A Call to the Unconverted

Is it your pleasures that you are afraid of losing? You think you shall never have a merry day again, if once you be Converted. Alas, that you should think it a ⟨p. 192⟩greater pleasure to live in foolish sports and merriments, and please your flesh, then to live in the Believing thoughts of glory, and in the love of God, and in righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, in which the state of grace consisteth, Romans 14.17. If it be a greater pleasure to you to think of your Lands and inheritance (if you were Lords of all the Country) then it is to a child to play for pins; why should it not be a greater Joy to you to think of the Kingdom of Heaven being yours, then of all the riches or pleasure of the world? As it is but foolish childishness that makes children so delight in gauds, that they would not leave them for all your Lands: so it is but foolish worldliness, and fleshliness, and wickedness, that makes you so much delight in your houses, and lands, and meat, and drink, and ⟨p. 193⟩ease, and honour, as that you would not part with them for the heavenly delights. But what will you do for pleasure when these are gone? Do you not think of that? When your pleasures end in horror, and go out with a stinking snuff, the Pleasures of the Saints are then at the best. I have had my self but a little taste of the heavenly pleasures in the forethoughts of the blessed approaching day, and in the present persuasions of the Love of God in Christ; but I have taken too deep a draught of earthly pleasures (so that you may see, if I be partial, it is on your side;) and yet I must profess from that little experience, that there is no comparison; there is more joy to be had in a day (if the Sun of life shine clear upon us) in the state of Holiness, then in an whole life of sinful pleasures. I had rather ⟨p. 194⟩be a door-keeper in the house of God, then to dwell in the Tents of wickedness, Psalm 84.10. A day in his Courts is better then a thousand anywhere else, Psal. 84.10. The mirth of the wicked is like the laughter of a mad man that knows not his own misery: and therefore Solomon faith of such laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doth it?