and which he preached himself, was, "Repent, and believe the Gospel :" i. e. forsake your sins and follow my doctrine, which I teach you from God.

His constant exhortation to sinners was : "Go, and sin no more:" i. e. keep the commandments of God.

In short, his answer to the young man of some rank, who came to him with great earnestness and apparent good dispositions, contains the general tenor of his divine instructions (Matt. xix. 17.)-" If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." Not that a perfect, unswerving obedience is demanded of us, but sincerity and uprightness, in not allowing ourselves in any known transgression of the divine laws, and in endeavours after progressive improvements in holiness.

V.

We are not to imagine, that those rules and directions to obtain eternal life which our Lord delivered in his discourses, and to those that came to him, when alive and in health, or upon having restored them from sickness, would have been softened and relaxed by him, had it fallen in his way to speak to persons go

ing out of the world, who had till then lived in an habitual course of sinful practice.

If in these circumstances a man had had recourse to him, and said; "Lord, I acknowledge I have not kept the commandments of God, but have grievously transgressed them all my life to this moment: but I have an earnest desire to be saved, and to inherit eternal life, and apply to thee to teach me how to obtain it; and I am the more solicitous, as I have not long to live;" we cannot think that our Saviour would have lowered the terms of salvation on such an occasion, and told him of any other way of obtaining the favour of God, besides obedience to his laws, and the acquiring of those holy, benevolent, and upright dispositions which are the result of such obedience.

He would surely have told him that his application was too late, and that the great work, for which God had sent him into the world, was not to be finished when he was going out of it.

It would confirm this serious conclusion for the necessity of an early turning to God, and show the wretched error of those, who, mistaking the case of this penitent criminal, flatter themselves

VOL. I.

themselves that an habitual sinner may be accepted and saved, upon a repentance never begun till his last moments,-if we consider that very remarkable circumstance in the accounts that we have of our Saviour and his apostles, namely, that we never find them attending the sick beds of dying persons, unless for the purpose of healing their diseases, and restoring them to health.

We can give no other account of this, but that our Saviour and his apostles were persuaded that the offers of the Gospel had nothing to do with sinners in a dying state.

For we cannot doubt of our divine Master's benevolence, that he would have failed in his own example and attendance on such occasions, or in giving the necessary directions to his followers, if he had known it to be a thing of any use.

VI.

But instead of forming fallacious hopes of repenting and being saved at the close of life, from the supposed example of the penitent criminal upon the cross, one wonders that the view of the other wretch, blaspheming the holy Jesus with his last breath, should not sometimes come across those who

will not quit their sinful courses for the present, and alarm them, lest, by sinning and delaying to repent, they should become incapable of repenting and being reformed.

One cannot question, but that those who have not thrown off all fear of God, and belief of the truths of the Gospel, are sincere at first in those resolutions of future amendment, with which they pacify and quiet their consciences at the time.

But this disposition wears away by degrees. For, by custom of sinning, men grow familiar with it; so that, instead of repenting of it, they grow to be easy under it, and think it is not a thing for which repentance is necessary. Their former strictness of principle is lost. Those customary transgressions, the particular vice, or whatever it is that they are prone to,, or think needful for their present gratification and convenience, they make light of. They flatter themselves that their Maker will not be angry with them for their overgreat indulgence of those appetites which he has implanted in them, or for little deviations from the strictness of those moral rules which he has prescribed to them. But they do not consider, that it is to their own loss, and future unavoidable miz 2

sery,

sery, that they give way to vice, or any thing evil. And they mistake the threatenings of their kind Creator's displeasure, as if he laid them under any restraints but such as were for their own good, or forbad any enjoyments but such as tended to their own unhappiness in the end. And, therefore, misery and torment will inevitably attend selfish desires, unjust ambitious pursuits, and wilful breach of truth and integrity persisted in; will haunt and pursue those who cherish such tempers, and overtake them, if not in this world, yet certainly in another.

Nor is it in your power, however vainly you may conceive of it, when once you have given way to evil and become habituated to it, to stop when you please, or to preserve such a sense of God upon your minds as may be the salutary means of your recovery.

Vice and wickedness not only corrupt the heart, but enfeeble the understanding; so that, when once you violate conscience, you know not to what length you may be carried.

We have instances, too many in our own days, of those who, on first abandoning the paths of virtue, have felt regret, and resolved soon to return to them; but have afterwards proceeded