2. As far as you are gone in a course of profaneness, you are not yet gone beyond the reach of mercy and all hopes of salvation, if now at last, after all your debaucheries and profaneness, the Lord touch your hearts mth the sense of your sinful and miserable state, and turn your feet to his testimonies. When the apostle, in 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10. had told us the doom of such men, upon the supposition of their perseverance in that course, yet presently adds, as a motive to their repentance, an example of mercy upon such wretches as these, " And such were some of you, but ye are washed," ver. 11. The golden sceptre of free grace hath been held forth to many, as profane and notorious sinners as you, to blaspheming Saul, to a Mary Magdalen, to a Manasseh. It is not the greatness of the sin, but the impenitence and infidelity of the sinner that ruins him. Well, then, there is a certainty of damnation if you go on, and yet a possibility of forgiveness and mercy before you; a mercy in- valuable.
3. Nay, this is not all ; but in some respect there is more pro- bability and hope of your return and repentance, than there is of many others who have led a more sober, smooth, and civil life tlian you have done. Your profaneness hath more dishonoured
SIO A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAN.
God, but the morality and civility of some men secure them faster in the snare of the devil : They have many things in themselves to build up their presumptuous hopes upon, but you have nothing. Itir is hard for conviction to reach that man's conscience that hath righ- teousness of his own to trust in ; but methinks it should have an easier access to yours, whose notorious courses lay your consciences naked and bare before the word to be wounded by it. Christ's ministry had little success among the Pharisees, who were righteous in their own eyes, but it wrought effectually upon Publicans and Sinners. Hence Christ told them, Matth. xxi. 31. that " Publi- " cans and Harlots go into the kingdom of God before them." Publicans were esteemed the worst of men, and Harlots the worst of women ; yet the one, and the other, as vile as they were, stood fairer for conviction, and consequently for salvation, than those that thought they needed no repentance. All this is matter of hope, and runs into a powerful motive and loud call to repentance. " He " that hath an ear to hear, let him hear.
TJie tenth way leading to destruction marked.
X. Deep and fixed prejudices against godliness, and the sincere professors thereof, precipitate thousands of souls into their own ruin and damnation.
It was not without a weighty reason, that Christ denounced that wo upon the world, Matth. xviii. 7. " Wo unto the world, because *' of offences.'' The poor world will be ruined by scandals and prejudices ; they will take such offences at the ways of godliness, that they will never have good thoughts of them any more. " This " sect is every where spoken against," Acts xxviii. 22. and so Christians are condemned, bta r-ziv (pri/j.riv, because of the common reproach, as Justin Martyr complained. All the scandals which fall out in the church, are so many swords and daggers put into the hands of the wicked world to murder their own souls withal. Some have sucked in such opinions of the ways of godliness as make them irreconcileable enemies to them, and fierce opposers of them. And from hence are most of the persecutions that befal the people of God. When you see showers of slanders and reproaches going before, expect storms of persecutions coming after. Slanders beget prejudices, and these prepare for persecutions. O how keen and fierce are the minds of many against the upright and innocent ser- vants of God, whom they have first represented to themselves in such an odious dress and character, as the devil hath drawn them in, upon their fancies and imaginations ! So the primitive Chris- tians were represented to the Heathens as monsters, and their conventions in the night, occasioned by the fury of persecutors,
A TEEATIS£ OF THE SOUL OF MAK. Sll
"^vere reported to be for lascivious and barbarous ends, to deflower virgins, and murder innocent children : And by this artifice the Heathens were secured against conversion to Christ. This hath been the policy of hell from the beginning, and it hath prospered so much in the world, that Satan hath no reason to change his hand. But how may this plot of hell be defeated, and the ruin of souls prevented ?
The tenth way of destroying souls shut up by two counsels.
1. It will be impossible to prevent the ruin of a great part of the world by prejudices against the ways of godliness, except those who profess them, walk more holily and conformably to the rule and pattern of Christ, whose name is called upon by them. I shall therefore first address my discourse to the professors of religion, beseeching them, in the bowels of Christ, to take pity upon the multitude of souls which are daily ruined and destroyed by their scandals and miscarriages. Did you live according to the rules you profess, " your well-doing would put to silence the ignorance of *• foolish men,'' 1 Pet. ii. 15. and consequently the ruin of many might be prevented. I remember * Bernard, speaking of the lewd and loose life of the priests of his time, sighs out this just and bitter complaint to God about it ; Misera eorum conversatio plehis turn miscrabilis suhversio est : O Lord ! said he, their miserable conversation is the miserable subversion of thy people. O ! of how many, who glory in the title of the sons of the church, may Christ say as Jacob did of his two lewd sons, Simon and Levi, " You " have troubled me, to make me to stink among the inhabitants of " the land," Gen. xxxiv. 30.
And how many professors, who pretend to more than ordinary reformation and holiness, do shed soul-blood by their scandalous conversations. -I* Salvian brings in the wicked of his age upbraid- ing the looseness of Christiass, in this manner ; " Behold, those *' men who boast themselves redeemed from the tyranny of Satan, " and profess themselves dead to the world, yet are conquered by " the lusts of it." And J Cyprian, long before his day, brings in the Heathens thus insulting over looser Christians : " Where is *' that catholic law which they believe ? Where are the examples *' of piety and chastity, which they should learn ? They read the *' gospel, yet are immodest ; they hear the apostles, yet are
* Bern, in Convers. Pavli, Ser. 1.
f Ecce quijactant se redemptos a tyrannide Satancs. qui pnpdicant se mortuos mundo^ nihilominus a cupiditatibus suit vincuntur. Salvian.
I Ubi est. cr.tkoUcn lex qiiam creduvt? Ubi pietatis et castitatis exeinpla quce discwH ? Evangelia legunty et impudici sunt} Apostalos audiunU et ■(nebriantvr. Cyp»
21^ A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAN.