He is by nature blind and ignorant, and yet refuses Christ, who conies to him with heavenly light and wisdom ; he is condemned by the terrible sentence of the law to eternal wrath, and yet rejects Christ, who renders to him complete and perfect righteousness : he is wholly polluted and plunged into original and actual pollutions of nature and practice, yet will have none of Christ, who would become sanctification to him. He is oppressed in soul and body, with the deplorable effects and miseries sin hath brought upon him, and yet is so in love with his bondage, that he will neither accept Christ, nor the redemption he brings with him to sinners.
O ! what monsters, what beasts hath sin turned its subjects into ! " You will not come to me that ye may have life," John v. 40. Sin hath stabbed the sinner to the heart, the wounds are all mortal, eternal death is in his face; Christ hath prepared the only plaister that can cure his wounds, but he will not suffer him to apply it *. He acts like one in love with death, and that judges it sweet to perish. So Christ tells us, Prov. viii. 36. " All they that " hate me, love death :" not in itself but in its causes, with which it is inseparably connected. They are loth to burn, yet willing to sin ; though sin kindle those everlasting flames. So that in two things the unbeliever shews himself worse than brutish, he cannot think of damnation, the effect of sin, without horror ; and cannot yet think of sin, the cause of damnation, without pleasure ; he is loth to perish to all eternity without a remedy, and yet refuses and declines Christ as if he were an enemy, who only can and would deliver him from that eternal perdition.
How do men act therefore, as if they were in love with their own ruin ! Many poor wretches now in the way to hell, what an hard shift do they make to cast themselves away ! Christ meets them many times in the ordinances, where they studiously shun him : many times checks them in their way by convictions, which they make an hard shift to overcome and conquer. Oh how willing are they to accept a cure, a benefit, a remedy, for any thing but their souls ! You see then that sinners cannot, (should they study all their days to do themselves a mischief), take a readier course to undo themselves, than by rejecting Christ in his gracious offers.
Surely the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is less than this sin.
Mercy itself is exasperated by it, and the damnation of such as reject Christ, (so prepared for them, with whatever they need, and so seriously and frequently offered to them upon the knee of gos- pel intreaty), is just, inevitable, and will be more intolerable than to any in the world beside them. It is just, for the sinner hath but
* Not that any one is so mad, as willingly and knowingly to love death, which we all naturally abhor; but because that is the fruit of despising the wisdom of God, which at length brings death on us. Lavat. on the place.
BfeSM. I. THE METHOD OF GRACE. 29
his own option, or choice : he is but come to the end which he was often told his way would bring him to. It is inevitable, for there is no other way to salvation, but that which is rejected. And it will be more intolerable than the damnation of others, be- cause neither heathens nor devils ever aggravated their sins by such an horrid circumstance, as the wilful refusing of such an apt, offered, and only remedy.
Infer. 4. What a tremendous symptom of wrath, and sad char* aeter of death, appears upon that marl's soul, to which no effectual application of Christ can be made by the gospel.
Christ, with his benefits, is frequently tendered to them in the gospel ; they have been beseeched once and again, upon the knee of importunity, to accept him ; those entreaties and persuasions have been urged by the greatest arguments, the command of God, the love of Christ, the inconceivable happiness or misery which una- voidably follow the accepting or rejecting of those offers, and yet nothing will affect them : all their pleas for infidelity have been over and over confuted, their reasons and consciences have stood convinced ; they have been speechless, as well as Christless : not one sound argument is found with them to defend their infidelity : they confess in general, that such courses as theirs are, lead to destruction. They will yield them to be happy souls that are in Christ ; and yet, when it comes to the point, their own closing with him, nothing will do ; all arguments, all entreaties, return to us without success.
Lord ! what is the reason of this unaccountable obstinacy ? In other things it is not so : If they be sick, they are so far from rejecting a physician that offers himself, that they will send, and pray, and pay him too. If they be arrested for debt, and any one will be a surety, and pay their debts for them, words can hardly express the sense they have of such a kindness : but though Christ would be both a physician and surety, and whatever else their needs re- quire, they will rather perish to eternity, than accept him. What may we fear to be the reason of this, but because they are not of Christ's sheep, John x. 26. The Lord open the eyes of poor sin- ners, to apprehend not only how great a sin, but how dreadful a sign this is.
Infer. 5. If Christ, with all his benefits, be made ours, by Gotfs spe- cial application, what a day of mercies then is the day of conversion! what multitudes of choice blessing's visit the converted soul in that day!
" This day. (saith Christ to Zaccheus, Luke xix. 9.) is " salvation come to this house.1' In this day, Christ cometh into the soul, and he comes not empty, but brings with him all his treasures of wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption. Troops of mercies, yea, of the best of mercies,
30 THY METHOD OF GliACE. SERM. T.
come with him. It is a day of singular gladness and joy to the heart of Christ, when he is espoused to, and received by the be- lieving soul : it is a coronation day to a king. So you read, Cant. iii. 11. " Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king " Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in " the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his " heart."
Where, under the type of Solomon in his greatest magnificence and glory, when the royal diadem was set upon his head, and the people shouted for joy, so that the earth did ring again, is shadow- ed out the joy- of Christ's heart, when poor souls, by their high estimation of him, and consent to his government, do, as it were, crown him with glory and honour, and make his heart glad.