Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

terposition of power, when sentence is gone forth against thee, were an act of rebellion against heaven, which these holy and excellent creatures would abhor. And when the final pleasure of the judge is known, instead of interceding in vain for the wretched criminal, they would rather, with ardent zeal for the glory of their Lord, and cordial acquiescence in the determination of his wisdom and justice, prepare to execute it. Yea, difficult as it may at present be to conceive it, it is a certain truth, that the servants of Christ, who now most tenderly love you, and most affectionately seek your salvation; not excepting those, who are allied to you in the nearest bonds of nature, or of friendship; even they shall put their amen to it. Now, indeed, their bowels yearn over you, and their eyes pour out tears on your account: now they expostulate with you, and plead with God for you, if by any means, while yet there is hope, you may be plucked as a fire-brand out of the burning*. But alas, their remonstrances, you will not regard and as for their prayers, what should they ask for you? What but this, that you may see yourselves to be undone and that, utterly despairing of any help from yourselves, or from any created power, you may lie before God in humility and brokenness of heart; that submitting yourselves to his righteous judgment, and in an utter renunciation of all self-dependance, and of all creature-dependance, you may lift up an humble look towards him, as almost from the depths of hell, if peradventure he may have compassion upon you, and may himself direct you to that only method of rescue, which, while things continue as in present circumstances they are, neither earth, nor hell, nor heaven can afford you.

The Lamentation of a Sinner, in this miserable Condition.

"OH doleful, uncomfortable, helpless state!O wretch that I am, to have reduced myself to it! Poor, empty, miserable, abandoned creature! Where is my pride, and the haughtiness of my heart! Where are my idol deities, whom I have loved, and served, after whom I have walked, and whom I have sought,t whilst I have been multiplying my transgressions against the majesty of heaven? Is there no heart to have compassion upon me? Is there no hand to save me? Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O my friends; for the hand of God hath touched met, hath seized me! I feel it pressing me hard, and what shall I do? Perhaps they have pity upon me: but alas, how feeble a Job xix. 23.

* Amosiv. 11.

+ Jer. viii. 2.

compassion! Only if there be any where in the whole compass of nature any help, tell me where it may be found! O point it out; direct me towards it; or rather, confounded and astonished as my mind is, take me by the hand, and lead me to it!

"O ye ministers of the Lord, whose office it is to guide and comfort distressed souls, take pity upon me! I fear I am a pattern of many other helpless creatures, who have the like. need of your assistance. Lay aside your other cares, to care for my soul; to care for this precious soul of mine, which lies as it were bleeding to death, (if that expression may be used,) while you perhaps hardly afford me a look; or, glancing an eye upon me, pass over to the other side*. Yet, alas, in a case like mine, what can your interposition avail, if it be alone: if the Lord do not help me, how can ye help me?+

"O God of the spirits of all flesh,t I lift up mine eyes unto thee, and cry unto thee, as out of the belly of hell. I cry unto thee, at least from the borders of it. Yet while I lie before thee in this infinite distress, I know, that thine almighty power and boundless grace can still find out a way for my recovery.

"Thou arthe, whom I have most of all injured and affronted; and yet from thee alone must I now seek redress. Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done evil in thy sight;¶ so that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest, though thou shouldst this moment adjudge me to eternal misery. And yet I find something that secretly draws me to thee, as if I might find rescue there, where I have deserved the most aggravated destruction. Blessed God, I have destroyed myself, but in thee is my help,** if there can be help at all.

"I know in the general, that thy ways are not as our ways, nor thy thoughts as our thoughts; but are as high above them, as the heavens are above the earth.++ Have mercy therefore upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies! Oh point out the path to the city of refuge! Oh lead me thyself in the way everlasting !|||| I know in the general, that thy gospel is the only remedy: Oh teach thy servants to administer it! Oh prepare mine heart to receive it! and suffer not, as in many instances, that malignity which has spread itself through all my nature, to turn that noble medicine into poison!"

* Luke x. 31.
¶ Psal. li. 4.
Psal. cxxxix. 24.

+ 2 Kings vi. 27.

** Hos. xiii. 9.

Numb. xvi. 22 ++ Isai. lv. 8, 9.

|| Jonah ii. 2.

‡‡ Psal. li. 1.

CHAP. VIII.

News of Salvation by Christ brought to the convinced and condemned Sinner.

The awful Things which have hitherto been said, intended not to grieve, but to help, §. 1. After some Reflection on the Pleasure with which a Minister of the Gospel may deliver the Message with which he is charged, §. 2. And some Reasons for the Repetition of what is in Speculation so generally known, §. 3. The Author proceeds briefly to declare the Substance of these glad Tidings; viz. That God, having in his infinite Compassion sent his Son to die for Sinners, is now reconcileable through him: §. 4-6. So that the most heinous Transgression shall be entirely pardoned to Believers, and they made completely and eternally happy, §. 7, 8. The Sinner's Reflection on this good News.

My dear reader! It is the great design of the gospel,

§. 1. and wherever it is cordially received, it is the glorious effect of it, to fill the heart with sentiments of love; to teach us to abhor all unnecessary rigour and severity, and to delight not in the grief, but in the happiness of our fellow creatures. I can hardly apprehend, how he can be a christian, who takes pleasure in the distress which appears even in a brute, much less in that of a human mind; and especially in such distress as the thoughts I have been proposing must give, if there be any due attention to their weight and energy. I have often felt a tender regret, while I have been representing these things; and I could have wished from mine heart, that it had not been necessary to have placed them in so severe and so painful a light. But now I am addressing myself to a part of my work, which I undertake with unutterable pleasure; and to that, which indeed I had in view, in all those awful things which I have already been laying before you. I have been shewing you, that, if you hitherto have lived in a state of impenitence and sin, you are condemned by God's righteous judgment, and have in yourself no spring of hope, and no possibility of deliverance, But I mean not to leave you under this sad apprehension, to lie down and die in despair, complaining of that cruel zeal, which has tormented you before the time.*

§. 2. Arise, O thou dejected soul, that art prostrate in the dust before God, and trembling under the terror of his righteous sentence; for I am commissioned to tell thee, that though thou hast destroyed thyself, in God is thine help. I bring the good tidings of great joy, which delight mine own heart, while I'

*Matt. viii. 29.

+ Hos. xiii. 9.

Luke ii. 10.

proclaim them, and will I hope reach, and revive thine; even the tidings of salvation, by the blood and righteousness of the Redeemer. And I give it thee for thy greater security, in the words of a gracious and forgiving God, that he is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, and not imputing to them their trespasses.*

*

§. 3. This is the best news that ever was heard, the most important message which God ever sent to his creatures: and though I doubt not at all, but living, as you have done, in a christian country, you have heard it often, perhaps a thousand and a thousand times; I will with all simplicity and plainness, repeat it to you again, and repeat it as if you had never heard it before. If thou, O sinner, shouldst now for the first time feel it, then will it be as a new gospel unto thee, though so familiar to thine ear; nor shall it be grievous for me to speak what is so common, since to you it is safet and necessary. They who are most deeply and intimately acquainted with it, instead of being cloyed and satiated, will hear it with distinguished pleasure ; and as for those who have hitherto slighted it, I am sure they had need to hear it again. Nor is it absolutely impossible, that some one soul at least may read these lines, who hath never been clearly and fully instructed in this important doctrine, though his everlasting all depends on knowing and receiving it. I will therefore take care, that such a one shall not have it to plead at the bar of God, that though he lived in a christian country, he was never plainly and faithfully taught the doctrine of salvation by Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life, by whom alone we come unto the Father.

§. 4. I do therefore testify unto you this day, that the holy and gracious majesty of heaven and earth, foreseeing the fatal apostacy into which the whole human race would fall, did not determine to deal in a way of strict and rigorous severity with us, so as to consign us over to universal ruin and inevitable damnation; but on the contrary, he determined to enter into a treaty of peace and reconciliation, and to publish to all, whom the gospel should reach, the express offers of life and glory, in a certain method, which his infinite wisdom judged suitable to the purity of his nature, and the honour of his government. This method was indeed a most atsonishing one, which, familiar as it is to our thoughts and our tongues, I cannot recollect and mention without great amazement. He determined to send his own

#2 Cor. v. 19.

+ Phil. iii. 1.

John xiv. 6.

VOL. I.

LI

Son into the world, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person,* partaker of his own divine perfections and honours, to be not merely a teacher of righteousness, and a messenger of but also a sacrifice for the sins of men: and grace, would consent to his saving them, on no other condition but this, that he should not only labour, but die in the cause.

§. 5. Accordingly, at such a period of time as infinite wisdom saw most convenient, the Lord Jesus Christ appeared in human flesh; and after he had gone through incessant and long continued fatigues, and borne all the preceding injuries, which the ingratitude and malice of men could inflict, he voluntarily submitted himself to death, even the death of the cross; + and having been delivered for our offences, was raised again for our justification. After his resurrection, he continued long enough on earth, to give his followers most convincing evidences of it, and then ascended into heaven in their sight; and sent down his spirit from thence upon his apostles, to enable them in the most persuasive and authoritative manner to preach the gospel: and he has given it in charge to them, and to those who in every age succeed them in this part of their office, that it should be published to every creature,** that all who believe in it may be saved, by virtue of its abiding energy, and the immutable power and grace of its divine author, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.++

§. 6. This gospel do I therefore now preach, and proclaim unto thee, O reader, with the sincerest desire, that through divine grace, it may this very day be salvation to thy soul !‡‡ Know therefore, and consider it, whosoever thou art, that as surely as these words are now before thine eyes, so sure it is, that the incarnate Son of God was made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men; his back torn with scourges, his head with thorus, his limbs stretched out as on a rack, and nailed to the accursed tree; and in this miserable condition he was hung by his hands and his feet, as an object of public infamy and contempt. Thus did he die, in the midst of all the taunts and insults of his cruel enemies, who thirsted for his blood; and, which was the saddest circumstance of all, in the midst of these agonies with which he closed the most innocent, perfect, and useful life that was ever spent on earth, he had not those supports of the divine presence, which sinful men have

* Heb. i. 3.
¶Luke xxiv. 40.
1 Cor. iv. 9.

+ Phil. ii. 8.
** Mark xvi. 15.

Rom. iv. 25. †† Heb. xiii. S.

Acts i. 9-11. ‡‡ Luke xix. 9.

« PredošláPokračovať »