The unbelievers preparing for Christ. By T.HThe vnbeleevers preparing for Christ. By T.H

Why here is a cup for a drunkard indeed, here is a cup for a whore indeed, here is a cup for a blasphemer indeed, if every sinners cup were filled thus brim full of ⟨p. 60⟩Gods wrath, never any man would take any joy in be ing drunk more, never would any man take any delight in chambering and wantonness more: but then the poor soul says further, oh but it is not in my power to help my soul, but if it will but please the Lord, to do good unto my poor soul, let him do what he will with it. What, faith the Minister, you are then willing and content to part with your sins a yes, yes, saith the poor soul, I will rather offend all the world than God, I had as lief go to hell as to the committing of any sinful practise; well saith the Minister, if it be so, it is well, but do you speak this from your heart; yes faith the poor soul, if it would please God to help me, I would forsake my sins with all my heart. Why now the poor soul is coming again, and God is haling of him aside again from his corruptions, and sinful distempers. This is that we shall observe. Hos. 2.6. there saith the text, behold I will hedge up the way with thorns, and make a wall that she shall not find her paths, and she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them, & she shall seek them but she shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better with me then, than it is now. The Lord at last tears the soul and rends the heart from sinful distempers, and then the soul thinketh, oh there is not that pleasure in sin, as I have formerly thought there was, the soul then hateth drunkenness as death, he is not able to look upon his adulteress quean, he is not able to abide the house where he committed the folly, & his heart ⟨p. 61⟩begins to tremble at it. And therefore mark the next and last cord: I should have added more to the former point out of Psal. 88.16. there saith David, thy fierce wrath is gone over me, and thy terrors have cut me off; thine arrows stick fast in me; how ever David before had shook off the commands and accusations of conscience, though these would not draw him to God; yet now the Lords arrows stuck fast in him, he could not pluck them out, nor cast them off for his life.