The Christian Life, Chapter 4 · Section 6
SECT. VI. Containing certain Motives to Press men to the Practice of these Duties of Perseverance in the Christian Warfare.
HAVING in the foregoing Section described all those Duties which appertain to the last Part of our Christian Warfare, to wit, final Perseverance; and shewn how effectually they all contribute thereunto, I shall now according to my former Method, conclude with some Motives to press and persuade men to the Practice of them; all which I shall deduce from the Consideration of the great and urgent Necessity of our final Perseverance, to which those Duties are such necessary Helps and Means. For unless we take in the Assistance of these Duties, in all Probability we shall never be able to hold out to the End; and unless we persevere to the End, we are guilty of the most fatal and mischievous piece of Folly in the World. For Consider,
1. If after we have made some Progress in Religion, we wilfully relapse, we shall go back much faster than ever we have proceeded.
2. If once we totally relapse, we shall thereby forfeit all the Fruit of our past Labour.
3. We shall forfeit the Fruit of our Labour after we have undergone the greatest Difficulty of it.
4. We shall not only forfeit the Fruit of our past Labour, but also render our Recovery more hazardous and difficult than ever.
5. We shall not only render our future Recovery more difficult, but also plunge our selves for the present into a far more Guilty and Criminal Condition than ever.
6. We shall not only render our selves for the present more guilty, but as a certain Consequence of that, Expose our selves, if we die in our Apostacy, to a Deeper and more Dreadful Ruin,
I. CONSIDER, when once we have wilfully relapsed, unless we immediately recover, we shall go much faster back, than ever we went forward. For in the Beginning of our religious Progress, we are fain to sail for a great while against Wind and Tyde, against a strong Gale of Temptation from without, and a rapid Stream of Inclination from within, and while we do thus, we must be contented to get our Ground by Inches, and move forward by slow and insensible Degrees; but in all our wilful Apostacies, we are carried on secundo flumine, with a full Drift of Temptation and Inclination. So that if when once we have wilfully sinn'd we do not immediately check our selves by Repentance, in all Probability we shall be driven farther back in a Day, than we shall be able to get forward in a Week. For your Progress in Religion lying up Hill, but your Apostacy down, you must expect when once you are falling to descend much faster than ever you ascended, and to get far sooner to the Bottom again than you can to the Top, though you should happen to fall just in the mid-way, and have no farther to the one than to the other. For 'tis hardly to be imagin'd what Strength a bad Inclination gets by a short Repast and Gratification; how when it hath been almost pined away by a long Abstinence, a Taste of sinful Pleasure will raise and revive it, and render it as brisk and vigorous as ever; insomuch that it usually requires a great many Acts of Mortification, to re-extinguish that Life and Strength it acquires in one short Gratification. For as the fierce Tyger after a long Confinement will lye down tamely in his Den, and by Degrees loose all his Fierceness and grow manageable and obsequious, but let him take but one warm Draught of Blood and his old savage Nature immediately revives, and he grows as cruel and outragious as ever; just so it is with our wicked Inclinations, which being reduced from their Excesses, and kept under the close Confinement of a holy Resolution, will by Degrees grow tame and gentle, and forget the alluring Relishes of Sin, but if once we suffer them to break loose again, and to come at those sinful Pleasures from which they have been a long while alienated, they will soon recover their natural Wildness, and become as head-strong and violent as ever. Wherefore it mightily concerns us to have a great Care of all wilful Apostacies; for to be sure your first Slip will vehemently incline you to a second, and that more vehemently to a third, and so like men that are running head-long down Hill, the farther you go the more you will be prest forward by your own Weight, and the harder 'twill be for you to stop and recover your selves. So that if you do not immediately stop, you will by a few Days Sin lose back all the Ground you have got by many a Years Warfare; you will pull down more of your Religion by one wilful Sin, than you will be able to repair again by many a vertuous Action; and like some prodigal Drudges spend more in one mad Frolick, than you have earn'd by many a hard Days Labour. And if you do thus, 'tis impossible you should ever improve; for what you do in a Week, you will undo again in a Day, and so instead of pressing forward, you will dance in a Circle, and always end where you begun. So that unless you go on and persevere in wel-doing, all your Strife and Warfare against Sin will be but like rolling of a Sisyphus his Stone, which after you have been a long while raising to the Top of the Hill, will in a moment tumble down again upon you; so that either you must undergo the same Pains to raise it again, or lye down under it, and tamely suffer your selves to be crush'd into eternal Ruine by it.
II. CONSIDER, if after we have made some Progress in Religion we totally Relapse, we thereby forfeit the Fruit of all our past Labour. For so God himself by the Prophet pronounces in the Case, Ezek. xviii.24. When the Righteous turns away from his Righteousness, and commits iniquity, and doth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doth, shall he live? all his Righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned, in the trespass that he hath trespassed, and in the sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die, i. e. how good soever he may have been for the Time past, if he doth not persevere to the End, but wilfully relapse into Folly and Wickedness, all the Vertue he hath exercised, and all the Good he hath done, shall be quite struck off from his Accounts, and never so much as mentioned to his Benefit and Advantage, but in that Wickedness wherein he is faln he shall as certainly perish as if all his Life had been a continued Act or uninterrupted Course of Iniquity. So also, Heb. x.38. if any shall draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. And indeed this is a most necessary Effect of our Apostacy; for by falling off from our Christian Courese, we put our selves back into the same State and Condition wherein we were before we enter'd upon it; and the Effect of all those good things which we did from the time we enter'd upon to the Time we deserted it, will be so voided and abolish'd, that there will not remain the least Trace or Footstep of it in our Natures, but our Will will become as obstinate again, our affections and Appetites as wild and extravagant as if we had all long permitted them to run on in an uninterrupted Course of Iniquity. And having thus exinguisht all the good Effects of our past Warfare, and rendered by our wilful Apostacy our Natures as corrupt and depraved as ever, we shall thereby be exposed again to the Wrath and Displeasure of God For Gods Love and Hatred are unvariably determined to the same Grounds and Reasons, and herein consists their Immutability, not that he always loves or always hates the same persons, out of a unreasonable Prejudice to the other, but that he always loves and always hates them for the same Reasons; and he hath expresly declared taht Goodness and Wickedness are the contrary Reasons of this his Contrary affection to his Creatures; which if it be, 'twill hence necessarilly follow, that as his Hatred must convert into Love to us when from wicked we become good, so his Love must convert into Hatred of us when from good we degenerate into wicked. Which Alteration of his Affection towards us, proceeds not from any change in his Nature but from a change in ours; he always proceeds upon steady and unchangeable Priniciples, and is for ever fixt and constant to the Reasons of his Love and Hatred; which he could not be, if he did not alter his Affection to us when the Reason of it is altered, if he did not abominate us when he sees us fallen and degenerated from that State of Goodness for teh sake of which he loved us and took pleasure in us. So that by wilfully retreating from our religious Progress, we do not only Extinguish all those good Effects which it had produced in our Natures, not only revive those inveterate Lusts we had almost mortified, and blast those tender Graces which we had therein acquired and improved, but as a Consequence of this, we run out of Gods Arms and Embraces; and throw our selves head-long from those glorious Hopes to which we have been all this while advancing with so much Labour and Difficulty. What a Madness therefore is it for men to think of retreating that have once actually ingaged in the Christian Warfare, to surrender themselves back into Captivity to their Lusts, after they have fought so many Combats against, and obtained so many Victories over them! O consider but the great Pains you have been at, the many Prayers and Tears, Abstinencies and Self-denials, Struggles and Convertion with your selves, that it hath cost you to retrieve your selves from the Dominion of Sin and the just Vengeance of God; and is it not a thousand Pities that all this should prove lost Labour in the End, and be rebder'd as fruitless and insignificant to us as if it had never been? that after you have taken so much Pains to stem the difficult Tyde, and are at last got within fight of Shore, you should now faint and yield to the Fury of it, and suffer your selves to be born down by it again into that Ocean of Sin and Guilt out of which you were so safely recovered? Wherefore as you would not render your albour in vain in the Lord, and utterly defeat your selves of all the Fruit of your Religious Endeavours, be still persuaded to struggle and contend, to strive and press forward to the mark of your high-calling. For if now you slacken or remit your Endeavourse, yield to the Current of Temptation, you will soon be driven down by it again as far from the Love of God and from the Hope of HEaven, as ever you were in the most degenerate State of your Natures.
III. CONSIDER that if by willfully sinning we retreat from our Christian Warfare, we shall forfeit the Fruit of our Labour after we have undergon the greatest Difficulty of it. For, as I shewed above, the main Difficulty of the Christian Warfare lies in the Entrance of it, and this I suppose you to have already past. You have already indured those sharep Pangs and Throws that are wont to accompany the Birth of a new Resolution; you have undergon the hard Pennance of a deep and through Consideration, the sharp Stings and Remorses of a solemn and sorrowful Repentance; you have forc'd your most Importunate Inclinations, and withstood the most violent Counter-struggling of a perverse and denegerate Nature; you have Conquered your Will in the Height of all its Obstinacy and Resistance, and Rescued it from the Arms of your Lusts when 'twas most inslaved and captivated by them; all this you did, if you did any thing to any purpose, when you first entered upon this holy Walfare. And ever since, you have been breaking the Strength of your evil Inclinations, and conquering the Antipathies of your Nature to your Religion; in which if you have made any Progress, you must by this Time have broken the Heart of the Difficulty of your Warfare, and have much less Opposition to contend with than ever. So that now in all Probability, there is nothing so difficult between you and Heaven, as that which you have already ingaged with and surmounted; and will you now turn your backs upon your Enemy, when his main Strength is spent, and you have already sustained the most violent Shocks of his Power? If you had retreated at the first Onset, when your Sin was seated in its Dominion, and you were yet but raising your Forces and arming your Resolution against it, it had been much more excusable; for then you had the sharpest Part of your Conflict to undergo being to contend with a flusht and a victorious Enemy, who having as yet all his Strength about him, could not fail to put your Courage to a mighty Tryal. But now to retreat, when you are past the worst, and have gotten above half Way through; when you have pulled down your Lust from its Throne and Dominion, and so far subdued it to your Religion and your Reason that you have henceforward no more to do but to pursue a Victory, which though you got with a great deal of Toil, you may finish with a great deal of Ease and Pleasure; now, I say, to retreat in such a prosperous Juncture, and give up the blessed Prize which you have been so long contending for, what desperate Madness is it! If you had never begun this Warfare, or yielded in the first Conflict of it, what a deal of Pains might you have saved? How many Prayers and Tears, Struglings and Contentions with your selves might you have escaped and avoided, and at last been in as good a Condition, if not a better, than that wherein your Apostacy will certainly leave you? And when a man hath been so long taking Heaven by Storm and Violence, when he hath broken through so many Oppositions to come at it, and in Despite of all the Darts of Temptation from without, and of all the Weights and Pressures of Inclination from within, he is gotten up as it were to the Top of the Scaling-Ladder, has laid hands on the Battlements of Heaven, and is ready to leap in and take Possession of the Joys of it, what a Madness is it for him now to let go his Hold and tumble headlong down again into that Abyss of Sin and Misery out of which he had recovered himself with so much Labour and Difficulty! Especially considering
IV. THAT by this our Relapse we shall not only forfeit the Fruit of our past Labour, but also render our Recovery more hazardous and difficult than ever. For what the Apostle pronounces concerning Apostates from Christianity, is in a great Measure applicable to those who having ingaged in the Christian Warfare, fall off from it again to their old sinful Courses; it is impossible, i. e. 'tis extreamly difficult, for those that were once enlightned, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the World to come; if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, Heb. vi.4, 5, 6. For besides that by falling from his first Repentance, a man grieves and chases the Holy Spirit from him, without whose Aid he can neither stand when he is up, nor recover when he is faln; and having Chased him away, he cannot well expect that he will be so ready to return and co-operate with him after he hath treated him so rudely by quenching his Motions, unraveling his Workmanship, and extinguishing all those heavenly Effects which his Grace had produced in his Soul. For how can this blessed Assistant of Souls but take it in great Disdain to be thus mock'd and disappointed, when he had been so industriously labouring for a Wretches Good, to lift him out of the Mire wherein he was sunk and perishing; and when he had succeeded so far in his Labour as to help him quite out, and was washing and cleansing his polluted Spirit and dressing it for the Embraces of the Father of spirits, to see this Wretch turn back after all, and plung himself headlong into the Mire again, how can he but resent such an ungrateful Disappointment of his Labour with unspeakable Grief and Indignation? And if upon such Resentment he should, as he justly may, wholly retire from him, and leave him forever to wallow in his own Hearts Lust, his Condition will not be only dangerous, but desperate. What the blessed Spirit will do in this Case, I cannot certainly determine, because he may do as he pleases, being totally released by the Sinners Apostacy from all Obligation of Promise. But it makes my Heart ake to think, how much Reason there is to fear that he will utterly forsake and abandon him, and not throw away any more of his Grace upon a Wretch on whom he hath already spent so much to no purpose. And if the heinous Affront which the blessed Spirit receives by your Apostacy should put him upon this Resolution, you are damn'd above-ground, and everlastingly forsaken of all Hopes of Recovery. But besides all this, (which one would think should be sufficient to startle any sober Man from making such a desperate Experiment) by falling off from your Repentance, you must needs be supposed to offer a mighty Violence to your Consciences; which having been already awaken'd into a through Sense of your past Sins, must necessarily reflect upon your present Apostacy with unspeakable Horror and Affrightment; which if it doth not presently scare ye back again to Repentance, will put ye upon more desperate Courses than ever. For now if your Conscience won't be quiet, you have no other Remedy but to ruffle with it, and out-brave its Horrors by being more couragiously wicked; and as those barbarous Parents that sacrificed their Children to Moloch were fain to make Noises round the burning Idol with Drums and Timbrels to drown their dying Shrieks and Grones, least they should move them to Compassion; so when by your wilful Relapses you have sacrificed your Conscience to your Lust, and it begins to Shriek out from among those Flames of Guilt whereinto you have cast it, you have no other Remedy, unless you repent immediately, but to make a Tophet round about it, and drown its Out cries in Excesses of Riot; to put your selves into a tumultuous Hurry of Wickedness and Folly, that you may not hear those ill-boding Shrieks within, and sear over the Wounds of your Conscience with a thick Custom of Sinning, that they may neither bleed nor smart. So that if once you turn Recreant to your Christian Warfare, you will be forced, in your own Defence, to plung your selves deeper into Sin than ever. For now you must sin not only to greatifie your Lusts, but to stupifie your Conscience, and this last you can never do without being excessively wicked. You must now be puny Sinners no longer, if ever you intend to sin quietly, but resolve to turn Heroes in Iniquity, and out-sin your natural Sense of Good and Evil. In order whereunto you must give your wounded Spirit Gash after Gash, and follow the Blow till you have left it past feeling; you must heap on Loads of Guilt upon your Conscience till with the continued Pressure you have rendered it callous and insensible; and when by this means you have sunk your selves deeper into Sin than ever (as you will doubtless soon do) how much more difficult and hazardous must your Recovery be? For now you will need much more Assistance than ever you did in your first Repentance, and have much less Reason to expect it. So that though I dare not say your Condition will be desperate; yet I must tell ye 'twill be so fearfully dangerous, that unless God out of a peculiar Mercy to ye, awake ye by some extraordinary providence, and at the same time co-operate with ye by an extraordinary Grace, you must certainly miscarry for ever.
V. CONSIDER that by your deserting of the Christian Warfare, you will not only render your future Recovery more difficult, but you will also plung your selves for the present into a far more guilty and criminal Condition than ever. For thus St. Peter determines in the Case, 2 Pet. ii.20, 21. if after they have escap'd the pollutions of the world, through the knowledg of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again intangled therein, and overcome, the later end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness; then after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandement; that is, by relapsing into those sinful Pollutions out of which they had been rescued by the Belief and Knowledg of Christianity, they have rendered themselves much more guilty, than they were before when they were Infidels; so that if they had never been acquainted with the Gospel, nor taken one Step in the Pathes of its holy Commandements, it had been much better for them, and God would have been much less angry and displeased with them. For by our Apostacy into a wicked Life, we do not only return back into as bad at least, if not a worse Condition than ever; but,
First, We do also make void all those Operations of the Spirit of God, by which we were so effectually persuaded to undertake, and hitherto to prosecute the Christian Warfare. By relapsing into a state of Sin again, we wilfully undo all that he hath been doing, we revive those Lusts which he hath been mortifying, and root up those Graces which he hath been planting and watering within us; and when with great Contrivance and Industry he hath drest and cultivavated our Nature, pluckt up the Weeds of it and planted it with the Flowers of Heaven, we wilfully spoil and lay it wast again, and turn his growing Sharon into a barren Wilderness. So that besides all that Guilt which arises from those sinful Courses whereinto we are relapst, we are now become guilty of the greatest Outrage to the Spirit of God; we are guilty of destroying the dearest Fruits of his Labour, of laying wast his Inclosures, quenching his Motions; extinguishing his Graces, and strangling all those heavenly Effects which he by his powerful Goodness had produced in our Natures. And what a black Aggravation of our Guilt must it be, thus to baffle and disappoint the Spirit of God? But then
Secondly, As by our Apostacy we offer the rudest Affront to the Holy Spirit, so we commit the greatest Violence both upon our Conscience and Experience. For in all Apostacies we sin with an awakened Conscience, with the Convictions of our Guilt glaring in our Eyes, and are fain to contend and struggle with our own Mind, before we can break through those Checks and Restraints it lays upon us, which must needs be a great Aggravation of our Guilt. For the more light and persuasion a man sins against, the more of Will and Malice there is in his Sin, and consequently the more of Guilt. For what can be more Malicious, than for a man to dare and defie his own Convictions, and charge into the very Mouth of them, while they are spitting fire and roring everlasting Ruine against him? This plainly shews him to be acted by a desperate Resolution, when for the sake of his Lusts he dares confront the Terrors of his Conscience, and rather than be barred the Enjoyment of them, he will plunge himself headlong into a foreseen Ruine, and leap after them into Hell with his Eyes open. And yet thus we do in all our wilful Apostacies; we sin against the quickest Sense of our Danger, the loudest Warnings of our Conscience, and the clearest Convictions of our Reason; which being all most horrid Aggravations, must needs swell up our Guilt to a monstrous Proportion. Neither do we sin only against our Conscience, but also against our Experience. For it is to be supposed that we have made some Proof and Tryal of Religion, and having done so, we must needs be sensible that there is nothing in it but what is reasonable and practicable and highly for our Good; nothing but what tends to the Tranquility of our Minds, the Peace of our Consciences, and the Perfection of our Natures; and being throughly assured of all this, and that not so much by Discourse as by our own Sense and Experience, what a horrid Baseness would it be, if notwithstanding this we should renounce and desert it? If we had never tryed it, we might have urged our Ignorance or Want of Experience as an Apology for our Refusal to submit to it; we might have pretended that for Want of a more intimate Acquaintance with it, we lookt upon its Commands as impossible, or at least as very difficult and altogether fruitless and ungrateful to humane Nature, and that if we had once complyed with it, we must have presently renounced every thing that is pleasant and desirable, and from thenceforth have been contented to sigh away our Lives in unsufferable Severities and a melancholy Retirement from all the Joys and Festivities of humane Conversation; for such frightful Representations men that are unexperienced in Religion, are apt to make of it; which though it be far from justifying, may in some Measure extenuate their Enmity to it. But you that have tryed Religion, must needs have experienced that all this is false; that its Commands are easie enough to a willing Mind, and that the many Advantages they bring with them do abundantly compensate for their Difficulty; that they are so far from barring men any innocent Pleasure, or Comfort of humane Life, that they purifie the Pleasures of it, and render them more grateful and generous; that besides this, they bring mighty Pleasures of their own along with them, the Pleasures of a glorious Hope, a serene Mind, a calm and undisturbed Conscience, which are such as do far out-relish the most studied and artificial Luxuries; all this you cannot but know, if you have made any considerable Tryal of a sober and wel-advised Religion. So that if now you Apostatize, you will not only affront your Conscience, but your Experience too; and the past Sense you have had of the Goodness of Religion, will rise up in Judgment against ye, and for ever silence all the Excuses you can urge for your selves, and leave ye nothing to say, but that you were sick of your Ease and tired with the Refreshments of Religion. But then
Thirdly, As your Apostacy will be a grievous Affront to the Spirit of God and to your own Conscience and Experience, so 'twill be one of the foulest Dishonours that you can cast upon Religion. If you had never been ingaged in the Christian Warfare, the Honour of Religion could never have been so nearly touch'd by your wicked Courses, and all considering Men would have attributed your Enmity to it, to your Ignorance and want of Experience, and never have thought the worse of it when they saw it so contemptuously treated by one that was never acquainted with it. But if now you revolt into wicked Courses after you have made Tryal of it, what will the World say? Look ye, here is one that hath made an Experiment of the Religion you so much celebrate, and which you extol and cry up for such a pleasant and amiable thing; if it were what you pretend, how comes it to pass that after so long Tryal and Experience of it, this man should now at last renounce and forsake it? Which is such an Objection, as can be no otherwise solv'd but by demonstrating the man whose Apostacy started it, to be forsaken and abandoned of his own Reason. For if upon the Tryal he hath made of Religion, he had experienced it to be that good and grateful thing it is represented, it is not to be imagined he would ever have revolted from it, had he been capable to deliberate of his own Choices and Actions. And how can they that are Strangers to Religion forbear suspecting the Goodness of it, when they see a man, after Tryal, and in his right Senses, declare by his Actions that Vice is better and more eligible than Vertue, and do behold the Pleasures of Sin prefer'd before the Joys and Satisfactions of Religion, by one that hath made a through Experiment of them both? So that by Apostatising into sinful Courses after a through Tryal of Religion, we take an effectual Course to defame and scandalize it, to render it a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to those that have had but little or no Acquaintance with it; and if by our Example any should be disheartned either from entering into or proceeding in the Christian Warfare, their Blood will be one day required at our Hands, and so we shall raise a most fearful Cry upon ourselves, and have not only the Spirit of God and our own Conscience and Experience, but also the Blood of all those Souls who have stumbled at our Apostacy lifting up their Cries together to the Tribunal of God for a dire and speedy Vengeance against us.
VI. CONSIDER, if after you have made some Progress in Religion you revolt into sinful Courses, you will not only render your selves for the present more guilty, but, as a Consequence of that, you will certainly expose your selves, if you die before your Recovery, to a deeper and more dreadful Ruine. For this we may depend upon, that the Judg of all the World will do righteously, and consequently, that as on the one hand he will proportion his Rewards to our Services, so on the other he will measure his Punishments by our Guilts and Demerits; and if he thus proceed (as he most certainly will) how horrible is it to think of the black and dismal Fate that hangs over the Heads of Apostates, whose Guilt being aggravated by those above-named Circumstances to such a prodigious Bulk and Magnitude, must be supposed to draw after it a Punishment proportionable? And if so, then doubtless the Portion of Apostates among wicked and miserable Spirits will be the most wretched & deplorable. For besides those supernumerary Stripes they must expect to receive from God, as being Servants that have known their Masters Will, and experienced the Goodness of it, and yet have finally refused to comply with it, their reflections on their own Apostacy, and the Folly and Madness of it will doubtless gall and torment them a thousand times more than all the other Stings of their Conscience together. For how must it inrage them against themselves, to ruminate on their own Follies, as they are wandering through the Infernal Shades! O desperate Creatures! from what glorious Hopes have we precipitated our selves into this dismal State! We had once got a fair Way onwards to Heaven, and were arived within Sight of its blessed Shores: we had shaken off our Lusts, mastered our Inclinations and subdued our Wills to the Will of God; and in so doing had conquered the most difficult Part of our Voyage; we had weathered the cross Winds of Temptation from without, and stem'd the Tide of corrupt Nature within, so that had we but bore up couragiously a little farther, we that are now howling among damned Ghosts, might have been triumphing with blessed Spirits. But O abominable Fools and Traytors to our selves! after all the successful Pains we had taken to be happy, we have shipwrack'd our Souls at the Mouth of our Harbour; and to gratifie a base Lust, have leapt headlong from the Brinks of the Rivers of Pleasure, into this Lake of fire and Brimstone. And have we thus undone our selves, thus madly, thus without Pretence or Temptation! O! cursed be our Folly, cursed be our Lusts, and for ever cursed be we for harbouring and entertaining them! Thus will these miserable People incessantly rave against themselves, and with dire Reflections on their desperate Follies for ever inrage and multiply their own Torments. So that were I descending to the bottomless Pit, and had but so much Time before I came there, as to make one Prayer more in my own Behalf, next to that of being wholly delivered thence, I know none I should sooner pitch upon, than this, O Lord deliver me from that Portion of Hell, which thou hast reserved for Apostates.
SO that if now that we have so far ingaged our selves in the Christian Warfare, we should be so mad as to retreat into our old sinful Courses, it had been a thousand times better for us that we had never ingaged in it at all. For unless we repent of our Retreat, and come on again, we have taken a great deal of Pains in Religion to no other Purpose, but only to to treasure up to our selves wrath against the day of wrath, and heat the Furnace of our future Torment yet seven times hotter. Wherefore since the Matter is now reduced to this Issue, that if we revolt from our Christian Warfare we shall not only defeat our selves of all the Fruit of our past Labour and Contentions, but also inhance our future Punishment; so that we must either resolve to win Heaven by our Perseverance, or sink our selves into the neithermost Hell by our Apostacy; let us pull up our Courage, and mangre all Temptations to the contrary, continue steadfast and immoveable in our Christian Resolution, remembring what the Captain of our Salvation hath promised▪ Rev. iii.21. To him that overcomes, will I grant to sit with me in my Throne, even as I also overcame, and am sat down with my Father in his Throne.