our hearts? Where
shall convincing words be had which may break the hardness of your hearts?
It is strange that you are in such a deep dream of delusion, that nothing
can awake you out of it. And how little is that in which you have to
please yourselves? Some external privileges the temple of the Lord, his
covenant and the seals of it, your ordinary hearing the word, and such
like. But are there not many things in your hearts and ways that act the
most contradictory be to these that can be? For wherefore do we thus meet
together? Do you know an end, or propose any? I scarce believe it of the
most part. We come out of custom, and many as by constraint, and with
little or no previous consideration of the great end of this work. And
when ye go forth, what fruit appears? Your ordinary cultural and civil
discourses succeed, and who is it either bows his knee to pray for the
divine blessing or entertains that holy word either in his own meditation,
or speaks of it to the edification of others? Are you not, the most part
of you, that ground of which Christ speaks, that lies in "the way side,"
and every thing comes and takes the seed up? Do you either listen and
apply your hearts to a presentness in hearing? Or is there any more
account of it, than a sound in the ear or any footstep or impression left
in the heart, more than of the flight of a bird in the air? And, alas!
how many souls are choked and stifled, the truth suffocated in the very
springing by the thorns of the cares of this world, and the throng and
importunity of businesses, and earthly desires? How many good motions come
to no maturity by this means? How few of you use to pray in secret and
dedicate a time for retirement from the world and enjoyment of God? Nay,
you think you are not called to it, and if any be induced to it and to
public worship in their families yet all the day over is but a flat
contradiction to that. What earthly mindedness! What unholiness of
affection! What impurity of conversation! What one lust is subdued? What
one sin mortified? Who increaseth more in knowledge of the truth or in
love of God? Is it not midnight with the most part of you? O the darkness
of the ignorance of your minds, by which you know not that religion you
profess, more than lurks who persecute it! And what are the ways to which
ye walk? Are they not such ways as will not come to the light, and hate
the light, because it reproves them? John iii. 19, 20, xi. 9, 10. Are t