304 Tut WOItLU TO CAME. night busy with your own hearts in the most intimate and careful search after converting grace and living christianity : You would never be at rest till you felt the new nature working with power and bright evidence within you, that you might be able to say, We know there is no condemnation belongs to us, but that we the passed from death unto life." Let us proceed upon this subject, turning the discourse from ourselves to our friends, and say, with what fervour of love, with' what holy zeal and compassion should we labour to save our friends and all that are dear to us from this eternal destruction ? What words of fiery terror shall we chose to awaken those who slumber on the edge of endless burning's' ? What lánguage of kind and tender passion shall we chose to reach their hearts ? What phrases of melting pity to hasten their escape from this precipice of burning ruin, or to pluck them as brands oat of the fire before it becomes unquenchable ? Knowing these terrors of Me Lord, with what vehemence of zeal should we try to per- suade men, our fellow - mortals, that they would not venture into the midst of these miseries, and beseech them in the riatne of Christ, to be reconciled to God y This was the practice, and these the motives of the great apostle, as he describes them at the latter end of the fifth chapter in his second epistle to the Corinthians ; verses 1 t -21. O with what force of ardent and active compassion should ministers preach both the curses of the law, and the grace of the blessed gospel, to perishing sinners, and make haste to rescue their souls from this everlasting vengeance ? With what warm and solicitous zeal should they lay hold of those poor thoughtless wretches who are madly indulging their lusts and follies, and thereby preparing themselves to become fit fuel for this eternal fire? They are forming themselves by their iniquities to become vessels of this everlasting indignation : Let us seize them by some kind and constraining words of love, settle outcries of com- passion and fear, lest they rush into those flames which will never he quenched : Perhaps when they are summoned away from ud by the stroke of death, they may-leave us in most uncomfortable borrows for our neglect, while they are suffering the long endless punishment due to their own iniquities. VI. " How unreasonable a thing is it for us ministers, who are charged and intrusted with the whole counsel of God for the salvation of men, to avoid the mention of these his eternal ter- rors in our serinons, and in our addresses to mortal creatures ;" creatures who are daily preparing themselves for them by their tins, and are ready to plunge into the midst of them ? 1-fas not our blessed Saviour made frequent mention of them in his .&3*os- pet, and set them in their dreadful array before his hearers ? llas he not expressed them in their strongest terns, and spread thew
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