Casuistical morning-exercises the fourth volume /

4. Preserve, and practically answer and improve a quick, deep, constant sense of the approaching day, i Thes. v. 1-11. ii Pet. iii. 1.—14. and Jude 20, 21. Col. iii. 2-5. Luke xxi. 34-36. xii. 35-40. Perhaps the Reader will not lose his time and labour in perusing and pausing upon these cited Texts: Nor find them impertinent nor inexpedient as to the case in hand. See also, ii Pet. i. 5-13. How copiously and closely might all these passages be insisted on, did not the Press stay for me, and the stated confines of a short discourse restrain me, and the fruits and labours of abler heads, and better pens, and hearts urge me severely ⟨p. 332⟩because deservedly, to give place thereto? Well, Sirs, Consider the Approaching day, and represent it to your thoughtful and concerned selves in all its Grandeurs, and Solemnities of Process, and Results; and try then if it do not warm your hearts, and urge you pungently, and severely to Good works. As to the persons here most Immediately concerned, these Christian Hebrews; There was a day of reckoning with their malignant Enemies by Providential Controversies and Rebukes, which also was a day▪ of great Redemption and Establishment to the persecuted faithful Christians. There was to be a day of great Conversion and divine Attestations to the Christian Faith, and to its Proselytes, and what was more congenial herewith than this endeavoured provocation to love and to good works? And they that are provoked hereto are also fittest for a day of trial. But I shall here consider it as the great day of Christs appearance and his Kingdom, ii Tim. iv. 1.8. i 18. That day of God, of Christ, of Judgment and Perdition of Ungodly Men. That day of Revelation of God and Christ in their Majestic glory, that day of searches, sentence, and full execution and adjustments in all the accuracies of governing wisdom, holiness and grace. Who can contemplate this, and yet be Cold and Barren? Then, in the glorious splendours, solemnities, and proceedings of that day shall it be evident who, and whose Son Christ is. What cost and care he hath been at to bring men to this warm and active course and temper, and what an estimate he and his Father set hereon, by what they then dispense and testify by way of recompense of reward thereto. Christ in his threefold glory,