368 DIRECTIONS AND PERSUASIONS verted, or use the means by which you should be con- verted, you may as well say plainly, you will be damn -. ed. For if you have found out fl way to be saved without conversion, you have done that which was never done before. So that you may see on what ground it is that God supposes that the wicked will their own destruction : they will not turn, though they must turn or die ;. they will rather venture on certain misery, than be convert - ed ; and then, to quiet themselves in their sins, they make themselves believe that they shall nevertheless' escape. 3. And as this controversy is matter of wonder, so are the disputants too ; that God should stoop so low as thus to plead the case with man ! and that men should be so strangely blind, and obstinate, as to need all this in so plain a case, yea, and to resist all this, when their own salvation lies upon the issue! No wonder if they will not hear us who are men, when they will not hear the Lord himself: as God says, when he sent the prophet to the Israelites, "The house of Israel will not hearken unto thee; for they will not hearken unto" me : for all the house of Israel are impudent and hard - hearted. "(a;) "But, woe unto him (saith the Lord) that striveth with his Maker ! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioned it, What makest thou ? "(y) USE. WHAT sayest thou, unconverted wretch ? Bar- est thou venture upon a dispute with God? Art thou able to confute him? Art thou ready to enter the lists ? God asks thee, Why wilt thou die ? Art thou furnished with a sufficient answer? Wilt thou undertake to prove that God is mistaken ? O what an undertaking is that ! Why, either he or you (x) Ezek. iii. 7. . (y) Isa. xlv. 9.
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