UNCONVERTED READER. 525 pity themselves; have mercy on them; that they may have some mercy on themselves ; help them, that they may help themselves and us. If you still refuse, will not your loss be more than ours? If we lose our labour, (which to ourselves we shall not,) if we lose our hopes of your salvation, what is this to your everlasting loss of salvation itself? And what are our sufferings for your sake, in comparison of your endless suffering? ? But, O ! this is it that breaketh our hearts, that we leave you under more guilt than we found you : and when we have laid out life and labour to save you, the impenitent souls must have their pains increased for refusing these calls ; and that it will be part of your hell to think for ever, how madly you refused our counsel, and what pains, cost, and patience, were used to have saved you, and all in vain. It will be so, it must needs be so. Christ saith, it shall be easier for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for the rejecters of his gospel- calls. The nature of the thing, and the nature of justice, certainly inform you it must be so. O turn not our complaints to God against you! turn us not from beseeching you to be reconciled to God, to tell him you will not be reconciled : force us not to say, that we earnestly invited you to the heavenly feast, and you would not come: force us not to bear this witness against you, " Lord, we could have borne all our labours and sufferings for them much easier, if they would but have yielded to thy grace. But it was they themselves that broke our hearts, that lost our labour, that made us to preach and intreat in vain ; it was easier to preach without maintenance than, with- out success. It was they that were worse to us than all the persecutors in the world. How oft would we have gathered them : but they would not, but are un- gathered still ?" How many holy, faithful ministers, have I known, these eleven years last past, who have lived in pining poverty and want, and hardly by cha- rity got bread and clothing; and yet, if they could but have truly said, "Lord, the sermons which I preach
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