Eighteen sermons preached in Oxford 1640 of conversion, unto God. Of redemption, & justification,…

2. But now besides this blow which is not so frequent, there is another more common and more insensible blow. God saith he is a dead man, and a slave to sin and Satan, and he thinks himself the freest man in the world. God curses and strikes, and he feels it not. This is an insensible blow, and like unto a dead palsy: Thou art dead, and yet walkest about, and art merry, though every one that hath his eyes open seeth death in thy face. O this deadness, this senselessness of heart is the heaviest thing as can befall a sinner in this life. It is the cause the Apostle speaks of in the Rom. when God delivers up a man [Greek or Hebrew], to a reprobate mind: And so in the Epistle to the Ephes. 4.19. declares such a man to be past feeling: Who being past feeling, have given ⟨p. 129⟩themselves over to lasciviousness to work uncleanness even with greediness. Although every sin, (as I told you before) is as it were the running a mans self on the point of Gods sword, yet these men being past feeling, run on, on, on to commit sin with greediness, till they come to the very pit of destruction, they run a main to their confusion. When this insensibleness is come upon them, it is not Gods goodness that can work upon them. Who art thou that despisest the riches of Gods goodness, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth unto repentance. It is not Gods judgments that will move them, they leave no impression, as Rev. 9.20. And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship Devils, &c. brass, nor stone and wood, which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk. They repented not, though they were spared, but worshipped Gods which cannot see, not hear no• speak, so brutish were they to be led away by stocks and stones: I think the Papist Gods cannot do it unless it be by cozenage; yet such is their senselessness, that though Gods fury be revealed from heaven against Papists, such as worship false Gods; yet are they so brutish, that they will worship things which can neither hear, nor see, nor walk: They that made them are like unto them, and so are all they that worship them, as brutish as the stocks themselves: They have no heart to God, but will follow after their Puppets and their Idols, and such are they also that follow after their drunkenness,