Think how monstrous this is. Revolve in your own minds the several aggravations of your sinful neglect before mentioned, and labour to feel the weight of them upon your own spirits. Think, what time you have lost from pleasant delightful walking with God! what damage you have done yourselves! how far you might have attained! how much you are cast behind in your preparations for a blessed eternity! what wrong you have done Him, whom you took for the God of your life, to whom you vowed your hearts and souls! how little kindly and truly you have dealt with him!

Return to him with weeping and supplication. Open yourselves freely to him. Let him hear you bemoaning yourselves; pour out your souls to him, in large acknowledgments and confessions of your guiltiness,-which, while you keep silence, will consume your bones and waste you to nothing. Remember whence you are fallen, and repent and do your first works. Till then, He hath this against you, that you have left your first love. Consider, is it not a grievous thing to you? Does it not pain your hearts, that your Lord and Redeemer should have somewhat against you, as it were laid up, noted, put on record, and, as himself remarkably expresses it, sealed up among his treasures.b Is this a small thing with you, when that must be apprehended to be his sense, "I remember the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals: and now, since

a Rev. ii. 5.

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those former days, what iniquity hast thou found in me, that thou art gone far from me, and hast walked after vanity, and art become vain ?" How confounding a thing were it, if he should say, "O my people, what have I done unto thee, and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me." How becoming is it, and suitable to the case, to cast down a wounded bleeding heart before the Lord, and be abased in the dust at the foot-stool of his mercy-seat!

Though your sins be great and heinous, yet apprehend you are before a mercy-seat; there is forgiveness with him, that he may be feared. How would this apprehension promote the humiliation which the case requires! A sullen despondency, that excludes hope of mercy, hardens the heart, and continues the sinful comfortless distance therefore, apply yourselves to him; seek his pardon in the blood of the Redeemer; know you need it, and that it is only upon such terms to be obtained. When you come with serious unfeigned acknowledgments of your offensive neglect of him, to seek forgiveness at his hand, he will be easy to forgive. How should this melt you down before him! and this is what his own word obliges you to apprehend and believe of him. These words he hath required to be proclaimed to you; "Return you backsliding ones, and I will not cause mine. anger to fall upon you; for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever.

Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against the Lord your God." What heart should not break and bleed at this overture? You can be recovered to no capacity of delighting in God, as heretofore, till you sensibly feel the need of great forgiveness, and have a disposition of heart inwardly to relish the sweetness and pleasantness of it; till those words agree with the sense of your hearts, and you can, as in a transport, cry out, "O the blessedness of the man whose iniquity is forgiven, and whose sin is covered!"a And now, when you are come thus far, if the temper of your spirit be right in this, there will be, in conjunction with the desire, the hope and value of forgiveness, at least an equal dread of such future strangeness and breaches between God and you.

Most earnestly seek and crave a better and more fixed temper of spirit, more fully determined and bent toward God; that your heart may be directed into the love of God; that the spirit of love, power, and a sound mind may bear rule in you. Be intent upon the recovery of that healthy soundness which, wheresoever it hath place, will with a certain steady power, and a strong inclining bent of love, carry your heart toward God. And take heed lest you be satisfied in the expectation and hope of forgiveness, as to your former neglects of God, without this.

There is a manifest prejudice daily accruing to the christian name and profession, by the un

a Psal. xxxii. 1,

b 2 Thess. iii. 5.

equal estimation which that part of the doctrine of Christ, which concerns the work of his spirit upon us (regeneration, the new creature, repentance, and a holy life,) hath in comparison of that which concerns his performances and acquisitions for us (expiation of sin, satisfaction of divine justice, forgiveness and acceptance with God.) How sweet ravishing transporting doctrines, and how pure Gospel are these latter accounted by many, who esteem the former cold, sapless, unpleasant notions! Thence comes christian religion to look with so distorted a face, that it is hardly to be known; being made to seem, as if it imported only a design to save some persons from divine wrath and justice, without ever giving them that disposition of heart, which is necessary both to their serving of God and their blessedness in him. This is not to be imputed so much to the misrepresentation made of it by them whose business it hath been to instruct others, though of them too many may have been very faulty in almost suppressing, or insisting little upon doctrines of the former strain, while the stream of their discourses hath mostly run upon the other; for it must be acknowledged that, by very many in our age, the absolute necessity of the great heart-change has been most clearly represented, and as urgently pressed as perhaps in most ages that have gone before. But the matter is plainly to be most attributed to that depravedness of man's nature, whence there is a most unequal and partial reception of the truth of God; and that which, taken apart by

itself, seems to import more of indulgence to sinners, is readily catched at; but that, which more directly strikes at the very root of the sin, is let pass, as if it had never been spoken. And, so, men make up to themselves a Gospel of this tenor and import, that-let the temper of their spirits towards God be what it will-if they rely and rest upon the righteousness of Christ, God will be reconciled to them; and they think, they need take no further care: but whatever is said in the gospel of Christ, of the necessity of being born of God, of partaking a divine nature, of putting off the old man, and putting on the new, &c. is looked upon, as if it had been thrown in by chance, and signified nothing; and the other, without this, is thought to be pure Gospel, as if these doctrines were impertinent additions and falsifications. Will not such men understand, that the detracting of any thing from the instrument or testament of a man, as well as adding thereto, makes it another thing, and none of his act or deed; and so, that their pure gospel, as they call it, is another Gospel, nay-because there cannot be another-no gospel? Will they not understand, how simply impossible it is, in the very nature of the thing, that the end should be attained, of bringing men to blessedness, i. e. to a delightful rest in God, without their having a new nature, a heart inclined and bent toward God, and wrought to a conformity and agreement with God's holy nature and will, to which the offer of hope and forgiveness by the blood of Christ is designed to win and form them? For