162 A CALL TO I your flesh can spare:'~_ This is but self:Jeluding; you must in heart and resolution forsake all that you have, or else you cannot be his disciples. Luke xiv. Q6, 33. If you will not take God and heaven for your portion, and lay all below at the feet of Christ, but you must needs also have your good things here, and have an earthly portion, and GoJ and glory are not enough for you,-it is in vain to dream of salvation on these terms; for it will not be. If you seem never so religious, if yet it be but a carnal righteousness, and if the flesh's prosperity, or pleasure~ or safety, be still excepted in your devotedness to God, this is as certain a way to death as open profaneness, though it be more plausible. DIRECTION X.-If you will turn and live, do it resolvedly, and stand not still deliberating, as if it were a doubtful case. Stand not wavering, as if you were uncertain whether God or the flesh be the better master, or whether sin or holiness be the better way, or whether heaven or hell be the better end. But away with your former lusts, and presently, habitually, fixedly resolve. Be not one day of one mind, and the next day of another; but be at a point with all the world, and resolvedly give up yourselves and all you have to God. Now, whila• you are reading, or hearing this. r':i>-C\.h~ vll tne ~tdl:i sleep another night, res0lp- . u. strr fi·om the place, resolve; be~' __.-rave time to take you off, resolve. YoLPres~r turn indeed till you do resolve, and that w~}i."Itfirm unchangeable resolution. And now I have done my part in this work, that you may turn to the call of God, and live. What will become of it I cannot tell. I have cast the seed at God's command; but it is not in my power to give the increase. I can go no further with my message; I cannot bring it to your hear,t, nor make
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