Love to Christ, necessary to escape the curse at his coming

1. Will it not be thy being cast into pain of greatest extremity? And how wilt thou do to bear it? If God do but touch thee with his Finger, thou dost sigh and sob, thou dost cry and roar, and canst not rest. O how wilt thou rest, when God shall lay on blows with his Almighty Arm? If pain in thy Head, or sickness at thy Heart, or Gripings in thy Bowels, make thee cry out like a Distracted Man, what wilt thou do to bear the wrath of God in a place prepared on purpose to show his indignation against Christ-refusing Sinners? When the sorest affliction in this Life, is but as the pricking of a Pin, to the piercing of a Sword, if compared to the Torments of the Damned?

1. Will it not be thy being cast into pain of greatest extremity? And how wilt thou do to bear it? If God do but touch thee with his Finger, thou dost sigh and sob, thou dost cry and roar, and canst not rest. O how wilt thou rest, when God shall lay on blows with his Almighty Arm? If pain in thy Head, or sickness at thy Heart, or Gripings in thy Bowels, make thee cry out like a Distracted Man, what wilt thou do to bear the wrath of God in a place prepared on purpose to shew his indignation against Christ-refusing Sinners? When the sorest affliction in this Life, is but as the pricking of a Pin, to the piercing of a Sword, if compared to the Torments of the Damned?

2. Will it not be Misery joined with endless Eternity? And hadst thou rather bear pains extreme and eternal too, than Love me, that would deliver thee from them? Doth not a small affliction make one Day or Night seem long, much more if it be heavy? Then in the Night thou askest, Is it not Day? Thou countest the Clock, thou numberest the Hours, and thinkest that Time doth pass but slowly on. Would it were but break-a-day that I might rise! But all the time between the Creation and the Dissolution of the World, is but a moment to Eternity: Where there is no striking of Clocks, ⟨p. 179⟩no telling of Hours, no returns of Night and Day, but always Night, and never Day; never shall be break-a-day. A thousand years shall pass, and never the less to come. Nay, nothing past, and nothing to come, and yet more to come than is already past; an everlasting Instant. Now there is hope, and yet thou wilt not give me thy Love and Heart, then there will be no hope, and that might even break thy Heart. Besides,