ment concerning sin is but worldly, outward, and respecting others: your own transgressions you can pass over lightly, count little of them; and be well content if you can force a tear, in the remembrance of some blacker passages of your life, when the decency of some more solemn action would seem to demand it from you.-Would you choose God's law, if you might avoid it? Do you not take offence at it? Are you not willing to believe it is not so strict and exact, as yet you cannot but suspect it to be? You should have more room and indulgence given you; cannot digest the nicety and exactness it enjoins; would prefer a religion that was more easy, which would not require so much attendance. You regard God's law with a certain secret aversion to it, and all the obedience you pay it, is against the grain.—The providence of God; have you a discerning eye to search it out, or a quiet mind to submit to it? You can talk of it, I know; you can condemn others, when resignedly they bear not correction and disappointment: but when the matter is your own, then the case differs. Then you can murmur and complain, rely upon your own prudence, or trust upon man for help; as if you believed not, that God ordereth all things about you. You know, in a certain way, that all creatures wait upon God, and that he distributes his blessings to them, as he will, out of the storehouse of his boundless goodness and fatherly care: but you are not apt to observe his dispensations, and in your own particular find no complacency and security of soul, that he condescends to guide you. Just the contrary; his daily bounties, and the more extraordinary interpositions of his love, come down upon you unobserved: and, when you are afflicted, you acknowledge not his hand; restless till you are delivered, and murmuring because you are stricken.-You can talk too of death: but you care not to think of it, to bring it near, to live in the constant expectation of it. It weighs with you so lightly, that you can follow one and another to the grave, and yet retain the confidence of life: or if for a moment you see yourself as within the reach of death, yet, by and by, the frightful monster disappears, and troubles you no more. You can talk of heaven also: but you have not explored the distant country; the glories of it, the joys at God's right hand, are unknown to and untasted by you. When you hear of heaven, as the seat of blessedness, you cannot but desire that some day you may have your place there; because you cannot but wish to be happy, (as who does not?) However, you find yourself in no manner of haste to be gone to this better country; nor, with all your uniformity of worship, have you once laboured after those dispositions of mind, and that spiritual attire, which becomes the company and the business of heaven. The best apprehension you have of heaven is, that it is a state you would possess, when you have done with the world; and which therefore you take up in your thoughts, when you have no other employment.—And what is your judgment of hell? You judge it terrible: but do you also judge it just; no more than the due recompense of sin? Have you judged it the just wages of any sins your self have committed? perhaps find, that you only suspect its reality; that you have but a faint apprehension of its horrors; that, to say the utmost of your judgment about it, you regard it only as the wages of gross and notorious sinners, while such as you have done nothing to merit it. The view of hell hath not taught you the sinfulness of sin: wherefore, regarding your own iniquities with a superficial and favourable eye, you have never yet learned to fear the vengeance of God, proclaimed against all manner of transgressions against his Divine Majesty.-And eternity, that awful endless state of being; doth it not pass before your mind like an airy form, scarcely gain remembrance there, like a dream in the night? Your apprehension of it is so unsubstantial, that the impression it makes vanishes as soon as it appears; and you remain in gay security, as if there were no such state: your days go forward, and you draw nearer to the wonderful abyss, and yet, approaching as it is, you regard it with the same cold stupidity; nor doth it gain any influence to weigh prevailingly in Look well to it; you may the soul. Speak the truth now:- -With all the show of religion you are so vain of, are you not a very trifler with God and your soul; rather playing with them, than acting with any sense and meaning? Surely your judgment is so vain, slight and momentary, in the greatest matters of salvation, that you must be said to apprehend them, as if you apprehended them not. The careless sinner is more consistent; he doth not pretend to what he is not. He knows all this just as you do; thinks of these things too, when he cannot avoid it; and the reflection dismays him while it lasts; nor can he be at rest, but while security, interest, and pleasure keep it at a distance. The careless sinner is a downright natural man; nor doth he labour to cheat himself, or to deceive others, into an opinion that he is one who minds the things of God and salvation. If God will save him just as he is, it is well; and some day or other he shall be at leisure to thank him; but, for the present, he hath too high and lively apprehensions of the things about him, to conceive any great apprehension of what is absent and unseen. He knows Christ to be the son of God, and the Saviour of men but Christ offers him nothing which suits his palate. His expectation and hope spring from carnal joys and present interests; and since Christ leads him not to these, he must be forgotten. He sees not how the Holy Spirit should give him worldly ease, peace, and gratification: it is not sin, which he dreads, but misery; the disappointment, cross, and injury of the day. His own will and pleasure is his rule; and self-gratification extinguishes all manner of attention to the law, the pleasure, and will of God. Providence he never thinks of; so carried on is he in a scene of contrivances, to prevent misfortune, to purchase wealth, or indulge pleasure. He has no time to think of death, amidst the hurry of business, or the entertainments of company and recreation. Heaven must be minded at another season; when the projects of life shall have been completed. Hell can weigh but little with him; seeing the great evils he feels and fears, are the frowns of men, the damage of his fortune, and the disappointment of his pleasure. He cannot look into eternity; some object of sense ever catches his eye, and engages his attention. He is not, you find, entirely without understanding: but the apprehensions of the things of this life outweigh the other, and leave them out of sight. His heart unhumbled and unbroken, he promises himself happiness upon earth; and, however unjustly, conceives that the increase of wealth, advancement of station, the well-spread table, and all things at his command, will render him happy. Under these deceitful apprehensions he lives; looks no farther; nor feels the importance of spiritual and eternal interests, but with a secondary impression, with a weak and vanishing influence. Thus now you may be able to discover what kind of apprehension in all things the new creature is possessed with, and how different it is from the judgment of the natural man, whether formal or careless. You see his apprehensions are humble, near, and I must add, enduring: for enduring they must be; not a sudden heat, caught up upon occasions, seeing these apprehensions are the very principles which direct the whole course of the new creature, determining his choice, and influencing his hopes and fears. There is the widest difference, you find, between the practical judgment of the renewed understanding, and the cold speculative apprehension of the unrenewed: this apprehends all the things which concern salvation, dryly and curi |