A25466:792
Casuistical morning-exercises the fourth volume /
Casuistical morning-exercises the fourth volume / by several ministers in and about London, preached in October, 1689.
London: printed by James Astwood for John Dunton, 1690
Sermon 9: Quest. What's the danger of a death-bed Repentance? SERMON IX.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Thirdly, God may have judicially hardened their Hearts, when they had sinfully hardened them before. And this seems to be one great cause of that stupidness and insensibleness we so often find in Sinners at the time of death. True, God infuseth no sin into them; yet he may wholly abandon them to the power of the hardness they have contracted, and give them up into the Devils hands, to delude and blind, to act and manage them according to his pleasure, and their own corrupt inclinations. They may not have so much as an heart to desire to repent, or pray to God for Grace to enable them to to it, all those common assistances of Gods Spirit they sometimes had, being wholly withdrawn from them and it.
Thirdly, God may have judicially hardned their Hearts, when they had sinfully hardened them before. And this seems to be one great cause of that stupidness and insensibleness we so often find in Sinners at the time of death. True, God infuseth no sin into them; yet he may wholly abandon them to the power of the hardness they have contracted, and give them up into the Devils hands, to delude and blind, to act and manage them according to his pleasure, and their own corrupt inclinations. They may not have so much as an heart to desire to repent, or pray to God for Grace to enable them to to it, all those common assistances of Gods Spirit they sometimes had, being wholly withdrawn from them and it.
1. Partly as a punishment for their former wilful impenitency. It is one of the most dreadful Judgments God ever executes upon any on this side Hell, when he punishes one sin with another, one hardness with another, which yet sometimes he doth, Prov. 81.11, 12. Israel would none of me, &c. so I gave them up, &c.
2. As a terror to others, and a warning too, that they that hear it may fear, and not dare to live impenitently, lest they should die impenitently; God not being bound to give them the Grace he denies to others, who perhaps were not greater Sinners than themselves.