_Direct._ II. Think well of the unspeakable greatness and importance of those truths and things which should affect you, and of those duties which are required of you. Eternity of joy or torment is such an amazing thing, that one would think every thought, and every mention either of it or of any thing that concerneth it, should go to our very hearts, and deeply affect us, and should command the obedience and service of our souls. It is true, they are things unseen, and therefore less apt in that respect to affect us than things visible; but the greatness of them should recompense that disadvantage a thousandfold. If our lives lay upon every word we speak, or upon every step we go, how carefully should we speak and go! But oh how deeply should things affect us, in which our everlasting life is concerned! One would think a thing of so great moment, as dying, and passing into an endless life of pain or pleasure, should so take up and transport the mind of man, that we should have much ado to bring ourselves to mind, regard, or talk of the inconsiderable interests of the flesh! How inexcusable a thing is a senseless, careless, negligent heart, when God looketh on us, and heaven or hell is a little before us! Yea, when we are so heavily laden with our sins, and compassed about with so many enemies, and in the midst of such great and manifold dangers, to be yet senseless under all, is (so far) to be dead. Will not the wounds of sin, and the threatenings of the law, and the accusations of conscience, make you feel? He that cannot feel the prick of a pin will feel the stab of a dagger, if he be alive.
_Direct._ III. Remember how near the time is, when stupidity and senseless neglect of God will be banished from all the world; and what certain and powerful means are before you at death and judgment, to awaken and pierce the hardest heart.[145] There are but few that are quite insensible at death; there are none past feeling after death, in heaven or hell. No man will stand before the Lord in the day of judgment, with a sleepy or a senseless heart. God will recover your feeling by misery, if you will lose it by sin, and not recover it by grace. He can make you now a terror to yourselves, Jer. xx. 4; he can make conscience say such things in secret to you, as you shall not be able to forget or slight. But if conscience awake you not, the approach of death it is likely will awaken you: when you see that God is now in earnest with you, and that die you must, and there is no remedy, will you not begin to think now, Whither must I go? and what will become of me for ever? Will you then harden your heart against God and his warnings? If you do, the first moment of your entrance upon eternity will cure your stupidity for ever. It will grieve a heart that is not stone, to think what a feeling stony-hearted sinners will shortly have, when God will purposely make them feel, with his wrathful streams of fire and brimstone! when Satan that now hindereth your feeling, will do his worst to make you feel; and conscience, the never-dying worm, will gnaw your hearts, and make them feel, without ease or hope of remedy! Think what a wakening day is coming!
_Direct._ IV. Think often of the love of God in Christ, and of the bloody sufferings of thy Redeemer, for it hath a mighty power to melt the heart. If love, and the love of God, and so great and wonderful a love, will not soften thy hardened heart, what will?
_Direct._ V. Labour for a full apprehension of the evil and danger of a hardened heart. It is the death of the soul, so far as it prevaileth: at the easiest, it is like the stupidity of a paralytic member or a seared part. Observe the names which Scripture giveth it: The "hardening of the heart," Prov. xxviii. 14. The "hardening of the neck," Prov. xxix. 10, which signifieth inflexibility. The "hardening of the face," which signifieth impudency, Prov. xxi. 29. The "searedness of the conscience," 1 Tim. iv. 2. The "impenitency of the heart," Rom. ii. 5. Sometimes it is called "sottishness," or "stupidity," Jer. iv. 22. Sometimes it is called a "not caring," or "not laying things to heart, and not regarding," Isa. xlii. 25; v. 12; xxxii. 9-11. Sometimes it is denominated metaphorically from inanimates: "A face harder than a rock," Jer. v. 3. "Stony hearts," Ezek. xi. 19; xxxvi. 26. "A neck with an iron sinew," Isa. xlviii. 4, and "a brow of brass." It is called "sleep," and a "deep slumber," and a "spirit of slumber," Rom. xiii. 11; xi. 8; Matt. xxv. 5; and "death" itself, 1 Tim. v. 6; Eph. ii. 1, 5; Col. ii. 13; Jude 12.