Casuistical morning-exercises the fourth volume /

2. The wickedness and profaneness of them. You resolve you will repent when you die, and that implies, you will not repent till then, i. e. you do and resolve still to love sin as long as you live, but you intend to leave it when you can live no longer in it: you hate God now, and resolve to hate him till you die, and then you will begin to love him. You will make work for repentance now, and seek for repentance at last; offend God, and provoke him, and make work for pardoning mercy all your days, and then sue to him for it. You will persevere to affront the grace of Christ, and throw his blood back into his face, and then expect to be washed in it from your sins, and saved by it when you go out of the World.

It is to as little purpose to say, Object. You will then send for the Minister to instruct you, to pray with you, &c.

For, what if you do? your case may be such, that all the good Men, Ans. good Ministers, good Instructions, good Counsels in the World may not help you, not save you: All may come too late, and signify no more to your Souls than Physicians and Physic, at that time, do to your Bodies. Alas what can Ministers do for you? Can their instructions enlighten your minds when God hath blinded them? Can their counsels soften your hearts, when he hath hardened them? Can the breath of prayer waft your Souls to Heaven, in the last moment of your life, when you have been steering towards Hell all your days? What can your Spiritual Physicians do for the cure of your Souls, when the great Physician of all hath left you as incurable, and will never any more visit you?

For, what if you do? your case may be such, that all the good Men, Ans. good Ministers, good Instructions, good Counsels in the World may not help you, not save you: All may come too late, and signifie no more to your Souls than Physitians and Physick, at that time, do to your Bodies. Alas what can Ministers do for you? Can their instructions enlighten your minds when God hath blinded them? Can their counsels soften your hearts, when he hath hardned them? Can the breath of prayer waft your Souls to Heaven, in the last moment of your life, when you have been stearing towards Hell all your days? What can your Spiritual Physitians do for the cure of your Souls, when the great Physitian of all hath left you as incurable, and will never any more visit you?