625 / 652
THE AGGRAVATIONS
OF
RÂCKSLIDING.
619
sins.
Well,
I
have seen these follies,
saith God,
but
I
will
restore
the fools
and
give
them wisdom again.
II.
There
is
also
great ingratitude; not
only they
sinned
against much
light,
but against much
love,
when
they
departed
from
God after
he has
once
manifested himself
to
them.
"
Have
I, saith God, been
a wilderness
to
thee,
or a
land
of
darkness
that
thou hast served me
thus
?
fer.
ii. 31.
Have
I
been
backward
in
shewing
mercies, and
yet
how
hast
thou
requited
me
?
For
one
that
has known
God
to
turn
away
from
him,
for him to
seek blessedness
in
the
creature
;
for one
that
has
fre-
quently, and for
a
long
lime
experienced
my
goodness,
in
a
thousand instances,
to
forget and
depart
from
me
and seek the
creature
:
yet I
can look over
this,
I
have
more
love,
and
I
will
manifest more instances
of
it;
I
will
recover
him from all this
ingratitude,
I
will
not
cease
to do
him
good,
though
he has been as
it
were
trying
to
weary
me
out
by his
rebellions
;
but
I
will
not
be
wearied
out,
I
still
will
shew
mercy
and
recover
him.
III.
Stubbornness
is
another
aggravation
of
this
sin
:
an
unwillingness to
return
after
many methods used to
reclaim
him.
This
was
the
case
in
our
text,
that after
God
had used many
ways
to
recover Israel, yet
"
he
went
on forwardly
in
the
way
of
his own
heart
:
this
is
expressed
in
Jer.
v.
3.
"
Thou
hast stricken
them,
O
Lord, but
they have
not
grieved
;
thou hast consumed
them,
but
they refused to receive
correction
:
they
have
made
their
faces
harder
than
a rock, they have
refused
to return,
&c."
God
might
be
ready to
say,
and
he
does
often
say,
"
How
shall
I pardon
thee for
this, shall
I not
visit for these
things,
and
shall
not
my
soul
be
avenged
on such
a
nation
as
this
?
Go
ye
up
upon her
walls
and
destroy,
but make
not
a
full
end."
I
have
a
mind to
make
them
return, therefore
do
not utterly
destroy
them,
saith the
Lord.
A child sometimes
manifests
stubborn-
ness
long and
in
many instances,
and yet
the
parent
will
not
wholly
turn
him
out
of
doors
;
thus
it
is
with
God
and sinners,
we
repeat our
provocations, and God re-
peats
his
long sufferings.
1V. A
multiplication of
sins
of
many kinds
will
at-
tend a
departure
from
God. Though
you have
played
the
harlot
with many
lovers,
yet, saith the Lord,
return,
&c.