13. God is not so forward to cast you off, who hath just cause; and why then should you be forward to turn from him? If he had, what had become of you long ago? Yea, what abundant occasion have you given him, when he never gave you any at all! Thy sins have testified and cried against thee! abused mercies have witnessed against thee! and yet he hath not cast thee off! Satan hath stood up before God to accuse thee, and glad he would be to see thee utterly forsaken of God, and yet he hath not utterly forsaken thee: even while thou art forsaking him, he is protecting and supporting thee, and providing for thee! Did he forsake thee when thou wast in sickness, want, and danger? If he had, thou hadst not now been here. And wilt thou begin and run away from him? What if Christ should offer thee a bill of divorce, and say, Seeing thou hast so little mind of me, or of my service, take thy course, and seek another master; I discharge thee from all thy relations to me, follow thy own way, and take what thou gettest by it. Would this be welcome tidings to thee? Or durst thou accept of it, and be gone?
14. If thou do turn back for the pleasures of the flesh, or the preferments or profits of the world, thou wilt have less pleasure in them now, than thou hadst heretofore, or than the unconverted have. For they that sin in the dark, do not know their danger, and therefore sin not with so much terror, as thou wilt hereafter. Thou hast known the danger, thou hast confessed the folly; the reasons of God's word will never be forgotten, nor thy convictions ever totally blotted out: thou wilt be remembering the ancient kindnesses of Christ, and thy former purposes, and promises, and ways; and thou wilt be thinking both of the days that are past, and the days that are to come, and foreseeing thy terrible account: so that thou wilt sin in such terrors, that thou wilt have a taste of hell in the very exercise of thy sin, and be tormented before the time. And will the world and sin be worth the enjoying on such terms as these?[91]
15. Either thou hopest to recover from thy backsliding by a second repentance, or else thou purposest to go on. If thou shouldst be so happy as to be recovered, dost thou know with how much pain and terror it is like to be accomplished? When thou thinkest of thy backslidings, and what thou hast done in revolting after such convictions, and promises, and mercies, and experiences, thou wilt be very hardly kept from desperation. Thou wilt read such passages, as Heb. vi. 4-6; x. 26-29, with so much horror, that thou wilt hardly be persuaded that there is any hope: thou wilt be ready to think that thou hast sinned against the Holy Ghost, and that thou hast trampled under foot the blood of the covenant, and done despite to the Spirit of grace. And thou wilt think, that there is no being twice born again! Or, if thou be restored to life, thou wilt hardly ever be restored to thy comforts here; if thy backsliding should be very great. But indeed, the danger is exceeding great, lest thou never be recovered at all, if once thou be "twice dead, and plucked up by the roots," Jude 6; and lest God do finally forsake thee! And then how desperate will be thy case!
16. Is not the example of backsliders very terrible, which God hath set up for the warning of his servants, as monuments of his wrath? Luke xvii. 32, "Remember Lot's wife," saith Christ, to them that are about to lose their estates, or goods, or lives, by saving them! How frightful is the remembrance of a Cain, a Judas, a Saul, a Joash, 2 Chron. xxiv. 2, a Julian! How sad is it to hear but such a one as Spira, especially at his death, crying out of his backsliding in the horror of his soul! and to see such ready to make away with themselves!
17. Consider, that there is none that so much dishonoureth God as a backslider. Others are supposed to sin in ignorance; but you do by your lives as bad as speak such blasphemy as this against the Lord; as if you should say, I thought once that God had been the best master, and his servants the wisest and happiest men, and godliness the best and safest life; but now I have tried both, and I find by experience that the devil is a better master, and his servants are the happiest men, and the world and the flesh do give the truest contentment of the mind. This is the plain blasphemy of your lives. And bethink thee how God should bear with this!