Chap. 5. .1 LOSE THE SAINTS' REST. 77 divine pleadings will passionately transport the damned with self-indignation ! "Must I tire out the patience of Christ? Must I make the God of heaven follow me in vain, till I had wearied him with crying to me, Repent ! return ! 0 hosejustly is that patience now turned into fury, which falls uponme with irresistibleviolence ! When the Lord cried to me, ' Wilt thou not be made clean ? When shall it mice be ?' my heart, or at least my practice, an- swered, Never. Ami now, when I cry, How long shall it be till I am freed from this torment ? how justly do I re- ceive the.same answer, Never, never !" It will also be most cutting to remember on .what easy tertaas,thee might have escaped their misery. Their work was not to remove mountains, nor conquer kingdoms, nor fulfil the law to the smallest tittle, nor satisfy justice for all their transgressions. " The yoke was easy and the burden light," which Christ would have laid upon them. It was but to repent and cordially accept him for their Savior ; to renounce all other happiness, and take the Lord for their supreme good ; to renounce the world artd the flesh, and submit to his meek and gracious government; and to forsake the ways of their own devising, and walk in bis holy, delightful way. " Ah," thinks the poor tormented wretch, "how justly do I suffer all this, who would not be :at so small pains to avoid it ! Where was my understand- ing, when I neglected that gracious offer; when I called rb the Lord a hard master,' and thought his pleasant service a bondage, and the service of the devil and the flesh the only freedom ? Was I not a thousand times worse than mad, when I censured the holy way of God as needless pre- ciseness ; when I thought the laws of Christ too strict, and all too much that I did for the life to come ? What would all sufferings for Christ and well-doing have been, com- pared with these sufferings that I must undergo for ever ! Would not the heaven, which I have lost, have recom- pensed all my losses? And would not all my sufferings have been there forgotten ? What if Christ had bid me to do some great matter; whether to live in continual fears and sorrows, or to suffer death a hundred times over : should I,not have done it? Howmuch more,when he only said Believe, and be saved. Seek my face, and thy soul shall live. Take up thycross, and follow me, and I will give thee
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