Casuistical morning-exercises the fourth volume /

2. Suppose Men have time and warning given them; Death knocks at the door before it enters, and besieges them before it storms them: they lie by the brink of the grave before they fall into it: yet, they may want the Means of grace by which God ordinarily works, when he brings Men to Repentance. Public Ordinances in such a case they cannot have, and private ones they may not have. They may have none with them that have the tongue of the Learned, to speak a word in season to them, Isa. 50.4. they may lack oil, but have none that can tell them where they may buy it. None that understand the nature of Repentance, none that can instruct them in it, or direct them how they may attain it. Friends may be as carnal and ignorant, and unacquainted with the things of God as themselves: and so may Ministers be sometimes. They may seek a vision of the Prophet, but the Law may perish from the Priest, and counsel from the Ancient, Ezek. 7.26. True indeed, God can work repentance in Man or any grace without means, by his immediate power, or by some extraordinary means; but he never promiseth to do it, and therefore it is a bold presuming, and tempting of him to expect he should. What if God once stopped a sinner in the midst of his career, when not only running away from the means of Salvation, but bidding defiance to them, and converted him in a miraculous way, by a glorious light shining about him, and the immediate voice of Christ to him,¹ shall others hope for the like? Live in sin all their days and look for conversion by miracle at last?

2. Suppose Men have time and warning given them; Death knocks at the door before it enters, and besieges them before it storms them: they lie by the brink of the grave before they fall into it: yet, they may want the Means of grace by which God ordinarily works, when he brings Men to Repentance. Publick Ordinances in such a case they cannot have, and private ones they may not have. They may have none with them that have the tongue of the Learned, to speak a word in season to them, Isa. 50.4. they may lack oyl, but have none that can tell them where they may buy it. None that understand the nature of Repentance, none that can instruct them in it, or direct them how they may attain it. Friends may be as carnal and ignorant, and unacquainted with the things of God as themselves: and so may Ministers be sometimes. They may seek a vision of the Prophet, but the Law may perish from the Priest, and counsel from the Ancient,