194 TIiE SAINT'S REST IS NOT Should I, whom they have wronged? Must they wilfully transgress my law, and I undergo their de- served pain? Must I come down from heaven to earth, and clothe myself with human flesh, be spit upon and scorned by man, and fast, and weep, anç1 suffer, and bleed, and die a cursed death ; and all this for wretched worms, who had rather hazard their souls, than forbear one forbidden morsel ? Do they cast away themselves so slightly, and must I redeem them so dearly ?" Thus we see Christ had reason enough to have made him unwilling; and yet did he voluntarily condescend. But we have no reason against our coming to hirn; except we will reason against our hopes, and plead for the perpetuity of our own calamities. Christ came down to fetch us up ; and world we have him to lose his blood and labour, and go again without us? Math he bought our rest at so dear a rate? Is our inheritance pur- chased with his blood ? And are we, after all this, loth to enter ?.. Ah, sirs! it was Christ, and not we, that had cause to be loth. May the Lord forgive, and heal this foolish ingratitude ! § 22. Do we not combine with our most cruel foes, in their most malicious designs, while we are loth to die, and go to heaven ? What is the devils daily bu- siness ? is it not to keep our souls from God ? And shall we N content with this ? Is it not the one half of hell which we wish to ourselves, while we. desire to be absent from heaven ? W hat sport is this to Satan, that his desires and thine, Christian, should so concur. that' when he sees he cannot get thee to hell, he can so long keep thee out of heaven, and make thee the earnest petitioner for it thyself ! O gratify not the devil so much to thy own injury ! Do not our daily fears of death, make our lives a continual torment? Those lives which might be full of joy, in the daily contemplations of the life to come, and the sweet de- lightful thought òf bliss ; how do we fill them up with causeless terror ! Thus,we consume our own comforts, and prey upon our truest pleasures. When we might _, --------íir¡
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