Doctrine: If Sinners Continue Unfruitful After All Endeavors, They Shall Perish Without Remedy

DOCTRINE. If sinners continue unfruitful after utmost endeavours used with them, they shall perish without remedy, without pity.

Though if they bear fruit at the last, they shall be spared, yet if finally they will not be brought to it, but remain in their natural barrenness, they must perish in the end: though God has spared them once and again as being loth that they should dy, yet he will then spare them no more.

There are three things intimated, as contained in the Doctrine.

1. That God will certainly bring destruction upon them in the end. There shall be no escaping for them: all the patience with which he has waited upon them, and good will which he has shewn to them, loving and kind entreaties which he has urged upon them, will not secure them from his wrath, or be any evidence to them that he will save and not destroy them: sinners are ready to say so; but God would have them to know and be assured of the contrary (Psalm 50:22).

2. That their church-privileges will not save them. Many are ready to think that the Sanctuary shall shelter them, whatever they be, how obstinately soever they refuse to hearken to the voice of God, yet the Temple shall save them; they are in the vineyard, and no evil can come at them; this was the carnal confidence of these Jews, which our Savior Christ would put them from entertaining, and bring them to see that impenitence would break an hole in the wall, and open a way for wrath to come upon them, and all they could challenge could not secure them, and see (Jeremiah 9:25, 26).

3. That when it comes to this, they shall then have none to plead for them. That a sinner under the Gospel may sin himself out of all pity, and beyond the prayers of the godly: they may go on so far in their obstinacy, that even they who have been most sollicitous for them, and have many a time with tears begged of God, to spare and forbear them, shall have done on this account, leave off praying for them, and stand in the gap between an angry God and them no longer: and now the way to God's wrath stands open, and there will be none to obstruct it; none to stay his hand or keep him back from vengeance; the hearts that before melted for them, shall now be hardened against them, and they shall readily comply with, and rejoice in the judgments of God that shall fall upon them (Psalm 52:5, 6).

This is a solemn truth, and many sinners are hard of believing it, having taken up strong persuasions about the mercy of God, as if it were inconsistent with that thus to do by them: but the Word of God is full of conviction on this account, enough to take off such vain opinions from men's minds if they will believe that.

This Doctrine may be cleared and confirmed in these conclusions.

1. That God can be highly provoked with sinners in the visible Church. Indeed he is nowhere so incensed against any sinners as those that sin there: all that belong there are not such as he has set his heart upon: he hates sin wherever he sees it; his pure eyes cannot behold it without detestation, and it is most grievous to him where he has used the most of means to draw men from it, and where he expects holiness. The Church is a company of holy ones, by separation for God, by profession, and by external denomination; holiness is that which God calls for, and they are devoted to: if therefore they be otherwise, he must needs take it in ill part, and it must stir up his jealousy against them. The Scripture affords us many instances of God's anger that has been stirred against such as have been taken near to him, and born the name of his people upon them, how often was God angry with Israel in the Wilderness, and in the land of Canaan? How many ways did he take to testify his displeasure against them? Hence that (Jeremiah 11:15), What has my beloved to do in my house, seeing she has wrought lewdness with many, if men in covenant with God, will live in sin, he will not bear it, yes the very Covenant threatening is out against them? And that is a witness of his displeasure.

2. That nothing is more provoking to God than for these to persist in wickedness; notwithstanding all means possible used to reclaim them. Although all sin be provoking to him, yet obstinacy and unreclaimableness in it renders them that commit it most of all displeasing in his sight: and this is aggravated proportionally to the means that have been used with them; and that is accumulated, when these have been carried on after signal tokens of his anger and eminent deliverances out of his hand, and renewed endeavours with fresh and increased importunity urged upon them. Though men sin, yet if they will be reclaimed, by afflictions, by deliverances, by earnest calls and entreaties, God can readily pass by all this provocation, and be atoned to the sinner; but if he harden his heart under all this, and goes on still in his loose and sinful ways, not giving ear to the voice of God: if he remains unchanged, impenitent, and in his natural state; this carries the greatest offence in it. This is the complaint of Christ (Matthew 23:37), How oft would I have gathered your children, but you would not. This was it that made God's anger to burn so hotly against Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 36:15, 16). This is his very quarrel with them (Amos 4:6), Yet have you not returned to me, says the Lord.

3. That there are fearful threatenings out against the finally impenitent. The truth is, all the terrible menaces of the Word of God are most properly belonging to such as these. It is not this or that sin in it self, that holds the sinner bound under the curse; for, let it have been what it will, of what sort or degree soever, yet if men do truly repent of it, that will turn away the wrath of God, and take off the threatening from them: but it is impenitency added to [illegible] that continues a man under the curse, and perseverance in it, that makes his case to be remediless. When God sent his Prophets [illegible] the most fearful denunciations of wrath, they were still to add invitations to repentance, and make encouraging promises of mercy in case they did prevail: but they were withal to assure them, that if they did not return those judgments should take place upon them without avoidance (Isaiah 1:19, 29; Psalm 7:10, 11). This is it which makes iniquity to be their ruin. If they had hearkened to the voice of God, believed his word, and obeyed his counsels, he would have turned his hand upon their enemies, and saved them; but because they would not so do, therefore did his wrath fall upon them.

4. That God has fixed a time how long he will wait for the sinner's conversion, before he puts these threatenings of his in execution. God is pleased first to threaten before he strikes the blow: and because this is one of the courses which he uses with men to persuade them to return, he gives them time afterwards, and calls aloud to them to consider and amend. Now this is God's long sufferance; and the duration of it depends upon his mere pleasure. But though we cannot tell how long it shall be, yet he knows, for he has appointed it in his holy purpose; he tells how long the old world shall be waited on (Genesis 6:3), thus long he will tarry no longer: he has set every sinner a day, and his call is limited to it: it says, today, while it is called today, that is, while it is a day of grace and patience; and because it is a day, it therefore has its bounds, and will have an end; it will not continue always. God can bear a great while, but he will not do so for ever: he can, as patient as he is, be weary with forbearing, and he will so be when that day is run out.

5. That if the sinner withstands God's time, he will unavoidably bring these threatenings upon his own head. Though God's menaces be conditional, yet they are real: he never intended them merely for the affrighting of man, but is resolved that they shall take place according to the true import of them. He says, if the sinner repents [illegible] and so says, that [illegible] neither [illegible] any [illegible] sinners [illegible] while [illegible] he will [illegible] and though [illegible] shall be no longer than the [illegible] and when the day of patience is at an end, the day of vengeance will tread upon the heels of it, and shall have no mercy in it (Isaiah 27:11). He that made them will have no mercy on them, and he that formed them will show them no favor. So Ezekiel 7:2, 3, 4. This is a day of revenges, and God will then make all his words good, and sinners' experience shall throughly convince them, that he did not speak in jest, though before they laughed at all forewarnings, and seemed to desire the day of the Lord.

6. That God's holiness and justice do stand engaged for the sinner's destruction. It must therefore needs be: this renders it unavoidable. Sinners please themselves with dreams of mercy, as if there were no other attribute in God but that, concerned about them: but know it, that if ever any sinner be saved, mercy and truth must meet together, righteousness and peace must kiss each other. Final barrenness cuts off the man from saving mercy, because holiness and justice do forbid it. Holiness is God bound for his own glory, so as not to bear any thing that stands in the way of it; now as it is God's glory to forgive the penitent, so it would be a wrong to it to spare the obstinate; he would lose the glory of his truth in his threatenings, yes the glory of his having honor by the creature that will pay him none. Justice also stands in the way; for every sinner is devoted to destruction by the law-threatening, to which the justice of God stands obliged; there is but one way to salve this justice in the justifying of a sinner, and that is by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to him, which must be according to the condition of the new covenant, which the sinner by his obstinacy keeps himself from, and therefore has no claim to the privileges of it; and so he must needs perish.

7. That gracious souls desire the sinner's salvation only in God's way. It is true, every sanctified soul has a love to the souls of others, and earnestly desires that they may be saved, and is willing to do all that he can for the procuring of it: but yet grace has taught every one that truly fears God, to subordinate all his aims, ends, desires to the glory of God, which is the ultimate end that all ought to propound to themselves in every thing. These desires are therefore limited, as to the way for the accomplishment of them, he would have the sinner to be saved, but he would not have him to be saved in his sins, for that would bring dishonor to God, but he would have him to be converted and changed, sanctified and made fruitful, and so to be saved; because this is the only way in which God brings men to salvation, so as to be glorified in it: and for this end it is that he does so much labor for his conversion, and pray so earnestly to God, that he would change his heart. How often is Paul begging for grace in behalf of those whom he writes to?

8. That these, if they find their last essays frustrated, are apt to grow discouraged. There is indeed too much pronitude in the hearts of God's people to sink under discouragement when they ought not, and they are fain to labor with their own misgiving spirits to animate them: but it is of God many times, and yet very righteously, and in anger to sinners, to take away all hopes from his servants. And though he does not say in so many words, as he did to the Prophet Jeremiah, pray no more for them, for I will not hear you, yet he sometimes providentially stops their mouths, and they look upon such as beyond their hope, and thereupon all their endeavours with and for them begin to grow languid and faint.

9. And when it comes to this, there is now nothing to hold back God's hand of revenge from falling upon such sinners. While these stood in the gap, they kept off the judgments of God, at least from cutting down and rooting out those sinners; while they were earnest with God to spare and try them, his hands were held back, and he knew not how to destroy them: but now God has, by silencing of them, made a way to his wrath, the breach stands wide open, and there is nothing in view but ruin, ready to fall upon sinners; all means having been tried to the utmost, and nothing remaining unessayed, all patience having been vilely abused and trampled upon, all hopes are now quite gone, and what shall God do with them now but cut them down?