as he did, Lord what wouldst thou have me to do? And, as soon as he appeared to you by the way to Damascus ? Have you not conferred with flesh and blood, when required, like him, to go up to Jerusalem, and abjure the prejudices of your fathers? Has your zeal resembled his, so as to feel your spirit stirred within you, at the sight of a superstitious altar? And has your love resembled his, so as to be willing to be accursed for your brethren? You have denied Jesus Christ, as St. Peter; and that criminal laxity, which induced you to comply in such and such company, when your virtue was assailed, has made you like this apostle, who denied him in the court of Caiaphas: so far the parallel is just; but have you, like him, burned with zeal for the interests of his glory? Have you said, with an ardour like his, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee? Have you, like these saints, been ready to seal the truths of the Gospel with your blood; and, after being a gazing-stock to the world, are you, like them, rea dy to be offered up? You, like the thief, have that false weight, and that short measure, which you se cretly use on your counter, and in your warehouse; or that authority, which you openly abuse in the face of the world, and on the seat of justice: you liberate the culprits, who, perhaps, have imposed on strangers, or attacked them with open force: so far the parallel is just; but have you, like him, had eyes, which penetrated through the clouds, with which Christ was surrounded on the cross? Have you, like him, discovered the God of heaven and earth, in the person of the crucified Redeemer? Have you, like him, repaired, with the sincerity of your expiring breath, the crimes of your whole life? If the parallel be still just, your argument is good, and your recourse to mercy shall be attended with the same success. But if the parallel be defective; if you find, on your death-bed, that you have followed those personages solely in what was sinful, then

your argument is false; and you ought, at least, to relinquish the hopes you have founded on their examples.

5. We find, in short, another difference between the men who delay conversion, and the sinners, whose cases they adduce: it is evident that they were converted and obtained mercy, whereas it is extremely doubtful whether the others shall ever obtain it, and be converted. What, according to your mode of arguing, constitutes the strength of your objection, becomes the solidity of our reply. A sinner, in the career of crimes, is in a fluctuating condition between life and death; equally uncertain whether he shall obtain salvation, or become the victim of perdition. These men who delay conversion, these are the sinners we have to attack. You allege the case of characters, whose state has been already determined; and whose repentance has been realized by experience. Each of these, while, like you, habituated to vice, was, like you, uncertain whether they should obtain mercy, or whether the door would be shut. Access was opened, pardon was granted. Thus the question is decided; and all doubts, with regard to them, are done away.

But your situation is quite the reverse. You have the sins of their fluctuating state, not the grace of their determined condition, which induces confidence. In this painful suspense, who is in the right? We, who tremble at the awful risk you run; or you who rely on the precarious hope of extricating your. selves from sin? Who is in the right? Those accommodating guides, who, in your greatest profli gacy, continually assure you of the divine mercy, which serves merely as a pretext to confirm you in crimes; or we, who brandish before your eyes the awful sword of justice, to alarm your indolence, and rouse you from soft security?

Collect now, my brethren, all this variety of reflections; and, if there remain with you a shadow of

honesty, renounce the advantage you pretend to derive from these examples. Consider, that many of these conversions are not only out of the common course of religion, but also that they could not have been effectuated by less than miraculous powers. Consider that, among all those sinners, there was not one in the situation of a christian, who delays conversion to the close of life, Consider, that you are enlightened with meridian lustre, which they had scarcely seen. Consider, that you are pressed with a thousand motives unknown to them. Consider, that they continued, for the most part but a short time in sin; but you have wasted life in folly. Consider, that they possessed distinguished virtues, which rendered them dear to God; but you have nothing to offer him but dissipation or indolence. Consider, that they were distinguished by repentance, which afforded constant proof of their sincerity: whereas it is still doubtful, whether you shall ever be converted, and you go the way to make it impossible. See, then, whether your arguments are just, and whether your hopes are properly founded.

These examples we acknowledge, my brethren, are very encouraging to those who diligently endea vour to reform. We delight in enforcing them to those contrite and simple souls; those bruised and timorous souls, who tremble at God's word. We came not to straighten the way to heaven; we came not to preach a severe morality, and to announce a Divinity ferocious and cruel. Would to God that every sinner, in this assembly, would recollect him. self, and swell the catalogue of converts, in which grace has been triumphant! But hardened men can infer nothing hence, except alarming considerations.

Hitherto we have examined the cases of those sinners, who apparently contradict our principles; let us, in the next place, briefly review those, by which they are confirmed. Let us prove that the

longsuffering of God has its limits; and that in order to find him propitious, we must seek him while he may be found, and call upon him while he is near. This is our second head.

II. Three distinguished classes of examples, my brethren, three alarming monuments, confirm those illustrious truths. These are....

I. Public catastrophes. II. Obdurate sinners. III. Dying men....Happy are they who are cautioned by the calamities of others!

I. Public catastrophes. There is to every government, to every nation, and to every church, a li mited day of visitation: there is a time in which the Lord may be found, and a time in which he will not be found. "A time when he may be found ;" when commerce flourishes, when families prosper, when armies conquer, when politics succeed, when the temples are open, when the solemn feasts are ob. served, and the faithful say one to another, O come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord. This is the time when the Lord may be found. Happy time, which would have been restricted only by the duration of the world, had not the ingratitude of man introduced another time, in which the Lord will not be found. Then commerce languishes, families degenerate, armies are defeated, politics are confused, churches are overturned, the solemn feasts subside; and the earth, according to Moses, vomiteth out its inhabitants.

Isaiah has given us a proof of this awful truth, in the Jews of his own age. He preached, he prayed, he exhorted, he threatened, he thundered. How often was his voice heard in the streets of Jerusalem! Sometimes he would draw them with the cords of humanity; sometimes he would save them with fear, pulling them out of the fire. How often did he

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proclaim among them those terrific words....Behold the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem, and from Judah, the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water; the mighty man, and the man of war: the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent; and the ancient, and the captain of fifty; and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator. Isaiah iii. 1, 2, 3. How often did he say to them, by divine authority....Hear ye what I will do to my vineyard; I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down; and will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned nor digged. but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also command the clouds, that they rain no rain upon it. How often did he describe the future calamities of his country; the Chaldeans approaching; Jerusalem besieged; the city encumbered with the dead; the temple of the Lord reduced to heaps of stones; the holy mountain streaming with blood; Judea buried in ashes, or swimming with the blood of its inhabitants? How often did he cry with a feeling heart, O. that thou hadst hearkened to my commandment! Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the crown of the head, there is no soundness in it, Isa. i. 5, 6 Howl O gate, cry O city, thou whole Palestina art dissolved, Isa. xiv. 31. Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust for the fear of the Lord, Isa. ii. 10. That was the time to have prevented the. whole, that was the aim of the prophet, and the design of our text. But the Jews hardened themselves against his voice. God pronounced the sentence; he executed his word; he commanded the Chaldeans to invest the walls of Jerusalem; and then says the sacred historian, there was no remedy, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 16 The Israelites made a variety of