Use 3

USE III.

This may serve to humble and abase us for all our barrenness. Are there not too many of us that have never done any thing for God in sincerity, that have brought no glory to his name at all, that have lived in their sins, and despised all the means used with them? And is it not a matter of shame and sorrow to you, to think what kind of creatures you are, what God esteems of you, and what you do really prove your selves to be? A meer burden to the places you live in? Oh! how low should it lay us? How vile should it make us to be in our own eyes, to think that we are not only good for nothing, but that we also do mischief? The places we dwell in suffer by us; we do not serve God our selves, and we hinder others also from serving him as they might, and we hereby expose them to the anger of God, and pull down a great deal of his wrath upon our people; and it is enough to make the best of us to blush at our selves, when we consider that so much barrenness, so much cumber: that all our short comings in living answerable to our profession, & Gods expense upon us, are not only to our own loss, but the damage of the whole.