h. I am sure, if you were walking by the way, and one came and told
you gravely and seriously that that way is full of dangerous pits, that
there are many robbers in it waiting to cut your throat, you would count
the admonition worthy of so much notice as to halt and consider what to
do, but now, when the Lord himself, that deserves infinite more respect
and credit than men, gives you warning once, and often, day after day
repeats this admonition to you, sends out many ambassadors to call you
off, makes this word to sound daily in your ears, "Oh! why will you die?"
"Such ways lead down to the chambers of death and hell," "to be
carnally-minded" in the issue "is death," whatsoever you may promise to
yourselves, I say, when he makes a voice to accompany us in all our
walkings, this is not the way that leads to life, why do you not think it
worthy of so much consideration as once to stop and sist your progress
till you examine what will come of it? Are we so credulous to men, and
shall not we believe God, who is truth itself, who affirms it so
constantly, and obtests us so earnestly? Are we so wise and prudent in
lesser things, and shall we be mad, self-willed, and refractory in the
greatest things that concern us eternally? Oh! unbelief is that which will
condemn the world, the unbelief of this one thing, that the walking after,
and minding of the flesh is mortal and deadly. Though all men confess with
their tongues this to be a truth, yet it is not really believed, the deep
inconsideration and slight apprehension of this truth, makes men boldly to
walk, and violently to run on, to perdition. Did you indeed believe that
eternal misery is before you at the end of this way, and would you be so
cruel to yourselves as to walk in it for any allurement that is in it? Did
you really believe that there is a precipice into utter darkness and
everlasting death at the end of this alley, would the pleasure and
sweetness of it be able to infatuate you and besot you so far as to lead
you on into it, like an ox to the slaughter, and a fool to the correction
of the stocks? It is strange, indeed, though you neither will believe that
death is the end of these things, nor yet can you be persuaded that you do
not believe it. There is a twofold delusion that possesses the hearts of
men; one is, a dream and fancy of escaping death though they live in sin;
another is, a dream and fancy that they do believe that death is the wages
of sin; we might