xxii God: we will treasure up wrath against the day of wrath if we do so. The genuine effect of his goodness is to lead to repentance; let not its effect upon us be to harden and encourage ourselves in the ways of sin. We shou ld cry now for the clean heart and the right spirit; and such is the exceeding freeness of the Spirit of God, that we will be listened to. Ifwe put off the cry till then, the same God may laugh at our calamity, and mock when our {car cometh. S. Our next argument for immediate repentance is, that we cannot bring forward, at any future period of your history, any considerations of a more prevailing or more powerfully moving influence than those we may bring forward at this moment. We tan tell you now of the terrors of the Lord. We can tell you now of the solemn mandates which have isj3ued fi·om his throne-and the authority of which is upon one and all of you. we can tell you now' that though, in this dead and darkened world, sin appears but a very trivial affair-for every body sins, and it is shielded fi·om execration by the universal countenance of an entire species lying in wickedness- yet it holds true of God, what is so emphatically sail! of him, that he cannot be mocked, nor will he endure it that you should riot in the impunity of your wilful resistance to him and to his warnings. We can tell you now, that he is a God of vengeance; and though, for a season, he is keeping back all the thunders of it fi:om a world that he would like to reclaim unto himself, yet, if you put all his expostulations away fi·om you, and will not be reclaimed, these thunders will be let loose upon you, and they will fall on your guilty heads, armed with tenfold energy, because you have not only defied his threats, but turned your back on hi:; offers of reconciliation. These are th"e arguments 'by which we would try to open our way to your consciences, and to waken up your fears, and to put ihe inspiring activity of hope into your bosoms, by ]ayinz before you those invitations which are' address....
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