An Alarm to Unconverted Sinners

Poor sinners! We talk not to you as on a stage, in customary words, and ⟨image 6⟩because that talking thus is our trade. We are in as good earnest with you, as if we saw you all murdering your selves, and we are persuading you to save your lives. Can any man be in jest with you who believeth God? who by faith foreseeth whither you are going, and what you lose, and where the game of sin will end? It is little better to jest with you now in Pulpit or in private, than to stand jesting over your departing souls, when at death you are breathing out your last.

Poor sinners! We talk not to you as on a stage, in customary words, and ⟨image 6⟩because that talking thus is our trade. We are in as good earnest with you, as if we saw you all murdering your selves, and we are perswading you to save your lives. Can any man be in jest with you who believeth God? who by faith foreseeth whither you are going, and what you lose, and where the game of sin will end? It is little better to jest with you now in Pulpit or in private, than to stand jesting over your departing souls, when at death you are breathing out your last.

Alas, with shame and grief we do confess, that we never speak to you of these things as their truth and weight deserve, nor with the skill and wisdom, the affection and fervency which beseemeth men engaged in the saving of poor souls. But yet you may perceive that we are in good sadness with you. (For God is so.) What else do we study for, labour for, suffer for, live for? Why else do we so much trouble our selves, and trouble you with all this ado, and anger them that would have had us silent? For my own part, I will make my free confession to you to my shame; that I never grow co•d and dull and pitiless to the souls of others, till I ⟨image 7⟩first grow too cold and careless of my own (unless when weakness or speculative studies cool me, which I must confess they often do.) We never cease pitying you, till we are growing too like you, and so have need of pity our selves.