One Hundred and Ninety Sermons on Psalm 119

3. Consider the many inconveniences that will follow, if they do not presently mind this work. 1. Death is uncertain, and therefore such a weighty business as this will brook no delay. God doth not always give warning. Nadab and Abihu, two rash and inconsiderate young men, were taken away in their sins; and the Bears out of the Forest devoured the children that mocked the Prophet. The danger being so great, as soon as we are sensible of it, we should fly from it. When children come to the fullness of reason, they stand upon their own bottom; before, they are reckoned to their Parents. Oh! woe be to you if you dye in your sins. Certainly as soon as a man is upon his own personal account, he should look to himself, lest God cut him off before he hath made his peace with him. 2. Sin groweth stronger by custom, and more rooted; it gathereth strength by every act. A brand that hath been in the fire, is more apt to take fire again. A man in a Dropsy, the more he drinks, the more his thirst increaseth. Every act lesseneth fear, and strengtheneth inclination. Jer. 13. 27. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem, wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be? A twig is easily bowed; but when it grows into a Tree, it is more troublesome and unpliable. A Tree newly set, may be transplanted; but when long rooted, not so easily. The man that was possessed of a Devil from his childhood, how hardly is he cured? Mark 9. 29. 3. Justice is provoked the longer, and that will be a grief to you first or last. If ever we be brought home to God, it will cost us many a bitter tear; not only at first conversion, Jer. 31. 18. I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus: Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, &c. but afterwards: David, though he began with God be-times, Psal. 25. 7. yet prays, Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgression. And Job 13. 26. For thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth. Old bruises may trouble us long after, upon every change of weather, and new afflictions revive the sense of old sins. They may stick by us. We think tricks of youth are not to be stood upon; you may have a bitter sense of them to your dying day. 4. You will every day grow more useless to God; the exercise of Religion dependeth much on the vigour of affections.