6. What abundance of experience do you sin against in your backsliding! You have had experience of the evil of sin, and of the smart of repentance, and of the deceitfulness of all that can be said for sinning; and of the goodness of God, and of the safety and sweetness of religion: and will you sin against so great experience? If your horse fall once into a quicksand, he will scarce be forced into it again; and will you be less wise?
7. What abundance of promises and covenants, which you have made to God, do you violate in your backsliding? How often in your fears, and dangers, and sicknesses, at sacraments and days of humiliation, have you bound yourselves afresh to God! And will you forget all these, and sin against them?
8. By what multitudes of mercies hath God obliged you! mercies before your repentance, and mercies that drew you to repent, and mercies since! How mercifully hath he kept you out of hell! How mercifully hath he borne with you in all your sins! and maintained you while you provoked him! and pardoned all that you have done against him (if you were truly penitent believers)![90] How mercifully hath he taught you, and sanctified you, and comforted you; and plentifully provided for you! And yet do you forsake him, and return to folly? For which of all his mercies is it, that you thus unworthily requite him? Can you remember how he hath dealt with you, and not be ashamed of your backslidings? Doth it not melt your heart to look back on his love, and to think of your ungrateful dealing?
9. Nay, what a multitude of present mercies dost thou run away from! Doth not thy conscience tell thee, that it is safer and better for thee to be true to Christ, than to return to sin? Wilt thou take thy leave of thy God, and thy Redeemer, and thy Comforter? Wilt thou quit thy title to pardon and protection, and all the promises of grace? Wilt thou bid farewell to all the comforts of a saint? Dost thou not tremble to think of such a day? Thou forsakest all these when thou forsakest God.
10. Yea, look before thee, man, and consider what greater things are promised thee, than yet thou ever didst enjoy. Christ is conducting thee to eternal happiness in the sight of God. And wilt thou forsake thy Guide, and break away from him, and quit all thy hopes of everlasting life?
11. Consider for what it is, that thou art about to run so great a hazard? Is it not for some worldly gain or honour, or some fleshly pleasure, sport, or ease? And hast thou not known long ago what all these are? What have they done for thee? or what will they ever do? Can any thing in the world be more causeless and unreasonable, than thy forsaking God, and turning back from the way of holiness? Will the world or sin give more for thee, than God will? or be better to thee here and hereafter? What wouldst thou have in God, or in thy Saviour, that thou thinkest wanting in him? Is it any thing that the world can make up, which hath nothing in itself but what is from him? What wrong hath God, or his service, done thee, that thou shouldst now forsake him and turn back? For thy soul's sake, man, think of some reasonable answer to such questions, before thou venture thyself upon a course which thou hast found so bad and perilous heretofore! Let all the malice of earth or hell say the worst it can against God and holiness, it shall never justify thy revolt!
12. Consider what abundance of labour and suffering is all lost, if thou fall away from Christ. Is all thy hearing, and meditation, and prayer, come to this? Is all thy self-denial and sufferings for Christ and godliness come to this? Heb. x. 32-34, "Call to remembrance the former days, in which after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; partly, while ye were made a gazing-stock both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used.--Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward." You should have let Christ alone, if you would not follow him to the end: he is less foolish that sitteth still, than he that first tireth himself, and then turneth again. The idle beggar is not so foolish, as the husbandman that will plough and sow, and at last lose his crop for want of the labour to reap it, and carry it home. Shall all thy pains and sufferings be lost at last, for nothing?