548 BAXTER'S FIFTY REASONS. you crush this serpent when it is but weak ; and can you encounter it in its serpentine strength ? Cannot you pluck up a tender plant, and can you pluck up an oak or cedar? O sinners'! what do you mean, to make your recovery so difliçult by delay ! You are never like to be fairer for heaven, and to find conver- sion an easier work, than now you may do. Will you stay till the work be ten times harder, and yet do you think it so hard already ? 10. "Consider also, that sin gets daily victories by your delay. We lay our batteries against it, and preach, and exhort, and pray against it, and it gets a kind of victory over all, as long as we prevail not with you to turn. It conquereth our persuasions and advice; it conquereth all the stirrings of your consciences ; it conquers all your heartless purposes, and deceitful promises. Anti these frequent conquests do strengthen your sin, and weaken your resistance, and leave the matter almost hopeless. Before a phy- sician bath used remedies, he bath more hope of a cure, than when he bath tried all means, and finds that the best medicines do no good, but that the man is still as bad or worse. So when all means have been tried with you, and yet you are unconverted, the case draws toward desperation itself: the very means are dis- abled more than before ; that is, your hearts are harder to be wrought upon by them : when you have long been under sermons, and reading, and among good examples, and yet you are unconverted; these ordi- nances lose much of their force with you : custom will make you slight them, and be dead - hearted under" them. And it is these very same means and truths that you have frustrated, that must do the work, or it will never be done. 11. Moreover, age itself hath many inconveniences, and youth bath many great advantages ; and therefore it is folly to delay. In age the understanding and memory grow dull, and people grow uncapable, and almost unchangeable. We see by our every day's experience, that men think they should not change
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