wilt thou make a covenant with me and my Christ? wilt thou take me for thy God, and him for thy Redeemer and Lord? And may I, Lord? yet, may I? O admirable grace! wonderful sparing mercy! that I was not thrown into hell at my first refusal! Yea, Lord, with all my heart and soul. I renounce the vanities of an empty cheating world, and all the pleasures of sin. In thy favour stands my life. Whom have I in heaven but thee? whom on earth do I desire besides thee? And O, thou blessed Jesus, thou Prince of the kings of the earth, who hast loved me, and washed me from my sins in thy blood, and whom the eternal God hath exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance and remission of sins, I fall before thee, my Lord and my God; I here willingly tender my homage at the footstool of thy throne. I take thee for the Lord of my life. I absolutely surrender and resign myself to thee. Thy love constrains me henceforth no more to live to myself, but to thee who diedst for me, and didst rise again. And I subject and yield myself to thy blessed light and power, O Holy Spirit of grace, to be more and more illuminated, sanctified, and prepared for every good word and work in this world, and for an inheritance among them that are sanctified in the other. Sinner, never give thy soul leave to be at rest till thou find it brought to some such transaction with God (the Father, Son, and Spirit) as this; so as that thou canst truly say, and dost feel thy heart is in it. Be not weary or impatient of waiting and striving, till thou canst say, this is now the very sense of thy soul. Such things have been done in the world; (but O how seldom of latter days!) so God hath wrought with men to save them from going down to the pit, having found a ransom for them. And why may he not yet be expected to do so? He hath smitten rocks ere now, and made the waters gush out; nor is his hand shortened nor his ear heavy. Thy danger is not, sinner, that he will be inexorable, but lest thou shouldst. He will be entreated, if thou wouldst be prevailed with to entreat his favour with thy whole heart.

And that thou mayst, and not throw away thy soul, and so great a hope, through mere sloth, and loathness to be at some pains for thy life; let the text, which hath been thy directory about the things that belong to thy peace, be also thy motive, as it gives thee to behold the Son of God weeping over such as would not know those things.

Shall not the Redeemer's tears move thee? O hard heart! Consider what these tears import to this purpose.

1. They signify the real depth and greatness of the misery into which thou art falling. They drop from an intellectual and most comprehensive eye, that sees far, and pierces deep into things, hath a wide and large prospect; takes the comfort of that forlorn state into which unreconcilable sinners are hastening, in all the horror of it. The Son of God did not weep vain and causeless tears, or for a light matter; nor did he for himself either spend his own, or desire the profusion of others' tears. Weep not for me, O daughters of Jerusalem, &c. He knows the value of souls, the weight of guilt, and how low it will press and sink them; the severity of God's justice, and the power of his anger, and what the fearful effects of them will be, when they finally fall. If thou understandest not these things thyself, believe him that did, at least believe

his tears.

2. They signify the sincerity of his love and pity, the truth and tenderness of his compassion. Canst thou think his deceitful tears? his, who never knew guile? was this like the rest of his course? And remember that he who shed tears, did, from the same fountain of love and mercy, shed blood too! Was that also done to deceive? Thou makest thyself some very considerable thing indeed, if thou thinkest the Son of God counted it worth his while to weep, and bleed, and die, to deceive thee into a false esteem of him and his love. But if it be the greatest madness imaginable to entertain any such thought, but that his tears were sincere and inartificial, the natural genuine expressions of undissembled benignity and pity, thou art then to consider what love and compassion thou art now sinning against; what bowels thou spurnest; and that if thou perishest, 'tis under such guilt as the devils themselves are not liable to, who never had a Redeemer bleeding for them, nor, that we ever find, weeping over them.

3. They show the remedilessness of thy case, if thou persist in impenitency and unbelief till the things of thy peace be quite hid from thine eyes. These tears will then be the last issues of (even defeated) love, of love that is frustrated of its kind design. Thou mayest perceive in these tears the steady unalterable laws of Heaven, the inflexibleness of the Divine justice, that holds thee in adamantine bonds, and hath sealed thee up, if thou prove

incurably obstinate and impenitent, unto perdition; so that even the Redeemer himself, he that is mighty to save, cannot at length save thee, but only weep over thee, drop tears into thy flame, which assuage it not; but (though they have another design, even to express true compassion} do yet unavoidably heighten and increase the fervour of it, and will do so to all eternity. He even tells thee, sinner, "Thou hast despised my blood, thou shalt yet have my tears." That would have saved thee, these do only lament thee lost.

But the tears wept over others, as lost and past hope, why should they not yet melt thee, while as yet there is hope in thy case? If thou be effectually melted in thy very soul, and looking to him whom thou hast pierced, dost truly mourn over him, thou mayst assure thyself the prospect his weeping eye had of lost souls, did not include tnee. His weeping over thee would argue thy case forlorn and hopeless: thy mourning over him will make it safe and happy. That it may be so, consider further, that,

4. They signify how very intent he is to save souls, and how gladly he would save thine, if yet thou wilt accept of mercy while it may be had. For if he weep over them that will not be saved, from the same love that is the spring of these tears, would saving mercy proceed to those that are become willing to receive them. And that love that wept over them that were lost, how will it glory in them that are saved! There his love is disappointed and vexed, crossed in its gracious intendment; but here having compassed it, how will he joy over thee with singing, and rest in his love! And thou also, instead of being involved in a like ruin with the unreconciled sinners of the old Jerusalem, shalt be enrolled among the glorious citizens of the new, and triumph together with them in eternal glory.

APPENDIX.

BECAUSE Some things, not fit to be wholly omitted, were as little fit to come into the body of a practical discourse, 'twas thought requisite to subjoin here the following additions, that will severally have reference to distinct parts of the foregoing discourse.

As to what was said of the unreasonableness and ill consequence of admitting it-to be any man's duty to believe himself utterly rejected, and forsaken of God, inasmuch as it would make that his duty which were repugnant to his felicity:-this is to be evinced by a consideration, which also, even apart by itself, were not without its own great weight, viz. that such a belief were inconsistent with his former stated and known duty; it were therefore inconsistent with his felicity, inasmuch as it would make that duty impossible to be performed, which before, was by constitution of the evangelical law, made necessary to it, viz. repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The hope of acceptance is so necessary to both these, that the belief of a man's being finally rejected, or that he shall never be accepted, cannot but make them both impossible, equally impossible as if he were actually in hell, as much impossible to him as to the devils themselves. Nor is this impossibility merely from a moral impotency, or that obduration of heart which were confessedly vicious, and his great sin, but from the natural influence of that belief of his being for ever rejected, which (upon the mentioned supposition) were his duty. Besides, inasmuch as it is the known duty of a sinner under the Gospel, to turn to God through Christ, and it is also declared in the same Gospel (sufficiently to make it the common matter of faith to Christians) that none can of themselves turn to God, and believe in his Son, without the help of special efficacious grace; it must hereupon be a man's duty also to pray for that grace which may enable him hereto. How deep in wickedness was Simon Magus, even in the gall of

**

bitterness, and bond of iniquity, when yet Peter calls him to repentance, and puts him upon praying for forgiveness: (which must imply also his praying for the grace to repent ;) but how can a man pray for that, which, at the same time, he believes shall not be given him? yea, and which is harder, and more unaccountable, how can he stand obliged in duty, to pray for that which at the same time, he stands obliged in duty to believe he shall not obtain? How can these two contrary obligations lie upon a man at the same time? or is he to look upon the former as ceased? should he reckon the Gospel as to him repealed? or his impenitency and infidelity, even when they are at the highest, no sins?

I know 'tis obvious to object, as to all this, the case of the unpardonable blasphemy against the Holy Ghost; which will be supposed to be stated and determined in the sacred Scriptures; and being so, the person that hath committed it, may equally be thought obliged (by a mixed assent, partly of faith to what is written, partly of selfknowledge, which he ought to have of his own acts and state) to conclude himself guilty of it; whereupon all the former inconvenience and difficulty will be liable to be urged as above. But even as to this also, I see not but it may fitly enough be said, that though the general nature of that sin be stated, and sufficiently determined in thesi, yet that God hath not left it determinable in hypothesi, by any particular person, that he hath committed it. For admit that it generally lies in imputing to the devil those works of the Holy Ghost, by which the truth of Christianity was to be demonstrated, I yet see not how any man can apply this to his own particular case, so as justly and certainly to conclude himself guilty of it. I take it for granted none will ever take the notion of blasphemy in that strictness, but that a man may possibly be guilty of this sin as well in thought as by speech. I also doubt not but it will be acknowledged on all hands, that prejudice and malice against Christianity must have a great ingrediency into this sin; not such malice as whereby, knowing it to be the true religion, a man hates and detests it as such (which would suppose these Pharisees, whom our Saviour charges with it, or cautions against it, to have been, at that time, in their judgments and consciences, Christians,) but such malignity, and strong prejudice, as darkens and obstructs his mind, that he judges it not to be true, against the highest evidence of its being. It will also be acknow