86 THE GREAT MISERY OF THOSE less misery!" The want of this self -application is the main cause why they are so little troubled now. They are hardly brought to believe that there is such a state of misery ; but more hardly to believe that it is like tó be their own. This makes so many sermons lost to them, and all threatenings and warnings in vain. Let a minister of Christ show them their misery ever so plainly and faithfully, they will not be persuaded they are so miserable. Let him tell them of the glory they must lose, and the sufferings they must feel, anal they think he means not them, but some notorious sinners. It is one of the hardest things in the world, to bring a wicked man to know that he is wicked, or to make him see himself in a state of wrath and condemnation. Though they may easily find by their strangeness to the new birth, and their enmity to holiness, that they never were partakers of them ; yet they as verily expect to see God and be saved, as if they were the most sanctified persons in the world. How seldom do men cry out, after the plainest discovery of their state, I am the man ! or acknowledge, that if they die in their present Condi- tion they are undone for ever ! But when they sud- denly find themselves in the land of darkness, feel themselves in scorching flames, and see they are shut out of the presence of God for ever, then the applica- tion of God's anger to themselves will be the easiest matter in the world. They will then roar out these forced confessions, O my misery! O my folly ! O my inconceivable, irrecoverable loss ! § 11. (4) Then will their affections likewise be more lively, and no longer stupified. A hard heart now makes heaven and hell seem but trifles. We have showed them everlasting glory and misery, and they are as men asleep ; our words are as stones cast against a wall, which fly back in our faces. We talk of terrible things, but it is to dead men ; we search the wounds, but they never feel us : we speak to rocks, rather than to men ; the earth will as soon tremble as they. But when these dead souls are re,
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