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II.

SERM. reclaiming finers. For these and other the like reasons the Scripture speaks of an accepted time, and a day of falvation : which it 2 Cor. vi. is of importance to emprove, and very dangerous to neglect.

If. xlix 8.

2.

If the ordinarie means of holinesse and falvation are continued, what reason is there to think, that you should be at any time hereafter better disposed to emprove them, than you are now? Is there not rather a great deal of reason to fear, leaft the heart should contract some hardnesse by a long continuance in fin? And if reasonable and forcible arguments do not now sway and prevail, they will be so far from influencing more hereafter, that they will affect much less than at present. Besides, by delaying and deferring you contract a habit of delaying, and do it with less remorse. Your first put-offs and excuses, perhaps, are not made without a good deal of uneasinessfe: and you are almost ashamed, or even confounded, when you make them: and your heart afterwards smites you for it. But having time after time excused and deferred compliance with the reasonable demands that have been made of you: you become more afsured and confident,

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dent, and fuch demands are for the future SERM. put off with little or no scruple, or concern of mind.

Moreover, it is a vain thing, to imagine, that you may outlive temptations: and that the time may come, when there shall be no longer any impediments or obstructions of repentance and amendment. For there always will be temptations, suited to every age of life; which will have a powerful influence upon those, who are not fully devoted to God, and have not attained to the government of their paffions. If sensual pleafure is a bait, that seduces and ensnares men in the early days of life: riches, and honour and preferment are as taking with men of worldly minds, in the more advanced, and the very latest periods of life.

4. Late repentance, supposing it to be fincere, and available, and accepted of God, must be very bitter and forrowful.

It cannot be otherwise. For you will have little or nothing to comfort you. And you will have a great number, and a long course of tranfgreffions and neglects, to reflect upon with grief and concern. It will be very grievous to recollect many instances of ingrati

C

II.

SERM. gratitude to God, who has been very good and gracious to you, who would not think of him, or pay a just regard to his reasonable and holy laws and commandments. You will, then, severely blame and condemn yourselves for acting contrarie to conviction, and for refusing to hearken to former preffing and friendly calls and invitations. You will be filled with the utmost concern, to think,

how you have multiplied tranfgreffions, and
persisted therein: thereby offending God, and
perhaps grieving men, whose comfort and hap-
pinesse should have been dear to you. And it
is well, if you have not also the sad and bitter
reflection to make, that by your fins, some of
them more especially, you have been the
means of mifleading some of your fellow-
creatures, and caufing them to fall and mif-
carry, and that finally, and for ever.

5. But late repentance is seldom fincere.
I do not say, that it is never fincere. But
there is too much reason to think, it is fel-
dom so. The confeffions and lamentations
of men in ficknesse, and in visible danger of
death, appear rather forced and unavoidable,
than free and voluntarie. And very often,
when the danger is over, and health and
safety

1 1

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fafety are restored, and the temptations of SERM.
life return with their usual force; men shew
their repentance was not unfeigned and ef-
fectual, by returning to their former evil
courses, and by being again entangled and
overcome by this world, and the snares of
it, as before.

6. Consequently, late repentance must be
very uncomfortable.

For though it should be fincere, and accepted of God, you cannot ordinarily have a full and fatisfactorie perfuafion of it in your minds. Some hope, poffibly, you may entertain: but it will be weak and languid: somewhat between hope and despair, a sad mixture of doubt and fear, whether this late humiliation will be accepted, or not. And forasmuch as you have not now an opportunity of approving to yourselves, or others, the truth of your repentance by future acts of steadie obedience, and that in time of temptation, you must go out of the world without that assured hope and expectation of a better life, and the heavenly happinesse, which is very defirable, and necessarie to give peace in the hour of death.

These

SERM.
II.

These considerations shew the folly and danger of delaying repentance ++.

II. I would now confider the pleas and excuses, which some make for delaying to reform, and their objections against immediate compliance with the commands of God, and against forming a present resolution to be immediatly religious.

1. Some think with themselves, and are apt to plead, that a life of strict virtue and ferious religion is unpleasant, sad and melancholie: depriving men of the pleasures and entertainments of life, and of much worldly gain and profit, which they might otherwise make.

To this I answer two things.

1.) Allowing the truth of all this, it is not a good and reasonable ground of deferring to be really good and virtuous, and securing the happinesse of a future life: because things earthly and temporal are not to be compared with things heavenly and eternal. These last

are

++ If any find this Sermon too long for a single reading here is a proper pause.

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