An Alarm to the Unconverted 3 of 5 — Joseph Alleine

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AN ALARM TO THE UNINVERTED SINNER. By Joseph Alain. It denounces indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, to every soul that doeth evil. Romans 2, 8 and 9. It curses every one that continueeth not, and all things written in the book of the law, to do them.

Galatians 3 .10. The justice of God to the imparted sinner who has a sense of his guilt is more terrible than the sight of the creditor to the bankrupt debtor, of the judge and bench to the robber, or of the irons and the gibbet to the guilty murderer.

The Sentence of Divine Judgment

When justice sits upon life and death, what dreadful work does it make with the wretched sinner? Bind him hand and foot, cast him into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.

Matthew 22 .13. 25 .41. This is a terrible sentence that justice pronounces. Sinner, by this severe justice you must be tried. In his God liveth this killing sentence must you hear unless he repents against you.

He is not only angry with you, so he may be with his children, but he has a fixed habitual displeasure against you. God's nature is infinitely contrary to sin, and so he cannot delight in a sinner out of Christ.

Oh, what a misery is this to be out of a favor, yea, under the hatred of God, who can as easily lay aside his nature and cease to be God. It looks like you be changed and removed. O sinner, how do you think of the bright and radiant sun of purity or the beauties of the glory of holiness in God?

Turn aside. He humbles himself to behold things that are done in heaven. Joel 25 .5. O those all-searching eyes of his, what do they spy in you? And have you no interest in Christ, neither that he should plead for you?

I think he should hear you crying out, astonished with the Beshemites. Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? Mounted like a mighty cannon against you, the glory of God's power is to be displayed in the amazing confusion and destruction of them that obey not the gospel.

He will make his power known in them. Romans 9 .22. How mightily he can torment them. For this end he raises them up, that he might make his power known. Romans 9 .17. O man, are you able to continue with your maker?

Sinner, the power of God's anger is against you, and power and anger together make fearful work. It were better you had all the world in arms against you than to have the power of God against you. There is no escaping his hands, no breaking his prison.

The thunder of his power, who can understand? Job 26 .14. For continuing with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand. He is wise in heart and mighty in strength. Who hath hearted himself against him and prospered, which removeth the mountains, and they know it not, which overturneth them in his anger, which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble, which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars.

Who will say unto him, What of this ye that forget God, lest he tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver? Psalm 50 .22. Submit to mercy. Let not best fires and thorns against him in battle, lest he go through them and consume them together.

But lay hold on his strength, that ye may make to twenty-seven four and five. Thriveth with his Maker. Isaiah 45 .9. The wisdom of God is set to ruin you. He has ordained his arrows, and prepared instruments of death, and made all things ready.

Psalm 7 .11 -13. His counsels are against you to contrive your destruction. Jeremiah 18 .11. He laughs in himself to see how you will be taken and ensnared in the evil day. Psalm 37 .13. The Lord shall laugh at him, for he seeth that his day is coming.

He sees how you will come down mightily in a moment, how you will wring your hands, and tear your hair, and eat your flesh, and gnash your teeth for anguish and astonishment of heart, when you see you are fallen irrevocably into the pit.

If he is faithful and true, you must perish if you go on, unless he is false to his God. Yet he abideth faithful. He cannot deny himself. 2 Timothy 2 .13. He is faithful to his threatenings as well as to his promises, and will show his faithfulness in our destruction, if we believe not.

God has told you, as plain as it can be spoken, that if he wash you not, you have no part in him, that if you live after the flesh, you shall die, that except you be converted, you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.

John 13 .8. To both faithfulness of God and his promise and oath affords belief with strong consolation, and so it is to unbelievers for strong consternation and confusion. These are the words of God that stand upon record against you.

Do you believe that they are true or not? If not, you are a wretched infidel. But if you do believe them, O heart of adamant that you have, that you can walk up and down in quiet, when the truth and faithfulness of God are engaged to destroy you.

The whole book of God testifies against you while you remain unconverted. It condemns you in every leaf and is to you like Ezekiel's roll, written within and without with lamentation and mourning and woe.

And all this shall surely come upon you except you repent. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but one jot or tittle of this word shall never pass away. Matthew 5 .18. Now put all this together and tell me if the case of the unconverted is not deplorably miserable.

As we read of some persons that have bound themselves by an oath and a curse to kill Paul, so you must know, O sinner, that all the attributes of the infinite God are bound by an oath to punish you. O man, what will you do?

Where will you flee? If God's omniscience confines you, you shall not escape. If the true and faithful God will regard his oath, perish you must, except you believe and repent. If the Almighty has power to torment you, you must be perfectly miserable in soul and body to all eternity unless it be prevented by speedy conversion.

Creation Groaning Under Human Sin

If God is against you, the whole creation says, Paul groaneth and travaileth. But what is it that the creation groans under? The fearful abuse it is subject to in serving the lusts of unsanctified men.

And what is it that the creation groans for? For freedom and liberty from this abuse, for the creature is not willingly made subject to this bondage, Romans 8, 20 and 21. If the irrational and inanimate creatures had speech and reason, they would cry out under it, as a bondage insufferable, to be abused by the ungodly contrary to their natures and the ends that the great Creator made them for.

It is the sin of an inanimate divine, the liquor that the drunkard drinks, if it had reason, like a man, to know how shamefully it is abused, would groan in the barrel against him. It would groan in the cottage and open the mouths of his creatures as he did the mouth of Balaam's apple.

There is not a creature, if it had reason, to know how it is abused till a man be converted, but would groan against him. The lamb would groan to bear him, the air would groan to give him breath, their houses would groan to dislodge them, their beds would groan to ease them, their clothes would groan to give them any help and comfort, so long as they live in sin against God.

I think there should be a terror to an unconverted soul to think he is a burden to the creation. Cut it down. Romans 18, 7. If inanimate creatures could but speak, your food would say, Lord, such a wretch as this, and yield forth my strength for him to dishonor thee.

No, I will choke him rather, if thou wilt give permission. The very air would say, Lord, must I give this man breath to set his tongue against heaven and scorn thy people and vent his pride and wrath and filthy talk and belch out oaths and blasphemy against thee?

No, thou wilt but say the word, he shall be breathless for me. His poor beast would say, Lord, must I carry him upon his wicked designs? No, I will break his bones. I will end his days rather, if I may have but leave from thee.

A wicked man, the earth groans under him and hell groans for him till death satisfies both. While the Lord of hosts is against you, be sure the host of the Lord is against you and all the creatures, as it were, up in arms till upon a man's conversion, the controversy being settled between God and him, he makes a covenant of peace with the creature for him.

Satanic Bondage and Slavery to Sin

Job 5 22 -24. Hosea 2 18 -3. Satan has his full power over you. You are fast in the paw of that roaring lion who is greedy to devour. 1 Peter 5 8. In the snare of the devil, led captive by him at his will.

2 Timothy 2 26. This is the spirit that works in the children of disobedience. Ephesians 2 2. His drudges they are and his lusts they do. He is the ruler of the darkness of this world. Ephesians 6 12.

That is of ignorant sinners who live in darkness. You pity the poor Indians that worship the devil for their God, but little think it is your own case. It is the common misery of all the unsanctified that the devil is their God.

Not that they intend to do him homage. They will be ready to defy him and him that should say so of them. But all this while they serve him and live under his government. His servants you are to whom you obey.

Romans 6 16. Oh, how many then will be found to be the real servants of the devil who take themselves for no other than the children of God. He could no sooner offer a sinful delight or opportunity for your unlawful advantage than you embrace it.

If he suggests a lie or prompts you to revenge, you readily obey. If he forbids you to read or pray, you hearken to him and therefore his servants you are. And he stands behind the curtain. He acts in the dark and sinners do not see who sets them working, but all the while he leads them.

Doubtless the liar does not intend to serve Satan but his own advantage. Yet it is he that stands unobserved and puts the thing into his heart. Undoubtedly Judas, when he sold his master for money and the Chaldeans and Sabians, when they plundered Job, did not intend to do the devil a pleasure but to satisfy their own covetous thirst.

Yet it was he that actuated them in their wickedness. John 13 27. Men may be very slaves and common drudges for the devil and not know it. Nay, they may please themselves in thoughts of liberty. Are you yet in ignorance and not turned from darkness to light?

I fear you are under the power of Satan. Do you live in the willful practice of any known sin? Know that you are of the devil. Do you live in strife or envy or malice? Verily he is your father. O dreadful case!

However Satan may provide his slaves with various pleasures, yet it is but to draw them into endless perdition. The serpent comes with the fruit in his mouth. But, as with Eve, you do not see the deadly stink.

He that is now your tenter will one day be your tormentor. O that I could but make you see how bad a master you serve, how merciless a tyrant you gratify! Whose pleasures is to set you on to make your perdition and damnation sure and to heat the furnace hotter and hotter, in which you must burn for millions and millions of ages.

The Guilt and Burden of Unpardoned Sin

Number Four. The guilt of all your sins lies like a mountain upon you. Poor soul, you do not feel it, but this is that which seals your misery. While unconverted, none of your sins are blotted out. They are all upon record against you.

Regeneration and remission are never separated. The unsanctified are unjustified and unpardoned. It is a fearful thing to be in debt, but above all in God's debt. For there is no arrest so formidable as his, no prison so dreary as his.

Look upon an enlightened sinner who feels the weight of his own guilt. O how frightful are his looks, how fearful are his complaints! His comforts are turned into wormwood and his moisture into drought, and his sleep is departed from his eyes.

He is a terror to himself and all that are about him and is ready to envy the very stones that lie in the street, because they are without sense and do not feel his misery. And he wishes he had been a dog rather than a man, because then death had put an end to his misery.

Whereas now it will be but the beginning of that which will know no ending. However you make light of it now, you will one day find the guilt of unpardoned sin to be a heavy burden. This is a millstone, that whosoever falleth upon it shall be broken.

But upon whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. Matthew 21 .44. The guilt of our sins caused the agony and death of the blessed Saviour. And if it did this in the green tree, what will it do in the dry?

Oh, think of your case in time! Can you think of that threat without trembling? You shall die in your sins. John 8 .24. Oh, better were it for you to die in a jail, in a ditch, in a dungeon, than die in your sins.

If death, as it will take away all your comforts, would take away all your sins too, it were some mitigation. But your sins will follow you when your friends leave you, and all worldly enjoyments shake hands with you.

Your sins will not die with you as a prisoner's other debts will, but they will go to judgment with you, there to be your accusers, and they will go to hell with you, there to be your tormentors. Oh, the work that these will make you!

Oh, look over your debts in time, how every one of God's commandments is ready to arrest you and take you by the throat for the innumerable bonds it has upon you. Then, when they shall altogether come in against you, hold open the eyes of your conscience to consider this, that you may despair of yourself and be driven to Christ, and fly for refuge to lay hold on the hope that is set before you.

The Tyranny of Raging Lusts

Number five, your raging lusts miserably enslave you. While unconverted, you are a very servant to sin. It reigns over you and holds you under its dominion till you are brought within the bonds of God's covenant.

There is not such another tyrant as sin. Oh, the vile and fearful work that it engages its servants in! Would it not pierce your heart to see a company of poor creatures dredging and toiling to carry together faggots and fuel for their own burning?

This is the employment of sin's dredges. Even while they bless themselves and their unrighteous gains, while they sing their pleasure, they are but treasuring up vengeance for the eternal burning. They are but adding to the pile of profit oil to make the flame rage the fiercer.

Who would serve such a master whose work is drudgery, whose wages are death? What a woeful spectacle was a poor wretch possessed with the legion! Would it not have grieved your heart to see him among the tombs cutting and wounding himself?

This is your case. Such is your work. Every stroke is a thrust at your heart. Conscience, indeed, is now asleep. But when death and judgment shall bring you to your senses, then you will feel the anguish in every wound.

The convinced sinner is an instance of the miserable bondage of sin. Conscience flies upon him and tells him the end of these things. And yet he is such a slave to his lust that on he goes, though he sees it will be his perdition.

When the temptation come, lust breaks accords of all his vows and promises and carries him headlong to his own destruction. Number six. The furnace of eternal vengeance is heated ready for you. Hell and destruction open their mouths upon you.

The Furnace of Eternal Vengeance

They gape for you. They groan for you. Isaiah 5 .14. Weeping as it were with a greedy eye as you stand on the brink. If the wrath of man be as a roaring of a lion,. Proverbs 19 .12. More heavy than the sand.

Proverbs 27 .3. What is the wrath of the infest heated in Nebuchadnezzar's fiery rage when he commended it to be made seven times hotter? What so fierce is to burn up even those that drew near to throw the three children in?

How hot is that burning of the Almighty's fury? Surely this is seventy times seven more fierce. What do you think, O man, of being a faggot in hell to all eternity? Can thine heart endure? Or can thine hands be strong in the days that I shall deal with thee?

Ezekiel 22 .14. Can you be everlasting? Can you dwell with consuming fire? When you shall be as glowing iron in hell and your whole body and soul shall be as perfectly possessed? What is God's burning vengeance?

Is his sparkling iron with fire when heated in the fiercest furnace? Some of the choicest servants of God, when under the hidings of his face and dreading the effects of his displeasure, have bewailed their condition with bitter lamentations.

How then will you endure when God shall pour out all his vials and set himself against you to torment you? When he shall make your conscience the tunnel by which it will be pouring its burning wrath into your soul forever?

And when he shall fill all your pores as full of torment as they are now full of sin? When immortality shall be your misery and to die the death of a brute and be swallowed up in the gulf of annihilation shall be such a felicity as the whole eternity of wishes in an ocean of tears shall never purchase?

Now you can put off the evil day and laugh and be merry and forget the terror of the Lord. But how will you hold out or hold up when God casts you into a bed of torment? Revelations 2 .22. It makes you lie down in sorrow.

Isaiah 50 .11. When roarings and blasphemy shall be your only music, and the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation shall be your only drink. Revelations 14 .10.

In a word, when the smoke of your torment shall ascend forever and ever and you shall have no rest day and night, no rest in your conscience, no ease in your bones, but you shall be in execration and astonishment and a curse and a reproach forevermore.

O sinner, stop here and consider if you are a man and not a senseless block, consider. Think where you are standing upon the very brink of destruction. As the Lord liveth and as your soul liveth, there is but a step between you and this.

You do not know when you lie down, but you may be in hell before morning. You do not know when you rise up, but you may drop in before night. Dare you make light of this? Will you go on in such a dreadful condition as if nothing ailed you?

If you put it off and say that this does not belong to you, look again over the previous chapter and tell me the truth. Are none of those black marks found upon you? Do not blind your eyes. Do not deceive yourself.

See your misery while you may prevent it. Think what it is to be a vile outcast, a lost reprobate, a vessel of wrath into which the Lord will be pouring out His tormenting fury while He has a being. Divine wrath is a fierce, devouring, everlasting, unquenchable fire, and this must be your portion unless you consider your ways and speedily turn to the Lord by a sound conversion.

Sinner, it is in vain to flatter you. This would be but to draw you into the unquenchable fire. Know from the living God that here you must lie with these burnings you must dwell till immortality die and immutability change, till eternity run out and omnipotence is no longer able to punish, except you be in good earnest renewed by sanctifying grace.

The Law, the Gospel, and Condemnation

Number seven. The law discharges all its threats and curses at you. Oh, how dreadfully does it thunder! It flashes devouring fire in your face. Its words are as strong swords and as the sharp arrows of the mighty.

It demands satisfaction to the utmost and cries, Justice! Justice! It speaks blood and war and wounds and death against you. Oh, man, away to your stronghold, away from your sins. Haste to the sanctuary, the city of refuge, even the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hide in him or else you are lost without any hope of recovery. Number eight. The gospel itself binds a sentence of eternal damnation upon you. If you continue in your impenitent and unconverted state, know that the gospel denounces a much sorer condemnation than ever would have been for the transgression only of the first covenant.

Is it not a dreadful case to have the gospel itself fill its mouth with threats? To have the Lord to roar from Mount Zion against you, Joel 3 .16. Hear the terror of the Lord. He that believeth not shall be damned.

Except ye repent, ye shall all perish. This is a condemnation that light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light. He that believeth not, the wrath of God abideth on him. If the word spoken by angels was steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?

He that despised Moses' law died without mercy. Of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God? Mark 3 .19 and 36. Hebrews 2 .2 and 3. Hebrews 10 .28 and 29.

And is this true indeed? Is this your misery? Yea, it is as true as God is. Bitter open your eyes and see it now while you may remedy it. Then blind and harden yourself till, till your eternal sorrow you shall feel what you would not believe.

And if it is true, what do you mean by lingering and loitering in such a state as this? Alas for you, poor man, how effectually has sin undone you, depraved you, and disfoiled you of even your reason to look after your everlasting good.

O miserable wretch, what stupidity and senselessness have surprised you? O let me knock and awake this sleeper. Who dwells within the walls of this flesh? Is there a soul here, a rational understanding soul?

Are you a rational soul, and yet so far brutified as to forget that you are immortal, and to think yourself to be as the beasts that perish? Having reason to understand the eternity of the future state, do you make light of being everlastingly miserable, which is to be so much below the brute as it is worse to act against reason than to act without it?

That was the glory of man, the companion of angels, and the image of God, that was God's representative in the world, and had the supremacy amongst the creatures, and the dominion over your maker's works.

Are you now become a slave to sense? Are you heaping together a little refined earth, so unsuited to your spiritual immortal nature? O why do you not consider where you will spend eternity? Death is at hand, the judge is even at the door.

Yet a little while, and time shall be no longer. And will you run the hazard of continuing in such a state in which, if you are overtaken, you are irrecoverably missed? Tell me, where are you going? What?

Will you live in such a course in which every act is a step to perdition? And do you not know that the next night you may make your bed in hell? O if you have a spark of reason, consider and turn and hearken to a true friend, who would show you your present misery, that you might in time make your escape and be eternally happy.

Hear what the Lord saith. Fear you not me, saith the Lord? Will you not tremble at my presence, Jeremiah 5, 22? O sinners, do make light, light of it. Why the very devils believe and tremble? What, are you more hardened than they?

Will you run upon the edge of the precipice? Will you play at the hole of the asp? Will you put your hand into the cockatrice's den? Will you dally with devouring wrath, as if you were indifferent, whether you escape or endure it?

There is no one so beside himself as a willful sinner, that goes on in his unconverted state without sense, as if nothing ailed him. The man that runs into the cannon's mouth and spores with his blood, or lets out his life in a frolic, is sensible, sober, and serious, compared with him that goes on still in his trespasses, or he stretches out his hand against God, and strengtheneth himself against the Almighty.

He runneth upon him, even upon his neck, upon the thick bosses of his bucklers, Job 15, 25, and 26, or to second death, or to venture into the lake, that burneth with fire and brimstone. What shall I say?

I can find no expression, no comparison, by which to set forth the dreadful madness of the soul that will go on in sin. Awake, awake, O sinner, arise, and take your flight. There is but one door that you may flee by, and that is the narrow door of conversion, and the new birth, unless you turn unseemly from all your sins, and come to Jesus Christ, and take him for the Lord your righteousness, and walk in him, in holiness and newness of life, as the Lord liveth, it is not more certain that you are now out of hell, than that you shall without fail be in it, but a few days or nights from now.

Oh, set your heart to think of your case. Does not your everlasting misery or welfare deserve a little consideration? Look again over the miseries of the unconverted. If the Lord is not spoken by me, regard me not.

But if it is the very word of God that all this misery lies upon you, what a state you are in! Is it for one that has his senses to live in such a condition, and not to make all possible haste to prevent his utter ruin?

O man, who has bewitched you, that in the matters of this present life you shall be wise enough to forecast your business, foresee your danger, and prevent your ruin, but in matters of everlasting consequence shall be slight and careless as if they little concerned you.

Is it nothing to you to have all the attributes of God engaged against you? Can you live without his favor? Can you live without his vengeance? Do you hear the creation groaning under you, and hell groaning for you, and yet think your case good enough?

Are you under the power of corruption, and the dark noisome prison, fettered with lusts, working out your own damnation? And is this not worth a thought? Will you make light of all the terrors of the law, of all its curses and thunders, as if there were but the threatenings of a child?

Do you laugh at hell and destruction, or can you drink the envenomed cup of the Almighty's fury as if it were a common potion? Gird up now your lungs like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.

Are you such a leviathan as that the scales of your pride should resist your maker? Will you esteem his arrows as straw, and the instruments of death as rotten wood? Are you chief of all the children of pride, even that you should count his darts as stubble, and laugh at the shaking of his spear?

Do you mock at fear, and are you not frightened? Do you not turn back from God's sword when its quiver rattles against you, and the glittering spear and the shield? Well, if the threats and calls of the word will not awaken you, I am sure death and judgment will.

Oh, what will you do when the Lord comes forth against you, and in his fury falls upon you, and you shall feel what you only now listen to? If when Daniel's enemies were cast into the den of lions, both they and their wives and their children, the lions had the mastery over them, and broke all their bones in pieces, or they came to the bottom of the den, what shall become of you when you fall into the hands of the living God?

I think contend with God. All ye upon him wall he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God.

For he will abundantly pardon. Isaiah 55, 6, and 7. Sure. Guide to Heaven by Joseph Alain. Chapter 6. Directions to the Unconverted. Before you read these directions, I advise you, yea, I charge you before God and his holy angels, that you resolve to follow them as far as conscience shall be convinced of their agreeableness to God's word and your state, and call in his assistance and blessings that they may succeed.

And as I have sought the Lord and consulted his oracles as to what advice to give you, so must you entertain it with that awe, reverence, and purpose of obedience which the word of the living God requires.

The Call to Conversion and the Way of Life

Now then attend. Set your heart unto all that I shall testify unto you this day, for it is not a vain thing. It is your life. Deuteronomy 32, 46. This is the aim of all that has been spoken hitherto, to bring you to set your heart upon turning to God.

I would not trouble you, nor torment you before the time with the thoughts of your eternal misery. But in order that you may make your escape, will you shut up under your present misery without remedy, it were but mercy to let you alone, that you might take in that poor little comfort which you are capable of in this world.

But you yet may be happy if you do not willfully refuse the means of your recovery. Behold, I hold open the door to you. Arise, take your flight. I see the way of life before you. Walk in it, and you shall live and not die.

It grieves me that you should be your own murderers, and throw yourselves headlong when God and man cry out to you, as Peter in another case to his master, Spare thyself. The destruction of ungodly men is willful.

God that made them cries out to them as Paul to the jailer when about to murder himself, Do thyself no harm. The ministers of Christ forewarned them, and followed them, and would gladly have them back.

But alas, no expostulations or entreaties will prevail, but men will hurl themselves into perdition, while pity itself looks on. What shall I say? Would it not grieve a person of any humanity if, in the time of a raging plague, he should have a remedy that would infallibly cure all the country and recover the most hopeless patients?

And yet his friends and neighbors should die by hundreds around him because they would not use it? Men and brethren, though you carry the certain symptoms of death on your faces, yet I have a prescription that will cure all infallibly.

Follow these directions, and if you do not then win heaven, I will be content to lose it. Here, then, O sinner, and as ever you would be converted in faith, take the following counsel. Number one, set it down with yourself as an undoubted truth that it is impossible for you ever to get to heaven in this, your unconverted state.

Can any other but Christ save you? And he tells you he will never do it except you be regenerated and converted. Does he not keep the keys of heaven, and can you go in without his leave? As you must, if ever you go in your natural condition without a sound and thorough conversion.

Number two, labor to get a thorough sight and lively sense and feeling of your sins. Turn in a weary and heavy laden and pricked at the heart and quite sick of sin. They will not come to Christ for cure, nor sincerely inquire, What shall we do?

They must see themselves as dead men before they will come unto Christ that they may live. Labor therefore to set all your sins in order before you. Do not be afraid to look upon them, but let your spirit make diligent search.

Inquire into your heart and into your life. Enter into a thorough examination of yourself and all your ways, that you may make a full discovery in calling the help of God's Spirit out of a sense of your own inability to do this by yourself.

For it is as proper work to convince of sin. Spread all before your conscience, till your heart and eyes are set weeping. Do not leave striving with God in your own soul, till it cry out under the sense of your sins as the enlightened jailer, What must I do to be saved?

To this purpose, meditate on the number of your sins. David's heart failed when he thought of this, and considered that he had more sins than the hairs of his head. This made him cry out for the multitude of God's tender mercies.

The loathsome carcass does not more hatefully swarm with crawling maggots than an unsanctified soul with filthy lusts. They feel the stench of blood on their head. The heart! Where was ever the place?