The saints everlasting rest

the great day of his judgment will be terrible: your time runs on: your lives are uncertain: you are far behind hand: you have loitered long: your case is dangerous: your souls are far gone in sin: you are strange to GOD: you are hardened in evil customs: you have no assurance of comfort to show: if you die to-morrow, how unready a•• you! And with what terror will your souls go out of your bodies! And do you yet loiter? Why, consider, GOD standeth all this while waiting your leisure: his patience beareth: his justice forbeareth: his mercy entreateth you: Christ standeth offering you his blood and merits: you may have him freely, and life with him: the Spirit is persuading: conscience is accusing and urging you: ministers are praying for you, and calling upon you: Satan stands waiting when justice will cut off your lives, that he may have you: this is your time: now or never. What! had you rather lose heaven than your profits or pleasures? Had you rather burn in hell, than repent on earth? Had you rather howl and roar there, than pray day and night for mercy here? Or have devils your tormentors, than Christ your governor? Will you renounce your part in GOD and glory, rather than renounce your sins? Do you think a holy life too much for heaven: or too dear a course to prevent endless misery? Oh friends, what do you think ⟨p. 208⟩of these things? GOD hath made you men, and end•ed you with reason: do you renounce your reason where you should chiefly use it? In this manner you must deal roundly and seriously with men. Alas! it is not a few dull words between jest and earnest, between sleep and waking, as it were, that will waken an ignorant dead-hearted sinner. When a dull hearer, and a dull speaker meet together, a dead heart, and a dead exhortation; it is unlike to have a lively effect. If a man fall down in a swoon, you will not stand trifling with him, but lay hands on him presently, and snatch him up, and rub him, and call aloud to him: if a house be on fire, you will not in a cold strain go to tell your neighbour of it, or make an oration of the nature and danger of fire; but you will run out and cry, fire, fire: matters of moment must be seriously dealt with. To tell a man of his sins so softly as Eli did his sons, or reprove him so gently as Jehoshaphat did Ahab, Let not the king say so, doth usually as much harm as good.

the great day of his judgment will be terrible: your time runs on: your lives are uncertain: you are far behind hand: you have loitered long: your case is dangerous: your souls are far gone in sin: you are strange to GOD: you are hardened in evil customs: you have no assurance of comfort to shew: if you die to-morrow, how unready a you! And with what terror will your souls go out of your bodies! And do you yet loiter? Why, consider, GOD standeth all this while waiting your leisure: his patience beareth: his justice forbeareth: his mercy entreateth you: Christ standeth offering you his blood and merits: you may have him freely, and life with him: the Spirit is persuading: conscience is accusing and urging you: ministers are praying for you, and calling upon you: Satan stands waiting when justice will cut off your lives, that he may have you: this is your time: now or never. What! had you rather lose heaven than your profits or pleasures? Had you rather burn in hell, than repent on earth? Had you rather howl and roar there, than pray day and night for mercy here? Or have devils your tormentors, than Christ your governor? Will you renounce your part in GOD and glory, rather than renounce your sins? Do you think a holy life too much for heaven: or too dear a course to prevent endless misery? Oh friends, what do you think