The way to true happiness in a serious treatise /

Scoffers at Religion, that make a scorn of precise walking, and mock at the messengers and diligent servants of the Lord, and at their holy profession, and make themselves merry with the weaknesses and failings of professors. Hear ye despisers, hear your dreadful doom, Prov. 19. 29. 2 Chron. 36. 16. Prov. 3. 34.

Sinner, consider diligently, whether thou art not to be found in one of these ranks: for if this be thy case, thou art in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity; for all these do carry their marks in their foreheads, and are undoubtedly the sons of death.

And if so, the Lord pity our poor Congregations; Oh how little a number will be left, when these ten sorts are set out! Alas on how many doors, on how many faces must we write, Lord have mercy upon us! Sirs, what shift do you make to keep up your confidence of your good estate, when God from heaven declares against you, and pronounces, you in a state of damnation? I would reason with you, as God with them; How canst thou say I am not polluted? Jer. 2. 23. See thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done. Man, is not thy conscience privy to thy tricks of deceit, to thy chamber pranks, to thy way of lying? Yea are not thy friends, thy family, thy neighbours, witnesses to thy profane neglects of Gods worship, to thy covetous practices, to thy envious and malicious carriage? may not they point at thee as thou goest, there goes a gaming Prodigal; there goes a drunken Nabal, a companion of evildoers; there goes a railer, or a scoffer, a loose ⟨p. 92⟩