Casuistical morning-exercises the fourth volume /

2. It is a reckoning upon time which they cannot command. Men may with Job, chap. 29.2. wish that they were, as in the months past, but they cannot make themselves be so. And so likewise they may wish time back, but cannot bring it back, or stop its motion as it runs, nor have they the least particle of it in their power. How foolish then is it to defer repentance while they have time for it, till they come to a sick bed where they are not secure of any! Alas they can no more add one inch to their time than one cubit to their stature.

3. It is a promising themselves the doing of that which is not in their own power to do. Though the exercise of repentance, as above was said, is ⟨image 100⟩Mans duty, yet it is such a duty as he cannot practise without the grace of repentance wrought in him; (the principle must be ere the act can be) and that grace is the gift of God; and if he do not give it, Man cannot have it; and if he will not give it, who can force him to do it? They that would command Gods grace, must command God himself; and they that defer their repentance till they die, must suppose either that they can work it in themselves, which hath already been disproved, or that God will be at their beck to do it for them; which needs no disproving.

4. It is a thinking to do the work best when they have made it most difficult and painful. Though (as was before said) God can by his power in an instant remove all obstructions, and work repentance in the most obdurate sinner; yet in his ordinary method he works gradually, and in the way of means, Mens attendance upon Ordinances, Seeking, and Labouring after repentance, &c. and Men have no reason to expect that God should disuse his wonted manner of working to gratify their sloth and loitering. Now it is certain that the longer Men live in sin, the more their hearts will cleave to it, and be hardened in it; and then the more loth they will be to be divorced from it, and the more averse to the use of those means whereby such a separation might be effected. The more sweetness they have tasted in sin, the more bitter will the very thoughts of repentance be: Strong affections to their lusts will make prayers cold and endeavours faint against them. Hence we see God handles old stubborn sinners more roughly, when he reduces them, for the most part, than others upon whom he works more early. Indeed their case requires it. They need more of the Lords terrors, (