An Alarm to Unconverted Sinners

While we keep aloof in generals, there is little fruit to be expected. It is the hand fight, that does execution. David is not awakened by the Prophets hovering at a distance, in parabolical insinuations: he is forced to close with him, and tell him home, Thou art the man. Few will in words deny the necessity of the new birth; but they have a self-deluding confidence, that the work is not now to do. And because they know themselves free from that gross hypocrisy, that doth take up Religion merely for a colour to deceive others, and for the covering of wicked designs, they are confident of their sincerity, and suspect not that more close hypocrisy (where the greatest ⟨p. 87⟩danger lies) by which man deceiveth his own soul. James 1. 26. But man's deceitful heart is such a matchless cheat, and self-delusion so reigning and so fatal a disease, that I know not whether be the greater, the difficulty, or the displicency, or the necessity of the undeceiving work that I am now upon. Alas for my unconverted hearers! They must be undeceived, or undone. But how shall this be effected? Hi• labour, h•c opus est.