own salvation with fear and trembling." How will that be done with dying remains? Faint wishes and languishing endeavours will not work that work. The garden will grow over with weeds, if there be not plying in earnest. 2. Generation-work is on your hands, namely, to be useful for God in the world; and not to take up room there for no good purpose, according as it is said of David, Acts xiii. 36, that "after he had served his own generation by the will of God, he fell on sleep." But will ever your dying remains make you useful for God? Eccl. ix. 10. I will say two things. 1. Dying remains are very unfit for any time, the best of times, there are difficulties in the way to heaven that will be enough to try the strength of the most grown Christian. There is holy violence to be used, Matth. xi. 12. There will be striving to enter in at the strait gate, Luke xiii. 24; wrestling with principalities and powers; a race to be run; a good fight to be fought, and victory to be obtained. How will dying remains suit these? 2. They are especially very unfit for our time we live in; the stream of profanity and wickedness runs violently among many of this generation; the stream of formality, deadness, and untenderness among professors, that it may be hard to keep what remains from dying out, if not strengthened, Rev. iii. 4. And the Lord is threatening the generation, as a generation of his wrath, so that we are very like to see suffering times, which our dying remains make us very unfit for; hence is that, Jer. xii. 5, "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?" Mor. 2. If ye do not stir up yourselves to "strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die," and recover, it will be bitterness in the end. Sleeping, decaying Christians, if they awake not at the Lord's call, will readily get a sad awakening. If ye hold on, take heed ye get not, 1. Jonah's awakening, being plunged into a deep sea ere ye are aware, getting a whale's belly to seek strengthening in, for the things that remain. Consider the case of Joseph's brethren. The Lord will not let a people he has any kindness for decay on and on, till what remains die quite out. But a midnight-cry they will get; and what the word does not, his heavy hand will perform ; Rev. iii. 3, "Remember therefore how thou has received and heard, and hold fast and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee." are aware. 2. David's awakening, over head and ears in a deep mire, ere ye A fall into some scandalous sin, that will make you go halting to the grave. It is a fearful threatening against Laodicea, Rev. iii. 16, "So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." Many keep up the carcase of religion, but the soul and life of it is gone; and God even lets them fall, so as the world may see they were never sound at the heart. "Wherefore let him that standeth, take heed lest he fall." Mor. ult. It is hard work, but must be done. The fire almost out is ill to kindle. Ye have all to undo ye have been doing since ye went back from God. Ye have been weaving a net to entangle your own feet; building a partition-wall betwixt God and you; setting up idols of jealousy in every corner of thy heart and life; ye must open out the net, demolish the wall, sacrifice the idols to the jealousy of an angry God. But it must be done, else ye will repent it bitterly in time, or in eternity, according as your state is. What shall we do to recover from a decay, to strengthen the dying remains? 1. Labour to work on your hearts a deep sense of the ill of this decaying case. Hear God saying to thee as to Adam, Where art thou? Consider how ye are robbed and spoiled, and snared and taken. How it mars all ye do, your praying, hearing, communicating, &c. And try to bring meat out of the eater, and sweet out of the strong, when ye observe it. (1.) Humiliation of soul before the Lord, saying with Asaph, Psalm lxxiii. 22, "So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee." (2.) Sense of the need of grace, while ye see what sad work ye make in your decaying condition, crying out with the apostle, Rom. vii. 24, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!” 2. Be sensible of your inability to recover yourself, saying, with Ephraim, Jer. xxxi. 18, "Turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God." Sometimes grace prevents the decaying Christian, and puts him in a fair way of recovery: but all is marred by self-confidence, and turning in to strength of resolution instead of going out of one's self to Christ. And so the resolution breaks and gives way, and he is where he was before. 3. Believe, accept, or renew your acceptance of Christ offered in the gospel-covenant, as if ye had never done it before. And look to him for quickening influences, depend on him for them; to him the Father sends you for quickening, Rev. iii. 1. And believe the promise suited to your case, and that with application to yourself; Hos. xiv. 7, "They that dwell under his shadow shall return, they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon." Mal. iv. 2, "But unto you that fear my name, shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall." : 4. Reflect on former experiences, muse on the days when it was better with you, Hos. ii. 7. Recal to mind the particular times and places where ye had something of God ye have not now. God says to Jacob, Gen. xxxi. 13, “I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me." Old experiences sometimes give a fresh smell when handled anew, as in Jacob's case, Gen. xxxv. 3, "Let us arise, (says he), and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went." They help to fill the face with holy shame. Every one of them comes out with that inscription, Jer. ii. 31, "O generation, sec ye the word of the Lord: have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, we are lords, we will come no more unto thee?" They strengthen faith, according to that, Isa. li. 9, "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?" 5. Repent, or renew your repentance, Rev. iii. 3. Search your ways, take a review of your decay in the several steps of it, in the doleful effects of it on your heart and life. Trace it to the source thereof; and let your eye affect your heart with indignation against sin, and self-loathing. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and lament your backslidings, with sincere purposes to endeavour to return to your first love. 6. Begin forthwith, and watch, Rev. iii. 2. Satisfy not yourselves to be affected with your decay on a Sabbath, or at a communion season, and to stuff your prayers with dry unactive complaints of deadness and decay: but forthwith set your watch, and call in your heart from its wandering. Watch heart, life, the whole man; watch the beginnings of a revival, and blow the coal, Hos. vi. 3. 7. Consider the signs of the times, as did Noah, Heb. xi. 7, who "by faith being warned of God, of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house." Behold how the harvest ripens for the sickle of wrath. Look over your bed, and see how the house is like to go up in a fire about our heads, that ye may bend to your feet. Concern about the public, not improved for the behoof of one's soul is little worth. 8. Make use of godly conference. It is said, Luke xxiv. 15, "While the two disciples communed together, and reasoned, Jesus VOL. VII. 2 s himself drew near and went with them." Conversation with lively Christians is very animating, Prov. xiii. 20. These are rare, ye may say but ye that ever had any experience of religion, tell your case one to another, and though you and your fellow be both alike, two cold flint-stones struck together may produce fire. See Prov. xxvii. 17; Eccl. iv. 9, 10, 11. Christ sent out his disciples by pairs. 9. Fix your eyes on the particular ills of your heart, and pursue them with the knife of mortification, Gal. v. 24. These are the suckers that draw away the sap from thy soul, and have made it wither. And be sure, as any of them thrives, ye will decay. And beguile not yourself with what you call your weak side; for if ever ye see heaven, ye must get above it, Matth. v. 29. Remember what is written, Mark x. 21, "Then Jesus beholding him, loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor; and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow me." Lastly, Be much in prayer; fervent in it, Rom. xii. 11. If your hearts be dead, yet impel them to liveliness, if I may so say. One bennmbed with cold, walking he becomes capable to run, and running he gathers heat. Stint not yourselves to morning and evening prayers; but take occasions between hands, if ye would thrive, and can get them. Use secret fasting and prayer; a most proper remedy for the worst of decays; for some devils are not cast out but by prayer and fasting. END OF VOLUME SEVENTII. PRINTED BY GEORGE AND ROBERT KING, |