A call to the unconverted, to turn and live

USE.

LOOK upon your best and strongest reasons, sinners, if you will make good your way, you see now with whom you have to deal. What sayest thou, unconverted sensual wretch? Darest thou venture upon a dispute with God? Art thou able to confute him? Art thou ready to enter the lists? God asketh thee why wilt thou die? Art thou furnished with a sufficient answer? Wilt thou undertake to prove that God is mistaken, and that thou art in the right! O what an undertaking is that? Why, either he or you is mistaken, when he is for your conversion, and you are against it; he calls upon you to turn, and you will not; he bids you do it presently, even to day, while it is called to day, and think it time enough hereafter. He saith it must be a total change, and you must be holy and new creatures, and born again: and you think that less may serve the turn, and that's enough to parch up the old man, without becoming new. Who is in the right now? God, or you? God calleth you to turn, and to live an holy life, and you will not: by your disobedient lives it appears you will not. If you will, why do you not? Why have you not done it all this while? And why do you not fall upon it yet? Your wills have the commands of our lives. We may certainly conclude, that you are unwilling to turn, when you do not turn. And why will you not? Can you give any ⟨p. 77⟩reason for it, that's worthy to be called a reason?

I that am but a worm, your fellow creature, of a shallow capacity, dare challenge the wisest of you all, to reason the case with me, while I plead my maker's cause: and I need not be discouraged, when I know, I plead but the cause that God pleadeth, and contend for him that will have the best at last; had I but these two general grounds against you, I am sure that you have no good reason on your side.