every creature.' Make no difference, rich or poor; great sinners or little, old sinners or young ; offer peace to all that will hut repent and believe ; hid as many come as will, here is room for all that come. Again, the strictness of it on the other hand. O what a solemn charge have tliey to deliver their message faithfully ! Paul trembles at the thoughts of loitering : ' Woe unto me if I preach not!' What an argument doth Christ use, fetched from his very heart, to persuade Peter to be careful : * If thou lovest me, feed my sheep.' As if he had said, Peter, thou now art in tears for thy cowardice in denying me, thou hast yet one way left, for all that unkindness, to demonstrate thy love to me, and that is l)y feeding my sheep : do this, and trouble not thyself for that. Christ shews more care of his sheep than of himself. Fourthly, The joy God expresseth when poor sinners come into the offer of peace. Joy is the liighest testimony that can be given to our complacency in any thing or person ; love is to joy as fuel to the fire : if love lay little fuel of desires on the heart, then the flame of joy that comes thence will not be great. Now God's joy is great in pardoning poor sinners that come in, therefore his affection great in the offer thereof. It is made tlie very motive that prevails with God to pardon sinners, ' Because he deligliteth in mercy,' Micah vii. 18 : ' Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, for he delighteth in mercy.' God doth all this, ' because he delighteth in mercy.' Ask why th.e angler stands all night with his line in the river ; he will tell you, because he delights in the sport. Well, you now know the reason why God stands so long waiting on sinners, months, years, preaching to them ; it is that he may be gracious in pardoning them, and in that act delight himself. Princes very often pardon traitors, to please others more than themselves, or else it would never be done ; but God doth it chiefly to delight and glad his own merciful heart. Hence, the business Christ came about, which was no other but to reconcile sinners to God, it is called ' the pleasure of the Lord,' Isa. liii. 10. The Lord takes such joy and pleasure in this, that whereas other fathers, whose love to their children sinks infinitely beneath any comparison with the love of God to Christ, mourn at the death of their children, (and most of all when violent and bloody,) God takes content in his Son's death ; yea, had the chief hand in procuring of it, and that with infinite complacency : ' It pleased the Lord to bruise him.' And what joy coidd God take in his Son's death, but as it made way for him and his poor creatures that were fallen out, and at o])en war one against another, to fall in again by a happy accord ? And now speak, O sinner, if God doth so affectionately desire to be reconciled with thee, doth it not much more behove thee to embrace the peace than it doth liim to ofier it?
Section IV. — Fourthly, There is but one thing more I would desire thee, sinner, to consider, and then I leave thee to thy own choice. Consider what thou dost when thou refusest peace with God. Determinations of war or peace use to be the result of the most grave counsels and mature deliberations possible. Think and think again what thou dost, before thou breakest off the treaty of peace, lest thou makcst work for repentance when it will be bootless. But lest thou shouldst not be so faithful to God and thy own soul, as to give thy conscience liberty to speak freely in this matter, I shall do it for thee, and tell thee what thou dost when thou rejectest peace. Thoujustifiest thy former hostilities against God, and declarest that thou wilt vouch what thou hast done, let God right himself as well as he can. He that refuseth a pardon, either dcnieth he hath done wrong, or which is worse, stands to defend it : thou hadst as good say thou desirest not to be friends with God, but hast a mind to perpetuate the feud between God and thee ; like Hamilcar, who was such an enemy to Rome, that when he died he made his son Hannibal swear to his hatred against them. Is it not enough thou hast fought so many battles on earth against thy Maker, but wilt thou keep the quarrel up in another world also, where there is no more possibility to put an end to it than to eternity itself? Thou throwest the greatest scorn upon God that it is possible for a creature to do ; as if God's love and hatred were such inconsiderable things that they need not, when cast into the scale of thy thoughts, preponderate thee either way, the one to move thy desire, or the other thy fear. In a word, thou consentest to thy own damnation, and desperately flingest thyself into the mouth of God's flaming wrath, which gapes
TllK OOSPiX Ob' PEACE. gg5