258 DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING AND' KEEPING about such a rock in my breast; such a stupid, dull, insensible soul,' &c. At the present, let us`suppose that all this be true ì yet see what a world of comfort you may gather fromuniversal or general mercy. I have before . opened to you four parts of it, in the cause of your happiness, and three in the effect, which may each of them afford much relief to your troubled soul. 1. Suppose you are yet graceless ; is it nothing to you that it is a God of 4nfinite mercy that you have to do with, whose compas- sions are ten 'thousand times greater than your dearest friends', or your own husband's? Object. 'O, bute yet he will not save the graceless.' Answ. True, but he is the more ready to give grace, that you may be saved. "If any of you (mark, any of you) do lack wis- dom, let him ask it.of God, who giveth to all men liberally (with- out desert) and upbraideth not, (with our unworthiness or former faults,) and it shall be given him;" James i. 4. "If you that are evil can give good gifts to your children, howmuch more shall your heavenly Father give.his Holy Spirit to them that ask it?" Luke xi. 13. Suppose your life were in the hands of your own husband, or your children's life in your hands, would it not exceed- ingly comfort you or them, to consider whose hands they are in, though yet you had no further assurance how you should be used It may be you will say, ',But God is no Father to the graceless.' I answer, He is not their Father in so near and strict a sense as he is the Father of believers ; but yet a Father he is, even to the wicked; and to convince men of his fatherly mercy, to them, he often so styleth himself. He saith by Moses, Deut. xxxii. 6, to a wicked generation, whose spot was not the spot of his children, "Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is not he thy Father that bought thee ? Hath he not made thee, and established thee ? " And the prodigal could call him Father for his encouragement before he returned to him; Luke xv. 16-18. For íi]yeown, part, I must needs profess that mÿ soul' bath more frequent support from the consideration of God's gra- cious and merciful nature, than from the promise itself. 2. Furthermore, Supposeyou were graceless at the present ; yet is it not an exceeding comfort, that there is one of such infinite compassion as the LordChrist, who hath- assumed our nature, and is come down to seek and save that which was lost ; and is more tender-hearted to poor sinners than we can possibly conceive? Yea, who bath made it his office to heal, and relieve, and restore, and reconcile. Yea, that bath himself endured such temptations as many of ours ; " For we havenot a High -Priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities; but was in all
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