Directions and persuasions to a sound conversion for prevention of that deceit and damnation…Directions and perswasions to a sound conversion for prevention of that deceit and damnation…

When you turn to God, there will remain within you the remnants of your corruption, a body of death, a rebelling flesh: and this will be still tempting you, and drawing you from God: And O how strong do these temptations seem to the Soul that is unresolved? Yea without a firm habituate Resolution, it is impossible to overcome them. Your whole way to Heaven is a continual warfare: You have enemies that will dispute every foot of the way with you. There's no going a step forward, but as the ship doth in the Sea, by cutting its way through the waves, and billows; and as the plough doth in the earth, by cutting through the resisting soil: There is self which is your principal enemy, and there is Satan, and the world, and almost all that you meet with in it, will prove your ⟨p. 479⟩hinderers: And you must make your way by valour, and Holy Violence through all: And will an unresolved man do this? You will scarce ever how your knee to God in secret prayer, nor set your selves upon serious Meditations, but the flesh and the Devil will be drawing you off; You will never attempt, a faithful reproof, a liberal work of Charity, a hazardous confession of Christ, or any dangerous or costly duty, but the flesh and the Devil will plead against it, and put you to it: And in these and many such cases of your lives, you will never break through, nor do any good on it, without Resolution. Do I need to tell you how hard the way of Salvation is, that fly from it on mistake, because you think it harder then it is? Do I need to tell you how false you will prove to Christ, if you have not Resolution, that know it by your ordinary, miserable experience, that a poor temptation will make you sin against your knowledge? How many good wishes and purposes have you had already, in sickness or at a lively Sermon, that are all come to nothing, for want of a firm Habituate Resolution? What abundance of time-servers, ⟨p. 480⟩and of chaffy professors are lately fallen off, to the way of rising and riches in the world, or to the pride, and giddy levity of dividers, that oppose the Truth of God, and their Teachers, and trouble the Church, and all because they were never well rooted by a sound Resolution. They that take Christ but upon liking, do usually mislike him, when he calls them to self-denial. For they had never that connatural principle that should effectually dispose their Souls to like him;