the Holy Spirit to depart from them. If men " will despise and reject all the counsel of the Lord, they will assuredly be left to eat the fruit of their own ways, and be filled with their own devices." It was so with the Heathen, " who liked not to retain God in their knowledge : he gave them over to a reprobate mind q." It was so, also, with the Israelites : " My people would not hearken to my voice, and Israel would none of me : so I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust ; and they walked hi their own counsels r." What more common than to see this very judgment inflicted before our eyes? The infidel, the drunkard, the whoremonger, the thief, the covet- ous man, the profane swearer, what slaves do they become to their respective habits ! These shew us the very truth that I am insisting on; and declare, with one voice, that the Ethiopian may as well change his skin or the leopard his spots, as they renounce the habits to which they have been given over by their God.]
3. To obduracy —
[Pharaoh., for his obstinacy, was given up to a state of hardness that is scarcely to be credited. And how many, in every age, when forsaken by the Lord, have had " their con- sciences seared as with a hot iron," and become altogether " past feelings!" Behold the scoffer, who pours contempt on all religion, and, with daring impiety, cries, " Where is the promise of God's coming to judgment ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the begin- ning of the creation1." If reproved for their impiety, they will in effect say, "Who is Lord over us11?" "We know not the Lord; neither will we obey his voice x." Even in death itself, they often evince the very same hardness, and shew how entirely they are given over by the Lord. Their friends around them are ready to say, " They died like lambs :" — and so indeed they did, even like brute beasts that have no understanding, having no conception of the state which awaits them at their departure hence. A terrible judgment this is ! and a certain prelude,]
4. To ruin ! —
[There is a time wherein God may be found, by every living man : but that season may be passed ; and a time arrive, when he will no more be found y, and when all God's offered mercies shall be for ever withheld. Such a period had actually arrived to the Jewish nation, when they crucified the
<i Rom. i. 28. r Ps. lxxxi. 11, 12.
s Eph. iv. 19. 1 Tim. iv. 2. * 2 Pet. iii. 4. u Ps. xii. 4.
x Exod. v. 2. y Isai. Iv. 0.