FIFTY REASONS. 217 sonable fruit, but still be putting o/J God with your delays? 29. Moreover, When you are in trouble and necessity, you are then in haste for deliverance and relief. Then you think every day a week, till your danger or suffering be past. If you be under the pain of a disease, or in danger of death, or under poverty, or oppression, or disgrace, you would have God relieve you without delay; and yet you will not turn to him without delay. Then you are ready to cry out, 'How long, Lord, how long till deliverance come?' But you will not hear God, when he crieth to you, in your sins-How long will it be ere you turn fi·om your transgressions? When shall it once be? When you are to receive any outward deliverance, you care not how soon; bnt when you are to turn to God, and receive his grace and title to glory, then you care not how late, as if you had no mind of it. Can you, for shame, beg of God to hasten your deliveranee, when you remember your delays, and still continue to trifle with him and draw back? SO. Your present prosperity, and worldly delights, are passing away without delay; and should you delay to make sure of better in their stead? Time is going; and health is going; youth is going; yea, life is going; your riches are taking wing; your fleshly pleasures do perish in the very using. Shortly you must part with house and lands, with goods and fhends; and all your mirth and earthly business will be done. All this you know, and yet will you delay to lay up a durable treasure, which you may trust upon, and to provide you a better tenement before you be turned out of this? What will you do for a habitation, for pleasures and contents, when all that you have now is spent and gone, and earth \vill afford you nothing but a grave? If you could but keep that you have, I should not much wonder, that k11owing so little of God and another world, you look not much after it; but when you perceive death 19
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=