§ 14. It will add to their calamity to remember how often they were persuaded to return. "Fain would the minister have had me escape these torments. With what love and compassion did he beseech me! And yet I did but make a jest of it. How oft did he convince me! And yet I stifled all these convictions. How did he open to me my very heart! And yet I was loth to know the worst of myself. O how glad would he have been, if he could have seen me cordially turn to Christ! My godly friends admonished me. They told me what would come of my wilfulness and negligence at last; but I neither believed, nor regarded them. How long did God himself condescend to entreat me! How did the _Spirit strive_ with my heart, as if he was loth to take a denial! How did _Christ stand knocking_ one Sabbath after another, and crying to me, _Open, sinner, open thy heart to thy Savior, and I will come in, and sup with thee, and thou with me! Why dost thou delay? How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee! Wilt thou not be pardoned, and sanctified, and made happy? When shall it once be?_" O how the recollection of such Divine pleadings will passionately transport the damned with self-indignation! "Must I tire out the patience of Christ? Must I make the God of heaven follow me in vain, till I had wearied him with crying to me, _Repent, return_? O how justly is that patience now turned into fury, which falls upon me with irresistible violence? When the Lord cried to me, _Wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be?_ my heart, or at least my practice, answered, _Never_. And now when I cry, How long shall it be till I am freed from this torment? How justly do I receive the same answer, _Never, never_."
§ 15. It will also be most cutting to remember on what easy terms they might have escaped their misery. Their work was not to remove mountains, nor conquer kingdoms, nor fulfil the law to the smallest tittle, nor satisfy justice for all their transgressions. _The yoke was easy, and the burden light_, which Christ would have laid upon them. It was but to repent, and cordially accept him for their Savior; to renounce all other happiness, and take the Lord for their supreme good; to renounce the world and the flesh, and submit to his meek and gracious government; and to forsake the ways of their own devising, and walk in his holy delightful way. "Ah," thinks the poor tormented wretch, "how justly do I suffer all this, who would not be at so small pains to avoid it? Where was my understanding, when I neglected that gracious offer; when I called _the Lord an hard master_, and thought his pleasant service a bondage, and the service of the devil and the flesh the only freedom? Was I not a thousand times worse than mad, when I censured the holy way of God as needless preciseness? when I thought the laws of Christ too strict, and all too much that I did for the life to come? What would all sufferings for Christ and well doing have been, compared with these sufferings that I must undergo for ever! Would not the heaven, which I have lost, have recompensed all my losses? And should not all my sufferings have been there forgotten? What if Christ had bid me do some great matter; whether to live in continual fears and sorrows, or to suffer death an hundred times over; should I not have done it? How much more, when he only said, _Believe and be saved. Seek my face, and thy soul shall live. Take up thy cross, and follow me, and I will give thee everlasting life._ O gracious offer! O easy terms! O cursed wretch, that would not be persuaded to accept them!"