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SERM. reclaiming finers. For thefe and other the II. like reafons the Scripture fpeaks of an accepted time, and a day of falvation: which it is of importance to emprove, and very dangerous to neglect.

If. xlix 8.

2 Cor. vi.

2.

If the ordinarie means of holineffe and falvation are continued, what reafon is there to think, that you should be at any time hereafter better difpofed to emprove them, than you are now? Is there not rather a great deal of reafon to fear, least the heart fhould contract fome hardneffe by a long continuance in fin? And if reasonable and forcible arguments do not now fway and prevail, they will be fo far from influencing more hereafter, that they will affect much lefs than at present. Befides, by delaying and deferring you contract a habit of delaying, and do it with lefs remorfe. Your first put-offs and excufes, perhaps, are not made without a good deal of uneafineffe: and you are almost ashamed, or even confounded, when you make them; and your heart afterwards fmites you for it. But having time after time excused and deferred compliance with the reasonable demands that have been made of you: you become more affured and confi

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dent, and fuch demands are for the future SERM. off with little or no fcruple, or concern II. of mind.

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Moreover, it is a vain thing, to imagine, that you may outlive temptations: and that the time may come, when there shall be no longer any impediments or obftructions of repentance and amendment. For there always will be temptations, fuited to every age of life; which will have a powerful influence upon thofe, who are not fully devoted to God, and have not attained to the government of their paffions. If fenfual pleafure is a bait, that feduces and enfnares men in the early days of life: riches, and honour and preferment are as taking with men of worldly minds, in the more advanced, and the very latest periods of life.

4. Late repentance, fuppofing it to be fincere, and available, and accepted of God, must be very bitter and forrowful.

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It cannot be otherwise. For you will have little or nothing to comfort you. And you will have a great number, and a long courfe of tranfgreffions and neglects, to reflect upon with grief and concern. It will be very grievous to recollect many inftances of in

SERM. gratitude to God, who has been very II.

good and gracious to you, who would not think of him, or pay a juft regard to his reasonable and holy laws and commandments. You will, then, feverely blame and condemn yourselves for acting contrarie to conviction, and for refusing to hearken to former preffing and friendly calls and invitations. You will be filled with the utmost concern, to think, how you have multiplied tranfgreffions, and perfifted therein thereby offending God, and perhaps grieving men, whose comfort and happineffe should have been dear to you. And it is well, if you have not alfo the fad and bitter reflection to make, that by your fins, fome of them more especially, you have been the means of misleading fome of your fellowcreatures, and caufing them to fall and mifcarry, and that finally, and for ever.

5. But late repentance is feldom fincere.

I do not fay, that it is never fincere. But there is too much reafon to think, it is feldom fo. The confeffions and lamentations of men in fickneffe, and in vifible danger of death, appear rather forced and unavoidable, than free and voluntarie. And very often, when the danger is over, and health and

fafety

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fafety are restored, and the temptations of SERM. life return with their ufual force; men fhew their repentance was not unfeigned and effectual, by returning to their former evil courfes, and by being again entangled and overcome by this world, and the fnares of it, as before.

6. Confequently, late repentance must be very uncomfortable.

For though it should be fincere, and accepted of God, you cannot ordinarily have a full and fatisfactorie perfuafion of it in your minds. Some hope, poffibly, you may entertain but it will be weak and languid: fomewhat between hope and despair, a fad mixture of doubt and fear, whether this late humiliation will be accepted, or not. And forafmuch as you have not now an opportunity of approving to yourselves, or others, the truth of your repentance by future acts of steadie obedience, and that in time of temptation, you must go out of the world without that affured hope and expectation of a better life, and the heavenly happineffe, which is very defirable, and neceffarie to give peace in the hour of death.

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II.

These confiderations fhew the folly and danger of delaying repentance ++

H. I would now confider the pleas and excufes, which fome make for delaying to reform, and their objections against immediate compliance with the commands of God, and against forming a present resolution to be immediatly religious.

1. Some think with themselves, and are apt to plead, that a life of strict virtue and ferious religion is unpleasant, fad and melancholie depriving men of the pleasures and entertainments of life, and of much worldly gain and profit, which they might otherwise

make.

To this I answer two things.

1.) Allowing the truth of all this, it is not a good and reasonable ground of deferring to be really good and virtuous, and securing the happineffe of a future life: because things earthly and temporal are not to be compared with things heavenly and eternal. These last

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+ If any find this Sermon too long for a fingle reading, bere is a proper pause.

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