal welfare is before you. When once you are dead, you are fixed unchangeably; if your peace be not made before then, you are gone for ever. And Oh, what a great work have you to do in a little time? And the Lord knows whether at present it be so much as begun in you; yes, there are fearful tokens that it is not. Oh that this pungent word may, by his grace give a forcible stroke to it.

Suitably repent of all your follies in particular. Repentance and pardon are inseparable; and you are told who it is that has the dispensation of both, namely Christ (Acts 5:31): him has God exalted with his right hand, to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins; and be sure to seek to him for it, as you hope to obtain it. Let all the obstinacy and hardness of heart which you have laboured of, be exceeding bitter to you, call all your sins to remembrance, and let every one of them be confessed and bewailed apart; and more peculiarly those sins that have brought you to this, your pride, your disobedience to your parents, your impatience of family government, your company keeping, your whoredoms, and your despising of Christ, who has offered himself to you. And let all this lead you to the fountain of iniquity, to the source or original of all abominations, and make you to confess with David (Psalms 51:5), behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Beware of hiding, excusing, extenuating, falsely denying of any thing, wherein the glory of God is concerned: what said he to Achan, when God's Providence had discovered him (Joshua 7:19), My son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession to him; and be sure to pour out your heart before God, with the most aggravating acknowledgments, in all the circumstances, with deepest self loathings and hatred of your sins, utterly renouncing of them. Remember what is said (Proverbs 28:13), he that covers his sins shall not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes shall have mercy.

Now humbly betake yourself to the blood of sprinkling; come to the fountain opened, to be washed in; there is enough in the blood of Christ for your pardon and healing (1 John 1:7). The blood of Christ cleanses from all sin; there wants not virtue in him to save such an one as you are. For we are assured (Hebrews 7:25) he is able to save to the uttermost (1 Timothy 1:15). Jesus Christ came to save sinners, of whom I am chief (1 Timothy 1:15). Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool (Isaiah 1:18). There have as great sinners as you, sought mercy, and found it. God can be just, and yet forgive your sin; he can get himself a name, and exalt the glory of his grace, in you; he can make those falls of yours to be the occasions of his appearing in his grace the more eminently to you, in his humbling, healing, and pardoning of you; and so making it to appear in you, how much more that can do for the saving of a soul than a vile hardened sinner can do for her own undoing. Only beware of cheating yourself by any fond presumptions of mercy though you live in your impenitence, or of supposing that you can comply with the terms of peace in your own strength: but carefully spend the residue of your little time, in lying prostrate at the footstool of the throne of sovereign grace, looking up to him, who has mercy on whom he will have mercy; and with repeated earnestness cease not to offer up that petition to him, while you have any breath left in you, "For your name sake, Oh Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great" (Psalm 25:11).