A Christian Directory

we speak to them of the greatest matters in all the world: we speak it to them in the name of God: we show them his own word for it: and plead with them the Arguments which he hath put into our mouths: and yet we speak as to posts and stones, to men past feeling: what a pitiful sight was it to see Christ stand weeping over Jerusalem, for the hardness of their hearts, and the nearness and greatness of their misery? while they themselves were so far from weeping for it, that they raged against the life of him that so much pitied them? We bless God that it is not thus with all: He hath encouraged some of us with the heart-yielding obedient attention of many great Congregations: But among the best; alas, how many of these hardened sinners are mixed? and in many places how do they abound? Hence it is that such odious abominations are committed; such filthiness, and lying, and perjury, and acts of malicious enmity against the servants of the Lord; and that so many are haters of God and Godliness. If Satan had not first hardened their hearts, he could never have brought them to such odious crimes, as now with impudency are committed in the Land. As Lots daughters were fain to make their Father drunk, that he might commit the sin of incest, so the Devil doth first deprive men both of reason and feeling, that he may bring them to such heinous wickedness as this, and make them laugh at their own destruction, and abhor those most, that fain would save them: And they are not only past feeling, but so hate any quickening Ministry, or Truth, or Means which would recover their feeling, that they seem to go to Hell as some condemned Malefactors to the Gallows, that make themselves drunk before they go, as if it were all they had to care for to keep themselves hoodwinked, from knowing or feeling whither they go, till they are there.

we speak to them of the greatest matters in all the world: we speak it to them in the name of God: we shew them his own word for it: and plead with them the Arguments which he hath put into our mouths: and yet we speak as to posts and stones, to men past feeling: what a pittiful sight was it to see Christ stand weeping over Ierusalem, for the hardness of their hearts, and the nearness and greatness of their misery? while they themselves were so far from weeping for it, that they raged against the life of him that so much pityed them? We bless God that it is not thus with all: He hath encouraged some of us with the heart-yielding obedient attention of many great Congregations: But among the best; alas, how many of these hardned sinners are mixed? and in many places how do they abound? Hence it is that such odious abominations are committed; such filthiness, and lying, and perjury, and acts of malicious enmity against the servants of the Lord; and that so many are haters of God and Godliness. If Satan had not first hardned their hearts, he could never have brought them to such odious crimes, as now with impudency are committed in the Land. As Lots daughters were fain to make their Father drunk, that he might commit the sin of incest, so the Devil doth first deprive men both of reason and feeling, that he may bring them to such heinous wickedness as this, and make them laugh at their own destruction, and abhor those most, that fain would save them: And they are not only past feeling, but so hate any quickning Ministry, or Truth, or Means which would recover their feeling, that they seem to go to Hell as some condemned Malefactors to the Gallows, that make themselves drunk before they go, as if it were all they had to care for to keep themselves hoodwinkt, from knowing or feeling whither they go, till they are there.