A call to the unconverted, to turn and live

Beloved friends, if the Lord had not awakened me to believe, and lay to heart these things myself, I should have remained in the dark and selfish state, and have perished for ever; but if he have truly made me sensible of them, it will constrain me to compassionate you as well as myself. If your eyes were so far opened as to see hell, and you saw your neighbours, that were unconverted, dragged thither with hideous cries; though they were such as you accounted honest people on earth, and feared no such matter by themselves, such a sight would make you go home and think of it, and think again, and make you warn all about you, as that damned worldling in Luke xvi. 28. would have had his brethren warned, lest they come to that place of torment. Why, faith is a kind of sight; it is the eye of the soul, the evidence of things not seen: If I believe God, it is next to seeing: And, therefore, I beseech you to excuse me, if I be half as earnest with you about these matters, as if I had seen them. If I must die to-morrow, and it were in my power to come again from another world, and tell you what I had seen, would you not be willing to hear me? And would you not believe and regard what I should tell you? If I might preach one sermon to you after I am dead, and have seen what is done in the world to come, would you not have me plainly speak the truth, and would you not crowd to hear me, and would you not lay it to heart? But this must not be; God hath his appointed way of teaching you by scripture and ministers, and he will not humour unbelievers so far as to send men from the dead to them, and to alter his established way; if any man quarrel with the sun, God will not humour him so far as to set him up a cl•carer light.— ⟨p. 31⟩Friends, I beseech you regard me now, as you would do if I should come from the dead to you; for I can give you as full assurance of the truth of what I say to you, as if I had been there and seen it with my eyes; for it is possible for one from the dead to deceive you; but Jesus Christ can never deceive you; the word of God, delivered in scripture, and sealed up by miracles, and holy workings of the spirit, can never deceive you. Believe th•s, or believe nothing. Believe and obey this, or you are undone.

Beloved friends, if the Lord had not awakened me to believe, and lay to heart these things myself, I should have remained in the dark and selfish state, and have perished for ever; but if he have truly made me sensible of them, it will constrain me to compassionate you as well as myself. If your eyes were so far opened as to see hell, and you saw your neighbours, that were unconverted, dragged thither with hideous cries; though they were such as you accounted honest people on earth, and feared no such matter by themselves, such a sight would make you go home and think of it, and think again, and make you warn all about you, as that damned worldling in