A SOLEMN ADDRESS TO THOSE WHO WILL NOT BE PERSUADED TO FALL IN WITH THE DESIGN OF THE GOSPEL.
1. Universal success not to be expected.--2-4. Yet, as unwilling absolutely to give up any, the author addresses thou who doubt the truth of Christianity, urging an inquiry into its evidences, and directing to prayer methods for that purpose.--5 Those who determine to give it up without further examination.--6. And presume to set themselves to oppose it.--7, 8. Those who speculatively assent to Christianity as true, and yet will sit down without any practical regard to its most important and acknowledged truths. Such are dismissed with a representation of the absurdity of their conduct on their own principles.--9, 10. With a solemn warning of its fatal consequences.--11. And a compassionate prayer, which concludes this chapter, and this part of the work.
1. I would humbly hope that the preceding chapters will be the means of
awakening some stupid and insensible sinners, the means of convincing them of
their need of Gospel-salvation, and of engaging some cordially to accept it.
Yet I cannot flatter myself so far as to hope this should be the case with
regard to all into whose hands this book shall come. "What am I, alas! better
than my fathers," (1 Kings 19:4) or better than my brethren, who have in all
ages been repeating their complaint, with regard to multitudes, that they "have
stretched out their hand all day long to a disobedient and gainsaying people!"
(Rom. 10:21) Many such may perhaps be found in the number of my readers; many,
on whom neither considerations of terror nor of love wilt make any deep and
lasting impression; many, who, as our Lord learned by experience to express it,
"when we pipe to them, will not dance; and when we mourn unto them; will not
lament." (Matt. 11:17) I can say no more to persuade them; if they make light
of what I have already said. Here, therefore, we must part: in this chapter I
must take my leave of them; and O that I could do it in such a manner as to
fix, at parting, some conviction upon their hearts, that though I seem to leave
them for a little while, and send them back to review again the former
chapters, as those in which alone they have any present concern, they might
soon, as it were, overtake me again, and find a suitableness in the remaining
part of this treatise, which at present they cannot possibly find. Unhappy
creatures. I quit you as a physician quits a patient whom he loves, and is just
about to give over as incurable: he returns again and again and re-examines the
several symptoms, to observe whether there be not some one of them wore
favorable than the rest, which may encourage a renewed application.
2. So would I once more return to you. You do
not find in yourself any disposition to embrace the Gospel, to apply yourself
to Christ, to give yourself up to thee service of God, and to make religion the
business of your life. But if I cannot prevail upon you to do this, let me
engage you, at least, to answer me, or rather to answer your own conscience,
"Why you will not do it?" is it owing to any secret disbelief of the great
principles of religion? If it be, the case is different from what I have yet
considered, and the cure must be different. This is not a place to combat with
the scruples of infidelity. Nevertheless, I would desire you seriously to
inquire "How far those scruples extend?" Do they affect any particular doctrine
of the Gospel on which my argument hath turned; or do they affect the whole
Christian revelation? Or do they reach yet farther, and extend themselves to
natural religion, as well as revealed; so that it should be a doubt with you,
whether there be any God, and providence, and future state, or not? As these
cases are all different, so it will be of great importance to distinguish the
one from the other; that you may know on what principles to build as certain,
in the examination of those concerning which you are yet in doubt. But,
whatever these doubts are, I would farther ask you, "How long have they
continued, and what method have you taken to get them resolved?" Do you
imagine, that, in matters of such moment, it will be an allowable case for you
to trifle on, neglecting to inquire into the evidence of these things, and then
plead your not being satisfied in that evidence, as an excuse for not acting
according to them? Must not the principles of common sense assure you, that,
if these things be true, as when you talk of doubting about them, you
acknowledge it at least possible they may be, they are of infinitely greater
importance than any of the affairs of life, whether of business or pleasure,
for the sake of which you neglect them? Why then do you continue indolent and
unconcerned, from week to week, and from month to month, which probably
conscience tells you is the case?
3. Do you ask, "What method you should take to be
resolved?" It is no hard question. Open your eyes: set yourself to think: let
conscience speak, and verily do I believe, that, if it be not seared in an
uncommon degree, you will find shrewd forebodings of the certainty both of
natural and revealed religion, and of the absolute necessity of repentance,
faith, and holiness, to a life of future felicity. If you area person of any
learning, you cannot but know by what writers, and in what treatises, these
great truths are defended. And if you are not, you may find, in almost every
town and neighborhood, persons capable of informing you in thee main evidences
of Christianity, and of answering such scruples against it as unlearned minds
may have met with. Set yourself, then, in the name of God, immediately to
consider the matter. If you study at all, bend your studies close this way, and
trifle not with mathematics, or poetry or history, or law, or physic, which are
all comparatively light as a feather, while you neglect this. Study the
argument as for your life; for much more than life depends on it. See how far
you are satisfied, and why that satisfaction reaches no farther. Compare
evidences on both sides. And, above all, consider the design and tendency of
the New Testament. See to what it will lead you, and all them that cordially
obey it, and then say whether it be not good. And consider how naturally its
truth is connected with its goodness. Trace the character and sentiments of its
authors, whose living image, if I may be allowed the expression, is still
preserved in their writings; and then ask your heart, can you think this was a
forgery, an impious, cruel forgery? for such it mast have been, if it were a
forgery at all: a scheme to mock God, and to ruin men, even the best of men,
such as reverenced Conscience, and would abide all extremities for what they
apprehended to be truth. Put the question to your own heart, Can I in my
conscience believe it to be such an imposture? Can I look up to an omniscient
God, and say, "O Lord, thou knowest that it is in reverence to thee, and in
love to truth and virtue, that I reject this book, and the method to happiness
here laid down."
4. But there are difficulties in the way. And
what then? Have those difficulties never been cleared? Go to the living
advocates for Christianity, to those of whose abilities, candor and piety you
have the best opinion, if your prejudices will give you leave to have a good
opinion of any such; tell them your difficulties; hear their solutions; weigh
them seriously, as those who know they must answer it to God; and while doubts
continue, follow the truth as far as it will lead you, and take heed that you
do not a "imprison it in unrighteousness." (Rom. 11:8) Nothing appears more
inconsistent and absurd than for a man solemnly to pretend dissatisfaction in
the evidences of the Gospel, as a reason why he cannot in conscience be a
thorough Christian; when at the same time he violates the most apparent
dictates of reason and conscience, and lives in vices condemned even by the
heathen. O sirs! Christ has judged concerning such, and judged most righteously
and most wisely: "They do evil, and therefore they hate the light; neither come
they to the light, lest their deeds should be made manifest, and be reproved."
(John 3:20) But there is a light that will make manifest and reprove their
works, to which they will be compelled to come, and the painful scrutiny of
which they shall be forced to abide.
5. In the mean time, if you are determined to
inquire no farther into the matter now, give me leave, at least, from a sincere
concern that you may not heap upon your head more aggravated ruin, to entreat
you that you would be cautious how you expose yourself to yet greater danger.
by what you must yourself own to be unnecessary; I mean attempts to prevent
others from believing the truth of the Gospel. Leave them; for God's sake, and
for your own, in possession of those pleasures and those hopes which nothing
but Christianity can give them; and act not as if you were solicitous to add to
the guilt of an infidel the tenfold damnation which they, who have been the
perverters and destroyers of the souls of others, must expect to meet, if that
Gospel, which they have so adventurously opposed, shall prove. as it certainly
will, a serious, and to them a dreadful truth.
6. If I cannot prevail here, (but the pride of
displaying a superiority of understanding should bear on such a reader, even in
opposition to his own favorite maxims of the innocence of error and the
equality of all religions consistent with social virtue, to do his utmost to
trample down the Gospel with contempt) I would, however, dismiss him with one
proposal which I think the importance of the affair may fully justify. If you
have done with your examination into Christianity, and determine to live and
conduct yourself as it were assuredly false, sit down, then, and make a
memorandum of that determination. Write it down:
"On such a day of such a year, I deliberately
resolved that I would live and die rejecting Christianity myself, and doing all
I could to overthrow it. This day I determined, not only to renounce all
subjection to, and expectation from Jesus of Nazareth, but also to make it a
serious part of the business of my life to destroy, as far as I possibly can,
all regard to him in the minds of others, and to exert my most vigorous
efforts, in the way of reasoning or of ridicule to sink the credit of his
religion, and, if it be possible, to root it out of the world; in calm, steady
defiance of that day, when his followers say, He shall appear in so much
majesty and terror, to execute the vengeance. threatened to his enemies."
Dare you write this, and sign it? I firmly
believe that many a man, who would be thought a deist. and endeavors to
increase the number, would not. And if you in particular dare not do it, whence
does that small remainder of caution arise? The cause is plain. There is in
your conscience some secret apprehension that this rejected, this opposed, this
derided Gospel may, after all, prove true. And if there be such an
apprehension, then let conscience do its office, and convict you of the impious
madness of acting as if it were most certainly and demonstrably false. Let it
tell you at large, how possible it is that "haply you may be found fighting
against God," (Acts 5:39) that, hold as you are in defying the terrors of the
Lord, you may possibly fall into his hands; may chance to hear that despised
sentence, which, when: you hear it from the mouth of the eternal Judge, you
will not be able to despise. I will repeat it again. In spite of all your
scorn: you may hear the King say to you. "Depart, accursed. into everlasting
fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." (Matt. 25:41) And now, go and
pervert and burlesque the Scripture, go and satirize the character of its
heroes, and ridicule the sublime discourses of its prophets and its apostles,
as some have done, who have left behind them but the short lived monuments of
their ignorance. their profaneness. and their malice. Go and spread like them,
the banners of infidelity and pride thyself in the number of credulous
creatures listed under them. But take heed lest the insulted Galilean direct a
secret arrow to thine heart, and stop thy licentious breath before it has
finished the next sentence thou wouldst utter against him.
7. I will turn myself from the deist or the
sceptic, and direct my address to the nominal Christian; if he may upon any
terms be called a Christian, who feels not, after all I have pleaded a
disposition to subject himself to the government and the grace of that Savior
whose name he hears: O sinner, thou art turning away from my Lord, in whose
cause I speak; but let me earnestly entreat thee seriously to consider why thou
art turning away; and "to whom thou wilt go," from him whom thou acknowledgst
"to have the words of eternal life." (John 6:63.) You call yourself a Christian
and yet will not by any means be persuaded to seek salvation in good earnest
from and through Jesus Christ, whom you call your Master and Lord. How do you
for a moment excuse this negligence to your own conscience? If I had urged you
on any controverted point it might have altered the case. If I had labored hard
to make you the disciple of any particular party of Christians, your delay
might have been more reasonable; nay, perhaps your refusing to acquiesce might
have been an act of apprehended duty to our common Master. But is it matter of
controversy among Christians, whether there be a great, holy, and righteous
God; and whether such a Being, whom we agree to own, should be reverenced and
loved, or neglected and dishonored? Is it matter of controversy whether a
sinner should deeply and seriously repent of his sins, or whether be should go
on in them? Is it a disputed point amongst us, whether Jesus became incarnate,
and died upon the cross for the redemption of sinners, or not? And if it be
not, can it be disputed by them who believe him to be the Son of God and the
Savior of men, whether a sinner should seek to him, or neglect hint; or whether
one who professes to be a Christian should depart from iniquity, or give
himself up to the practice or it? Are the precepts of our great Master written
so obscurely in his word, that there should be room seriously to question
whether he require a devout, holy, humble, spiritual, watchful, self-denying
life, or whether he allow the contrary? Has Christ, after all big pretensions
of bringing life and immortality to light, left it more uncertain than he found
it, whether there be any future state of happiness and misery, or for whom
these states are respectively intended? Is it a matter of controversy whether
God will, or will not, "bring every work into judgment, with every secret
thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil?" (Eccl. 12:14) or whether, at
the conclusion of that judgment, "the wicked shall go away into everlasting
punishment, and the righteous into life eternal?" (Matt. 25:46) You will not I
am sure, for very shame, pretend any doubt about these things, and yet call
yourself a Christian. Why then will you not be persuaded to lay them to heart,
and to act as duty and interest so evidently require? O sinner, the cause is
too obvious, a cause indeed quite unworthy of being called a reason. It is
because thou art blinded and besotted with thy vanities and thy lusts. It is
because thou hast some perishing trifle, which charms thy imagination and thy
senses, so that it is dearer to thee than God and Christ, than thy own soul and
its salvation. It is, in a word, because thou art still under the influence of
that carnal mind, which, whatever pious forms it may sometimes admit and
pretend, "is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither
indeed can be." (Rom. 8:7) And therefore thou art in the very case of those
wretches, concerning whom our Lord said in the days of his flesh, "Ye will not
come unto me, that ye might have life," (John 5:40) and therefore "ye shall die
in your sins." (John 8:24)
8. In this case I see not what it can signify, to
renew those expostulations and addresses which I have made in the former
chapters. As our blessed Redeemer says of those who reject his Gospel, "Ye have
both seen and hated both me and my Father," (John 15:24) so may I truly say
with regard to you, I have endeavored to show you, in the plainest and the
clearest words, both Christ and the Father; I have urged the obligations you
are under to both; I have laid before you your guilt and your condemnation; I
have pointed out the only remedy; I have pointed out the rock on which I have
built my own eternal hopes, and the way in which alone I expect salvation. I
have recommended those things to you, which, if God gives me an opportunity, I
will, with my dying breath, earnestly and affectionately recommend to my own
children, and to all the dearest friends that I have upon earth, who may then
be near me, esteeming it the highest token or my friendship, the surest proof
of my love to them. And if, believing the Gospel to be true, you resolve to
reject it, I have nothing farther to say, but that you must abide the
consequence. Yet as Moses, when he went out from the presence of Pharaoh for
the last time, finding his heart yet more hardened by all the judgments and
deliverances with which he had formerly been exercised, denounced upon him
"God's passing through the land in terror to smite the firstborn with death,
and warned him of that great and lamentable cry, which the sword of the
destroying angel should raise throughout all his realm;" (Exod. 11:4-6) so will
I, sinner, now when I am quitting thee, speak to thee yet again, "whether thou
wilt hear, or whether thou wilt forbear," (Ezek. 2:7) and denounce that much
more terrible judgment; which the sword of divine vengeance, already whetted
and drawn, and "bathed, as it were, in heaven," (Isai. 34:5) is preparing
against thee; which shall end in a much more doleful cry, though thou wert
greater and more obstinate than that haughty monarch. Yes, sinner, that I may,
with the apostle Paul, when turning to others who are more likely to hear me,
"shake my raiment, and say, I am pure from your blood," (Acts 18.6) I will once
more tell you what the end of these things will be. And, O that I could speak
to purpose! O that I could thunder in thine ear such a peal of terror as might
awaken thee, and be too loud to be drowned in all the noise of carnal mirth, or
to be deadened by those dangerous opiates with which thou art contriving to
stupify thy conscience!
9. Seek what amusements and entertainments thou
wilt, O sinner! I tell thee, if thou wert equal in dignity, and power, and
magnificence, to the "great monarch of Babylon, thy pomp shalt be brought down
to the grave, and all the sound of thy viols; the worm shall be spread under
thee, and the worm shall cover thee;" (Isai. 14:11) yes, sinner, "the end of
these things is death!" (Rom. 6:21) death in its most terrible sense to thee,
if this continue thy governing temper. Thou canst not avoid it; and, if it be
possible for any thing that I can say to prevent, thou shalt not forget it.
Your "strength is not the strength of stones, nor is your flesh of brass." (Job
6:12) You are accessible to disease, as well as others; and if some sudden
accident do not prevent it, we shall soon see how heroically you will behave
yourself on a dying bed, and in the near views of eternity. You, that now
despise Christ, and trifle with his Gospel, we shall see you droop and
languish; shall see all your relish for your carnal recreations and your vain
companions lost. And if perhaps one and another of them bolt in upon you, and
is brutish and desperate enough to attempt to entertain a dying man with a gay
story, or a profane jest, we shall see how you will relish it. We shall see
what comfort you will have in reflecting on what is past, or what hope in
looking forward to what is to come. Perhaps, trembling and astonished, you will
then be inquiring; in a wild kind of consternation, "what you shall do to be
saved:" calling for the ministers of Christ, whom you now despise for the
earnestness with which they would labor to save your soul! and it maybe falling
into a delirium, or dying convulsions, before they can come. Or perhaps we may
see you flattering yourself, through a long, lingering illness, that you shall
still recover, and putting off any serious reflection and conversation, for
fear it should overset your spirits. And the cruel kindness of friends and
physicians, as if they were in league with Satan to make the destruction of
your soul as sure as possible, may perhaps abet this fatal deceit.
10. And if any of these probable cases happen,
that is, in short, unless a miracle of grace snatch you "as a brand out of the
burning," when the flames have, as it were, already taken hold of you; all
these gloomy circumstances, which pass in the chambers of illness and on the
bed of death, are but the forerunners of infinitely more dreadful things. Oh!
who can describe them? Who can imagine them? When surviving friends are
tenderly mourning over the breathless corpse, and taking a fond farewell of it
before it is laid to consume away in the dark and silent grave, into what
hands, O sinner! will thy soul be fallen? What scenes will open upon thy
separate spirit, even before thy deserted flesh be cold, or thy sightless eyes
are closed? It shall then know what it is to return to God, to be rejected by
him as having rejected his Gospel and his Son, and despised the only treaty of
reconciliation; and that so amazingly condescending and gracious! Thou shalt
know what it is to be disowned by Christ, whom thou hast refused to entertain;
and what it is, as the certain and immediate consequence of that, to be left in
the hands of the malignant spirits of hell. There will be no more-friendship
then: none to comfort, none to alleviate thy agony and distress; but, on the
contrary, all around thee laboring to aggravate and increase them. Thou shalt
pass away the intermediate years of the separate state in dreadful expectation,
and bitter outcries of horror and remorse. And then thou shalt hear the trumpet
of the archangel, in whatever cavern of that gloomy world thou art lodged. Its
sound shall penetrate thy prison, where, doleful and horrible as it is, thou
shalt nevertheless wish that thou mightest still be allowed to hide thy guilty
head, rather than show it before the face of that awful Judge; before whom
"heaven and earth are fleeing away." (Rev. 20:11) But thou must come forth, and
be reunited to a body now formed for ever to endure agonies, which in this
mortal state would have dissolved it in a moment. You would not be persuaded to
come to Christ before: you would stupidly neglect him, in spite of reason, in
spite of conscience, in spite of all the tender solicitations of the Gospel,
and the repeated admonitions of its most faithful ministers. But now, sinner,
you shall have an interview; with him; if that may be called an interview, in
which you will not dare to lift up your head to view the face of your
tremendous and inexorable Judge. There, at least, how distant soever the time
of our life and the place of our abode may have been, there shall we see how
courageously your heart will endure, and how "strong your hands will be when
the lord doth this." (Ezek. 22:14) There shall I see thee, O reader! whoever
thou art that goest on in thine impenitency, among thousands and ten thousands
of despairing wretches, trembling and confounded. There shall I hear thy cries
among the rest, rending the very heavens in vain. The Judge will rise from his
throne with majestic composure, and leave thee to be hurried down to those
everlasting burnings, to which his righteous vengeance hath doomed thee,
because thou wouldst not be saved from them. Hell shall shut its mouth upon
thee for ever, and the sad echo of thy groans and outcries shall be lost,
amidst the hallelujahs of heaven, to all that find mercy of the Lord in that
day.
11. This will most assuredly be the end of these
things; and thou, as a nominal Christian, professest to know, and to believe
it. It moves my heart at least, if it moves not thine. I firmly believe, that
every one, who himself obtains salvation and glory will bear so much of his
Savior's image in wisdom and goodness, in zeal for God, and a steady regard to
the happiness of the whole creation, that he will behold this sad scene with
calm approbation, and without any painful commotion of mind. But as yet I am
flesh and blood; and therefore my bowels are troubled, and mine eyes often
overflow with grief to think that wretched sinners will have no more compassion
upon their own souls; to think that in spite of all admonition, they will
obstinately run upon final, everlasting destruction. It would signify nothing
here to add a prayer or a meditation for your use. Poor creature, you will not
meditate! you will not pray! Yet as I have often poured out my heart in prayer
over a dying friend, when the force of his distemper has rendered him incapable
of joining with me, so I will now apply myself to God for you, O unhappy
creature! And if you disdain so much as to read what my compassion dictates,
yet I hope, they who have felt the power of the Gospel on their own souls, as
they cannot but pity such as you, will join with me in such cordial, though
broken petitions as these:
A prayer in behalf of an Impenitent Sinner, in the case just described.