A26695:396
A sure guide to heaven, or, An earnest invitation to sinners to turn to…
A sure guide to heaven, or, An earnest invitation to sinners to turn to God in order to their eternal salvation showing the thoughtful sinner what he must do to be saved / by Joseph Alleine.A sure guide to heaven, or, An earnest invitation to sinners to turn to God in order to their eternal salvation shewing the thoughtful sinner what he must do to be saved / by Joseph Alleine.
London: printed for Tho. Parkhurst, 1688
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.
A Short Soliloquy for an Unregenerate Sinner.
AH wretched man that I am! What a condition have I brought my self into by sin? Oh! I see my heart hath but deceived me all this wh••e, ⟨p. 146⟩in flattering me, that my condition was good. I see, I see, I am but a lost and undone man; for ever undone, unless the Lord help me out of this condition. My sins! My sins! Lord, what an unclean, polluted wretch am I! more loathsome and odious to thee, than the most hateful Venom, or noisome carcass, can be to me. Oh! what a Hell of sin is in this heart of mine, which I have flattered my self to be a good heart? Lord, how universally am I corrupted, in all my parts, powers, performances? All the imaginations of the thoughts of my heart, are only evil, continually. I am under an inability to, averseness from, and enmity against any thing that is good; and am prone to all that is evil. My heart is a very sink of all sin: And Oh the innumerable hosts, and swarms of sinful thoughts, words, and actions, that have flown from thence. Oh the load of guilt that is on my soul! My ••ad is •ull, my heartfull, my mind and my members, they are all full of sin. Oh my sins! How do they stare upon me! How do they witness against me! Woe i• me, my Creditors are upon me, every Commandm••• taketh hold upon me, for more than ten thousand […] Talents, yea ten thousand times ten thousand. How endless then is the sum of all my debts? If this whole world were filled up from Earth to Heaven with paper, and all this paper written over, within and without, by Arithmeticians: yet when all were case up together, it would come unconceivably short of what I owe to the least of Gods Commandments. Woe unto me! for my debts are infinite, and my sins are increased. They are wrongs to an infinite Majesty: And if he that committeth Treason against a silken Mortal, is worthy to be racked, drawn and quartered: What have I deserved, that have so often lifted up my hand against Heaven, and have struck at the Crown and Dignity of the Almighty?