The Necessity of Serious Consideration and Speedy Repentance, Part 2 · Section 4
SECT. IV. The First Danger of Delaying.
I Am sensible how hard a thing it is to make one who loves his sin, to see the baseness of it. If he be young, it's hard to bring him to that degree of seriousness, as is needful to such a thorough consideration, as must make him understand it: and if he be old, long custom hath harden'd him in it, and taken away the sense of baseness. But he that is grown too impudent to be ashamed, may possibly be made afraid; and an apprehension of danger may move him that hath lost the sense of Baseness. Let us therefore now consider the great danger we are in by delaying our Repentance, and the keeping of God's Commandments; and we shall find it to be no less, than that of perishing everlastingly. We must repent before we die, or at death we sink into Eternal Misery; and therefore 'tis certain, that seeing none of us knoweth how soon he must die, every delay of our Repentance, which must be before we die, or never, is extremely dangerous. We say, we are resolved to repent; and it behoves us to do more than resolve upon it; for without doing it, how fully soever we resolve to do it, we must perish for ever. When therefore will we repent, that we may be out of danger? Not yet, but sometime hereafter. Well, but now consider it in earnest; Is there not a great deal of danger in driving it off till hereafter? Run we not a great hazard in doing so? All we can hope for, and all that we can fear, our attaining to the one, our escaping the other, depends upon our actual Repentance; and will we yet venture all upon hereafter? Suppose That Hereafter never come, but we die before; then farewell to all possibility of Repentance and Salvation too. Suppose we live till Hereafter, but be then as unwilling to repent as we are now; then shall we be no better, but much worse than we are now▪ and in more danger of dying in our impenitence, and of Perishing. Suppose we shall hereafter have some kind of willingness to repent, but shall not be able to repent so, as that God will accept of our Repentance▪ then is there no remedy, but we are undone for ever. Here then lieth the danger of delaying till hereafter. We know not whether we shall have an hereafter or no to repent in; we know not, if we have an hereafter, whether we shall repent in it or no: We know not, if we shall in some sort repent hereafter, whether our Repentance then will be accepted, and do us any good, or none. How dangerous then must it be to put it off till hereafter!
What assurance can any of us have, that we shall have an hereafter to repent in? How know we, that we shall not die before? God hath not assured us of any such thing, and Man cannot; on what then do we build our hopes of living to any time hereafter? We are well assured, That it is appointed for all men once to die, and after that, the judgment, Heb. IX. 27. We are well assured, that except we repent, we shall all perish, and die the second death, and go into everlasting punishment. But who hath assured us, that we shall have any time at all, after this that now is, to repent in? And if we be not assured of this, what can it be to put off that which must be done before we die, to another day, which we have no assurance at all that we shall live to see, but a rash hazarding of our Souls to all Eternity? What is our life? St. Iames hath told us, and we all know it; It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away, Jam. IV. 14. And thence that Apostle very rationally dissuades men from the great folly of confidently resolving, any otherwise than conditionally, to do any thing hereafter; Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow: How foolish a thing is it to say, to morrow we will do this or that? Ye ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that, V. 15. When we say, we will repent to morrow; do we know whether we shall be alive or dead to morrow? If we do not, what can we mean by saying so, but this; That if we live, we will repent to morrow? And are we content then to be damned if we die to night? If not, why are we so mad as to put it to the venture? Boast not thy self of to morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth, saith the wise man, Prov. XXVII. 1. Alas! a day, an hour, the least moment of time may lay the strongest and most confident of us all upon our backs in the dust; and why are we confident we shall repent to morrow, when we know so little what changes one single minute may produce? Is it possible that any of us, whilst we see so many every day dropping down into the grave round about us, should need a Monitor to mind him, that this life is a very ticklish thing to trust to? What though we be young, and lusty, and healthful? Were not some of them so too, who died the other day; and thought they not themselves as likely to live as any of us can be? All their confidence is swallowed up of Death in a moment; and I am sure we are all of us so many days the nearer to Death, as we have out-lived them. How many hundreds yearly die in the heat and wantonness of their youthful blood? How many in the very fulness of strength and vigour? How many in the very throng of their worldly business, and whilst they are as busy as the Bee in gathering for old age? How many in the midst of their mirth and jollity, yea, in the very acts of Sin, in their drunkenness and gluttony, their fornication and adultery, their theft and robbery, their anger and revenge? How many in the height of their security and confidence, sleeping in their beds, riding merrily on the rode, going busily about their common affairs? It's no news to hear of sudden and unexpected Deaths of many sorts; and less strange can it be to any one to see those young people cut off by Death, who thought it too soon to become good and serious; and were unwilling to marr their juvenile pleasures with many thoughts of Piety and Religion. Let us but think, how many are already Dead, who delay'd their Repentance with as much confidence as we can do, to Repent hereafter, till they had no time left them to Repent in: And how fruitlesly they now lament their folly in doing so. Think but what they would now be content to give, that they might have their life to begin again on Earth; and whether they would, were that granted them, venture again to delay their Repentance, and hazard another sudden fall into those intollerable torments, which now they feel! O let us not stay, till thinking of this will do us no good; let us not go on till we fall into their condition, and experience the Torments of vain and fruitless wishes. Let us not indulge our infidelity as to these things, till some come from the dead to make us believe; lest we be made, before we fear it, to see and feel, what we make no more haste to escape. We say still, we will Repent and become new men to morrow: But alas, we know not yet whether we shall live till then; nay, we know not but that our bodies may be in the Grave, and our Souls in Hell to morrow; and for this very reason, because we Repent not to day. Who then that is wise will venture one moment longer on such an uncertainty?
But suppose we may live, and have the time we at present presume so groundlesly upon; we may not be one jot the better for it when we have it. We are to consider yet farther, how many things may happen to us at that time or before, which may as much disable us to Repent, as Death it self. We may live, and yet be as good as dead unto all manner of Religious Duty and Exercise: We may be, we know not how soon, in such a condition, as we may not be able either to reflect on what is past, or understand what is present, or consider what is to come. We cannot be ignorant, how many Diseases suddenly surprise men, which, though they do not immediately deprive them of life, yet destroy their memory, and understanding, and reason; or so weaken them, that they can be of little use for the exercise of Repentance. May we not be suddenly taken with an Apoplexy or a Lethargy, with a Phrenzy, or Melancholy, or Dotage? May we not become mad or foolish, and so distracted and crazed in our heads, that we cannot at all consider either what we do, or what we should do? Yea, suppose none of these things befall us, yet are there other diseases and pains, whereunto we are subject, and which we may labour under a very considerable time before they kill us; by which yet we may be brought into such a condition, as we shall find it very hard to perform any Religious Duty as we ought. We may lie under such continual, and even intollerable pains of body; under such daily languishings, and faintings, and decays of Strength and Spirits, that we shall have very little freedom or strength of mind left us to Consider, and do all that is needful to Repentance, which till then hath been delay'd. Why do not we think our selves concern'd to prevent all these evils? Are we not sensible that such things often befal men, who as little fear'd them as we do? And may they not, for ought we know, befal us as well as any others? If we are surprized by any of these after we are become sincere Penitents, they do us but little hurt; they are God's Visitations indeed; and for what, He (it may be) only knows; but the worst that comes to us by them, is only this, That we are long a dying, and in such a manner as it pleaseth God. But if we have not sincerely Repented before these evils seize us, it is greatly to be feared, we shall never be able to Repent; and God only knows, what will become of us. Let us then be so wise, as to make good use of our strength and health, our senses and understanding, whilst we have them. Why make we not all sure now whilst we can, seeing we know not how soon it will be, that we cannot? Now we are young, we are too jovial and airy; and we put all off to those years, which we suppose will of course bring with them more Seriousness, and when we think it will better become us to look gravely and Religiously. When those years, which we are wont to call the years of Discretion, are come; we find that a great deal of other business comes with them; and now we are men and women, we are engaged in the World; and if we have got loose from the Vanities of Youth, which do not seldome hold us fast even till we die, we are become intangled in things that are but a little better; and we put off all yet till old age come and make us more leisure. Old age is all this while stealing insensibly upon us, and we perceive it not for the throng we are in, till we find our selves on a sudden grown too heavy and dull, and our faculties too much decay'd, and too feeble for much business. And then instead of serious reflections on the state of our Souls, we are rather apt to reflect with too much concern on our present bodily weakness, as we are become unable to do any longer as we have done, and yet have as great a mind to do as ever. And hence also instead of being Penitent for our Sins, we are apt to grow Passionate, Peevish, and Impatient; and our Repentance is still put off to our last Sickness. After all these delays, it may be we have no Sickness at all, Death gives us no warning at all of its approach, but knocks us down with a sudden blow; or else it sends such a Messenger for us, as will not allow us to know or consider, whither we are going, by reason of either the stupefaction or Torment which it lays us under. What remains then, but that we take the Preacher's advice, Ecc. XII. 1. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.
But besides the uncertainty of the term of our life, as to us; and many disappointments, which not unusually befal us in it; we ought farther to consider, that it is very Iust in God to cut our lives the shorter, for our delaying to keep his Commandments. Neither can we take a more likely course to provoke God to take us away in the midst of our days, or to render them by his Iudgments intollerable to us, than this bad use which we make of them. When by delaying our Duty to God we make it appear, that we grudge him any considerable part of our time; and that we are resolved to dishonour him with as much of it, and to bestow upon his Service as little of it as we can; what readier way can we take to provoke him, either to cut our thread of life very short, or to make it very knotty to us? Can we our selves when we think well of it, judge it fit, that he, to whose goodness we owe our life, and being, and in whose hands our times are, Psal. XXXI. 15. In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind, Job XII. 10. should allow us just as much time as we desire, to dishonour and affront him in? I confess, I know not what greater Presumption we can be guilty of, than to resolve to rebel against God as long as we can think it safe to do so, and to expect he should give us from day to day more time to do so in. O let us take heed, lest he take away our breath, and we return to our dust ere we have begun to serve him; for then be sure all these vain thoughts shall perish. Psal. CVI. 4. The youngest of us is not sure to live one day longer; and we who grow old are very sure, that we cannot have many days more, if any, to live in this World: nor what kind of days, be they many or few, they will prove to us. Let us then no longer delay our Repentance, because we are so little sure that we shall have any hereafter to repent in.