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First, The persons he sends to preach. Not angels, foreigners to our nature; who, though they wish us well, yet are not so intimately concerned in man's fall, as to give them the advantage of preaching with those melting bowels that God would have them filled with who go on this his errand. No: he sends men, with whom we may converse familiarly, creatures of like passions, whose nature puts them under the same depravation, temptation, and condemnation with ourselves; who can, from the acquaintance they have with their own hearts, tell us the baseness of ours; from the fire of God's wrath, which hath scorched them for their sins, tell us the desert of ours, and danger we are in by reason of them; as also, from the sweet sense that the taste of God's love in Christ hath left on their souls, can commend the cheer and feast they invite us to, upon their own knowledge. Did not God, think you, desire good speed to his embassage, when he chose such to carry it?

Secondly, Observe the qualifications required in those he employs as ambassadors to offer peace to sinners; "The servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves." 2 Tim. ii. 24, O how careful is God that nothing should be in the preacher to prejudice the sinner's judgment, or harden his heart against the offer of his grace? If the servant be proud and hasty, how shall they know the master is meek and patient? God would have them do nothing to make the breach wider, or hinder a happy close betwixt him and them. Indeed he that will take the bird, must not scare it. A froward peevish messenger is no friend to him that sends him. Sinners are not pelted into Christ with stones of hard provoking language; but wooed into Christ by heartmelting exhortations.

Thirdly, Look into the commission God gives his ambassadors, and still his heart appears in the business; whether you consider the largeness of it, on the one hand, or strictness of it on the other. First, the largeness of it: "Go and preach (saith Christ) the Gospel to every creature." Make no difference: rich or poor, great sinners or little, old sinners or young; offer peace to all

that will but repent and believe; bid as many come as will; here is room for all that come. Again, the strictness of it on the other hand. O what a solemn charge have they of delivering their message faithfully! Paul trembles at the thoughts of loitering: "Woe unto me if I preach not." What an argument doth Christ use (fetched from his very heart) to persuade Peter to be careful: "If thou lovest me, feed my sheep." As if he had said, Peter, thou now art in tears for thy cowardice in denying me; thou hast yet one way left, for all that unkindness, to demonstrate thy love to me, and that is by feeding my sheep: do this, and trouble not thyself for that. Christ shews more care of his sheep than of himself.

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Fourthly, The joy God expresseth when poor sinners come into the offer of peace. Joy is the highest testimony that can be given to our complacency in any thing or person: love to joy is as fuel to the fire; if love lay little fuel of desires on the heart, then the flame of joy that comes thence will not be great. Now God's joy is great in pardoning poor sinners that come in; therefore his affection great in the offer thereof. It is made the very motive that prevails with God to pardon sinners, "because he delighteth in mercy." Micah vii. 18. "Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, for he delighteth in mercy.' God doth all this, "because he delighteth in mercy. Ask why the fisher stands all night with his angle in the river; he will tell you because he delights in the sport. Well, you now know the reason why God stands so long waiting on sinners, months, years preaching to them; it is that he may be gracious in pardoning them, and in that act delight himself. Princes very often pardon traitors, to please others more than themselves, or else it would never be done; but God doth it chiefly to delight and glad his own merciful heart. Hence the business Christ came about (which was no other but to reconcile sinners to God) is called, the pleasure of the Lord. Isaiah liii. 10. The Lord takes such joy and pleasure in this, that whereas other fathers, whose love to their children sinks infinitely beneath any comparison with the love of

God to Christ, mourn at the death of their children (and most of all when violent and bloody) God he takes content in his Son's death, yea had the chief hand in procuring of it, and that with infinite complacency: "it pleased the Lord to bruise him." And what joy could God take in his Son's death, but as it made way for him and his poor creature that were fallen out, and at open war one against another, to fall in again by a happy accord? And now speak, O sinner, if God doth so affectionately desire to be reconciled with thee, doth it not much more behove thee to embrace the peace, than it doth him to offer it?

SECT. IV.

There is but one thing more I would desire thee, sinner, to consider, and then I leave thee to thy own choice. Consider what thou dost when thou refusest peace with God. Determinations of war or peace are the result of the most grave counsels and mature deliberation possible. Think and think again what thou dost before thou breakest off the treaty of peace; lest thou makest work for repentance, when it will be too late. But, lest thou shouldest not be so faithful to God and thy own soul as to give thy conscience liberty to speak freely in this matter, I shall do it for thee, and tell thee what thou dost when thou rejectest peace. Thou justifiest thy former hostilities against God, and declarest that thou wilt vouch what thou hast done, let God right himself as well as he can. He that refuseth a pardon, either denieth he hath done wrong, or, which is worse, stands to defend it; thou hast as good say, thou desirest not to be friends with God, but hast a mind to perpetuate the feud betwixt God and thee; like Amilcar, who was such an enemy to Rome, that when he died, he made his son Hannibal heir to his hatred against them. Is it not enough thou hast fought so many battles on earth against thy Maker, but wilt thou keep the quarrel up in another world also, where there is no more possibility to put an end to it than to eternity itself? Thou throwest the greatest scorn upon God that it is possible for a creature to do; as if God's love and hatred were such inconsider

able things that they need not, when cast into the scale of thy thoughts, preponderate thee either way, the one to move thy desire, or the other thy fear. In a word, thou consentest to thy own damnation, and desperately flingest thyself into the mouth of God's flaming wrath, which gapes in the threatening upon thee. God is under an oath to procure thy destruction, if thou diest in this mind; which God forbid. Death is the trap-door which will let thee down to Hell's dungeon, and when once thou art there thou art where thou wilt have space enough to weep over thy past folly; though here thou hast neither mind nor leisure to make God thy friend. The very thoughts of those offers of peace which once thou hadst (but no heart to embrace them) will be like so much salt and vinegar, with which thy accusing conscience will be continually basting thee, as thou liest roasting in Hell-fire, to make thy torment the more intolerable. I know this language grates in the sinner's ears, but not so ill as the gnashing of the sinner's own teeth will in Hell. I have read of a foolish (I may say cruel) law among the Lacedemonians, that none should tell his neighbour any ill news befallen him; but every one should be left in process of time to find it out themselves. Many among us I think would be content, if there was such a law, that might tie up ministers' mouths from scaring them with their sins, and the miseries that attend their unreconciled state: the most are more careful to run from the discourse of their misery than to get out of the danger of it; are more offended with the talk of Hell, than troubled for that sinful state that shall bring them thither. But, alas! when then shall we shew our love to the souls of sinners, if not now? seeing that in Hell there remains no more offices of love to be done for them. Hell is a pest-house, that we may not write so much on the door of it as "Lord have mercy on them," that are in it; nay they who now pray for their salvation, and weep over their condition, must then with Christ vote for their damnation, and rejoice in it; though they be their own fathers, husbands, and wives they see there. O now bethink yourselves, before the heart of God and man be hardened against you.

CHAP. VI.

FOUR DIRECTIONS BY WAY OF COUNSEL TO SINNERS,

YET IN AN UNRECONCILED STATE, HOW THEY MAY BE AT PEACE WITH GOD.

QUEST. But how may a poor sinner be at peace with God?

SECT. I.

Answ. First, See and be sensible of the feud and enmity that at present stands betwixt God and thee.

First, As to the reality of the thing, that there is indeed a quarrel, with God hath against thee; wherever thou goest an angry God is at thy back, and his wrath, like a heavy cloud, hangs full of curses over thy head, ready every moment to empty them upon thy head. There is need of pressing this; for, though it is ordinary for men to confess themselves sinners, yet most are loth to disparage their state so far as to rank themselves among the enemies of God; no, they hope God and they are good friends for all this. Like thieves, they will confess some little matter, but they will have a care of letting fall any thing that may hazard their necks; sinner is a favourable word: who lives and sins not? that they will grant; but to be in a state of enmity, and under the wrath of God, this scares them too much, and brings too near the sight of the gallows, the seat of hell, which are due to that state; and therefore when pressed thus far; as the Jews desired Rabshakeh (when he scared them with the dreadful things that would befal them, if they stood out against the king his master) that he would not speak in the Jews' language in the hearing of the people, Isa. xxxvi. 11. (for fear of affrighting them) but in a foreign tongue; so sinners desire those that deal plainly with them they would not speak so broad in the hearing of their conscience, which they are afraid should know the worst. But, if thou lovest thy own soul, make a true representation of thy state to thyself. O what folly is it

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