Heavenly merchandiseHeavenly merchandize

5: You must not only come hither, but it must be with a purpose to buy the Truth: this ought to be your design, the very errand that brings you hither, the business that you come about; and therefore you must ask and enquire after it. It is true, Gods grace prevents us, and first begins with us, and he always offers before we ask: but yet it is as true, that before a bargain be throughly driven be between God and a Sinner, he is wont to make us to feel our emptiness and want, and thereupon raise up in our hearts such a sense as drives us to ask, to wait for, and to cheapen it: the man before that time, was wont to go to the House of God; he frequented the Ordinances after a formal and customary manner; and if a reason had then been asked of him why he went, and what he went for, it would have put him hard to it, to have given a rational answer, for indeed he went he well knew not for what, and thereupon he used to come away again, as wise as he went, and this is the lamentable case of the greatest number of those that live in places of Gospel Light, and sit under the dispensation of the means of grace: But now the case is altered, ⟨p. 91⟩and he can resolve you, that it is the Truth he is seeking after, he feels a destroying want of it, and hath heard that here it may be gotten, and this makes him to set himself to hearken with diligence, and bend his mind to receive the conception of things, and to wait upon God for his Spirit to make application of them to his Soul; and this is the first thing to be done, if you would buy the Truth.

5: You must not only come hither, but it must be with a purpose to buy the Truth: this ought to be your design, the very errand that brings you hither, the business that you come about; and therefore you must ask and enquire after it. It is true, Gods grace prevents us, and first begins with us, and he always offers before we ask: but yet it is as true, that before a bargain be throughly driven bebetween God and a Sinner, he is wont to make us to feel our emptiness and want, and thereupon raise up in our hearts such a sense as drives us to ask, to wait for, and to cheapen it: the man before that time, was wont to go to the House of God; he frequented the Ordinances after a formal and customary manner; and if a reason had then been asked of him why he went, and what he went for, it would have put him hard to it, to have given a rational answer, for indeed he went he well knew not for what, and thereupon he used to come away again, as wise as he went, and this is the lamentable case of the greatest number of those that live in places of Gospel Light, and sit under the dispensation of the means of grace: But now the case is altered,