The way to true happiness in a serious treatise /

But, O, this is it that breaketh our hearts, that we leave you under more guilt than we found you; and when we have laid out life and labour to save you, the impenitent souls must have their pains increased, for the refusing of these Calls. And that it will be part of your Hell, to think for ever how madly you refused our Counsel, and what pains and cost and patience were used to have saved you, and all in vain. It will be so: it must needs be so: Christ saith it shall be easier for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of Judgment than for the rejectors of his Gospel-calls. The Nature of the thing, and the nature of Justice certainly tell you, that it must be so.

O turn not our complaints to God against you: Turn us not from beseeching you to be reconciled to God, to tell him you will not be reconciled. Force us not to say, that we earnestly invited you to the Heavenly Feast, and you would not come. Force us not to bear this Witness against you, Lord, we could have born all our labour and sufferings for them, much easilier, if they would but have yielded to thy grace. But it was they themselves that broke our hearts, that lost our labour, that made us preach and entreat in vain: It was easier to preach without maintenance, than without success. It was they that were worse to us than all the Persecutors in the World. ⟨image 7⟩How oft would we have gathered them, but they would not, but are ungathered still? How many Holy, Faithful Ministers have I known these eleven years last past, who have lived in pining poverty and want, and hardly by Charity got Bread and Clothing; and yet if they could but have truly said [Lord the Sermons, which I preach privately and in danger, have won many Souls to thee] it would have made all this burden easy. But I tell thee senseless and impenitent Sinner, thou that deniedst God thy Heart, and thou that deniedst them thy Conversion, which was the end of all their labours hast dealt much more cruelly with them, than they that denied the Levites Bread.

O turn not our complaints to God against you: Turn us not from beseeching you to be reconciled to God, to tell him you will not be reconciled. Force us not to say, that we earnestly invited you to the Heavenly Feast, and you would not come. Force us not to bear this Witness against you, Lord, we could have born all our labour and sufferings for them, much easilier, if they would but have yielded to thy grace. But it was they themselves that broke our hearts, that lost our labour, that made us preach and intreat in vain: It was easier to preach without maintenance, than without success. It was they that were worse to us than all the Persecutors in the World.