THE UNCONVERTED. 137 your grounds, and your cattle, and your worldly business; and when you would not come, you have saicl you could not; and provoked him to resolve that you should never taste of his supper, Luke xiv. 16-25. And who is if the fault of now but yourselves? and what can you say is the chief cause of your damnation but your own wills? you would be damned. The whole case is laid open by Christ himself, Prov. i. 20-33. "Wisdom crieth without, she utteret.h her voice in the streets; she crieth in the chief place of the concourse,-How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity, and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn ye at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my Spirit upon you, I will make known my words unto you. Becam;e I have called, and ye refused. I have stretched out my hands and no man regarded; but ye have set at naught all my counsels, and would none of my reproofS. I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh: when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you, then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me; for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would noi1e of my counsels: they despised all my reproof; therefore, shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But whoso hearkeneth to me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from the fear of evil." I thought best to recite the whole text at large to you, because it cloth so fully show the cause of tiw destruction of the wicked. It is not because God would not teach them, but because they would not learn. It is not because God would not call them, but because they would not turn at his reproof. Their wilfulness is their undoing. l:l
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