N03796:574
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.
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, Luke 5.5. We have been toiling all Night, and caught nothing. May not this be the sad Complaint of many a Man? I have been toiling all my Life, and ye ⟨p. 36⟩I have done nothing, because what I did was not done unto the Lord. How would you take it of your Servants, if coming home in the Evening, you should find every one of them minding their own Business and Pleasure, and your Work left undone. Is it not sad, Sirs, that so many Hours and Days should pass over us, and we no nearer our End than ever we were before? Your little Children are busy from Morning to Night, and yet all the while have been doing nothing: And so are you, when you are but seeking your carnal Selves, and not serving and pleasing God in what you undertake.