lasting misery in hell is your deserved portion, you can never lie so low as you ought to lie.]
2. The true preparative for pardon —
[Something we must bring with us to the Saviour: but what is that which we ought to bring ? Must we get a certain portion of good works wherewith to purchase his salvation ? No: this is a price which he will utterly despise. That which we are to bring is precisely what a patient brings to a physician, a sense of his extreme need of the physician's aid. Christ came to save sinners: we then must feel ourselves sinners. He came to seek and save that which was lost : we then must feel ourselves lost. A just sense of our guilt and misery is all that he requires : if we come wretched, and miserable, and poor and blind and naked, he will give us that gold that has been tried in the fire, the rai- ment that shall cover our nakedness, and the eye-salve that shall restore our eyes to sight. If we come to him full, we shall be sent empty away : but if we come hungry and empty, we shall " be filled out of his inexhaustible fulness," we shall " be filled with all the fulness of our God."]
3. The best preservative from sin—
[When Joseph was tempted by Potiphar's wife, he answered her, " How shall I do this great wickedness, and sin against God^^?" Thus we would recommend all, when tempted to com- mit iniquity, to consider, first, what God will think of it; and next, what they themselves will think of it in the last day? Now it may appear light and venial, especially if it be not such an heinous sin as adultery or murder : but when it comes to be seen in its true light, as against an infinitely good and gracious God ; and when the judgments which he has denounced against it come to be felt ; what shall we think of it then ? Oh ! a&k yourselves. What will be my view of this marter in the last day? Then even the sins that now seem of no account, will appear most heinous, and the price paid for a momentary indulgence, most prodigal. The selling of a birthright for a mess of pottage was but a very faint emblem of the folly of those, who for the whole world are induced to barter the salvation of their souls. View things in any measure now, as you will view them at the last day, and you will rather die a thousand deaths than sin against your God.J
P Gen. xxxix. Q.