1. Your yielding your selves to God must be accompanied with very deep and serious repentance. 'Tis a most penitential surrender you are now to make of your selves to him; for you are to remember that you are but now coming back out of a state of Apostasy from your Sovereign and most rightful Lord. Yea tho' you are but renewing your surrender of your selves, having done somewhat herein before, you are yet to consider this was your case; and perhaps some never ⟨p. 41⟩have yet seriously thought of any such thing, but lived in this World hitherto as if you were your own, and there were no Lord over you: O then with what inward remorse, with what brokenness of heart, with what relentings and self-accusings should this thing now be done! you should come, smiting upon the thigh, and saying within your selves, What have I done? So long Lord, have I lived in this World of thine, which thou madest, and not I, as if I might do in it, and with my self, what I pleased? I have usurped upon thy unquestionable right in me, have lived to my self, and not to thee; I am now convinced this was a very undutiful, unlawful way of living. Let him hear you (as he once heard Ephraim, or shall do) bemoaning your selves, 1and saying, Turn me and I shall be turned, thou art the Lord my God, &c. How can you think of yielding your selves now at length to God, without being deeply sensible of your having deferred it so long, and that you have not done it sooner? and how great the iniquity was of your former course? that you have all this while committed a continual robbery upon him ⟨p. 42⟩that gave you breath. Will a man rob God? And if you say, Wherein have I robbed him? you have robbed him of your self, a greater thing than of Tithes and Offerings. And this robbery was sacrilege. For every thing due and devoted to God, hath a sacredness upon it; and consider, were you not, upon his just claim, in your Baptism devoted to him? how should this startle you? you have constantly alienated from him a sacred thing! You have been in a continual contest with him about one of the highest rights of his Sovereignty, yea and of his Godhead, for to that, nothing is more peculiar, than to be Lord of all. So that the controversy between him and you hath been, who shall be God? You have refused him his own creature; How high a crime was this?
1. Your yielding your selves to God must be accompani'd with very deep and serious repentance. 'Tis a most penitential surrender you are now to make of your selves to him; for you are to remember that you are but now coming back out of a state of Apostacy from your Sovereign and most rightful Lord. Yea tho' you are but renewing your surrender of your selves, having done somewhat herein before, you are yet to consider this was your case; and perhaps some never ⟨p. 41⟩have yet seriously thought of any such thing, but liv'd in this World hitherto as if you were your own, and there were no Lord over you: O then with what inward remorse, with what brokenness of heart, with what relentings and self-accusings should this thing now be done! you should come, smiting upon the thigh, and saying within your selves, What have I done? So long Lord, have I liv'd in this World of thine, which thou mad'st, and not I, as if I might do in it, and with my self, what I pleas'd? I have usurpt upon thy unquestionable right in me, have liv'd to my self, and not to thee; I am now convinced this was a very undutiful, unlawful way of living. Let him hear you (as he once heard Ephraim, or shall do) bemoaning your selves, 1and saying, Turn me and I shall be turned, thou art the Lord my God, &c. How can you think of yielding your selves now at length to God, without being deeply sensible of your having deferr'd it so long, and that you have not done it sooner? and how great the iniquity was of your former course? that you have all this while committed a continual robbery upon him ⟨p. 42⟩that gave you breath. Will a man rob God? And if you say, Wherein have I robbed him? you have rob'd him of your self, a greater thing than of Tythes and Offerings. And this robbery was sacriledge. For every thing due and devoted to God, hath a sacredness upon it; and consider, were you not, upon his just claim, in your Baptism devoted to him? how should this startle you? you have constantly alienanated from him a sacred thing! You have been in a continual contest with him about one of the highest rights of his Sovereignty, yea and of his Godhead, for to that, nothing is more peculiar, than to be Lord of all. So that the controversy between him and you hath been, who shall be God? You have refus'd him his own creature; How high a crime was this?
- 1Jerem. 31. 18, 19.
