398 DIRECTIONS AND PERSUASIONS some that have a bone broken, or out of joint, and it bath been set amiss at first ; O what torments were the poor creatures fain to undergo, in having it broken or stretched and set again ! which might have been spared, if it had been thoroughly done at first. So if you will be shrinking and drawing back, and fa- vouring your flesh, and will not go to the quick, you will make your conversion much more difficult : you must be brought to it again, and fetch your groans yet deeper than before, and weep over all your former tears ; your doubts will be multiplied : your fears and sorrows will be increased ; and all will go sorer with you than at first. O what a case will you be in, when your sores must be lanced a second time, and your bones, as it were, broken again ! Then you will wish you had gone through with it at the first. Yea, perhaps you may ,put God to it to fetch you in by some sharp affliction, and send out so boisterous and churlish a messenger to call you home, as may make you wish you had hearkened to a more gentle call : When the sheep will straggle, the dog mnst be sent to affright him home. Many a foolish sinner makes light of the gentle invitations of grace, and they stand hovering between their sins and Christ ; and sometimes they have a mind to turn, and the next. temptation they are off again, and then they come on again coldly with half a heart: and thus they stand trifling with the God of heaven, till he is fain to take another course with them, and resolve to use some sharper means : and when he layeth them under his rod, and they can neither fly from him, nor resist him, but see that their lives and souls are at his mercy, then they begin to look about them, and see their fol- ly, and change their minds. You can tarry, and delay daily with the dreadful God, in the time of your pros- perity; and we may ask you over and over, whe- ther you will turn, before we can have a hearty answer: but what will you do when God shall begin to frown, and when he takes you in hand by his unresistible power, and lets loose upon you the terrors of his
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