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I am perfuaded, many have felt his gracious prefence here. Indeed we speak what we know. Do not reject the kingdom of GOD against yourfelves: be fo wife as to receive our witnefs. I cannot, I will not let you go; ftay a little, let us reafon together. However lightly you may efteem your fouls, I know our LORD has fet an' unfpeakable value on them. He thought them worthy of his moft precious blood. I beseech you, therefore, O finners, be ye reconciled to God. I hope you do not fear being accepted in the beloved. Behold, he calleth you; behold, he prevents and follows you with his mercy, and hath sent forth his fervants into the highways and hedges, to compel you to come in. Remember then, that at fuch an hour of such a day, in such a year, in this place, you were all told what you ought to think concerning JESUS CHRIST. If you now perifh, it will not be for lack of knowledge: I am free from the blood of you all. You cannot fay I have been preaching damnation to you; you cannot say I have, like legal preachers, been requiring you to make brick without ftraw. I have not bidden you to make yourselves faints, and then come to GoD; but I have offered you falvation on as cheap terms as you can defire. I have offered you CHRIST'S whole wifdom, CHRIST's whole righteousness, CHRIST'S whole fanctification and eternal redemption, if you will but believe on him. If you fay, you cannot believe, you fay right; for faith, as well as every other bleffing, is the gift of GOD but then wait upon GOD, and who knows but he may have mercy on thee? Why do we not entertain more loving thoughts of CHRIST? Or do you think he will have mercy on others, and not on you? But are you not finners? And did not JESUS CHRIST come into the world to fave fin ners? If you fay you are the chief of finners; I answer, that will be no hindrance to your falvation, indeed it will not, if you lay hold on him by faith. Read the Evangelifts, and fee how kindly he behaved to his difciples who fled from and de nied him: "Go tell my brethren," fays he. He did not fay, Go tell those traitors; but, " Go tell my brethren, and Peter" as though he had faid, Go tell my brethren in gene ral, and poor Peter in particular, "that I am rifen;" O comfort his poor drooping heart, tell him I am reconciled to him; bid him weep no more fo bitterly for though with

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baths and curfes he thrice denied me, yet I have died for his fins, I am rifen again for his juftification: I freely forgive him all. Thus flow to anger, and of great kindness, was our allmerciful High-prieft. And do you think he has changed his nature, and forgets poor finners, now he is exalted to the right-hand of GOD? No, he is the fame yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and fitteth there only to make interceffion for Come then, ye harlots, come ye publicans, come ye moft abandoned of finners, come and believe on JESUS CHRIST. Though the whole world defpife you and caft you out, yet he will not difdain to take you up. O amazing, O infinitely condefcending love! even you, he will not be afhamed to call his brethren. How will you efcape if you neglect fuch a glorious offer of falvation? What would the damned fpirits, now in the prison of hell, give, if CHRIST was fo freely offered to their fouls? And why are not we lifting up our eyes in torments? Does any one out of this great multitude dare fay, he does not deserve damnation? If not, why are we left, and others taken away by death? What is this but an inftance of God's free grace, and a fign of his good will towards us? Let Gon's goodness lead us to repentance! O let there be joy in heaven over fome of you repenting! Though we are in a field, I am perfuaded the bleffed angels are hovering now around us, and do lông," as the hart panteth after the water-brooks," to fing an anthem at your converfion. Bleffed be God, I hope their joy will be fulfilled. An awful filence appears amongst us. I have good hope that the words which the LORD hast enabled me to speak in your ears this day, have not altogether fallen to the ground. Your tears and deep attention, are an evidence, that the LORD GOD is amongst us of a truth. Come, ye Pharifees, come and fee, in fpite of your fatanical rage and fury, the LORD JESUS is getting himfelf the victory. And brethren, I fpeak the truth in CHRIST, I lie not, if one foul of you, by the bleffing of GOD, be brought to think favingly of JESUS CHRIST this day, I care not if my enemies were permitted to carry me to prifon, and put my feet fast in the flocks, as foon as I have delivered this fermon. Brethren, my heart's defire and prayer to God is, that you may be faved. For this caufe I follow my Mafter without the camp. I care not how much of his facred reproach I bear, fo that A a 2 fome

fome of you be converted from the errors of your ways. I rejoice, yea and I will rejoice. Ye men, ye devils, do your worst: the LORD who fent, will fupport me. And when CHRIST, who is our life, and whom I have now been preaching, fhall appear, I alfo, together with his defpifed little ones, fhall appear with him in glory. And then, what will you think of CHRIST? I know what you will think of him. You will then think him to be the fairest among ten thousand: You will then think and feel him to be a juft and fin-avenging judge. Be ye then perfuaded to kiss him left he be angry, and fo you be banished for ever from the presence of the LORD. Behold, I come to you as the angel did to Lot. Flee, flee, for your lives; hafte, linger no longer in your fpiritual Sodom, for otherwife you will be eternally deftroyed. Numbers, no doubt, there are amongst you, that may regard me no more than Lot's fons-in-law regarded him. I am perfuaded I seem to fome of you as one that mocketh: but I fpeak the truth in CHRIST, I lie not; as fure as fire and brimftone was rained from the LORD out of heaven, to deftroy Sodom and Gomorrah, fo furely, at the great day, fhall the vials of GOD's wrath be poured on you, if you do not think seriously of, and act agreeable to the gospel of the LORD'S CHRIST. Behold, I have told you before; and I pray GOD, all you that forget him may seriously think of what has been faid, before he pluck you away, and there be none to deliver you.

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ERMON XXV.

The wife and foolish Virgins.

MATTHEW XXV. 13.

Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of man cometh.

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HE apoftle Paul, in his epiftle to the Hebrews, informs. us, "That it is appointed for all men once to die; after that is the judgment." And I think, if any confideration be fufficient to awaken a sleeping drowsy world, it must be this, That there will be a day wherein these heavens fhall be wrapt up like a fcroll, this element melt with fervent heat, the earth and all things therein be burnt up, and every foul, of every nation and language, fummoned to appear before the dreadful tribunal of the righteous Judge of quick and dead, to receive rewards, and punishments, according to the deeds done in their bodies. The great apostle juft mentioned, when brought before Felix, could think of no better means to convert that finful man, than to reafon of temperance, righteousness, and more especially of a judgment to come. The firft might in fome measure affect, but, I am perfuaded, it was the laft confideration, a judgment to come, that made him to tremble: and fo bad as the world is now grown, yet there are few have their confciences fo far feared, as to deny that there will be a reckoning hereafter. The promiscuous difpenfations of providence in this life, wherein we fee good men afflicted, deftitute, tormented, and the wicked permitted triumphantly to ride over their heads, has been always looked upon as an indifputable argument, by the generality of men, that there will be a day in which GOD will judge the world in righte oufnefs, and adminifter equity unto his people. Some indeed

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are fo bold as to deny it, while they are engaged in the pursuit of the luft of the eye, and the pride of life. But follow them to their death-beds, ask them, when their fouls are ready to launch into eternity, what they then think of a judgment to come and they will tell you, they.dare not give their consciences the lie any longer. They feel a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation in their hearts. Since then these things are fo, does it not highly concern each of us, my brethren, before we come on a bed of fickness, seriously to examine how the account ftands between God and our fouls, and how it will fare with us in that day? As for the openly prophane, the drunkard, the whoremonger, the adulterer, and fuch-like, there is no doubt of what will become of them; without repentance they fhall never enter into the kingdom of GOD and his CHRIST: no; their damnation flumbereth not; a burning fiery Tophet, kindled by the fury of God's eternal wrath, is prepared for their reception, wherein they must fuffer the vengeance of eternal fire. Nor is there the leaft doubt of the state of true believers. For though they are defpifed and rejected of natural men, yet being born again of GOD, they are heirs of GoD, and joint heirs with CHRÍST. They have the earnest of the promised inheritance in their hearts, and are affured, that a new and living way is made open for them, into the holy of holies, by the blood of JESUS CHRIST, into which an abundant entrance fhall be adminif tered to them at the great day of account. The only queftion is, what will become of the almoft Chriftian, one that is content to go, as he thinks, in a middle way to heaven, without being prophane on the one hand, or, as he falfly imagines, righteous over-much on the other? Many there are in every congregation, and confequently fome here prefent, of this ftamp. And what is worst of all, it is more eafy to convince the most notorious publicans and finners of their being out of a ftate of salvation, than any of thefe. Notwithstanding, if JESUS CHRIST may be our judge, they fhall as certainly be rejected and difowned by him at the laft day, as though they lived in open defiance of all his laws. For what fays our LORD in the parable of which the words of the text are a conclufion, and which I intend to make the fubject of my prefent difcourfe. "Then," at the day of judgment, which

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