' 390 MotiveJ~, 0 backniders ! your cafe is a fe~rful one, Heb.' x: 38. ' If any man draw back, my foul ffiall have no pleafure in him. 'What mind ye to do with it? Will ye continue in it, to your eternal ruin ? Oh ! no, pity your own fouls. There's ' hope in lfrael concerning " lhis thing,,' as ,bad ~s it is"Perhaps your heart tells you That your cafe is now gone on too far, to be mended, : but it is not fo; that's but a fatanical fuggefiion. God's word fays otherwife,Jer. iii. I. ' Tho' thou hall play– ed the harlot with many lovers, yet return again tcl - me, faith the Lord. Ifa. liv. 6. 'Ihave called thee as ---a wife of youth, when thou wafi refufed, f.1ith thy , God.' Wherefore, 0 backflider, beftir thy felf to ~nf\ver the Lord's caJI, and remember that fome devils go not out but by prayer and fa(iing; -Mat. xvii. 22. T -ry this method then for your recovery : try !t, as you would not be guilty ofwilful dyingofyourditeafe. Our heavenly Father kindly meets returning prodig~ls: ' the returning back!lider will be treated by him as a ~ ,dear fon, a pleafant child,' Jer. xxxi. 20 . Return ye, ~hen, and. he ' will refiore to you the years that the locuft hath eaten,' Joel ii. 2 r. And as yet,, ' your bones .{hall flourif111ike an herb,' If.1. x1vi. 14. 'Thi,·d!y, It is a proper mean'> to prevent relapfes, and to keep one's fpiritual cafe right, when once it is right. Frequent .llating of accou.lts, keeps matters cleat:, which otherwife might come to be perpkx'd and involv'd. And the cafe which, being on the de.. dine, is taken in time, is cafily righted, in cornp?rifon of that which has long run on: even as when Chrifi raifed to life the young man of }lain, whom they were carrying out to the grave, he only touched the bier, and (:id, ror.mg man, I fay unto thee arifl, Luke vii. 14. but he ·weep'd and groan'd once and again at the railing of Lazarus, who had been four days dead, John xi . 33, 35, 38. The unhealthly and fickly dif. pofition of the fouls ofmen, by reafon of the remains ,; ofcorruption _that are always in the bell, while here, makes
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