east believe His tears.
2. They signify the sincerity of His love and pity, the truth and
tenderness of His compassion. Canst thou think His deceitful tears?
His, who never knew guile? Was this like the rest of His course? And
remember that He who shed tears did, from the same fountain of love
and mercy, shed blood too! Was that also done to deceive? Thou makest
thyself a very considerable thing indeed, if thou thinkest the Son of
God counted it worth His while to weep, and bleed, and die, to deceive
thee into a false esteem of Him and His love. But if it be the
greatest madness imaginable to entertain any such thought but that His
tears were sincere and unartificial, the natural, genuine expression
of undissembled benignity and pity, thou art then to consider what
love and compassion thou art now sinning against; what bowels thou
spurnest; and that if thou perishest, 'tis under such guilt as the
devils themselves are not liable to, who never had a Redeemer bleeding
for them, nor, that we ever find, weeping over them.
3. They show the remedilessness of thy case if thou persist in
impenitency and unbelief till the things of thy peace be quite hid
from thine eyes. These tears will then be the last issues of (even
defeated) love, of love that is frustrated of its kind design. Thou
mayst perceive in these tears the steady, unalterable laws of
heaven, the inflexibleness of the divine justice, that holds thee in
adamantine bonds, and hath sealed thee up, if thou prove incurably
obstinate and impenitent, unto perdition; so that even the Redeemer
Himself, He that is mighty to save, can not at length save thee, but
only weep over thee, drop tears into thy flame, which assuage it not;
but (tho they have another design, even to express true compassion) do
yet unavoidably heighten and increase the fervor of it, and will do so
to all eternity. He even tells thee, sinner, "Thou hast despised My
blood; thou shalt yet have My tears." That would have saved thee,
these do only lament thee lost. But the tears wept over others, as
lost and past hope, why should they not yet melt thee, while as yet
there is hope in thy case? If thou be effectually melted in thy very
soul, and looking to Him whom thou hast pierced, dost truly mourn over
Him, thou mayst assure thyself the prospect His weeping eye had of
lost souls did not include thee. His weeping over thee would argue thy
case forlorn and hopeless; thy mourning over Him will make it safe
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