your negligence? If thou hast played the loiterer, do so no longer. Go search thy soul, and follow the search close, till thou come to a clear discovery. Begin to-night; stay not till the morning. Certainty comes not by length of time, but by the blessing of the Spirit upon wise and faithful trial. You may linger out thus twenty years more, and be still as uncertain as you are now.

2. Perfect certainty may not be expected. We shall still be deficient in this, as well as in other doings: I know no reason why we may not expect perfection in all things else, as well as in this. If your belief of that Scripture, "Believe and be saved," be imperfect; or if your knowledge, whether your own deceitful hearts do sincerely believe or not, be imperfect, the result or conclusion must needs be imperfect too. If then you stay till you are perfectly certain, you may stay for ever.

3. Both your assurance, and the comfort thereof, are the gift of the Spirit, who is a free bestower. And God's usual time to be largest in mercy, is when his people are deepest in necessity. A mercy in season, is the sweetest mercy. I could give you abundance of examples of those who have languished for assurance and comfort, some all their sickness, and some most of their lives; and when they have been near to death, they have received it in abundance. Never fear death, then, through the imperfection of thy assurance; for that is the most usual time of all for God most fully and sweetly to bestow it.

Objection 2. O but the Church's necessities are great. God has made me useful in my place, so that my death will be a loss to many; otherwise, methinks, I could willingly die.

Answer. This may be the case of some; but yet remember the heart is deceitful. God is often pretended, when ourselves are intended. But if this be, indeed, what stops thee, consider, Art thou wiser than God? Does he not know how to provide for his Church? Cannot he do his work without thee? Or find out instruments enough besides thee? Think

not too highly of thyself, because God has made thee useful. Must the Church needs fall when thou art gone? Art thou the foundation on which it is built? Could God take away a Moses, an Aaron, a David, an Elijah, and find supply for all their places? and cannot he also supply thine? This is to derogate too much from God, and to arrogate too much to thyself. Neither art thou so merciful as God; nor canst love the church so well as he: As his interest is infinitely beyond thine, so are his tender care and bounty.

Frederick, the third elector of the Rhine, when he was a dying at Heidelberg, said to his friends, I have lived long enough on earth for you, I must now go live for myself in heaven for ever. So methinks

when Christians have lived long in hard labour and sufferings for God and the church, they should be willing to live in heaven for God and themselves.

Yet mistake me not in what I said: I deny not but that it is lawful for a Christian to desire God to delay his death, both for obtaining further opportunity of gaining assurance, and for being further serviceable to the church. I doubt not, but we may pray for recovery from sickness; we may rejoice in it, and give thanks for it, as a great mercy; we may pray hard for our godly and ungodly friends in their sickness; we must value our time highly, and improve it as a mercy which we must be accountable for; every godly man is ordinarily so useful to the church, that even for the church's service he may desire to live longer, as Paul did, even till he come to the full age of man, and while he is able to serve the church, and it hath need of him. No man should be over-hasty to enter on a state that can never be changed, when both assurance of glory, and his fitness for it, are still imperfect; especially as the saints ordinarily grow fitter for it as they advance in age. But then this must not be from love of earth; we must consider it as our present loss to be kept from heaven, though it may tend to the church's and our own future advantage and so may be desired.

Objection 3. But is not death a punishment of God for sin? Does not Scripture call it the king of terrors, and does not nature abhor it above all other evils?

Answer. Though death, considered in itself, may be called an evil, as being the dissolution of the creature, yet being sanctified to us by Christ, and being the occasion of so great a good as our introduction into heaven, it may be welcomed with glad submission, if not with desire. Christ affords us grounds enough to comfort us against this natural evil; and therefore endues us with the principle of grace, to raise us above the reach of nature.

To conclude: You must remember that in what I have said, I refer simply to the godly. I dissuade not the ungodly from the fear of death. It is a wonder rather, that they fear it no more, and spend not their days in continual horror of it. One would think such men should eat their bread with trembling; that the thoughts of their danger should keep them awake in the night; for it is no wonder that a man should quake at the thoughts of death, who expects to be dispossessed by it of his happiness, and knows not whither he is next to go; but for the saints to fear their passage by death to everlasting rest, this is a strange unreasonable fear.

CHAPTER VII.

AN EXHORTATION TO THOSE THAT HAVE GOT ASSUR ANCE OF THE HEAVENLY REST, TO DO ALL THEY CAN TO HELP OTHERS TO IT.

Use Seventh.-Has God set before us such a glorious prize as is this everlasting rest of the saints, and has he made man capable of such an inconceivable happiness? Why then do not all the children of the kingdom bestir themselves more to help others to the enjoyment of it? Alas! how little are poor souls

around us, beholden to the most of us! We see the glory of the kingdom, and they do not: We see the misery and torment of the unconverted, and they do not: We see them wandering out of the way, and know if they hold on, they can never come there, and they discern not this themselves: And yet we will not speak to them seriously, and show them their error and danger, and help to bring them into the way that they may live!

But because this is a duty which so many neglect, and yet a duty of such high concernment to the glory of God, and the happiness of men, I will speak of it somewhat the more largely, and show you,

I. Wherein it consists.

II. What are the causes why it is so much neglected: III. State some considerations to persuade you to the performance of it.

Lastly, Apply this more particularly to some persons whom it very nearly concerns.

SECTION I.

The Nature of this Duty.

THE duty that I would press upon you consists in the things following.

I. Get your hearts affected with the misery of your brethren's souls; be compassionate towards them; yearn after their salvation. If you earnestly long for their conversion, and your hearts are fully set on doing them good, it will excite you to the work, and God will usually bless it.

II. Embrace all opportunities which you possibly can, of conferring with them privately about their state, and instructing and helping them to attain salvation; and, lest you should not know how to manage this work, let me tell you more particularly what you are to do.

If he be an ignorant person with whom you have to deal, who is an utter stranger to the principles of religion, the first thing you have to do is, to acquaint

him with the primary truths of the gospel. Labour to make him understand wherein man's chief happiness consists, and how far he was once possessed of it, and what covenant God then made with him, and how he broke it, and what penalty he incurred, and into what misery he brought himself thereby. Teach him what need men had of a Redeemer, and how Christ in mercy interposed, and bore the penalty, and what is the only way in which salvation can now be attained; and what course Christ takes to draw men to himself, and what are the riches and privileges that believers have in him.

If, when he understands these things, he be not moved by them; or if you find that the defect lies in his will and affections, and in the hardness of his heart, and in his devotion to the flesh and the world, then show him the excellency of the glory which he neglects; and the extremity and eternity of the torments of the damned, and how certainly he must endure them; and how heinous a sin it is to reject the free offer of divine mercy, and to tread under foot the blood of the covenant. Show him the certainty, the nearness, and the terrors of death and judgment, and the vanity of all things below, with which he is now taken up, and how little they will avail him in the time of his extremity. Show him that, both by nature and practice, he himself is an enemy of God, and a child of wrath. Show him the vile and heinous nature of sin, the absolute necessity in which he stands of a Saviour, the fulness of Christ, the sufficiency of his satisfaction, his readiness to receive all that come to him, and the authority and dominion which he has purchased over us. Show him the absolute necessity of regeneration, faith, and holiness; how impossible it is to have salvation by Christ without these; and what is their true nature.

If, when he understands all this, you find his soul enthralled in presumption and false hopes, persuading himself that he is a true believer, pardoned and reconciled, and that he shall be saved by Christ, and all this upon false grounds, then urge him to examine his