3. How little you have answered this end ! God complaineth of our backwardness to this work : Jer. viii. 6, ' No man repented of his wickedness, saying, What have I done ? ' God, upon a review, found every day's work good, very good in themselves, and their correspond- ence and frame. Gen. i. 31 ; but when we consider our ways, we shall find that all is evil, veiy evil. We have too long gone on in a course of sin, and the more we go on, the more we shall go astray, and wander from the great end for which w^e were created, which was God's service and honour. Oh ! consider your ways, especially when con-
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130 SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. [SeR. LXVL
science is set awork by the word, or when we smart under the folly of our own wanderings, and God maketh us sensible of our mistake by some smart scourge. If we never seriously thought on our ways be- fore, then is a time to think of them, and to count it a mercy that we are not left to go on in a course of sin without checks and disap- pointments. Oh ! look upon the drift and course of your lives and actions, pry into every corner of them. What have I been doing hitherto ? spending my days in vanity and sin ? Have I remembered my Creator, made it my work to serve him, my scope to glorify him ? Have I looked after this as the unum necessarium, the great law and business of my life, that I might enjoy communion with God ? Oh ! for how long a time hath God been kept out of his right, and I have been sowing to the flesh, and never minded the great errand for which I was sent into 'the world ! None can excuse himself.
4. The unkindness and baseness of such a course, that you may make it odious to the soul. God hath not only made me, but kept me,, and provided for me day after day. ' The God which fed me all my lifetime,' saith Jacob, Gen. xlviii. 15. I have been fed at his table, clothed at his cost, defended, kept, when long ago God might have struck me dead in my sins ; and yet all this while I have not thought of God, to pay the return of my thanks and obedience to my great benefactor. The very beasts are more dutiful in their kind to man, who, as God's instrument, provideth for them : Isa. i. 3, ' The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib ; but my people will not know, Israel will not consider.' How senseless have I been of the great obli- gations wherein I stand bound to God ! There is the fault ; we do not know, and will not consider what hath been done to God for this.
5. What it will come to, or what will become of you, if you should still so continue, or if I should go on in this course, what will be my ])ortion for ever ? Nothing but an eternal separation from God, and endless torments with the devil and his angels : Ps. 1. 22, ' Now con- sider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.' Oh ! this is the means to awaken the conscience, and to affect the heart with high and right thoughts of God. What will be the end of those that go far away from God, if they do not make haste to come home to him ? Eternal and merciless vengeance ; for God will not always bear with forgetful sinners ; tliey shall be torn in pieces, the soul sent to hell, and the body to the grave. Oh ! it con- cerneth the poor impenitent wretch that now goetli on fearless in a course of sin, immediately to stop in his march, lest he be hurried away to the place of torment, and there be no escaping. Now, urge this upon the heart, and exercise your thoughts in the remembrance of it ; and if you have overcome and overwrestled some former qualms of conscience, now lay it to heart, and do so no more. It may be the hour is at hand when God will take away your souls from you, and all your sins shall be set in order before you, and the stupid conscience, that is now senseless, shall have a lively feeling of all your rebellions and unkindnesses done to God, as the paper which was but now white, when stamped with the printing-irons hath a story written upon it in legible characters.
6. How much it concerneth you to come out of this condition
VeR. 59.] SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. 131
speedily, for God is not a God to be neglected or dallied with. Wlien lie calls in the seasons of grace he will be observed, otherwise yon may call and he will have no regard: 'They shall call, and I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but not find me,' Prov. i, 28. When you receive many checks of conscience, entreaties of grace, motions of the Spirit in vain, God will be gone. God doth commonly give men a day, and no man or angel knowetli how long this day shall last. God gave Cain a day : ' If thou dost well, shalt thou not be accepted ? if thou dost ill, sin lieth at the door.' Oh ! then, when you begin to have thoughts of turning unto God, let them not be quelled. God reckoneth every hour, ' These three years,' ' this second epistle,' ' this second miracle ; ' and when his patience will expire you cannot tell.