5. By the commission given to his ministers : 2 Cor. v. 20, ' Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us : we pray you in Christ's stead be reconciled to God.' He hath appointed some to call us to faith and repentance, and to quicken us to make ready for eternal life. He has appointed men in our nature to offer you mercy, and teach you the way to eternal life ; to warn every man, to instruct every man ; men of the same nature, the same affections, the same temptations ; who have advantage of familiar converse with us to help, comfort, and quicken you upon all occasions.
6. The course of his providence. Mercies to entice you to him : Eom. ii. 4, ' Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance ? ' We might long ago have been in hell. God might have taken you away in the very act of sin ; but he is pleased to use correctives. Ajffligit, ut non affligat — He afflicts that he may not afflict. He sent a tempest after Jonah. He sets our cornfield on fire to bring us to him, as Absalom did Joab's.
7. In the ready entertainment of returning sinners. Ahab's counter- feit humiliation had a temporal reward, 1 King xxi. from 19, to 29, but much more where it is real. Though sinners have done infinite wrong to his holiness, yet upon repentance, and as soon as they begin to submit, mercy embraceth and huggeth them, as if no breach had been : Luke xv. 20, ' But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion on him, and fell on his neck and kissed him ; ' Isa. Ixv. 24, ' Before they call, I will answer ; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear ; ' Ps. xxxii. 5, ' I said, I will confess my transgression unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin ; ' Jer. xxxi. 18-20, ' I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus, Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised ; as a bullock unac-
VeR. 23.] SERMONS UPON EZEKIEL XVni. 23, 471
customed to the yoke : turn thou me, and I shall be turaed. Surely after that I was turned, I repented, and after I was instructed, I smote upon the thigh. I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because 1 did bear the reproach of my youth. Is Ephraim my dear son ? is he a pleasant child ? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still, because my bowels are troubled for him. I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord/ He comes apace to the sinner ; is exceeding swift, like a roe on the mountains, Cant. i. 8. He is ready to support us with early comforts. We return to a father as the pro- digal when he returned.
SERMON II.
Have I any 'pleasure at all that the ivicJced should die, saith the Lord God ; and not that he should return from his loays, and live ? — EzEK. xviii. 23.
Fkom the words I have observed this doctrine, That the repentance and salvation of the wicked is more pleasing to God than their death and damnation.
1. I have showed you how God delighteth not in the death of a sinner.
2. How contrary it is to the nature of God to be otherwise affected.
3. I have given you proofs of God's having more pleasure in our conversion and salvation, than our sin and destruction.
4. We now come to the uses. Use 1. Of inibrmation.
First, TImt God is not the cause of man's destruction, but it is man's own fault if they be not converted and saved. That men are apt to charge God foolishly appeareth by that monition, Hosea iii. 9, '0 Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help.' But more expressly by Prov. xix. 3, ' The foolishness of man perverteth his way, and his heart fretteth against the Lord.' But the blame cannot lie in God ; he doth all that seemeth fit to be done as a lawgiver and governor of the world. There is nothing wanting on his part : Isa. v. 4, * What could I have done more to my vineyard that I have not done to it ? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes,' From first to lust we may plead the cause of God with you. God made man upright, gave him a righteous law, which, when broken, that all hopes might not be cut off, he sent his Son : Rom. viii. 3, ' God sending i)is own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh/ to be the foundation of a new covenant ; offered you grace in him, pardon of all your sins past, to help you in the course of obedience for time to come ; moved you by powerful arguments, not by low and cheap considerations, but those of the greatest weight, the joys of lieaven, the torments of hell ; called upon you often by the ministry, knocked at your hearts as well