in vice, he admires, applauds, and teaches those practices he can no longer enjoy.

OR look at a finner, fuddenly arrefted, in his wicked career, by fome unexpected illness. See him ftretched upon his fick-bed, and you are amazed at the alteration in the man

You are

tempted to think, that he is quite become a new creature -you hear prayers becoming the fervour of a faint; you hear the paffionate proteftations, the firm vows and refolves of a repenting Peter Behold the effect: it pleases GOD to make one trial more of himthe disorder takes a favourable turn, health revives, his fpirits rekindle, old objects present themselves again; and what is the confequence?—I leave you to judge from the small number, that prove real penitents upon their return into the world.

TAKE laftly an inftance from some victim of public justice. This man has

had

had an opportunity of converfing long with himself in the folitude of confinement: fome friendly minister of religion has affifted his devotion: he prays, he beats his breaft, he lifts up his eyes to heaven; he thinks too that he repents. He encreases and multiplies these expreffions of repentance, as he is led to the place of punishment. His pious demeanour raises even your compaffion. You wish to fee fuch a reformed man pardoned and restored to the community. Suppose him then given to your wishes, restored from death - instant death, acting upon him in its strongest impreffions and you will find him restored only that he may again take 66 up

DEAN Swift has given us the most natural picture of abandoned life, in the laft dying words of Ebenezer Ellifton.

"I CAN, (fays he, in that man's character,) I can "fay farther from my own knowledge, that two of my "fraternity, after they had been hanged, and wonder

"" fully

up

his old trade again, his evil habits are fo rooted in him, and he is

grown "fo unfit for any other kind of employ"ment."

I MEAN not to difcourage the outward means and expreffions of repentance but certainly these representations, taken as you must know from real life, tend to show the danger of trifling with grace, the necessary inftrument of falvation. It is ever ready, to be fure, to affift our endeavours. But we must remember that the fpirit of GOD doth not always ftrive with man: those, whom it cannot reform, it leaves to the bias of their natural corruptions. There are certain states and difpofitions of the Q2 heart,

fully came to life, and made their efcapes, as it "fometimes happens, proved afterwards the wickedeft "rogues I ever knew, and fo continued until they were

hanged again for good and all; and yet they had the impudence at both times they went to the gallows, to fmite their breafts, and lift up their eyes to heaven all the way."

heart, inconfiftent with its foft improving influences.

IT is often feen, indeed, to awaken even the thoughtless far-gone finner in fome particular ferious feafons, under the judgments and vifitations of GOD. Where this effect begins at the heart, where it is permanent, where it leads a man to the difcipline of religion, and brings forth in him the meet fruits of repentance; it is happy with him, he will be rewarded according to his proficiency in the spiritual life. But happier far is he, who from the very beginning of life forms and keeps up this acquaintance with the principle of holinefs, in the regular use of the appointed methods and channels of its convey

ance.

THUS, you fee, the delaying of repentance proceeds upon four abfurd fuppofitions. It fuppofes we have a command over our life, whereas nothing it fuppofes we can

is more uncertain

calculate

calculate and repair the mischief of our fins; whereas this grows foon beyond the power of the deliberate finner - it supposes, we have a command of our refolutions and Divine grace, whereas every day more and more weakens our refolutions, and unfits us for the influences both of preventing and affifting grace.

THE true meaning of all the finner's excuses is plainly this, he wants inclination to repent. Only let him examine himself-why does he propose to repent to morrow, rather than to day?—It is (his confcience will honeftly tell him) because he is not willing at present to part with his fins. Well then : fince he plainly fees, that this difinclination must encrease upon him; him; is it not his bufinefs to begin immediately; as a moment loft may be his deftruction? Is it not the part of madness to defer a neQ3

ceffary