deal in
love and tenderness with it, it speaks more sweetly, and so can have less
resistance, and therefore works more strongly. It is true, another way of
terrors threatening, and reproofs, mingled with sharp and heavy words of
challenges, may make a great deal of more noise, and yet it hath not such
virtue to prevail with a rational soul. The Spirit of the Lord was not in
the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still and
calm voice which came to Elijah, 1 Kings xix. 11, 12. These suit not the
gentle, dove-like disposition of the Spirit; and though they be fit to
rend rocks in pieces, yet they cannot truly break hearts, and make them
contrite. The sun will make a man sooner part with his cloak than the
wind, such is the difference between the warm beams of affection, and the
boisterous violence of passions or terror. Now, O that there were such a
spirit in them who preach the gospel, such a fatherly affection, that with
much pity and compassion they might call sinners from the ways of death! O
there is no subject, in which a man may have more room for melting
affections, nothing that will admit of such bowels of compassion as
this--the multitude of souls posting to destruction, and so blindfolded
that they cannot see it! Here the fountain of tears might be opened to run
abundantly. The Lord personates a tender hearted father or husband often,
"Oh, why will ye die? Ye have broken my heart with your whorish heart. O
Jerusalem, how oft would I, but thou wouldst not!" When he, who is not
subject to human passions, expresseth himself thus, how much more doth it
become us poor creatures to have pity on our fellow-creatures? Should it
not press out from us many groans, to see so many perishing, even beside
salvation. I wish you would take it so, that the warning you to flee from
the wrath to come, is the greatest act of favour and love that can be done
to you. It becomes us to be solicitous about you, and declare unto you,
that you will meet with destruction in those paths in which you walk; that
these ways go down to the chambers of death. O that it might be done with
so much feeling compassion of your misery, as the necessity of it
requires! But, why do many of you take it so hard to be thus forewarned,
and have your danger declared unto you? I guess at the reason of it. You
are in a distempter as sick children distempered in a fever, who are not
capable of discerning their parents' tender affection, when