Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

3. Exhortation, therefore presume not upon his patience. The exercise of it is not Eternal; you are at present under his Patience, yet while you are unconverted, you are also under his anger; Psal. 7.11. God is angry with the wicked every day. You know not how soon his Anger may turn his Patience aside, and step before it. It may be his Sword is drawn out of his Scabbard, his Arrows may be settled in his Bow; and perhaps there is but a little time, before you may feel the edge of the one, or the point of the other; and then there will be no ⟨p. 826⟩more time for Patience in God to us, or petition from us to him. If we repent here, he will pardon us. If we defer Repentance, and dye without it, he will have no longer mercy to pardon, nor Patience to bear.

3. Exhortation, therefore presume not upon his patience. The exercise of it is not Eternal; you are at present under his Patience, yet while you are unconverted, you are also under his anger; Psal. 7.11. God is angry with the wicked every day. You know not how soon his Anger may turn his Patience aside, and step before it. It may be his Sword is drawn out of his Scabbard, his Arrowes may be settled in his Bow; and perhaps there is but a little time, before you may feel the edge of the one, or the point of the other; and then there will be no ⟨p. 826⟩more time for Patience in God to us, or petition from us to him. If we repent here, he will pardon us. If we deferre Repentance, and dye without it, he will have no longer mercy to pardon, nor Patience to bear.

What is there in our power but the present? the future time we cannot command, the past time we cannot recall, squander not then the present away. The time will come, when time shall be no more, and then long-suffering shall be no more. Will you neglect the time, wherein patience acts, and vainly hope for a time beyond the resolves of patience? Will you spend that in vain, which Goodness hath allotted you for other purposes? What an estimate will you make of a little forbearance to respite death, when you are gasping under the stroke of its Arrows? How much would you value some few days, of those many years you now trifle away? Can any think God will be always at an expense with them in vain, that he will have such riches trampled under their feet, and so many editions of his patience, be made wast Paper? Do you know how few sands are yet to run in your glass? Are you sure that he that waits to day, will wait as well to morrow? How can you tell, but that God that is slow to anger to day, may be swift to it the next? Jerusalem had but a day of peace, and the most carel sinner hath no more. When their day was don they were destroyed by […], Pestilence, or Sword, or led into a doleful Captivity. Did God make our lives so uncertain, and the duration of his forbearance unknown to us, that we should live in a lazy neglect of his Glory, and our own happiness? If you should have more patience in regard of your lives, do you know whither you shall have the effectual offers of Grace? As your lives depend upon his will, so your conversion depends solely upon his Grace. There have been many examples of those miserable wretches, that have been left to a reprobate sense, after they have a long time abused Divine forbearance. Though […] he binds up sin.