Chap. (o.] is NOT ON EARTH. 163 so it is just with him to resolve against us, who frame ex- cuses when we should come to glory. The Lord Jesus Christ was willing to come from heaven to earth for us, and shall we be unwilling to remove from earth to heaven for ourselves and him ? He might have said, " What is it to me, if these sinners suffer ? If they value their flesh above their spirits, and their lusts above my Father's love ; if they will sell their souls for nought, who is it fit should be the loser ? Should I, whom they have wronged ? Must they wilfully transgress my law, and I undergo their de- served pain ? Must I come down from heaven to earth, and clothe myself with human 'flesh, be spit upon and scorned by man, and fast, and weep, and sweat, and suffer, and bleed, and die a cursed death ; and all this for wretched worms, who would rather hazard their souls than forbear one forbidden morsel ? Do they cast away themselves so slightly, and must I redeem them so dearly ?" Thus we see Christ had reason enough to have made him unwilling; and yet did he voluntarily condescend. But we have no reason against our coming to him ; except we will reason against our hopes, and plead for a perpetuity of our own calamities. Christ came down to fetch us up ; and would we have him lose his blood and labor, and go again with- out us ? Hath he bought our rest at so dear a rate ? Is our inheritance "purchased with his blood V' And are we, after all this, loath to enter ? Ah, sirs ! it was Christ, and not we, that had cause to be loath. May the Lord forgive, and heal this foolish ingratitude ! Do we not combine with our most cruel foes in their most malicious designs, while we are loath to die, and go to heaven ? What is the devil's daily business ? Is it not to keep our souls from God ? And shall we be content with this ? Is it not the one half of hell which we wish to ourselves, while we desire to be absent from heaven ? What sport is this to Satan, that his desires and thine, Christian, should so concur ! that, when he sees he cannot get thee to hell, he can so long keep thee out of heaven, and make thee the earnest petitioner for it thyself ! O gratify not the devil so much to thy own injury ! Do not our daily fears of death make our lives a continual tor- ment ? Those lives which might be full of joy, in the daily contemplations of the life to come, and the sweet, delight-
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