your salvation is not in the power of any of them. What, if your old companions tempt you! They can but TEMPT you; they cannot CONSTRAIN you to any evil. All the devils in hell, or men on earth, cannot damn you; no, nor make you sinners, if you do it not your ownselves. Refuse not Christ, and he will not refuse you. And when he is willing, if you be but willing,-truly willing to be saved from sin and misery, and to have Christ, grace, and glory in the use of the means which God hath appointed you,—neither earth nor hell can hinder your salvation. Who, but yourselves, now keep you from forsaking the company, the house, or the baits which have deceived you? Who, but yourselves, keep you from lamenting your sin and flying to Christ, from begging mercy and giving yourselves to God? If you think that serious Christians are the happiest persons in the world, refuse not to be such yourselves. It will be your own doing, your own wilful obstinacy, if you perish. But of this I have already said more in my "Call to the Unconverted."

19. Dare you deliberately resolve or bargain to take your fleshly pleasures for your part, instead of all your hopes of heaven? I hope none of you are yet so mad. I think it is but few (if any) of the witches that make so express a bargain with the devil. If they did, O how they would tremble when they see their glass almost run out, and death at hand! If you dare not make such a bargain in plain words, O do not do the same in the choice of your hearts, and in the practice of your lives, deceiving yourselves by thinking that you do it not, when you do. It is God (and not you) that maketh the conditions of salvation and damnation. If you choose that life which, God hath told us, is the condition of damnation, and if you finally refuse that life which God hath made the condition of salvation, it will in effect be all the same as to choose damnation and to refuse salvation. He that chooseth deadly poison, or refuseth his necessary food, in effect chooseth death, and refuseth life. God hath said, "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if, by the Spirit, ye mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live." (Rom. viii.) Christ tells you, that, unless you are born again and converted, you cannot enter into his kingdom; (John iii. 3, 5; Matt. xviii. 3;) and that "without holiness none shall see

God." Refuse these and choose the world and sinful pleasures, and you refuse salvation, and shall have no better than you choose. What you judge best, choose resolvedly; and do not cheat yourselves.

20. Have you no natural love to your parents, or your country? O what inhuman cruelty it is, to break the hearts of those from whom you had your being, and who were tender of you when you could not help yourselves! Doubtless, one reason why God hath put so strong a love in parents to their children, and made your birth and breeding so costly to your mother, and made the milk which is formed in her own body to be the first nourishment of your lives, is, to oblige you to answerable love and obedience. And if, after all this, you prove worse than brutes, and become the grief of the souls of those who thus bred, and loved, and nourished you, do you think God will not at last make this far sadder to you, than ever it was to THEM? If cruelty to an enemy (much more to a stranger, to a neighbour, to a friend!) be so hateful to the God of love that it goeth not unrevenged, O what will unnatural cruelty to parents bring upon you! Yea, even in this life, as honouring father and mother hath a special promise of prosperity and long life, so dishonouring and grieving parents is usually punished with some notable calamity, as a forerunner of the GREAT REVENGE hereafter.

You cannot but perceive that such as live in sensuality, lust, and wickedness, are the great troublers of church and state. God himself hath said it, "There is no peace to the wicked." (Isa. xlviii. 22.) "For the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt: there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. The way of peace they knew not; there is no judgment in their goings; they have made them crooked paths; whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace." (Isa. lix. 8.) They give no peace to others, and God will deny peace to themselves. Yea, the nature of their own sin denieth it to them, as broken bones and griping sickness deny ease to the body. And can you think that you shall become the shame of the church and the troublers of the land, and that God will not trouble you for it? If you will be enemies of God and of your country, you will prove the sorest enemies to yourselves.

Who is the gainer by all this? No one in the world; unless you will call it the 'devil's gain,' to have his malicious,

cruel will fulfilled. And surely to please the devil and a fleshly lust, fancy or appetite, can never compensate all your losses, nor comfort you under the sufferings which you wilfully bring upon yourselves.

of

Young men, the reason I thus deal with you by way question is, that I may, if possible, engage your own thoughts in answering them. For I find most are aptest to learn of themselves and indeed, without yourselves and your own serious thoughts, we cannot help you to true understanding. He that readeth the wisest lecture to boys or men who take no heed to what is said, yea, or who will not make it their own study to understand and remember, doth but cast away his labour. It is a hard thing to save any man from himself; but there is no saving any man without himself; without his own consent and labour. If you will but now take these twenty questions into your serious thoughts in secret, and consider them till you can give them such an answer as reason should allow, and as you will stand to before God when the mouth of all iniquity shall be stopped, I should not doubt but you will reap the benefit.

O what should a man do, who pitieth blind and wilful sinners, to make them willing and desirous of their own recovery! At this point all stops. And must it stop at this? Are you not willing? And will you not so much as consider the reasons that should make you willing, when heaven or hell must be the consequence? O what a thing is a blind mind, and a dead and hardened heart! What a befooling thing is fleshly lust! O what need had mankind of a Saviour! And what need have all of a Sanctifier, and of his holy word, and of all the holy means of grace!

Poor sinners! O let not the counsel and tears of your teachers be brought in as witnesses against you to your condemnation! O add not this to all their griefs, that their counsel and their sorrows must sink you the more deeply into hell! Alas, it were sadness enough to them to see that it is all vain! Let not this counsel of mine to you be rejected to the increase of your guilt and misery: if it do you no good, it will leave you worse. Were I present with you, I should not think it too much, would that prevail, to kneel down to you, and beg that you would but well consider your own case and ways, and think before of what will follow, and that you would study a wise and satisfactory answer to

the questions put to you till you are resolved. Your case is not desperate; mercy is yet offered to you; the day of grace is not yet past; God is not unwilling to receive you; Christ is not unwilling to be your Saviour, if you consent. No difficulty in the world maketh us afraid of your damnation, but your own foolish choice and your wicked wills. Our care is neither to make God merciful, to make Christ's merits and sacrifice sufficient, nor to get God to promise you pardon if you repent and come to him by Christ: all this is done already. But that which is undone, is, to make you considerate and truly willing, and to live as those that indeed are willing to let go the poisonous pleasures of sin, to take God and heaven for your hope and portion, and to be saved and ruled by Christ and sanctified by his Spirit, and to receive his daily help and mercies to this end, in the use of his appointed means; and, without this, you are undone for ever. And is there any hurt in all this? If there were, is it worse than the filth of sin, and the plagues that follow here and for ever? Worthy is he to hear at last, "Depart from me, thou worker of iniquity," and to be thrust away from the hopes of heaven, who, after all that can be said and done, chooseth sin as more desirable than this God, this Saviour, this Sanctifier, and this glory.

CHAP. VIII.

General Directions to the willing.

THOUGH the blindness and obstinacy of fleshly sinners too often frustrate great endeavours, yet we may well hope that the prayers and tears of parents, and the calls of God, may prevail with many; and I may hope, that some that have read what is before written, will say, 'We are willing to hear and learn that we may be saved: tell us what it is that we must do.' And on that hope, I shall give such miscarrying youth some general advice, as well as some counsel about their particular cases, and all as briefly as I am able. O that the Lord would make you who read this, to be truly willing to practise these ten directions following! How happy may you yet be!

1. Set your understandings seriously and diligently to

the work for which they are made, and consider well what is your interest and your duty, till you come to a fixed resolution as to what is for your good, and what is for your hurt, and what that good or hurt will be.

Should it be a hard thing to persuade a man in his wits to love himself, and to think what is good or hurtful to himself, especially for everlasting? Why are you men, if you will live like dogs? What do you with understandings, if you will not use them? For what will you use them, if not for your own good and to avoid misery? What good will you desire, if not everlasting joy and glory? And what hurt will you avoid, if not hell-fire? Have you reason, and can you live as if these were not worth the thinking on? Will you bestow your thoughts all the day and year upon you know not what nor why, and not one hour soberly think of such important things as these? O sirs! will you go out of the world before you well think whither you must go? Will you appear before the Judge of souls, to give up your great account before you think of it, and how it must be done? Is he worthy of the help of GRACE, that will not use his natural REASON? I beg it of you, as ever you care what becomes of you for ever, that you will some time alone set yourselves for one hour seriously to think, who made you, and why; what you owe him; how much you depend on him; what you have done against him; how you have spent your time; in what case your souls are; what Christ hath done for you; and what he is or would be to you; whether you are sanctified and forgiven; what God's Spirit must do for you; and what you must be and do, if you will be saved; and if it be otherwise, whither it is that you must go.

2. Therefore I next advise and entreat you, that you live not as at a great distance from eternity, foolishly flattering yourselves with the deceitful promises of long life and were it sure to be an hundred years, remember how quickly and certainly they will end. Oh! time is nothing! therefore think of nothing in this world as separated from the world to come. Whatever you are doing, or saying, or thinking, the boat is hastening to the gulf. You are posting to death and judgment: which way soever you go, by wealth or poverty, health or sickness, busy or idle, single or married, you are going still to the grave and to eternity. Judge then of every thing as it tendeth to that end and