ten thousand times, and that too by those whom you yourselves acknowledge as appointed of God, to watch for your souls. You have had exceeding great and precious promises also set before you, with most assured declarations from God, that no one of you shall ever seek his face in vain. Say then, whether these Ninevites will not rise up in judgment to condemn you at the last day, if you dissemble with God on this occasion, as too many of us through the whole land, it is to be feared, are doing? Look at our king and his nobles, and at his subjects throughout the empire, and say, Whether there be any resem- blance between our humiliation, and that which we have noticed in these penitent heathens ? In them it was produced at the very first instant : but we have been warned ten thousand times in vain. Oh ! could we but see any measure of the penitence amongst us that was evinced by them, I should have no fear but that the judgments under which we labour should be removed, or sanctified to our greater good.
In the case before us, God, in reversing the sentence de- nounced against that city, might appear weak, or mutable, or unworthy to be feared : and, at all events his prophet would appear to them as a deceiver. But He was more careful of their welfare than of his own honour, or of his servant's repu- tation : and having produced a change in the people, he instantly changed his dispensations towards them. Not that the change was in him: it was in them only: for the removal of his threatened judgments was rather an execution, than a reversal, of his own decrees, which from eternity have been to pardon the penitent, and to bless the contrite. But in your case there is no such obstacle in his way : for he has told you, that if you confess your sins, he will not only forgive them, but display and magnify his own faithfulness and justice in that very dispensation towards youe.
To obtain national mercies, our repentance must be national: but if there be but one amongst us that truly turns to God, he shall surely obtain mercy for his own soul, and be a monument of God's pardoning love to all eternity.
Let me however hope, that this occasion shall not be lost upon the nation at large : but that our fasting shall be sincere, our prayers fervent, our reformation radical, and our success complete.]
e 1 John i. 9.