Author’s Preface
To all unsanctified people who read this book, especially my hearers in the borough and parish of Kidderminster.
Men and brothers,
The eternal God made you for everlasting life and redeemed you by his only Son when you had lost both that life and yourselves. Remembering you in your sin and misery, he has composed the gospel, sealed it by his Spirit, and commanded his ministers to preach it to the world. With pardon freely offered to you and heaven set before you, he would call you away from your fleshly pleasures and your pursuit of this deceitful world. He would acquaint you with the life for which you were created and redeemed, before you are dead and beyond remedy. He does not send you prophets or apostles who receive their message by direct revelation. Yet he calls you through his ordinary ministers, whom he has commissioned to preach the same gospel that Christ and his apostles first delivered.
The Lord sees how you forget him and your latter end, and how lightly you treat everlasting things, like people who do not understand what they must do or suffer. He sees how bold you are in sin, how little you fear his warnings, and how careless you are about your souls. He sees the deeds of unbelievers in your lives while Christian belief is on your lips. He sees the dreadful day approaching when your sorrows will begin. Then you must lament all this with fruitless cries in torment and despair. The memory of your folly will tear your hearts, unless true conversion prevents it now.
In compassion for your sinful, miserable souls, the Lord, who knows your condition better than you can, has made it our duty to speak to you in his name (2 Cor 5:19). We must tell you plainly about your sin and misery, what your end will be, and what a sorrowful change you will soon see if you continue just a little longer. Having bought you at so great a price as the blood of his Son Jesus Christ, and having made you so free and so general a promise of pardon, grace, and everlasting glory, he commands us to offer all this to you as God’s gift. He commands us to urge you to consider the necessity and worth of what he offers.
He sees and pities you while you are drowned in worldly cares and pleasures, eagerly pursuing childish toys and wasting your short, precious time on something worthless. You should be using that time to prepare for everlasting life. So he has commanded us to call after you and tell you that you are wasting your labor and are about to lose your souls. We must tell you what greater and better things you could certainly have if you would listen to his call (Isa 55:1-3).
We believe and obey God’s voice, and we come to you with his message. He has charged us to preach and press his message upon you in season and out of season, to raise our voice like a trumpet and show you your transgressions and sins (Isa 58:1-2; 2 Tim 4:1-2). But alas, to our souls’ grief and your ruin, you stop your ears, stiffen your necks, and harden your hearts. You send us back to God with groans to tell him that we have delivered his message but can do you no good, and can scarcely obtain a serious hearing.
Oh, that our eyes were a fountain of tears, so that we could mourn for our ignorant, careless people! Christ is before them, with pardon, life, and heaven, yet they have no heart to know or value these things. They could have Christ, grace, and glory as well as others, if it were not for their willful neglect and contempt. Oh, that the Lord would fill our hearts with greater compassion for these miserable souls, so that we might throw ourselves at their feet, follow them to their homes, and speak to them with our bitter tears!
For a long time we have preached to many of them, seemingly in vain. We strive for plainness to make them understand, but many of them will not understand us. We strive for serious, piercing words to make them feel, but they will not feel. If the greatest matters could move them, we would awaken them. If the sweetest things could move them, we would draw them and win their hearts. If the most dreadful things could move them, we would at least frighten them away from their wickedness. If truth and certainty could gain a hearing with them, we would soon convince them.
If the God who made them and the Christ who bought them could be heard, their condition would soon change. If Scripture could be heard, we would soon prevail. If reason, even the best and strongest reason, could be heard, we would have no doubt that we would quickly convince them. If experience could be heard, even their own experience and the experience of the whole world, things would improve. Yes, if the conscience within them could be heard, their condition would be better than it is.
But if nothing can be heard, what can we do for them? If the awe-inspiring God of heaven is disregarded, who will be respected? If a Redeemer’s priceless love and blood are treated lightly, what will be valued? If they find no desirable glory in heaven, and everlasting joys are worth nothing to them, what can we do? If they can joke about hell, dance around the bottomless pit, and play with the consuming fire, even while God and people warn them about it, what can we do for souls like these?
Once more, in the name of the God of heaven, I will deliver the message to you that he has commanded us to give. I will leave it in these enduring written lines to convert you or condemn you, to change you or rise up in judgment against you. It will bear witness to your faces that you once received a serious call to turn.
Listen, all of you who are the world’s drudges and the servants of the flesh and Satan! You spend your days pursuing earthly prosperity and drown your consciences in drinking, gluttony, idleness, and foolish amusements. You know that you sin, yet you insist on sinning, as though you were defying God and telling him to do his worst and hold nothing back!
Listen, all of you who give no thought to God and have no heart for holy things! You find no delight in the Lord’s Word or worship, or in the thought or mention of eternal life. You are careless about your immortal souls. You have never spent even one hour asking what condition they are in, whether sanctified or unsanctified, and whether you are ready to appear before the Lord!
Listen, all of you who, by sinning against the light you have received, have sinned yourselves into atheism and unbelief, and do not believe God’s Word! “He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear” God’s gracious yet dreadful call! His eye is on you all this time. Your sins are recorded, and you will surely hear of them all again. God keeps the book now. He will write it on all your consciences with his terrors, and then you too will keep it yourselves.
Oh, sinners, if only you knew what you are doing, and whom you are offending all this time! The sun itself is darkness beside the glory of that Majesty whom you daily insult and carelessly provoke. The angels who sinned could not stand before him, but were cast down to be tormented with devils. And do insignificant worms like you dare to offend him so fearlessly and set yourselves against your Maker? Oh, if only you knew even a little of the condition of that wretched soul who has brought the living God against him!
The word from his mouth that made you can unmake you. The frown of his face will cut you off and cast you into utter darkness. How eager the devils who tempted you are to get at you! They are only waiting for God’s word to take you and deal with you as their own. Then, in a moment, you will be in hell. If God is against you, everything is against you. This world is only your prison, however much you love it. You are kept in it only until the day of wrath (Job 21:30).
The Judge is coming. Your soul is on the verge of departure. In just a little while, your friend will say of you, “He is dead.” You will see the things you now despise and feel what you now refuse to believe. Death will bring an argument you cannot answer, an argument that will decisively refute your quibbles against God’s Word and ways, and all your conceited delusions. How quickly your mind will change then!
Then be an unbeliever if you can. Stand by all those words you used to speak against the Scriptures, or against a holy and heavenly life. Defend before the Lord the cause you used to argue against your teachers and against the people who feared God. Then stand by your old opinions and your contemptuous thoughts about the saints’ diligence. Prepare your strongest reasons now. Then stand before the Judge and plead like a man for your fleshly, worldly, and ungodly life. But know that you must argue with someone you cannot intimidate, or put off as easily as you put off us, your fellow creatures.
Oh, poor, deceived, wretched soul! Nothing but a thin veil of flesh stands between you and that overwhelming sight. It will quickly silence you, change your tune, and make you think differently. As soon as death draws this curtain aside, you will see what will quickly leave you speechless. And how soon that day and hour will come!
After just a few more merry hours, a few more pleasant drinks and mouthfuls, and a little more of the world’s honors and riches, your portion will be spent and your pleasures ended. Everything you set your heart on will then be gone. Of everything for which you sold your Savior and salvation, nothing will remain but the terrible reckoning.
You are like a thief who sits happily in a tavern, drinking away the money he stole, while people ride at full speed to arrest him. While you are drowned in cares or fleshly pleasures and making merry with your own shame, death is coming at full speed to seize you. It will carry your souls to a place and condition that you now scarcely know or think about.
Suppose that, while you were boldly busy with your sin, a messenger was hurrying from London to arrest you and take your lives. Although you did not see him, if you knew he was coming, it would spoil your merriment. You would think about how fast he was traveling and listen for his knock at your door. Oh, if only you could see how fast death is coming, though it has not yet overtaken you! No courier is so swift! No messenger is more certain to arrive!
As surely as the sun will be with you in the morning, though it has many thousands and hundreds of thousands of miles to travel during the night, death will soon be with you. And then, where will your amusement and pleasure be? Will you then joke and face it down? Will you then jeer at those who warned you? Will it then be better to be a believing saint or a sensual person devoted to the world? “And then whose shall all those things be” that you have gathered (Luke 12:19-21)?
Do you not notice how quickly days and weeks pass, and how swiftly nights and mornings come and follow one another? You sleep, but your “damnation slumbereth not.” You delay, “but your judgment this long time lingereth not” (2 Pet 2:3-5). It is the judgment to which “you are reserved for punishment” (2 Pet 2:8-9). “O that you were wise to understand this, and that you did consider your latter end” (Deut 32:29)! “He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear” the call of God in this day of his salvation.
Oh, careless sinners, if only you knew the love you so ungratefully neglect, and the preciousness of Christ’s blood, which you despise! Oh, if only you knew the riches of the gospel! Oh, if only you knew, even a little, the certainty, glory, and blessedness of that everlasting life! You will not now set your hearts on it or be persuaded to seek it first and diligently (Heb 11:6; Heb 12:28; Matt 6:13).
If you knew the endless life with God that you now neglect, how quickly you would cast away your sin! How quickly you would change your mind and life, your course and companions, redirect the streams of your affections, and turn your care in another direction! How firmly you would scorn to yield to the temptations that now deceive you and carry you away! How zealously you would exert yourselves for that most blessed life! How earnest you would be with God in prayer! How diligent in hearing, learning, and asking questions! How serious in meditating on God’s laws (Ps 1:2)! How afraid you would be to sin in thought, word, or deed, and how careful to please God and grow in holiness! Oh, what a changed people you would be! And why should you not believe God’s certain Word and let it prevail with you, when it reveals these glorious and eternal things to you?
Yes, let me tell you: even here on earth, you scarcely know the difference between the life you refuse and the life you choose. Those who are sanctified commune with God, while you scarcely dare to think of him and concern yourselves only with earthly and fleshly things. Their life is in heaven, while you are complete strangers to it, your belly is your god, and your minds are set on earthly things (Phil 3:18-20). They seek the face of God, while you seek nothing higher than this world. They are busily preparing for an endless life, where they will be equal to the angels (Luke 20:36), while you settle for a shadow, a passing thing of no substance.
How low and base your earthly, fleshly, sinful life is compared with the noble, spiritual life of true believers! Many times I have looked at such people with grief and pity. They trudge about the world and spend their lives, care, and labor for nothing but a little food and clothing, a little wealth that fades away, fleshly pleasures, or empty honors, as if they had nothing higher to consider. What difference is there between their lives and those of the beasts that perish, which spend their time working, eating, and living merely so that they may live? They never taste the inward, heavenly pleasures that believers taste and live on.
I would rather have a little of the comfort believers receive from anticipating their heavenly inheritance, even with all the scorn and suffering they endure, than have all your pleasures and treacherous prosperity. I would not accept one of your secret pangs of conscience, or your dark and dreadful thoughts of death and the life to come, in exchange for everything the world has ever done for you or everything you can reasonably hope it will do.
If I were in your unconverted, fleshly condition, yet knew what I know and believed what I now believe, I think my life would be a foretaste of hell. How often I would think of the terrors of the Lord and the dreadful day that is swiftly approaching! Surely death and hell would always be before me. I would think of them by day and dream of them by night. I would lie down in fear, rise in fear, and live in fear that death might come before I was converted. I would find little happiness in anything I possessed, little pleasure in anyone’s company, and little joy in anything in the world, as long as I knew I was under God’s curse and wrath. I would always be afraid of hearing that voice: “Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee” (Luke 12:20). And that dreadful sentence would be written on my conscience: “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked” (Isa 48:22; Isa 57:21).
Oh, poor sinners! You could live a more joyful life than this if you were only willing, truly willing to listen to Christ and come home to God. Then you could draw near to God boldly, call him your Father, and confidently entrust your souls and bodies to him. If you look at the promises, you may say, “They are all mine.” If you look at the curse, you may say, “I have been delivered from this!” When you read the law, you may see what you have been saved from. When you read the gospel, you may see the one who redeemed you. You may see the course of his love, holy life, and sufferings, and follow him through his temptations, tears, and blood in the work of your salvation.
You may see death conquered, heaven opened, and your resurrection and glorification provided for in the resurrection and glorification of your Lord. If you look at the saints, you may say, “They are my brothers and companions.” If you look at those who are not sanctified, you may rejoice to think that you have been saved from that condition. If you look at the heavens, the sun, the moon, and the countless stars, you may think and say, “My Father’s face is infinitely more glorious. He has prepared higher things for his saints. What I see up there is only heaven’s outer court. The blessedness he has promised me is so much higher that flesh and blood cannot behold it.”
If you think of the grave, you may remember that your glorified spirit, a living Head, and a loving Father all have so close a relationship to your dust that it cannot be forgotten or neglected. It will revive more certainly than the plants and flowers in spring, because the soul, which is the root of the body, is still alive, and Christ, who is the root of both, is alive. Even death, the king of fears, may be remembered and welcomed with joy. It is the day of your deliverance from the remaining sin and sorrow, the day you believed would come, hoped for, and awaited. Then you will see the blessed things you had heard about. Through joyful experience, you will discover what it meant to choose the better part and to be a sincere, believing saint.
What do you say, gentlemen? Isn’t this a more delightful life, to be assured of salvation and ready to die, than to live like the ungodly, whose hearts are “overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and so that Day comes upon them unawares?” (Luke 21:34, 36). Couldn’t you live a life of comfort if you were once made heirs of heaven and certain of salvation when you leave the world? Oh, look around you, then, and consider what you are doing. Do not throw away hopes like these for absolutely nothing. The flesh and the world can give you no such hopes or comforts.
Besides all the misery you bring on yourselves, you trouble others as long as you remain unconverted. You trouble magistrates as they govern you by their laws. You trouble ministers by resisting the light and guidance they offer you. Your sin and misery cause them more grief and trouble than anything else in the world. You trouble the nation and bring God’s judgments upon us. You are the ones who most disturb the churches’ holy peace and order and hinder our unity and reform. You are the shame and trouble of the churches into which you intrude and of the places where you live.
Ah, Lord! How grievous and sad this is! Even in England, where the gospel abounds more than in any other nation in the world, teaching is so plain and widespread, and every help we could desire is at hand. The sword has been cutting us down, and judgment has swept like fire through the land. Deliverances have brought us relief, and so many wonderful mercies have bound us to God, the gospel, and a holy life. Yet after all this, our cities, towns, and countryside still abound with multitudes of unsanctified people and swarm with so much sensuality, as we see everywhere to our grief!
One would have thought that after all this light and experience, and all these judgments and mercies of God, the people of this nation would have joined together as one to turn to the Lord. They would have come to their godly teacher, lamented all their former sins, and asked him to join them in publicly humbling themselves, openly confessing their sins, and begging the Lord’s pardon for them. They would have asked for his instruction for the future and gladly submitted to the rule of the Spirit within and Christ’s ministers without, according to the Word of God.
One would think that after the reasoning and scriptural evidence they hear, and after all these means and mercies, there would not be an ungodly person left among us. No one devoted to the world, no drunkard, no hater of reform, and no enemy of holiness would be found in any of our towns or countryside. Even if we disagree about some ceremonies or forms of government, one would think that by now we would all have agreed to live a holy and heavenly life. We would live in obedience to God, his Word, and his ministers, and in love and peace with one another.
But alas, how far our people are from this way of life! Most of them in most places set their hearts on earthly things and seek “not first the Kingdom of God, and the righteousness thereof.” They regard holiness as unnecessary. Their families live without prayer, or a few heartless, lifeless words must serve in place of heartfelt, fervent daily prayers. Their children are not taught the knowledge of Christ and the covenant of grace, or brought up in the nurture of the Lord, though they falsely promised all this at their children’s baptism. They do not instruct their servants in matters of salvation. As long as the work gets done, they do not care. Their families hear more oaths, curses, obscene speech, and abusive words than gracious words that build others up.
How few families fear the Lord, consult his Word and ministers about how they should live and what they should do, are willing to be taught and governed, and earnestly seek everlasting life! And those few whom God has made so happy commonly become the objects of their neighbors’ mockery. We see some living in drunkenness, others in pride and devotion to the world, and most showing little concern for their salvation. Although their condition is plainly wrong and beyond dispute, they can scarcely be convinced of their misery, and still less readily reclaimed and reformed. When we have done everything we can to save them from their sins, we leave most of them as we found them.
If, according to God’s law, we exclude them from the church’s communion after they have stubbornly rejected all our warnings, they rage at us as if we were their enemies. Their hearts fill with malice against us. They will sooner set themselves against the Lord, his laws, his church, and his ministers than against their deadly sins. This is England’s sorrowful condition. We have magistrates who support the ways of godliness. A welcome opportunity for unity and reform lies before us, and faithful ministers long to see the church and God’s ordinances rightly ordered. But the power of sin among our people defeats almost everything.
Almost nowhere can a faithful minister establish Christ’s unquestionable discipline or exclude the most flagrantly sinful and unrepentant people from the church’s communion and participation in the sacraments without most of the people railing at him and reviling him. They act as if these ignorant, careless souls were wiser than their teachers, or than God himself, and better qualified than they are to govern the church. So, in this time when God visits us and calls us to reform his church, although magistrates seem willing and faithful ministers are willing, the multitude of the people remain unwilling. Sin has so blinded them and hardened their hearts that even in these days of light and grace, they are stubborn enemies of light and grace. They will not let God’s calls bring them to see their folly and recognize what is good for them. Oh, that the people of England “knew at least in this their day the things that belong unto their peace, before they are hid from their eyes!” (Luke 19:42).
Oh, foolish, miserable souls! “Who hath bewitched your” (Gal 3:1) minds into such madness and your hearts into such deadness? How can you be such deadly enemies to yourselves and go on so stubbornly toward damnation that neither God’s Word nor human persuasion can change your minds, restrain your hands, or stop you before you are beyond remedy? Well, sinners, this life will not last forever. This patience will not wait for you forever. Do not think you can abuse your Maker and Redeemer, serve his enemies, degrade your souls, trouble the world, wrong the church, disgrace the godly, grieve your teachers, and hinder reform, all without cost.
You do not yet know what this will cost you, but you will soon know when the righteous God takes you in hand. He will deal with you differently from the strictest magistrates or the most plainspoken pastors, unless you avert everlasting torments by a genuine conversion and prompt obedience to God’s call. “He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear,” while mercy still has a voice to call!
I find that one desperate objection clings closely to the hearts of many ungodly people. I address it later, but too briefly. They think that God does not care as much about what people think, say, or do as we tell them he does; and therefore they care so little themselves. To convince such atheistic people, I will put the following questions to them.
1. Do you think God cares whether you are a human being or not? If not, who made you and preserves you? If he does, surely he cares whether you behave as a human being should. No one is so foolish as to make a tool or build a house or ship and then not care whether it serves the purpose for which he made it. For shame, then, do not attribute such folly to the God of wisdom, as if he made so noble a creature as a human being, endowed that creature with such noble faculties, and did it all for nothing, without caring what becomes of the creature afterward.
Why would God give you a mind that can know him and a heart that can love him if he did not care whether you know and love him? Do you not see that in the order of nature everything is fitted for its purpose? The beasts do not know God and are not capable of loving him, because they were not made for that purpose. But your capacity shows that you were made for God and for a life to come.
2. Do you think that God is present everywhere, infinite, and all-sufficient? If not, you do not believe that he is God. It is unreasonable to imagine that God has made a world greater and more extensive or encompassing than himself! No one can give more than he has. But if you are forced to acknowledge that God is everywhere, and as sufficient for each individual as if he had no other creature to care for, you must also acknowledge that he does not disregard human hearts and conduct. These things are always before his eyes. It is a degrading and blasphemous thought of God, as though he were limited, absent, or insufficient, that makes people think he pays so little attention to their hearts and conduct.
3. Do you think that God cares what happens to your body, whether you are sick or well, whether you live or die? If not, how did you receive your life, health, and blessings? If they came from some other source, tell us where. Is it not to God that you pray for your life and health? Do you dare say to him, “I will not depend on you. I will not be indebted to you for another day’s life and blessings”? If so, you are a blinded atheist. But if you think he cares for your body, can you think he does not care still more for your soul? If he must take care to provide you with blessings, he will surely care whether you love and live for the one who gave them.
4. Do you believe that God is the ruler of the world, or not? If not, there can be no rightful government. Just as no justice of the peace can have authority except from the sovereign, no sovereign can have authority except from God, or be a lawful ruler except under him. By that reasoning, the whole world would fall into confusion. But if you must acknowledge that God is the ruler of the world, what an unwise, unjust ruler you would make him if you thought he disregarded the hearts and conduct of those he governs! This, again, amounts to denying that he is God.
5. If God cares so little about what is in our hearts or what we do, why would he make a law for our hearts, words, and conduct? Would he command something he does not care about? Would he so strictly forbid sin if it made no difference whether we sinned or not? Would he promise eternal life to the holy and obedient if he did not care whether we were holy and obedient? Would he threaten hell for all the ungodly if he did not care whether we were godly? Do you dare say that the almighty, holy God has to rule the world by a lie and deceive people into obedience?
Even the law of nature itself contains not only commands concerning our duty, but also hopes and fears concerning a life to come. Without these, the world could not be governed. And surely the means by which infinite wisdom, power, and goodness govern the world are no deceptions.
6. If God paid little attention to our hearts and lives, why would he make the whole world serve us? Does he give us the sun, moon, stars, earth, and all its creatures to attend us and serve us with their lives and beneficial powers, yet not care about our hearts or service? This is as foolish as saying that he made the whole world for nothing and does not care for it now that he has made it.
7. If he did not care about the condition of our hearts and lives, he would not have sent his Son to redeem us, cleanse us from all iniquity, and sanctify us as a people specially his own (Titus 2:14). Surely the price paid for sinners and God’s wonderful purpose in our redemption show that he does not take sin lightly, and that he has a wonderful love for holiness.
8. If God did not care about our hearts and lives, he would not have made it his ministers’ duty to call us daily to repentance and a holy life. Nor would he have commanded them to make such an urgent effort with sinners to win them to God. He would not have appointed all his ordinances, both public and private, for this purpose. Does God command all this effort for something he does not care about?
9. Nor would he punish the world with hell in the life to come, or with so many dreadful judgments here, as thousands experience, if he did not care what people think or do. It seems to me that people who so often groan under his rod should feel that he watches over their hearts and conduct.
10. And how can the Holy Spirit be our Sanctifier if God is so indifferent to whether we are clean or unclean? Do you dare think that the Holy Spirit undertakes needless work?
