Secondly, If the Word doth not awaken you out of it, your cold prayers, your heartless hearing, your careless walking with God, that your lamps be not burning (burning love to the Lord and his people, shining holiness, so as others may walk after your light, and be glad to follow you) that present pleasure you take is the rotten wood that breeds the worm of a gnawing conscience, when in the time of your trouble, it shall say, What hath your idleness gained to you? and it is the fore-runner of misery; that if lighter miseries will not do, the Lord will bring seven plagues more, and drive you into a wilderness, and there shall you be famished for want of bread; and if this will not do, God will send spoilers that shall sell you for slaves, and that shall carry you away captive, and then you shall remember Zion, and the days you slept over your time: Find any sin, but security in it will make a desolate Country and families; if you sin and rest ⟨p. 36⟩in it, (though not gross) nay do but decay in what once you had; many say it is more here then ever; I deny it utterly, unless it be to them that are secure; and if it be so, the loss of your first love (a small thing, &c.) will hasten breaking. Let this truth therefore be a burning Beacon to awaken you; for God will make this word good, and not let one tittle of it fall to the ground. Ezra 10. 3. them that trembled put away their strange wives, and wept sore for it; so do you; you think you may have this and the Lord too; true, but the Lord will not long abide with you if secure.
Secondly, If the Word doth not awaken you out of it, your cold prayers, your heartless hearing, your careless walking with God, that your lamps be not burning (burning love to the Lord and his people, shining holiness, so as others may walk after your light, and be glad to follow you) that present pleasure you take is the rotten wood that breeds the worm of a gnawing conscience, when in the time of your trouble, it shall say, What hath your idleness gained to you? and it is the fore-runner of misery; that if lighter miseries will not do, the Lord will bring seven plagues more, and drive you into a wilderness, and there shall you be famished for want of bread; and if this will not do, God will send spoilers that shall sell you for slaves, and that shall carry you away captive, and then you shal remember Sion, and the days you slept over your time: Find any sin, but security in it will make a desolate Country and familes; if you sin and rest ⟨p. 36⟩in it, (though not gross) nay do but decay in what once you had; many say it is more here then ever; I deny it utterly, unless it be to them that are secure; and if it be so, the loss of your first love (a small thing, &c.) will hasten breaking. Let this truth therefore be a burning Beacon to awaken you; for God will make this word good, and not let one tittle of it fall to the ground. Ezra 10. 3. them that trembled put away their strange wives, and wept sore for it; so do you; you think you may have this and the Lord too; true, but the Lord will not long abide with you if secure.
