The saints everlasting rest

6. This also will be a most tormenting consideration, to remember what they sold their eternal welfare for. When they compare the value of the pleasures of sin, with the value of the recompense of reward, how will the vast disproportion astonish them! To think of a few pleasant cups, or sweet morsels, a little case, or low delight to the flesh; and then to think of everlasting glory! What a vast difference between them will then appear? To think, this is all I had for my soul, my GOD, my hopes of blessedness! It cannot possibly be expressed how these thoughts will tear his heart. Then will he exclaim against his folly. O miserable wretch! Did I set my soul to sale for so base a price? Did I part with my GOD for a little dirt and dross? and sell my Saviour, as Judas, for a little silver? O for how small a matter have I parted with my happiness! I had but a dream of delight, for my hopes of heaven: and now I am awaked, it is all vanished: where are now my honours and attendance? My morsels are now turned to gall, and my cups to wormwood. They delighted me no longer than while they were passing down; and is this all that I have had for the inestimable treasure? O what a mad exchange did I make? What if I had gained all the world, and lost my soul? But alas, how small a part of the world was it, for which I gave up my part of glory!—O tha• sinners would think of this, when they are swimming in delights, and studying to be rich and honourable! When they are desperately venturing upon known transgression, and sinning against the checks of conscience!

7. Yet much more will it add unto their torment, when they consider that all this was their own doings, and that they wilfully procured their own destruction: had they been forced to sin, it would much abate the rage of their consciences, or if they were punished for another man's transgressions: or if any other had been the chief author of their ruin: but to think, that it was the choice of their own wills, and that GOD had set them in so free a condition, that none in the world could have forced them to sin against their wills, this will be a griping thought. What (thinks this wretched creature) had I not enemies enough in the world, but I must be an enemy to myself? GOD would neither give the devil, nor the world, so much power over me, as to force me to commit the least transgression. If I had not consented, their temptations had been in vain; they could but entice me, it was myself that yielded, and did the evil; and I must needs lay hands upon my own soul, and imbrue my hands in my own blood. Who should pity me, who pitied not myself, and who brought all this upon mine own head? Never did GOD do me any good, or offer me any for the welfare of my soul, but I resisted him: he hath heaped mercy upon me, and renewed one deliverance after another, to entice my heart to him, and yet was I never heartily willing to serve him: he hath gently chastised me, and made me groan under the fruit of my disobedience, and yet, though I promised largely in my affliction, I was never unfeignedly willing to obey him.