The sermon transcript emphasizes the importance of reading and understanding the word of God. It warns about the consequences of living in a state of sin and being unprepared for judgment. The speaker urges listeners to repent and turn to God, renouncing their idols and sinful practices. The sermon also highlights the power of the gospel to bring both salvation and condemnation, depending on one's response to it.

An Alarm to the Uninverted Sinner by Joseph Alain It denounces indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish to every soul that doeth evil. Romans 2, 8 and 9 It curses every one that continueeth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them. Galatians 3, 10 The justice of God to the imparted sinner who has a sense of his guilt is more terrible than the sight of the creditor to the bankrupt debtor, of the judge and bench to the robber, or of the irons and the gibbet to the guilty murderer. When justice sits upon life and death, what dreadful work does it make with a wretched sinner? Bind him hand and foot, cast him into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire. Matthew 22, 13 25, 41 This is a terrible sentence the justice pronounces. Sinner, by this severe justice ye must be tried. In as God liveth, this killing sentence must you hear, unless ye repent and be converted. The holiness of God is against you. He is not only angry with you, so he may be with his children, but he has a fixed habitual displeasure against you. God's nature is infinitely contrary to sin, and so he cannot delight in a sinner out of Christ. Oh, what a misery is this, to be out of a favor, yea, under the hatred of God. That God, who can as easily lay aside his nature and cease to be God, is not be contrary to you and detest you, except you be changed and renewed. Oh, sinner, how do you think of the bright and radiant sun of purity, or the beauties of the glory of holiness in God? The stars are not pure in his sight. He humbles himself to behold things that are done in heaven. Joel 25, 5 Oh, those all-searching eyes of his, what do they spy in you? And have you no interest in Christ, neither that he should plead for you? I think he should hear you crying out, astonished with the Beshamites, Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? The power of God is mounted like a mighty cannon against you. The glory of God's power is to be displayed in the amazing confusion and destruction of them that obey not the gospel. He will make his power known in them. Romans 9, 22 How mightily he can torment them! For this end he raises them up, that he might make his power known. Romans 9, 17 Oh man, are you able to continue with your maker? Sinner, the power of God's anger is against you, and power and anger together make fearful work. It were better you had all the world in arms against you, than to have the power of God against you. There is no escaping his hands, no breaking his prison. The thunder of his power, who can understand? Job 26, 14 Unhappy man, that shall understand it by feeling it. If he will continue with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand. He is wise in heart and mighty in strength, who hath hearted himself against him and prospered, which removeth the mountains, and they know it not, which overturneth him in his anger, which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble, which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars, who will say unto him, What doest thou? If God will not withdraw his anger, the proud helpers do stoop under him. Job 9 And are you a footnatch for such an antagonist? O consider this, ye that forget God, lest he tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver. Psalm 50, 22 Submit to mercy. Let not dust and stubble stand out against the Almighty. Set not briars and thorns against him in battle, lest he go through them and consume them together. But lay hold on his strength, that ye may make peace with him. Isaiah 27, 4, 5 Woe to him that striveth with his Maker. Isaiah 45, 9 The wisdom of God is set to ruin you. He has ordained his arrows, and prepared instruments of death, and made all things ready. Psalm 7, 11-13 His counsels are against you to contrive your destruction. Jeremiah 18, 11 He laughs in himself to see how you will be taken and ensnared in the evil day. Psalm 37, 13 The Lord shall laugh at him, for he seeth that his day is coming. He sees how you will come down mightily in a moment, how you will wring your hands and tear your hair and eat your flesh, and gnash your teeth for anguish and astonishment of heart, when you see you are fallen irrevocably into the pit of destruction. The truth of God is sworn against you. If he is faithful and true, you must perish if you go on. Unless he is false to his word, you must die except you repent. If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself. 2 Timothy 2, 13 He is faithful to his threatenings as well as to his promises, and will show his faithfulness in our destruction if we believe not. God has told you as plain as it can be spoken that if he wash you not, you have no part in him, that if you live after the flesh, you shall die, that except you be converted, you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. John 13, 8 Romans 8, 13 Matthew 18, 3 Beloved, as the immutable faithfulness of God in his promising oath affords believers strong consolation, so it is to unbelievers for strong consternation and confusion. O sinner, tell me, what do you think of all the threatenings of God's word that stand upon record against you? Do you believe that they are true or not? If not, you are a wretched infidel. But if you do believe them, O heart of adamant that you have, that you can walk up and down in quiet when the truth and faithfulness of God are engaged to destroy you. The whole book of God testifies against you while you remain unconverted. It condemns you in every leaf and is to you like Ezekiel's roll, written within and without with lamentation and mourning and woe. And all this shall surely come upon you except you repent. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but one jot or tittle of this word shall never pass away. Matthew 5, 18 Now put all this together and tell me if the case of the unconverted is not deplorably miserable. As we read of some persons that have bound themselves by an oath and a curse to kill Paul, so you must know, O sinner, that all the attributes of the infinite God are bound by an oath to punish you. O man, what will you do? Where will you flee? If God's omniscience confines you, you shall not escape. If the true and faithful God will regard his oath, perish you must, except you believe and repent. If the Almighty has power to torment you, you must be perfectly miserable in soul and body to all eternity unless it be prevented by speedy conversion. Number 2 The whole creation of God is against you. The whole creation, says Paul, groaneth and travaileth in pain. Romans 8, 22 But what is it that the creation groans under? The fearful abuse it is subject to in serving the lusts of unsanctified men. And what is it that the creation groans for? For freedom and liberty from this abuse, for the creature is not willingly made subject to this bondage. Romans 8, 20 and 21 If the irrational and inanimate creatures had speech and reason, they would cry out under it as a bondage insufferable to be abused by the ungodly. Contrary to their natures and the ends that the great creator made them for, it is the sin of an inanimate divine. The liquor that the drunkard drinks, if it had reason, like a man, to know how shamefully it is abused, would groan in the barrel against him. It would groan in the cup against him, groan in his throat, in his stomach against him. It would fly in his face if it could speak. And if God should open the mouths of his creatures as he did the mouth of Balaam's ass, the proud man's garment on his back would groan against him. There is not a creature, if it had reason, to know how it is abused till a man be converted, that would groan against him. The land would groan to bear him, the air would groan to give him breath, their houses would groan to dislodge them, their beds would groan to ease them, their food to nourish them, their clothes to cover them, and the creature would groan to give them any help and comfort, so long as they live in sin against God. I think there should be a terror to an unconverted soul to think he is a burden to the creation. Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground. Luke 13.7 If inanimate creatures could but speak, your food would say, Lord, must I nourish such a wretch as this and yield forth my strength for him to dishonor thee? No, I will choke him rather, if thou wilt give permission. The very air would say, Lord, must I give this man breath to set his tongue against heaven and scorn thy people and vent his pride and wrath and filthy talk and belch out oaths and blasphemy against thee? No, thou wilt but say the word, he shall be breathless for me. His poor beast would say, Lord, must I carry him upon his wicked designs? No, I will break his bones. I will end his days rather, if I may have but leave from thee. A wicked man, the earth groans under him and hell groans for him till death satisfies both. While the Lord of hosts is against you, be sure the host of the Lord is against you and all the creatures, as it were, up in arms till upon a man's conversion, the controversy being settled between God and him, he makes a covenant of peace with the creature for him. Job 5 22-24 Hosea 2 18-20 Number 3 Satan has his full power over you. You are fast in the paw of that roaring lion who is greedy to devour. 1 Peter 5 8 In the snare of the devil led captive by him at his will. 2 Timothy 2 26 This is the spirit that works in the children of disobedience. Ephesians 2 2 His drudges they are and his lusts they do. He is the ruler of the darkness of this world. Ephesians 6 12 That is, of ignorant sinners who live in darkness. You pity the poor Indians that worship the devil for their God, but little think it is your own case. It is the common misery of all the unsanctified that the devil is their God. Not that they intend to do him homage. They will be ready to defy him and him that should say so of them. But all this while they serve him and live under his government. His servants ye are to whom ye obey. Romans 6 16 O how many then will be found to be the real servants of the devil who take themselves for no other than the children of God. He can no sooner offer a sinful delight or opportunity for your unlawful advantage than you embrace it. If he suggests a lie or prompts you to revenge, you readily obey. If he forbids you to read or pray, you hearken to him and therefore his servants you are. And he stands behind the curtain. He acts in the dark and sinners do not see who sets them working. But all the while he leads them. Doubtless the liar does not intend to serve Satan but his own advantage. Yet it is he that stands unobserved and puts the thing into his heart. Undoubtedly Judas when he sold his master for money and the Chaldeans and Sabeans when they plundered Job did not intend to do the devil a pleasure but to satisfy their own covetous thirst. Yet it was he that actuated them in their wickedness. John 13 27 Men may be very slaves and common drudges for the devil and not know it. Nay, they may please themselves in thoughts of liberty. Are you yet in ignorance and not turned from darkness to light? I fear you are under the power of Satan. Do you live in the willful practice of any known sin? Know that you are of the devil. Do you live in strife or envy or malice? Verily he is your father. O dreadful case! However Satan may provide his slaves with various pleasures yet it is but to draw them into endless perdition. The serpent comes with the fruit in his mouth but as with Eve you do not see the deadly sting. He that is now your tenter will one day be your tormentor. O that I could but make you see how bad a master you serve, how merciless a tyrant you gratify whose pleasures is to set you on to make your perdition and damnation sure and to heat the furnace hotter and hotter in which you must burn for millions and millions of ages. Number Four The guilt of all your sins lies like a mountain upon you. O poor soul you do not feel it but this is that which seals your misery. While unconverted none of your sins are blotted out they are all upon record against you. Regeneration and remission are never separated. The unsanctified are unjustified and unpardoned. It is a fearful thing to be in debt but above all in God's debt for there is no arrest so formidable as his there is no prison so dreary as his. Look upon an enlightened sinner who feels the weight of his own guilt. O how frightful are his looks how fearful are his complaints. His comforts are turned into wormwood and his moisture into drought and his sleep is departed from his eyes. He is a terror to himself and all that are about him and is ready to envy the very stones that lie in the street because they are without sense and do not feel his misery and he wishes he had been a dog rather than a man because then death had put an end to his misery whereas now it will be but the beginning of that which will know no ending. However you make light of it now you will one day find the guilt of unpardoned sin to be a heavy burden. This is a millstone that whosoever falleth upon it shall be broken. But upon whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder. The guilt of our sins caused the agony and death of the blessed Savior and if it did this in the green tree what will it do in the dry? Well think of your case in time can you think of that threat without trembling? You shall die in your sins. John 8 24 O better were it for you to die in a jail in a ditch in a dungeon than die in your sins. If death as it will take away all your comforts would take away all your sins too there were some mitigation. But your sins will follow you when your friends leave you and all worldly enjoyments shake hands with you. Your sins will not die with you as a prisoner's other debts will. But they will go to judgment with you there to be your accusers and they will go to hell with you there to be your tormentors. O the work that these will make you. O look over your debts in time how every one of God's commandments is ready to arrest you and take you by the throat for the innumerable bonds it has upon you. What will you do then when they shall altogether come in against you? Hold open the eyes of your conscience to consider this that you may despair of yourself and be driven to Christ and fly for refuge to lay hold on the hope that is set before you. 5. Your raging lusts miserably enslave you. While unconverted you are a very servant to sin. It reigns over you and holds you under its dominion till you are brought within the bonds of God's covenant. 6. There is not such another tyrant as sin. O the vile and fearful work that it engages its servant sin. Would it not pierce your heart to see a company of poor creatures dredging and toiling to carry together faggots and fuel for their own burning? 7. This is the employment of sin's dredges even while they bless themselves and their unrighteous gains, while they sing their pleasure, they are but treasuring up vengeance for the eternal burning. They are but adding to the pile of profit, inflaming in oil to make the flame rage the fiercer. 8. Who would serve such a master whose work is drudgery, whose wages are death? What a woeful spectacle was a poor wretch possessed with the legion! Would it not have grieved your heart to see him among the tombs cutting and wounding himself? This is your case. Such is your work. Every stroke is a thrust at your heart. Conscience, indeed, is now asleep. But when death and judgment shall bring you to your senses, then you will feel the anguish in every wound. The convinced sinner is an instance of the miserable bondage of sin. Conscience flies upon him and tells him the end of these things. And yet he is such a slave to his lust that on he goes, though he sees it will be his perdition. When the temptation come, lust breaks the cords of all his vows and promises and carries him headlong to his own destruction. 6. A furnace of eternal vengeance is heated ready for you. Hell and destruction open their mouths upon you. They gape for you. They groan for you. Isaiah 5, 14. Weeping as it were with a greedy eye as you stand on the brink. If the wrath of man be as a roaring of a lion, Proverbs 19, 12. More heavy than the sand, Proverbs 27, 3. What is the wrath of the infinite God? If the burning furnace heated in Nebuchadnezzar's fiery rage when he commanded it to be made seven times hotter was so fierce as to burn up even those that drew near to throw the three children in, how hot is that burning of the Almighty's fury? Surely this is seventy times seven more fierce. What do you think, O man, of being a faggot in hell to all eternity? Can thine heart endure? Or can thine hands be strong in the days that I shall deal with thee? Ezekiel 22, 14. Can you abide the everlasting burnings? Can you dwell with consuming fire when you shall be as glowing iron in hell, and your whole body and soul shall be as perfectly possessed by God's burning vengeance as the sparkling iron with fire when heated in the fiercest furnace? Some of the choicest servants of God, when under the hidings of his face and dreading the effects of his displeasure, have bewailed their condition with bitter lamentations. How then will you endure when God shall pour out all his vials and set himself against you to torment you? When he shall make your conscience the tunnel by which it will be pouring its burning wrath into your soul forever? And when he shall fill all your pores as full of torment as you are now full of sin? When immortality shall be your misery and to die the death of a brute and be swallowed up in the gulf of annihilation shall be such a felicity as the whole eternity of wishes and an ocean of tears that you will never see again. When you will never see you will never see again when you will never see again when you will never see again when you again again when you will never see again when you will never see you will never see when you will will never again when you will never see again when you will never again when you will never again when you will never see again when you never fire in your face, its words are as drawn swords and as the sharp arrows of the mighty. It demands satisfaction to the utmost and cries, Justice, justice! It speaks blood and war and wounds and death against you. O man, away to your stronghold, away from your sins, haste to the sanctuary, the city of refuge, even the Lord Jesus Christ. Hide in him or else you are lost, without any hope of recovery. 8. The gospel itself binds a sentence of eternal damnation upon you. If you continue in your impenitent and unconverted state, know that the gospel denounces a much sorer condemnation than ever would have been for the transgression only of the first covenant. Is it not a dreadful case to have the gospel itself fill its mouth with threats? To have the Lord to roar from Mount Zion against you, Joel 3.16, hear the terror of the Lord. He that believeth not shall be damned, except ye repent, ye shall all perish. This is a condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light. He that believeth not, the wrath of God abideth on him. If the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? He that despised Moses' law died without mercy. Of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God? Mark 16.16, Luke 13.3, John 3.19 and 36, Hebrews 2.2 and 3, Hebrews 10.28 and 29. And is this true indeed? Is this your misery? Yea, it is as true as God is. Better open your eyes and see it now, while you may remedy it, than blind and harden yourself till, till your eternal sorrow you shall feel what you would not believe. And if it is true, what do you mean by lingering and loitering in such a state as this? Alas for you, poor man! And how effectually has sin undone you, depraved you, and disfollowed you of even your reason to look after your everlasting good? O miserable wretch, what stupidity and senselessness have surprised you? O let me knock and awake this sleeper! Who dwells within the walls of this flesh? Is there a soul here, a rational, understanding soul, or are you only a senseless lump? Are you a rational soul, and yet so far brutified as to forget that you are immortal and to think yourself to be as the beasts that perish? Having reason to understand the eternity of the future state, do you make light of being everlastingly miserable, which is to be so much below the brute as it is worse to act against reason than to act without it? O unhappy soul that was the glory of man, the companion of angels and the image of God, that was God's representative in the world and had the supremacy amongst the creatures and the dominion over your Maker's works, are you now become a slave to sense? Are you heaping together a little refined earth, so unsuited to your spiritual and mortal nature? O why do you not consider where you will spend eternity? Death is at hand, the Judge is even at the door. Yet a little while and time shall be no longer. And will you run the hazard of continuing in such a state in which, if you are overtaken, you are irrecoverably miserable? Come then, arise, and attend to your nearest concerns. Tell me, where are you going? What? Will you live in such a course in which every act is a step to perdition? And do you not know that the next night you may make your bed in hell? O if you have a spark of reason, consider and turn and hearken to a true friend, who would show you your present misery, that you might in time make your escape and be eternally happy. Hear what the Lord saith. Fear you not me, saith the Lord? Will you not tremble at my presence, Jeremiah 5.22? O sinners, do you make light of the wrath to come? I am sure there is a time coming when you will not make light of it. Why the very devils believe and tremble? Why turn you more hardened than they? Will you run upon the edge of the precipice? Will you play with the hole of the asp? Will you put your hand into the cockatrice's den? Will you dolly with devouring wrath, as if you were indifferent, whether you escape or endure it? There is no one so beside himself as a willful sinner, that goes on in his unconverted state without sense, as if nothing ailed him. The man that runs into the cannon's mouth and spores with his blood, or lets out his life in a frolic, is sensible, sober, and serious, compared with him that goes on still in his trespasses, for he stretches out his hand against God, and strengtheneth himself against the Almighty. He runneth upon him, even upon his neck, upon the thick bosses of his bucklers, Job 15.25 and 26. Is it wisdom to sport with the second death, or to venture into the lake, that burneth with fire and brimstone? What shall I say? I can find no expression, no comparison, by which to set forth the dreadful madness of the soul that will go on in sin. Awake! Awake, O sinner! Arise and take your flight! There is but one door that you may flee by, and that is the mirror door of conversion and the new birth, unless you turn unseemly from all your sins and come to Jesus Christ, and take him for the Lord your righteousness, and walk in him in holiness and newness of life. As the Lord liveth, it is not more certain that you are now out of hell than that you shall without fail be in it but a few days or nights from now. O set your heart to think of your case! Does not your everlasting misery or welfare deserve a little consideration? Look again over the miseries of the unconverted. If the Lord is not spoken by me, regard me not. But if it is the very word of God that all this misery lies upon you, what a state you are in! Is it for one that has his senses to live in such a condition and not to make all possible haste, to prevent his utter ruin? O man, who has bewitched you that in the matters of this present life you shall be wise enough to forecast your business, foresee your danger, and prevent your ruin, that in matters of everlasting consequence shall be slight and careless, as if they little concerned you? Is it nothing to you to have all the attributes of God engaged against you? Can you live without his favor? Can you escape his hands or endure his vengeance? Do you hear the creation groaning under you and hell groaning for you, and yet think your case good enough? Are you under the power of corruption and the dark noisome prison fettered with lusts, working out your own damnation? And is this not worth a thought? Will you make light of all the terrors of the law, of all its curses and thunders, as if there were but the threatenings of a child? Do you laugh at hell and destruction, or can you drink the envenomed cup of the Almighty's fury, as if it were a common potion? Gird up now your lungs like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answerest thou me. Are you such a Leviathan as that the scales of your pride should resist your Maker? Will you esteem his arrows as straw and the instruments of death as rotten wood? Are you chief of all the children of pride, even that you should count his darts as stubble, and laugh at the shaking of his spear? Do you mock at fear, and are you not frightened? Do you not turn back from God's sword when his quiver rattles against you and the glittering spear in the field? Well, if the threats and calls of the Word will not awaken you, I am sure death and judgment will. Oh, what will you do when the Lord comes forth against you and in his fury falls upon you, and you shall feel what you only now listen to? If when Daniel's enemies were cast into the den of lions, both they and their wives and their children, the lions had the mastery over them and broke all their bones in pieces, or they came to the bottom of the den, what shall become of you? Will you fall into the hands of the living God? Oh, do not then contend with God. Repent and be converted, so none of this shall come upon you. Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him and to our God. For he will abundantly pardon. Isaiah 55, 6 and 7 A Sure Guide to Heaven by Joseph Alain Chapter 6 Directions to the Unconverted Before you read these directions, I advise you, yea, I charge you before God and his holy angels that you resolve to follow them as far as conscience shall be convinced of their agreeableness to God's word and your state, and call in his assistance and blessings that they may succeed. And as I sought the Lord and consulted his oracles as to what advice to give you, so must you entertain it with that awe, reverence, and purpose of obedience which the word of the living God requires. Now then, attend. Set your heart unto all that I shall testify unto you this day, for it is not a vain thing. It is your life. Deuteronomy 32, 46 This is the aim of all that has been spoken hitherto, to bring you to set your heart upon turning to God. I would not trouble you, nor torment you before the time with the thoughts of your eternal misery, but in order that you may make your escape. Were you shut up under your present misery without remedy, it were but mercy to let you alone that you might take in that poor little comfort which you are capable of in this world. But you yet may be happy if you do not willfully refuse the means of your recovery. Behold, I hold open the door to you. Arise, take your flight. I see the way of life before you. Walk in it, and you shall live and not die. It grieves me that you should be your own murderers and throw yourselves headlong when God and man cry out to you, as Peter in another case to his master, Spare thyself. The destruction of ungodly men is willful. God that made them cries out to them as Paul to the jailer when about to murder himself. Do thyself no harm. The ministers of Christ forewarned them and followed them and would gladly have them back. But alas, no expostulations or entreaties will prevail, but men will hurl themselves into perdition while pity itself looks on. What shall I say? Would it not grieve a person of any humanity if in the time of a raging plague he should have a remedy that would infallibly cure all the country and recover the most hopeless patients? And yet his friends and neighbors should die by hundreds around him because they would not use it? Men and brethren, though you carry the certain symptoms of death on your faces, yet I have a prescription that will cure all infallibly. Follow these directions, and if you do not then win heaven, I will be content to lose it. Here then, O sinner, and as ever you would be converted in faith, take the following counsel. Number one, set it down with yourself as an undoubted truth that it is impossible for you ever to get to heaven in this your unconverted state. Can any other but Christ save you? And he tells you he will never do it except you be regenerated and converted. Does he not keep the keys of heaven, and can you go in without his leave? As you must, if ever you go in your natural condition without a sound and thorough conversion. Number two, labor to get a thorough sight and lively sense and feeling of your sins. Turning a weary and heavy laden and pricked at the heart and quite sick of sin, they will not come to Christ for cure, nor sincerely inquire, What shall we do? They must see themselves as dead men before they will come unto Christ that they may live. Labor therefore to set all your sins in order before you. Do not be afraid to look upon them, but let your spirit make diligent search. Inquire into your heart and into your life. Enter into a thorough examination of yourself and all your ways, that you may make a full discovery in calling the help of God's Spirit out of a sense of your own inability to do this by yourself. For it is as proper work to convince of sin. Spread all before your conscience till your heart and eyes are set weeping. Do not leave striving with God in your own soul till it cry out under the sense of your sins as he enlightened Jailer, What must I do to be saved? To this purpose meditate on the number of your sins. David's heart failed when he thought of this and considered that he had more sins than the hairs of his head. This made him cry out for the multitude of God's tender mercies. The loathsome carcass does not more hatefully swarm with crawling maggots than an unsanctified soul with filthy lusts. They feel the head, the heart, the eyes and mouth of him. Look backward. Where was ever the place? What was ever the time in which you did not sin? Look inward. What part or power can you find in soul or body which is not poisoned with sin? What duty do you ever perform into which this poison is not shed? Oh, how rude is the sum of your debts, who have been all your life running upon trust and never did or can pay off one penny. Look over the sin of your nature and all its cursed brood, the sins of your life. Call to mind your omissions and commissions, the sins of thoughts, words and actions, the sins of your youth and the sins of your riper years. Do not be like a desperate bankrupt that is afraid to look over his books. Read the records of conscience carefully. These books must be opened sooner or later. Meditate upon the aggravations of your sins as they are the grand enemies of the God of your life and of the life of your soul. In a word, they are the public enemies of all mankind. How do David, Ezra, Daniel and the good Levites aggravate their sins from the consideration of their opposition to God and His good and righteous laws and of the mercies and warnings against which they were committed or the work that sin has done in the world? This is the enemy that is brought in death, that has robbed and enslaved man, that has turned the world upside down. And so the dissensions between man and the creatures, between man and man, yea, between man and himself, setting the animal part against a rational, the will against a judgment, lust against conscience, yea, worst of all, between God and man, making the sinner both hateful to God and a hater of God. O man, how can you make so light of sin? This is a traitor that thirsted for the blood of the Son of God, that sold Him, that mocked Him, that scourged Him, that spat in His face, that tore His hands, that pierced His side, that pressed His soul, that mangled His body, that never left Him till He had bound Him, condemned Him, nailed Him, crucified Him, and put Him to an open shame. This is that deadly poison, so powerful of operation, and one drop of it shed on the root of mankind, has corrupted, spoiled, poisoned, and ruined a whole race. This is the bloody executioner, that has killed the prophets, burned the martyrs, murdered all the apostles, all the patriarchs, all the kings and potentates, that has destroyed cities, swallowed empires, and devoured whole nations. Whatever weapon it was done by, it was sin that caused the execution. Do you yet think it only a small thing? If Adam and all his children could be dug out of their graves, and their bodies piled up to heaven, and an inquest were made as to what matchless murderer were guilty of all this blood, it would be all found in sin. Study the nature of sin, till your heart inclined to fear and loathe it, and meditate on the aggravations of your particular sins, how you ascend against all God's warnings, against your own prayers, against mercies, against corrections, against clearest light, against freest love, against your own resolutions, against promises, vows, and covenants of better obedience. Charge your heart with these things, till it blush for shame, and be brought out of all good opinion of itself. Meditate on the desert of sin. It cries to heaven. It calls for vengeance. It still wages a death and damnation, and brings a curse of God upon the soul and body. The least sinful word or thought lays you under the infinite wrath of God. Oh, what a load of wrath! What a weight of curses! What treasures of vengeance! Have all the millions of your sins deserved? Oh, judge yourself, that the Lord may not judge you. Meditate on the deformity and defilement of sin. It is black as hell, the very image and likeness of the devil drawn upon the soul. It would terrify you to see yourself in the hateful deformity of your nature. There is no mire so unclean, no plague or leprosy, so noisome as sin, in which you are plunged and rendered more displeasing to the pure and holy nature of the glorious God than the vilest object can be to you. Could you take up a toad into your bosom? Could you cherish it and take delight in it? But you are as contrary to the pure and perfect holiness of the divine nature till you are purified by the blood of Jesus and the power of renewing grace. For the continuation of this book. Above all other sins, consider these two. First, the sin of your heart. It is to little purpose to lop off the branches while the root of corruption remains untouched. In vain do men lave out the strains when the fountain is running that fills up all again. Let the acts of your repentance with David's go to the root of sin. Study how deep, how permanent is your natural pollution, how universal it is till you cry out with Paul against your body of death. The heart is never soundly broken till thoroughly convinced of the heinousness of its original and deep-rooted depravity. Here fix your thoughts. This is that which makes you backward to all good and prone to all evil, that sheds blindness, pride, prejudice, and unbelief into your mind, enmity, inconstancy, and obstinacy into your will, inordinate heats and colds into your affections, insensibleness and unfaithfulness into your conscience, slipperiness into your memory. In a word, it has put every will of the soul out of order and made it from a habitation of holiness to become a very hell of iniquity. This is what has defiled and perverted all your members and turned them into weapons of unrighteousness and servants of sin, that has fueled the head with carnal and corrupt designs, the hand with sinful practices, the eyes with wandering and wantonness, the tongue with deadly poison. This is what has opened you as to tales, flattery and filthy talk, and shut them against the instructions of life, and has rendered your heart the cursed source of all deadly imagination. For so that it pours out its wickedness without ceasing, even as naturally as a fountain pours forth its waters, or the raging sea casts forth mire and dirt. And will you yet be in love with yourself and tell us any longer of your good heart, or never leave meditating on the desperate contagion, the original corruption of your heart, till with Ephraim you bemoan yourself, and with the deepest shame and sorrow smite your breast as a publican, and with Job abhor yourself in repentant dust and ashes? Secondly, the particular evil that you are most addicted to, find out all its aggravation, set home upon your heart all God's threats against it. Repentance thrives before it, the whole herd, but especially sticks the arrow in the beloved sin and singles this out above the rest. To run it down, or labor to make this sin odious to your soul, and double your guard and resolutions against it, because this is most dishonoring to God and dangerous to you. Number three, strive to affect your heart with a deep sense of your present misery. Read over the previous chapter again and again and get it out of the book into your heart. Remember when you lie down that for all you know you may awake in flames, and when you rise up, by the next night you may make your bed in hell. Is it nothing to you to live in such a fearful state, to stand tottering on the brink of a bottomless pit, and to live at the mercy of every disease, that, if it but fall upon you, will send you forthwith into the burnings? Suppose you saw a condemned wretch hanging over Nebuchadnezzar's burning fiery furnace by nothing but a thread which was ready to break every moment. Would not your heart tremble for such an one? Thou art the man, this is the very case of you, O man, woman, who reads this, if you are yet unconverted. What if the thread of your life should break? And you know not, but it may be the next night, yea, the next moment. Where would you be then? Where would you drop? Verily, upon the breaking of this thread, you fall into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, where you must lie while God has a being, if you die in your present state. And does not your soul tremble as you read? Do not your tears wet the paper and your heart throb in your bosom? Do you not yet begin to smite your breast and think with yourself what need you have of a change? O what is your heart made of? Have you not only lost all regard to God, but all love and pity to yourself? O study your misery till your heart cry out for Christ as earnestly as ever a drowning man did for a boat or the wounded for a surgeon. Men must come to see the danger and feel the smart of their deadly sores and sickness, or Christ will be to them a physician of no value. The manslayer hastens to the city of refuge when pursued by the avenger of blood. But men must be even forced and driven out of themselves, or they will not come to Christ. It was distress and extremity that made the prodigal think of returning. While Laodicea thinks herself rich, increased in goods, in need of nothing, there is little hope. She must be deeply convinced of her wretchedness, blindness, poverty, and nakedness before she will come to Christ for his gold, raiment, and eyesalve. Therefore, hold the eyes of conscience open. Amplify your misery as much as possible. Do not flee the sight of it, for fear it should fill you with terror. The sense of your misery is but, as it were, the festering of the wounds which is necessary to the cure. Better not to fear the torments that await you than to feel them hereafter. 4. Settle it in your heart that you must look out of yourself and away from your own doings for help. Do not think your praying, reading, hearing, confessing, or amending will effect the cure. These must be attended to, but you are undone if you rest in them. You are a lost man if you hope to escape drowning on any other plank but Jesus Christ. You must unlearn yourself and renounce your own wisdom, your own righteousness, your own strength, and throw yourself wholly upon Christ, or you cannot escape. While men trust in themselves and establish their own righteousness and have confidence in the flesh, they will not savingly come to Christ. You must know your gain to be but loss, your strength but weakness, your righteousness rags and rottenness before there will be an effectual closure between Christ and you. Can the lifeless body shake off its grave clothes and lose the bands of death? Then may you recover yourself who are dead in trespasses and sins and under an impossibility of serving your Maker acceptably in this condition. Therefore, when you go to pray or meditate or to do any of the duties to which you are here directed, go out of yourself and call in the help of the Spirit, as despairing to do anything pleasing to God in your own strength. Yet do not neglect duty. While the eunuch was reading, then the Holy Ghost did send Philip to him. When the disciples were praying, when Cornelius and his friends were hearing, then the Holy Ghost fell upon and filled them all. Number five, henceforth, renounce all your sins. If you yield yourself to the practice of any sin, you are undone. In vain do you hope for life by Christ except you depart from iniquity. Forsake your sins or you cannot find mercy. You cannot be married to Christ except you be divorced from sin. Give up the traitor or you can have no peace with heaven. Keep not Delilah in your lap. You must part with your sins or with your soul. Spare but one sin and God will not spare you. Your sins must die or you must die for them. If you allow one sin, though but a little secret one, though you may plead necessity and have a hundred schists and excuses for it, the life of your soul must go for the life of that sin. And will it not be dearly bought? O sinner, hear and consider. If you will part with your sins, God will give you his Christ. Is this not a fair exchange? I testify unto this day that if you perish, it is not because there was never a Savior provided nor life tendered, but because with the Jews he preferred the murderer before the Savior, sin before Christ, and love darkness rather than light. Search your heart therefore with candles as the Jews did their houses for leaven before the Passover. Labor to find out your sins. Enter into your closet and consider. What evil have I lived in? What duty have I neglected towards God? What sin have I lived in against my brother? And I'll strike the dart through the heart of your sin as Joab did through Absalom's. Do not stand looking at your sins, nor rolling the morsel under your tongue, but cast it out as poison with fear and detestation. Alas, what will your sins do for you that you should hesitate to part with them? They will flatter you, but they will undo you and poison you while they please you, and arm the justice and wrath of the infinite God against you. They will open hell for you and pile up fuel to burn you. Behold the gibbets they have prepared for you, or treat them like Haman and do upon them the execution they would else have done upon you. Away with them. Crucify them, and let Christ alone be Lord over you. Number six. Make a solemn choice of God for your portion and blessedness with all possible devotion and veneration of vows to the Lord for your God. Set the world with all its glory and paint and gallantry, with all its pleasures and promotions on the one hand, and set God with all his infinite excellencies and perfections on the other, and see that you do deliberately make your choice. Take up your rest in God. Sit down under his shadow. Let his promises and perfections turn the scale against all the world. Settle it in your heart that the Lord is an all-sufficient portion and that you cannot be miserable while you have God to live upon. Take him for your shield and exceeding great reward. God alone is more than all the world. Content yourself with him. Let others possess the performance and glory of the world, but do you place your happiness in the favor of God and in the light of his countenance? Poor sinner, you have fallen off from God and have engaged his power and wrath against you. Yet know that of his abundant grace he offers to be your God again in Christ. What do you say? Will you have the Lord for your God? Take this counsel and you shall have him. Come to him by Christ. Renounce the idols of your pleasures. Gain reputation. Let these be pulled from their throne and set God's interest uppermost in your heart. Take him as God to be chief in your affections and purposes, for he will not endure to have any set above him. In a word, you must take him in all his personal relations and in all his essential perfections. First, in all his personal relations, God the Father must be taken for your Father. O come to him with the prodigal. Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am not worthy to be called thy son. But since of thy wonderful mercy thou art pleased to take me, that of myself most vile, even a beast and no man before thee, to be a child, I solemnly take thee for my father, commend myself to thy care, entrust to thy providence, and cast my burden on thee. I depend on thy provision, and submit to thy corrections, entrust under the shadow of thy wings, and hide in thy chambers and fly to thy name. I renounce all confidence in myself. I repose my confidence in thee. I declare my engagement with thee. I will be for thee and not for another. God the Son must be taken for your Savior, your Redeemer, and your Righteousness. He must be accepted as the only way to the Father and the only means of life. O then, put off the raiment of your captivity, put on the wedding garment, and go and marry yourself to Christ. Lord, I am thine, and all I have, my body, soul, and estate, I give my heart to thee. I will be thine undividedly, thine everlastingly. I will set thy name on all I have, and use it only as thy goods during thy absence, resigning all to thee. I will have no king but thee to reign over me. Other lords have had dominion over me, but now I will make mention of thy name only, and do here take an oath of fidelity to thee, promising to serve and fear thee above all competitors. I reject my own righteousness in despair of ever being pardoned and saved for my own duties or graces, and lean solely on thy all-sufficient sacrifice and intercession for pardon, life, and acceptance before God. I take thee for my only guide and instructor, resolving to be directed by thee and to wait for thy counsel. Lastly, God the Spirit must be taken for your sanctifier, for your advocate, your counselor, your comforter, the teacher of your ignorance, the pledge and earnest of your inheritance. Awake thou, North Wind, and come thou South, and blow upon my garden. Canticles 4.16 Come thou Spirit of the Most High, here is a temple for thee. Do thou rest here forever. Dwell here. Lo, I give possession to thee, full possession. I send thee the keys of my heart that all may be thine. I give up the use of all to thee that every faculty and every member may be thy instrument to work righteousness unto the will of my Father who is in heaven. in all his essential perfections, consider how the Lord has revealed himself to you in his word. Will you take him as such a God? O sinner, here is the most blessed news that ever came to the sons of men. The Lord will be your God if you will be close with him in his excellencies. Will you have the merciful, the gracious, the sin-pardoning God to be your God? O yes, says the sinner, otherwise I am undone. But he further tells you, I am the holy and sin-hating God. If you will be owned as one of my people, you must be holy, holy in heart, holy in life. You must put away all your iniquities, be they ever so dear, ever so natural, ever so necessary to the maintaining of your worldly interest. Unless you will be at enmity with sin, I cannot be your God. Cast out the leaven, put away the evil of thy doings, cease to do evil, learn to do well, bring forth mine enemies, or there is no peace to be had with me. What does your heart answer? Lord, I desire to be holy as thou art holy, and to be made partaker of thy holiness. I love thee, not only for thy goodness and mercy, but for thy holiness and purity. I take thy holiness for my happiness. O be to me a fountain of holiness. Set on me the stamp and impress of thy holiness. I will thankfully part with all my sins at thy command. My willful sins I do henceforth, forsake. And for mine infirmities that cleave to me, though I would be rid of them, I will strive against them continually. I detest them, and I will pray against them, and never let them have rest in my soul. Beloved, whoever of you will thus accept the Lord, he shall be your God. Again he tells you, I am the all-sufficient God. Will you lay all at my feet? Give up all to my disposal, and take me for your only portion. Will you own and honor my all-sufficiency? Will you take me as your happiness and treasure, your hope and bliss? I am a sun and a shield all in one. Will you have me for your all? Now what do you say to this? Does your soul long for the onions and flesh pots of Egypt? Are you loath to change your earthly happiness for a portion in God? And though you would be glad to have God in the world too, yet you cannot think of having him and nothing but him, but would rather take up what the earth below of God would, but let you keep it as long as you would. This is a fearful sign. But now if you are willing to sell all for the pearl of great price, if your heart answer, Lord, I desire no other portion but thee, take the corn and the wine and the oil, who will, so I have the light of thy countenance. I fix upon thee for my happiness. I gladly venture myself on thee and trust myself with thee. I set my hope in thee. I take up my rest with thee. Let me hear thee say, I am thy God, thy salvation. I have enough, all I wish for. I will make no terms with thee, but for thyself. Let me have thee for sure. Let me be able to make my claim and see my title to thyself. And for other things, I leave them to thee. Give me more or less, anything or nothing. I will be satisfied in my God. Take him thus, and he is your own. Again he tells you, I am the sovereign Lord. If you will have me for your God, you must give me the supremacy. You must not make me second to sin or any worldly interest. If you will be my people, I must have the rule over you. You must not live at your pleasure. Will you come under my yoke? Will you bow to my government? Will you submit to my discipline, to my word, to my rod, sinner? What do you say to this? Lord, I'd rather be at thy command than live at my own will. I'd rather have thy will to be done than mine. I approve of and consent to thy laws and account it my privilege to be under them. And though the flesh rebel and often break its bounds, I have resolved to take no other Lord but thee. I willingly take the oath of thy supremacy and acknowledge thee for my sovereign and resolve all my days to pay the tribute of worship, obedience, love, and service to thee and to live to thee to the end of my life. This is a right acceptance of God. To be short, he tells you, I am the true and faithful God. If you will have me for your God, you must be content to trust me. Will you venture yourselves upon my word and depend on my faithfulness and take my bond for your security? Will you be content to follow me in poverty and reproach and affliction here and to tarry till the next world for your preferment? Will you be content to labor and suffer and to tarry for your returns till the resurrection of the just? My promise will not always be instantly fulfilled. Will you have the patience to wait? Now, beloved, what do you say to this? Will you have this God for your God? Will you be content to live by faith and trust him for an unseen happiness, an unseen heaven, an unseen glory? Do your hearts answer, Lord, we will venture ourselves upon thee. We commit ourselves to thee. We cast ourselves upon thee. We know whom we have trusted. We are willing to take thy word. We prefer thy promises before our own possessions and the hopes of heaven before all the enjoyments of earth. We will do thy pleasure. What thou wilt here is all that we may have but thy faithful promise for heaven hereafter. If you can, entrust, and upon deliberation, thus accept of God he will be yours. Thus there must be in a right conversion to God a closing with him suitable to his excellencies. But when men close with mercy, but yet love sin, hating holiness and purity, or will take him for their benefactor, but not for their sovereign, or for their patron, and not for their portion, this is no thorough and sound conversion. Number 7 Accept the Lord Jesus, and all his offices is yours. Upon these terms Christ may be had. Sinner, you have undone yourself and are plunged into the ditch of most deplorable misery out of which you are never able to escape. But Jesus Christ is able and ready to help you and he freely tenders himself to you. Be your sins ever so many, ever so great, of ever so long continuance, yet you shall be most certainly pardoned and saved if you do not wretchedly neglect the offer that in the name of God is here made to you. The Lord Jesus calls you to look to him and be saved. Come unto him and he will in no wise cast you out. Yea, he beseeches you to be reconciled. He cries in the streets. He knocks at your door. He invites you to accept him and live with him. If you die, it is because you would not come to him for life. Accept and offer Christ now, and you are made forever. Give your consent to him now, and the match is made. All the world cannot hinder it. Do not stand off because of your unworthiness. I tell you, nothing can undo you but your own unwillingness. Speak, man. Will you give your consent? Will you have Christ and all his relations to be yours, your king, your priest, your prophet? Will you have him and bear his cross? Do not take Christ without consideration, but sit down first and count the cost. Will you lay all at his feet? Will you be content to run all hazards with him? Will you take your lot with him, fall where it will? Will you deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him? Are you deliberately, understandingly, freely determined to cleave to him in all times and conditions? If so, you shall never perish, but you are passed from death unto life. Here lies the main point of your salvation, that you be found in your covenant closure with Jesus Christ, and therefore, if you love yourself, see that you be faithful to God in your soul here. 8. Resign all your powers and faculties and your whole interests to be his. They gave their own selves to the Lord. 2 Corinthians 8. 5. Present your bodies a living sacrifice. Romans 12. 1. The Lord seeks not yours, but you. Resign, therefore, your body with its members to him, and your soul with all its powers, that he may be glorified in your body and in your spirit, which are his. 3. In a right closing with Christ, all your faculties are given up to him. Your judgment says, Lord, thou art worthy of all acceptation, chief of ten thousand, happy is a man that findeth thee. 4. All the things that are to be desired are not to be compared with thee. Proverbs 3.13-15. The understanding lays aside his corrupt reasonings and cavils and his prejudices against Christ and his ways. It is now past questioning and determines for Christ against all the world. It concludes, It is good to be here and see such a treasure in this field, such a value in this pearl, as is worth all. Matthew 8.44-46. Oh, here is the richest prize that ever man was offered. Here is the most sovereign remedy that ever mercy prepared. He is worthy of my esteem, worthy of my choice, worthy of my love, worthy to be embraced, adored, admired. Forevermore, Revelations 5.12. I approve of his articles. His terms are righteous and reasonable, full of equity and mercy. Again the will resigns. It stands no longer wavering but is peremptorily determined. Lord, thy love hath overcome me. Thou hast won me, and thou shalt have me. Come in, Lord. To thee I freely open. I consent to be saved in thine own way. Thou shalt have anything. Nay, have all. Let me have but thee. The memory gives up to Christ. Lord, here is a storehouse for thee. Outwith this trash lay in the treasures. Let me be a repository of thy truth, thy promises, thy providences. The conscience comes in. Lord, I will ever side with thee. I will be thy faithful registrar. I will warn when the sinner is tempted and smite when thou art offended. I will witness for thee and judge for thee and guide into thy ways and will never let sin have quiet in this soul. The affections also come to Christ. All says love. I am sick for thee. All says desire. Now I have what I have sought for. Here is the desire of nations. Here is bread for me and balm for me. All that I want. Fear bows in thee with awe and veneration. Welcome, Lord. To thee will I pay my homage. Thy word and rod shall command my actions. Thee will I reverence and adore. Before thee will I fall down and worship. Grief likewise puts in. Lord, thy displeasure and thy dishonor. Thy people's calamities and my own iniquity shall be what shall set me a-weeping. I will mourn when thou art offended. I will weep when thy cause is wounded. Anger likewise comes in for Christ. Lord, nothing so enrages me as my folly against thee that I should be so besotted as to hearken to the flatteries of sin and the temptations of Satan against thee. Hatred, too, will side with Christ. I protest mortal enmity to thine enemies that I will never be a friend to thy foes. I vow an eternal quarrel with every sin. I will give no quarter. I will make no peace. Thus let all your powers yield to Jesus Christ. Again, you must give up your whole interest to him. If there is anything that you keep back from Christ, it will be your undoing. Luke 14.33 Unless you will forsake all in preparation and resolution of your heart, you cannot be his disciple. You must hate father and mother, yea, in your own life also, in comparison with him, and as far as it stands in competition with him. In a word, you must give him yourself and all that you have without reservation, or else you can have no part in him. Number nine. Choose the laws of Christ as a rule of your words, thoughts, and actions. This is a true convert's choice. But he remembered the three rules. Number one. You must choose them all. There is no getting to heaven by a partial obedience. It is not enough to take up the cheap and easy part of religion, let alone the duties that are costly and self-denying, and oppose the interests of the flesh. You must take all or none. A sincere convert, though he makes conscience of the greatest sins and weighty his duties, yet he makes true conscience of little sins and of all duties. Number two. You must choose Christ's laws for all times, for prosperity and adversity. A true convert is resolved in his course. He will stand to his choice and will not set his back to the wind. And be of the religion of the times. I have stuck to thy testimonies. I have inclined mine heart to perform thy statutes always. Even to the end. Thy testimonies have I taken as a heritage forever. I will have respect to thy statutes continually. Psalm 119. Number three. This must be done deliberately and understandingly. The disobedient son said, I go, sir, but he went not. How fairly did they promise. Oh, that the Lord our God shall speak to thee. We will do it. And it is likely they meant what they said. But when it came to the trial, it was found that there was not such a heart in them as to do what they had promised. Deuteronomy 5, 27 and 29. If you would be sincere in closing with the laws and the ways of Christ, study the meaning and breadth and extent of them. Remember that they are spiritual. They reach the very thoughts and inclinations of the heart. So that if you will walk by this rule, your very thoughts and inward motions must be under government. Again, they are very strict and self-denying, quite contrary to your natural inclinations. You must take the straight gate, the narrow way, and be content to have the flesh curved from the liberty it desires. In a word, they are very large. For thy commandment is exceeding broad. Psalm 119. Do not rest in general commands, for there is much deceit in them. But bring down your heart to the particular commands of Christ. Those Jews and the prophets seemed as well resolved as any in the world and called God to witness that they meant what they said. But they rested in generals. When God's command crosses their inclinations, they will not obey. Jeremiah 42, 1 and 6. Take the Westminster Assembly's larger catechism and see their excellent and most comprehensive exposition of the commandments and put your heart to it. Are you resolved in the strength of Christ to set upon the conscientious practice of every duty that you find to be required of you and to set against every sin that you find to be forbidden? This is the way to be sound in God's statutes, that you may never be ashamed. Observe the special duties that your heart is most against and the special sins that it is most inclined to and see whether it be truly resolved to perform the one and forego the other. What do you say to your bosom sin, your profitable sin? What do you say to costly, hazardous, and flesh-displeasing duties? If you halt here and do not resolve by the grace of God to cross a flesh and be an earnest, you are unsound. 10. Let all this be completed in a solemn covenant between God and your soul. Set apart some time more than wants to be spent in secret before the Lord and seeking earnestly His special assistance and gracious acceptance of you and searching your heart whether you are sincerely willing to forsake all your sins and to resign yourself, body, and soul to God in a service to serve Him in holiness and righteousness all the days of your life. Compose your spirit into the most serious frame possible, suitable to a transaction of so high importance. Lay hold on the covenant of God and rely on His promise of giving grace and strength, by which you may be enabled to perform your promise. Do not trust to your own strength, to the strength of your own resolutions, but take hold on His strength. Being thus prepared, on some convenient time set apart for the purpose, enter upon the work and solemnly, as in the presence of the Lord, fall down on your knees and spreading forth your hands toward heaven, open your heart to the Lord in these, or the like, words. O most holy God, for the passion of Thy Son, I beseech Thee, accept Thy poor prodigal, now prostrating himself at Thy door. I have fallen from Thee by mine iniquity, and am by nature a son of death, and a thousandfold more the child of hell by wicked practice. But of Thine infinite grace Thou hast promised mercy to me in Christ, if I will but turn to Thee with all my heart. Therefore, upon the call of Thy gospel, I now come in, and throwing down my weapons, submit myself to Thy mercy. And because You require, as a condition of my peace with You, that I should put away my idols and be at defiance with all Your enemies, while I acknowledge I have wickedly sided with against Thee, I here from the bottom of my heart renounce them all, firmly covenanting with You, not to allow myself in any known sin, but conscientiously to use all the means that I know You have prescribed for the death and utter destruction of all my corruption. And whereas formerly I have inordinately and idolatrously set my affections upon the world, I do here resign my heart to You who made it, humbly declaring before Your glorious majesty that it is a firm resolution of my heart, that I do unfeintedly desire grace from You, that when You shall call me here unto You, I may practice this, my resolution, through Your assistance, to forsake all that is dear to me in this world, rather than to turn from You to the ways of sin, and that I will watch against all its temptations, whether of prosperity or adversity, lest I should withdraw my heart from You. I beseech You also to help me against the temptations of Satan, to whose wicked suggestions are resolved by Your grace never to yield myself a servant. And because my unrighteousness is but his filthy rags, I renounce all my confidence therein and acknowledge that I am of myself a hopeless, helpless, undone creature without righteousness or strength. For as much as You have of Your bottomless mercy offered most graciously to me a wretched sinner to be again my God through Christ, if I would accept Thee, I call upon heaven and earth to record this day that I do here solemnly avow to You for the Lord my God, and with all possible veneration bowing the neck of my soul under the feet of Your most sacred majesty, I do here take You, the Lord Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for my portion and chief good, and do give myself body and soul to be Your servant, promising and vowing to serve You in holiness and righteousness all the days of my life. And since You have appointed the Lord Jesus Christ, the only means of coming to You, I do here solemnly join myself in a marriage covenant to Him. O blessed Jesus, I come to You hungry and thirsty, poor and wretched, miserable, blind and naked, a most loathsome, polluted wretch, a guilty, condemned malefactor, unworthy to wash the feet of the servants of my Lord, much more to be solemnly married to the King of Glory. But such is Thine unparalleled love that I do here with all my power accept You and do take You for my head and husband, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, for all times and conditions to love, honor, and obey You before all others, and this to the death. I embrace You in all Your offices. I renounce my own worthiness and do here avow You to be the Lord my righteousness. I renounce my own wisdom and do here take You for my only guide. I renounce my own will and take You for my law. And since You have told me that I must suffer if I will reign, I do here covenant with You to take my lot as it falls with You, and by Your grace assisting to run all hazards with You, verily supposing that neither life nor death shall part between You and me. And because You have been pleased to give me Your holy laws as the rule of my life and the way in which I should walk to Your kingdom, I do here willingly put my neck under Your yoke and set my shoulder to Thy burden, and subscribing to all Your laws as holy, just, and good, I solemnly take them as the rule of my words, thoughts, and action, promising that though my flesh contradict and rebel, yet I will endeavor to order and govern my whole life to Your direction, and will not allow myself to neglect anything that I know to be my duty, only because through the frailty of my flesh I am subject to many failings. I am bold, humbly to request that unintentional shortcomings, contrary to the settled bent and resolution of my heart, shall not make void this covenant, for so Thou hast said. Now, Almighty God, Searcher of hearts, You know that I make this covenant with You this day without any known guile or reservation, beseeching You that if You espy any flaw or falsehood in it, You would reveal it to me and help me to do it aright. And now, O God, the Father, whom I shall be bold from this day forward to look upon as my God and Father, glory be to You for finding out such a way for the recovery of undone sinners. Glory be to You, O God, the Son who has loved me and washed me from my sins in Your own blood and art now become my Savior and Redeemer. Glory be to You, O God, the Holy Ghost, who by the finger of Thine almighty power has turned about my heart from sin to God. O High and Holy Jehovah, the Lord God Omnipotent, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, You are now become my covenant friend, and I through Thine infinite grace am become Your covenant servant. Amen, so be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. This covenant I advise you to make not only in heart but in word, not only in word but in writing, and that you would with all possible reverence spread the writings before the Lord as if you presented to Him as your act and deed. And when you have done this, set your hand to it and sign it. Keep it as a memorial of the solemn transactions that have passed between God and you, that you may have recourse to it in doubts and temptations. Number 11. Take heed of delaying your conversion, but make a speedy and an immediate surrender of your heart to God. I made haste and delayed not. Psalm 119.60 Remember and tremble at the sad instance of the foolish virgins who did not come till the door of mercy was shut, and of a convinced Felix who put off Paul to another season, but we do not find that he had another season. O come in while it is cold today, lest you should be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, lest the day of grace should be over and the things which belong to your peace should be hid from your eyes. Now mercy is wooing you. Now Christ is waiting to be gracious to you, and the Spirit of God is striving with you. Now ministers are calling. Now conscience is stirring. Now the market is open and oil may be had. You have opportunity for the buying. Now Christ is to be had for the taking. O strike in with the offers of grace, O now or never. If you make light to this offer, God may swear in his wrath that you shall never taste of his supper. Number 12. Attend conscientiously upon the word as a means appointed for your conversion. Attend, I say, not customarily, but conscientiously with this desire, design, hope, and expectation that you may be converted by it. Come to every sermon you hear with this thought. O I hope God will now come in. I hope this day may be the time. This may be the man by whom God will bring me home. When you are coming to the privileges of God's house, lift up your heart to God's thoughts. Lord, let this be the Sabbath. Let this be the season in which I may receive renewing grace. O let it be said that this day such an one was born unto thee. Objection. You will say, I have been a hearer of the word a long time, yet it has not been effectual to my conversion. Answer. Yes, but you have not attended upon it in this manner, as a means of your conversion, nor with this design, nor praying for and expecting the happy effect of it. Number 13. Strike in with the Spirit when He begins to work upon your heart. When He works convictions, O do not stifle them, but join in with Him and beg the Lord to give you saving conversion. Quench not the Spirit. Do not reject Him. Do not resist Him. Beware of stifling convictions with evil company or worldly business. When you are in anguish on account of sin and fears about your eternal state, beg of God that you may have peace only in thoroughly renouncing all sin, loathing it in your inmost soul, and giving your whole heart without reserve to Christ. Say to Him, Strike home, Lord. Do not leave the work half done. Go to the bottom of my corruption and let out the lifeblood of my sins. Thus yield yourself to the working of the Spirit and hoist yourselves to His gusts. For the continuation of this book, please go to tape 4 at this time.