(6.) Lastly, Art thou one that hast through mercy at last attain- ed assurance, or good hope, through grace, of thy interest in Christ? Rejoice then in thy present mercy, and long ardently to be with thine own Christ in his glory. There be many things dis- persed through this treatise, of Christ, to animate such joy, and excite such longings. It was truly observed by a wor- j^r g -^ thy author, (whose words I have mentioned more freely than his name in this discourse) That it is in a manner as natural for us to leap when we see the new Jerusalem, as it is to laugli wlicn we are ticlled : Joy is not under the souFs command when Christ kisseth it. And for your desires to be with Christ, what considera- tion can you find in this world strong enough to rein them in ? O when you shall consider what he hath done, suffered, and pur- chased" for you, where he is now, and how much he longs for your coming, your very hearts should groan out those words, Phil. i. 23. " I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ.'" The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for of Christ.
2. Having delivered my message to the reader in general, I have Somewhat more particularly to say to you of this place.
You are a people that were born under, and bred up with the gospel. It hath been your singular privilege, above many towns and parishes in England, to enjoy more than sixty years together an able and fruitful ministry among you. The dew of heaven lay upon you, as it did upon Gideon's fleece, when the ground was dry in other places about you ; you have been richly watered with gospel-showers ; you, with Capernaum, have been exalted to heaven in the means of grace. And it must be owned to your praise, that you testified more respect to the gospel than many other places have done, and treated Christ's ambassadors with more civility, whilst they prophesied in sackcloth, than some other places did. These things are praise-worthy in you. But all this, and much more than this, amounts not to that which Jesus Christ expects from you, and which in his name I would now persuade you to. And 6 that I (the least and un worthiest of all the messengers of
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Christ to you) might indeed prevail with all that are Christless among you, (1.) To answer the long continued calls of God to you, by a thorough and sound conversion, that the long-suffering of God may be your salvation , and you may not receive all this grace of God in vain. O that the damned might never be set a wondering, to see a people of your advantages for heaven, sinking as much below many of themselves in misery, as you now are above them in means and mercy.
Dear friends, my heart's desire and prayer to God for you is, that you may be saved. O that I knew how to engage this whole town to Jesus Christ, and make fast the marriage-knot betwixt him and you, albeit after that I should presently go to the place of silence^ and see men no more, with the inhabitants of the world. Ah sirs ! methinks I see the Lord Jesus laying the mer- ciful hand of a holy violence upon you : methinks he calls to you, as the angel to Lot, saying, " Arise, lest ye be consumed; And " while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, the Lord " being merciful unto him. And they brought him without the " city, and said, Escape for thy life, stay not in all the plain ; u escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed," Gen. xix. 15. How often (to allude to this) hath Jesus Christ in like manner laid hold upon you in the preaching of the gospel, and will you not flee for refuge to him ? Will you rather be consumed, than endeavour an escape ? A beast will not be driven into the fire, and will not you be kept out ? The merciful Lord Jesus, by his admi- rable patience and bounty, hath convinced you how loth he is to leave or lose you. To this day his arms are stretched forth to ga- ther you, and will you not be gathered ? Alas for my poor neigh- bours ! Must so many of them perish at last ? What shall I do for the daughter of my people ?
Lord, by what 'arguments shall they be persuaded to be happy ? What will win them effectually to thy Christ? They have many of them escaped the pollutions of the world through the know- ledge of the Lord and Saviour. They are a people that love thine ordinances, they take delight in approaching to God ; thou hast beautified many of them with lovely and obliging tempers and disr- positions. Thus far they are come, there they stick ; and beyond this no power but thine can move them. O thou, to whose hand this work is and must be left, put forth thy saving power and re- veal thine arm for their salvation; Thou hast glorified thy name in many of them ; Lord, glorify it again.
(2.) *My next request is, that you will all be persuaded, whether converted or unconverted, to set up all the duties of religion in your families, and govern your children and servants as men that must give an account to God for them in the great day. O that
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there were not a prayerless family in this town ! How little will their tables differ from the manger, where beasts feed together, if God be not owned and acknowledged there, in your eating and drinking ? And how can you expect blessings should dwell in your tabernacles, if God be not called on there? Say not, you want time for it, or that your necessities will not allow it ; for, had you been more careful of these duties, it is like you had not been ex* posed to such necessities : besides, you can find time to be idle, you can waste a part of every day vainly ; Why could not that time be redeemed for God ? Moreover, you will not deny but the success of all your affairs at home and abroad depends upon the blessing of God ; and if so, think you it is not the right way, even to tem- poral prosperity, to engage his presence and blessing with you, in whose hands your all is ? Say not, your children and servants are ignorant of God, and therefore you cannot comfortably join with them in those duties, for the neglect of those duties is the cause of their ignorance ; and it is not like they will be better, till you use God's means to make them so.