FlFTY REASONS. 227 When you have been long accustoming yourselves to sin, you must unlearn and break all these customs again. You are hardening your hearts daily, and they must again be softened. And I must tell you, that though a little time and labour may serve to do mischief, yet it is not quickly undone again. You may sooner set your house on fire than quench it. You may sooner cut and wound your bodies, than heal them again; and sooner catch a cold or a disease than cure it; you may quickly do that which must be longer undoing. Besides, the cure is accompanied with pain; you must take many a bitter draught, in groans or tears of godly sorrow, for these delays; the wounds, that you are now giving your souls, must smart, and smart again, before they are searched and healed to the bottom. And what man of wisdom would make himself such work and sorrow? Who would travel on an hour longer, tliat knows he is out of his way, and must come back again? Would you not think him a madman that would say, I will go on a little further, and then I will turn back. 48. And methinks if it were but this, it would terrify you from your delays, that it is likely to make your conversion more grievous, if you should have so great mercy from God, after all, to be converted . God must send either some grievous affliction to fire and frighten you out ofyour sins, or else some terrible horrors of conscience, that should make you groan, and groan again, in the feeling of your folly. The pangs and throes of conscience, in the work ofconversion, are far more grievous in some than in others. Some are even on the rack, and almost brought beside their wits, and the next step to desperation, with horror of soul and the sense of the wrath of God; so that they lie in doubts and complaints many a year together, and think that they are even forsaken of God. And to delay your conversion is the way to draw on either this or worse.
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