A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of Jude

4. The Scriptures speak much of his readiness to receive returning sinners: Though they have done infinite wrong to his Holiness, yet upon repentance, and as soon as they begin to submit, Mercy embraceth and huggeth them, as if there had been no breach; Luk. 15. 20. I will go to my Father, and the Father ran to meet him: So Isai. 56. 20. Before they call, &c. So Psal. 32. 5. I said, and thou forgavest, &c. So Jer. 31. 17, with 20. I have heard Ephraim bemoaning himself, &c. and presently, Oh my dear and pleasant child. The first relentings of the creature work upon the bowels of Mercy: Love's pace is very swift, it runneth to meet a returning sinner: Christ cometh skipping over the Mountains, Cant. 2. 8. He thinketh that he can never be soon enough with us: He would fain have the company of sinners, and therefore meeteth them more then half way: When we but conceive a purpose, we presently receive the fruit of his early mercies.

5. God doth not only admit them to come, but of his own accord inviteth them that are slack and backward. The Scriptures do every where record the entreaties of God: he draweth us with cords of Love; cords that are woven and spun out of Christs heart and bowels: In one place thus, Cant. 4. 8. Come away from Lebanon, my Sister, my Spouse, from the Lions dens, from the mountains of Leopards: Christs love is hot and burning, he thinketh we tarry too long from his embraces. So Cant. 5. 2. Open to me my Sister, my Spouse, &c. Christ stands begging for entrance: Lost man, do but suffer me to save thee; poor sinner, suffer me to love thee: These are the charms of Gospel Rhetoric! So