Use

All the improvement that I shall make of this doctrine, is in this one use; let it be a warning-peal to all the sinners in Zion; to awaken you from your security; and make you afraid any longer to live unprofitably under the Gospel and ordinances: and if there be any solemnity in this truth, make it your own, and lay it to heart; and there are these two things which I would entreat of you that you would, for that end, employ your serious thoughts about.

1. Think what reason there is for you to expect that God's patience is almost wearied out with you: possibly you may be ready to please your selves with contrary imaginations; and say there is no fear at all; but be not brutish and sottish: and that none concerned herein may be omitted, in this warning, let me press it upon:

1. Young sinners, you that are in your prime, and ready to think that this admonition little concerns you: you will say that God has waited but a little while upon you, and therefore you may well expect a longer day: but remember what you were told under another doctrine, that God's patience is arbitrary; and that where he has afforded more of light, and clearer dispensations; and used more earnest endeavours, he may count three years a great while, but let me add;

1. Consider that God is ever and anon taking away of such as you are. How many young persons have been slain by the sword? How many such have been cut down by the late raging sickness? And does this say nothing to you? If you die in your youth, and in your sins, this threatening is then verified upon you: this present season is your day, and it may be all the day that you shall ever have; and when God comes to expose such as you are in his providence, it speaks loudly to you, and tells you that his day may be near an end with you.

2. Consider that if you ripen in wickedness apace, it is a sad sign that you are making great haste to be ready for cutting down; and are there no young ones among us that are concerned in this? Who not only live in a state of unregeneracy, but also grow vain, and profane, and lewd! Are there none of our children that have learnt to curse and swear, and profane God's holy Sabbaths? That shake off the yoke of family government, and keep company with riotous persons? That have been privately by their parents, and publicly in the ordinances warned, and reproved, and yet have despised all, and wilfully pursue their old courses, and grow worse and worse after all; and have you not heard that when it comes to this, that persons will not be reformed, they are then next to past hope? And what but destruction belongs to such? And if it be so, with you, as young as you are, you are old enough for God to make monuments of his holy jealousy, see for this (Jeremiah 5:7, 8, 9).

2. Old sinners; you that have been suffered a great while in the vineyard, and yielded to the Owner of it no profit at all; have not you abundant reason to look continually when God's patience shall turn into fury, and that fury fall upon you in its weight? Surely you have cause to dread the thoughts of it every hour; consider then,

1. How much you have done to weary him out. You have much more cause to wonder that he has born with you so long; than to promise your selves that he will wait upon you longer; how often have you grieved him, vexed his holy Spirit? What innumerable affronts have you put upon him? Count over the many Sabbaths which you have enjoyed, the sermons that you have heard, the convictions that you have had, the mercies that have been bestowed upon you, the afflictions that have come to awaken you, and the ill improvement that you have made of all these, the grievous contempt that you have cast upon them all: what husbandman would have suffered such a tree so long undestroyed, that had been planted and cherished in his orchard?

2. Consider the ax lies at your root. God has brought it there; are there none of the fore-runners of your ruin come upon you? Are there no spiritual beginnings towards it? Does not the Spirit of God begin to withdraw his strivings in the means of grace? Do you not find your selves more careless and secure under, and more impenetrable by the Word of God which is dispensed to you [illegible]? Are you not more delighted with, and more violently set in your hearts to live still in your sinful courses? Are there no temporal fore-runners of this? Do not God's servants proclaim his wrath awfully against you? Does not God's providence raise up evil, and fearful judgments against you? Are there not those infirmities and sicknesses, which are the presage of death upon you? These all have a voice in them.

2. Think now what a terrible thing it is to be cut down for your barrenness, do not make a mock at destruction, but be afraid of excision; consider therefore.

1. What a loss you will then sustain. Then will you lose all at once, and for ever. You are then cast out of the vineyard, and all the advantages of it are gone, no more to be recruited: then you will have no more Sabbaths, no more counsels, and instructions, no more warnings and calls, no more secret strivings of the Spirit of God, no more day of grace, no more hopes of salvation to eternity. Is it a light matter with you now to think of losing all these? I can assure you that it will not be so in the recognition: when you shall look back from the pit where you are going, and from where there is no returning, and there remember all these things, it will be a far more bitter memento than Jerusalem's was in the land of Assyria.

2. What an account you will have to give in to God when he shall come to cut you down. Then will you wish that you had never grown in such a soil, been within such a pale, enjoyed so much cost and labor as was laid out upon you: then will you wish that you had grown in the remotest desert, where God and Christ had never been heard of. When God shall count up to you all that he has done for you, all the privileges which you enjoyed by his benignity, all the free offers that he made to you, and endeavours which he industriously used with you, to persuade you to give up your selves to his fear, and service, and all the patience with which he waited upon you, and all the wilful scorn and contumely which you cast upon this; and it will be a most fearful reckoning.

3. What plagues you will then suffer. Did you not know and consider what shall be then done with the fruitless fig-tree, when it is cut down, what more especial examples of God's severe revenge such shall be made, who had once all the means of grace waiting upon them, what a seven times heated furnace of fiery indignation these shall be cast into, one would think it should make their hearts ache, and their joints tremble; and Oh that God would in rich mercy set home the impression of these thoughts upon you now; that yet at the least in this your day, you would mind the things of your peace, before the last sand of God's patience be run out, and so these things be hidden from you: might it but drive you to Christ, bewailing heartily your barrenness, and earnestly supplication of him for his sanctifying Spirit, to make you fruitful, there would be still hope in Israel for this thing.