n all instances, when we needed and when
we needed not. He heard us when we prayed, giving us all, and giving
us more, than we desired. He desired that we should ask, and yet He
hath also prevented our desires. He watched for us, and at His own
charge sent a whole order of men whose employment is to minister to
our souls; and if all this had not been enough, He had given us more
also. He promised heaven to our obedience, a province for a dish of
water, a kingdom for a prayer, satisfaction for desiring it, grace
for receiving, and more grace for accepting and using the first.
He invited us with gracious words and perfect entertainments; He
threatened horrible things to us if we would not be happy; He hath
made strange necessities for us, making our very repentance to be a
conjugation of holy actions, and holy times, and a long succession;
He hath taken away all excuses from us; He hath called us from
temptation; He bears our charges; He is always beforehand with us in
every act of favor, and perpetually slow in striking, and His arrows
are unfeathered; and He is so long, first, in drawing His sword, and
another long while in whetting it, and yet longer in lifting His hand
to strike, that before the blow comes the man hath repented long,
unless he be a fool and impudent; and then God is so glad of an excuse
to lay His anger aside, that certainly, if after all this, we refuse
life and glory, there is no more to be said; this plain story will
condemn us; but the story is very much longer; and, as our conscience
will represent all our sins to us, so the Judge will represent all His
Father's kindnesses, as Nathan did to David, when he was to make the
justice of the divine sentence appear against him. Then it shall
be remembered that the joys of every day's piety would have been a
greater pleasure every night than the remembrance of every night's sin
could have been in the morning; that every night the trouble and labor
of the day's virtue would have been as much passed and turned to as
the pleasure of that day's sin, but that they would be infinitely
distinguished by the effects. The offering ourselves to God every
morning, and the thanksgiving to God every night, hope and fear, shame
and desire, the honor of leaving a fair name behind us, and the shame
of dying like a fool,--everything indeed in the world is made to be an
argument and an inducement to us to invite us to come to God and be
saved; and therefore when this, and i