work is principally to be done between you and God, who alone can save you or destroy you: and yet do you forget him, and live as if you had no business with him, when you have your salvation to obtain from him, and your damnation to prevent? Have you such business as this with any other ?

2. You have a strict and righteous judgment to undergo in order to this salvation or damnation. You must stand before the holy majesty, and be judged by the governor of the world: you must be there accused, and found guilty or not guilty; and judged as fulfillers, or as breakers of the holy covenant of grace: you must be set on the right hand or on the left: you must answer for all the time that you here spent, and for all the means and mercies which you here received, and for that you have done, whether it were good or evil: and it is now in this life that all your preparation must be made, and all that must be done, upon which your justification or condemnation will then depend. It is between God and you that all this business must be done: and yet can you live as negligently towards him, as if you had no business with him?

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3. You have a death to die, a change to make, which must be made but once; which will be the entrance upon endless joy or pain: do you think this needeth not your most timely and diligent preparation you must struggle with pains, and faint with weakness, and feel death taking down your earthen tabernacle: you must then have a life that is ending to review, and all that you have done laid open to your more impartial judgment; you must then see time as at an end, and the last sand running, and your candle ready to go out, and leave the snuff; you must then look back upon all that you have had from the world, as ending; and upon all that you have done as that which cannot be undone again, that you may do it better; and you must have a more serious look into eternity, when you are stepping thither, than you can now conceive of: and doth all this need no preparation? It is with God that all that business must be now transacted, that must make your death to be comfortable or safe. If now you will only converse with men, and know no business that you have with God, you shall find at last to your exceeding terror, that you are in his hands, and passing to his bar, and that it is God that then you have to do with, when your business with all the world is at an end: he will then have something to do with you, if you will now find nothing to do with him.

4. In order to all this you have reconciliation to receive from God, and the pardon of all your sins to be obtained. For woe to you if then you are found under the guilt of any sin. Look back upon your lives, and remember how you have lived in the word, and what you have been doing how you have spent your time, in youth, and in your riper age; and how many sinful thoughts, words, and deeds you have been guilty of; how often you have sinfully pleased your appetites, gratified your flesh, and yielded to temptations, abused mercy, and lost your time: how often you have neglected your duty, and betrayed your souls: how long you have lived in forgetfulness of God and your salvation; minding only the things of the flesh and of the world: how often you have sinned ignorantly and against knowledge, through carelessness and throughrashness, through negligence and through presumption, in passion, and upon deliberation; against convictions, purposes and promises: how often you have sinned against the precepts of piety to God, and of justice and charity to men. Think how your sins are multiplied and aggravated, more in number than the hours of your lives: aggravated by a world of mercies; by the clearest teachings, and the loudest calls, and sharpest reproofs, and seasonable warnings, and by the long and urgent importunities of grace. Think of all these, and then consider whether you have nothing now to do with God, whether it be not a business to be followed with all possible speed and diligence, to procure the pardon of all these sins: you have no such business as these to transact with men: you may have business with them which your estates depend upon, or which touch your credit, or lives; but you have no business with men, unless in subordination to God, which your salvation doth depend upon: your eternal happiness is not in their hands: they may kill your bodies, if God permit them, but not your souls. You need not solicit them to pardon your sins against God: it is a small matter how you are judged of by man: you have one that judgeth you, even the Lord. No man can forgive sin, but God only. O then how early, how earnestly should you cry to him for mercy! Pardon must be obtained now or never: there is no justification for that man at the day of judgment, who is not forgiven and justified now.

Blessed then is the man whose iniquity is forgiven, whose sin is covered, and to whom it is not imputed by the Lord.' Woe to that man that ever he was born, who is then found without the pardon of his sins! Think of this as the case deserves, and then think if

5. Moreover, you have peace of conscience to obtain; and that depends upon your peace with God. Conscience will be your accuser, condemner, and tormentor, if you make it not your friend, by making God your friend. Consider what conscience hath to say against you, and how certainly it will speak home, when you would be loth to hear it and bethink you how to answer all its accusations, and what will be necessary to make it a messenger of peace; and then think your business with God to be but small, if you are able. It is no easy matter to get assurance that God is reconciled to you, and that he hath forgiven all your sins.

6. In order to all this, you must be united to Jesus Christ, and be made his members, that you may have part in him, and that he may wash you by his blood, and that he may answer for you to his Father; woe to you if he be not your righteousness, and if you have not him to plead your cause, and take upon him your final justification! None else can save you from the wrath of God: and he is the Saviour only of his body, he hath died for you without your consent, and he hath made general proclamation of pardon and salvation, before you consented to it: but he will not be united to you, nor actually forgive, justify and save you, without your own consent: therefore, that the Father may draw you to the Son, and may give you Christ, and life in him, when all your hope depends on it, you may see that you have more to do with God, than your senseless hearts have hitherto understood.

7. That you may have a saving interest in Jesus Christ, you must have sound repentance for all your former life of wickedness, and a lively, effectual faith in Christ: neither sin nor Christ must be made light of. Repentance must tell you to the very heart, that you have done foolishly in sinning, and that it is an evil and a bitter thing that you forsook the Lord, and that his fear was not in you: and thus your wickedness shall correct you and reprove you.' Faith must tell you that Christ is more necessary to you than food or life, and that there is no other name given under heaven by which you can be saved,' and it is not so easy nor so common a thing to repent and believe, as ignorant presumptuous sinners imagine. It is a greater matter to have a truly humbled, contrite heart, and to lothe yourselves for all your sins, and to lothe those sins, and resolvedly give up yourselves to Christ and to his Spirit for a holy life, than

or I repent, without any true contrition or renovation. It is a greater to betake yourselves to Jesus Christ as your only hope, to save you both from sin and from damnation, than barely through custom, and the benefit of education, to say, I do believe in Christ. I tell you it is so great a work to bring you to sound Repentance and Faith, that it must be done by the power of God himself, they are the gifts of God, you must have his Spirit to illuminate you, and show you the odiousness of sin, the intolerableness of the wrath of God, the necessity and sufficiency, the power and willingness of Christ; and to overcome all your prejudice, and save you from false opinions and deceits and to repulse the temptations of Satan, the world and the flesh, which will all rise up against you. All this must be done to bring you home to Jesus Christ, or else you will have no part in him, his righteousness and grace: and can you think that you have not most important business with God, who must do all this upon you, or else you are undone for ever!

8. Moreover you must have all the corruptions of your natures healed, and your sins subdued, and your hearts made new by sanctifying grace, and the image of God implanted in you, and your lives made holy and sincerely conformable to the will of God. All this must be done, or you cannot be acceptable to God, nor ever will be saved: though your carnal interests rise against it; though your old corrupted natures be against it; though your custom, pleasure, and worldly gain and honour be against it; though all your carnal friends and superiors be against it; though the devil will do all that he can against it, yet all this must be done or you are lost for ever: all this must be done by the Spirit of God; for it is his work to make you new and holy can you think then that the business is not great which you have with God; when you have tried how hard every part of this work is, to be begun and carried on, you will find you have more to do with God, than with all the world.

9. Moreover, in order to this, it is necessary that you read, hear and understand the gospel, which must be the means of bringing you to God by Christ: this must be the instrument of God, by which he will bring you to repent and believe, and by which he will renew your natures, and imprint his image on you, and bring you to love him, and obey his will. The word of God must be your counsellor, and your delight, and you must set your heart to it, and meditate in it day and night. Knowledge must be the means

little higher than their brethren, to hold the reins, have their wills, and be admired and adored in the world, or to get a large estate for themselves and their posterity, than to please their Maker, or to save their souls. It is the case of every sensual epicure, whose belly is his God, and serves his fancy, lust, and appetite before the Lord. It is the case of every unsanctified man, that seeks first the prosperity of his flesh, before the kingdom and righteousness of God, and is most careful and laborious to lay up a treasure on earth, and laboureth more (with greater estimation, resolution, and delight) for the meat that perisheth, than for that which endureth to everlasting life. All these (who are too great a part of the world, and too great a part of professed Christians) are taken up with creature converse; and yet think to escape the deluge of God's displeasure, because the Enochs and Noahs are so few who walk with God; and they think God will not destroy so many thus they think to be saved by their multitude, and to hide themselves in the crowd from God: they will go the wide and common path, and be of the mind that most are of: they will not be convinced till most men are convinced: that is, till their wisdom come too late, and cost them dearer than its worth, When all men are convinced that God should have been preferred before the world, and served before their fleshly lusts, as they will certainly and sadly be, then they will be convinced with the rest. When all men understand that life was given them to have done the work which eternal life depends on, then they will understand it with the rest. When all men shall discern between the righteous and the wicked; between those that serve God, and that serve him not, then they will discern it with the rest they will know what their business was in the world, and how much they had to do with God, when all men know it.

But O how much better for them had it been to have known it in time, while knowledge might have done them better service, than to make them feel the greatness of their sin and folly, and the hopes which once they had of happiness, and to help the sting of desperation continually to prick them at the heart: they would not be of so little a flock as that to which it was the good pleasure of God to give the kingdom. If you demand a reason of all this, their reason was in their sensual pleasures: they had fleshly appetites and lusts, and thereby could relish fleshly pleasures; but spiritual life and appetite they had none, and therefore relished not spiritual things had Christ, holiness, and heaven been

as suitable to their appetites, as the sweetness of their meat, drink, and lusts, and as suitable to their fancy as their worldly dignities and greatness were, they would then have made a better choice. They would have walked with God, if drunkenness, gluttony, pride, wantonness, covetousness and idleness, had been the way in which they might have walked with him. If these had been godliness, how godly would they have been? How certainly would they have come to heaven, if this had been the way? To be idle, proud, fleshly, and worldly, is that which they love; and to be humble, holy, heavenly, and mortified, is that which they hate, and cannot away with; their love and hatred proceed from their corrupt natures; and these are instead of reason to them. Their strong apprehensions of a present suitableness in fleshly pleasures to their appetites, and of a present unsuitableness of a holy life, keep out all effectual apprehensions of the excellencies of God, and of spiritual, heavenly delights, which cross them in the pleasures which they most desire.

But yet (their appetites corrupting their understandings as well as their wills) they will not be mad without some reason, nor reject their Maker and their happiness without some reason, nor neglect that holy work which they were made for, without some reason; let us hear then what it is.

CHAP. IIL

OBJECTIONS STATED AND ANSWERED.

Object. 1. They say, 'It is true that God hath much to do with us, and for us: but it follows not that we have so much to do with him, or for him, as you would have us to believe: for he is necessarily good, and necessarily doth good; and therefore will do so, whether we think of him or not: the sun will not give over shining on me, though I never think on it, or never pray to it, or give it thanks. Nor doth God need any service that we can do him, no more than the sun doth nor is he pleased any more in the praise of men, or in their works.'

Answ. 1. It is most certain that God is good as necessarily as he is God: but it is not true, that he must necessarily do good to you, or other individual persons, nor that he necessarily doth the good he doth them. As he is not necessitated to make toads and serpents as happy as men, or men as angels; so he is not necessitated to save the devils or damned souls, for he will not save them. He was under no greater a