N03796:573
An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: showing I. What conversion is…An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: shewing I. What conversion is…
An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: showing I. What conversion is not, and correcting some mistakes about it. II. What conversion is, and wherein it consisteth. III. The necessity of conversion. IV. The marks of the unconverted. V. The miseries of the unconverted. VI. Directions for conversion. VII. Motions [i.e., Motives] to conversion. : Whereunto are annexed Divers practical cases of conscience judiciously resolved. / By Joseph Alleine, late Minister of the Gospel at Taunton, in Somersetshire.An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: shewing I. What conversion is not, and correcting some mistakes about it. II. What conversion is, and wherein it consisteth. III. The necessity of conversion. IV. The marks of the unconverted. V. The miseries of the unconverted. VI. Directions for conversion. VII. Motions [i.e., Motives] to conversion. : Whereunto are annexed Divers practical cases of conscience judiciously resolv'd. / By Joseph Alleine, late Minister of the Gospel at Taunton, in Somersetshire.
Philadelphia: printed by B. Franklin, 1741
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Beloved, you must count that you have lived no longer than you have lived unto God, Philip. 1.21. To me to live is Christ, I should account I did not ⟨p. 35⟩live, if I did not live to him! 'Tis the only Employment of my Life to serve him. I should not tell what to do with my Life, unless it were to spend it for him.
Christian, Thus thou must reckon: So much Time as I have li•ed to Christ, so much have I lived; and so much as I have lived to myself, so much I have lost. 'Tis not the Man but the Beast that lives, while we live below our Reason, which distinguishes the Human Life from that of B•tes. Now while we live not to God, we live utterly below our Reason it self, which is sufficiently discovered, in that God is the Author and End of Man. Doth not Reason dictate that GOD should have the Glory of his own Work, and the Vessel should be to the Potter's Use? Doth any plant a Vineyard, or keep a Flock, and not expect the Fruits or Milk? 1 Cor. 9.7. GOD hath made thee, O Man, for himself. Prov. 16.4. And hast thou the Face of a Man, and dost not blush at this, to think that God should make and maintain thee in vain? If thou hast one Grain of Ingenuity, thou wilt abhor the thought of this, that thou shouldst be in vain. Why, so much as thou art for thy self, thou art for nothing. It may be thou livest a very busy Life; but thou actest not for God, thou art all this while but busily doing nothing. Thou mayest set down in the Evening, and say, I have been all this Day doing nothing. Thou wilt find a blank in God's Book for that Day, nothing upon thine Account: on this sad Record such a Day spent and nothing done. God hath his Day-book, and takes Notice of all your Carriages, how you rise, and how you go forth to your Labours: how you speak, how you eat, and whether you eye him and his Glory, in all, or look no higher than yourselves,