'BAXTER'S FIFTY REASONS. 559 32. Moreover, if men offer you courtesies, and com- modities for your bodies, you will not stand delaying, and need so many persuasions to accept them., If your landlord . would for nothing renew your lease : if any man would give you houses or lands, would you delay so long before you would accept them ? A beggar at your door, will not only thankfully take your alms, without your entreaty, and importunity, but will beg for it, and be importunate with you to give it. And yet will you delay to accept the blessed offers of grace, which is so much greater ? 33. Yet consider, that it is God that is the giver, and you that are the miserable beggars, and receivers: and therefore it is fitter you should wait on God, and call oí{ on him for his grace, when he seemeth tó delay, and not that he should wait on you. He can live without your receiving, but you cannot live without his giving: The beggar must be glad of an alms at any time; and the condemned person of a pardon at any time ; but the giver may well expect that his gift be received without delay, or else he may let them go without it. 34. And methinks you should not deal worse with God, when he comes to you as a physician to save your own souls, than you would do with a neighbour, or a friend, when it is not for your own good, but for theirs. If your neighbour lay a dying, you would go and visit him without delay : if he fell down in a swoon, you would catch him up without delay: if he fell into the fire, or water, you would pluck him out without delay. Yea, you would do thus much by a very beast. And yet Will you delay when it is not another, but yourselves, that are sinking, and drowning, and within a step of death and desperation ? If a woman be but in travail, her, neighbours will come to her without delay : and yet when their own souls are in bondage to sin and Satan, and a state of death,, they will let them lie there, year after year, and .,when we desire' them to be con- verted, here is nothing but delays. 35. If yet you perceive not how unreasonably you deal with God, and your souls, I beseech you consider, whether you do not dealworse withhim than you do with
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