Owen - BT795 O84 1800Z

EäIIORTATION TO BELIEVE. 235 that your own hearts know you to be guilty of, and that hidden mass of sin which is in you, which you are not able to discover ; notwithstanding that charge that lies upon you from your own conscience,. and that dreadful sentence and curse of the law which you are obnoxious to ; notwithstanding all the just grounds you have to apprehend that God is your enemy, and will be SO to eternity; yet : TERMS OF PEACE AND RECONCILIA- TION ARE PROVIDED AND PROPOSED BETWEEN HIM AND YOUR sour.. This, in the first place, is clearly declared in the psalm on which our discourse is founded. Whatever else it informs us of, this it positively asserts, namely, that there is a way whereby sinners may come to be accepted with God : for there is forgiveness with him, that he may be feared. And we hope that we have not confirmed it by so many evidences in vain. Now, that you may see ..how great a privilege this is, and how deeplyyou are concerned in it, consider, 1. That this belongs to you in an especial manner; it is your peculiar advantage. It is not so with the angels that sinned. There were never any terms of peace or reconciliation proposed to them, nor ever shall be to eternity. There is no way of escape provided for them. Having once sinned as you have done a thousand times, God spared them not, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment. 2 Pet. 2 4. It is not so with them that havedied in their. sins. Ah ! how would many souls, who are departed, it may be not an hour since, out of this world, rejoice for an interest in this privilege, the hearing of terms of peace once more between God and them; but their time is past, their house is .left unto them desolate. As the tree falleth, so it must lie : " It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment." Heb. 9 : 27.

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