PREFACE. To all unsancti.fiei Persons that shall read this Book; especially of my hea1·e1·s in the B01·ough and Pa1'ish of Kidderminster. lllEN AND BRETHREN, THE eternal Gon, that made you for a life everlasting, and hath redeemed you by his only Son, when you had lost it and yourselves, being mindful of you in your sin and misery, hath indited the gospel, and sealed it by his Spirit, and commanded his ministers to preach it to the world, that pardon being freely offered you, and Heaven being set before you, he might call you off from your fleshly pleasures, and from following after this deceitful world, and acquaint you with the life that you were created and redeemed for, before you are dead and past remedy. He sendeth you not prophets or apostles, that receive their message by immediate revelation; but yet he calleth yoJJ by his ordinary ministers, who are commissioned by him to preach the same gospel which Christ and his apostles first delivered. The Lord seeth how you forget him and your latter end, and how light you make of everlasting things, as men that understand not what they have to do or suffer. He seeth how bold you are in sin, and how fearless of his threatenings, and how careless of your souls, and how the works of infidels are in your lives, while the belief of Christians is in your mouths. He seeth the dreadful day at hand, when your sorrows will begin, and you must lament all this with fruitless cries in torment and desperation: and then the remembrance of your folly will tear your hearts, if true conversion now prevent it not. In compassion to your sinful miserable souls, the Lord, that better knows your case than you can know it, hath made it our duty to speak to you in his name, (2 Cor. v. 19.) and to tell you plainly of your sin and misery, and what will be your end, and how sad a change you will shortly see, if yet you go on a little longer: Having bought you at so dear a rate as the blood of his Son Jesus Christ, and mado you so free
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