Let it provoke everyone to labour to get an interest in this peace of reconciliation with God which the gospel brings. Peace with God! Sure it is worth the sinner’s having, or else the angels were ill employed when they welcomed the tidings thereof into the world at our Saviour’s birth with such acclamation of joy. ‘Glory to God,....on earth peace,’ Luke 2:14. Yea otherwise Christ himself was deceived in his purchase, who, if a sinner's peace with God be not of high praise and value, hath little to show for the effusion of his heart-blood, which he thought well spent to gain this. But this we cannot believe. And yet to see how freely God offers peace and pardon to the sons of men through Christ, and how coy, yea sullen and cross they are to the motion:—one that does not well know them both—God's infinite goodness, and wretched man's horrible baseness—might be ready to think it some low prized ware which lay upon God’s hands, and this to be the cause why God is so earnest to put it off, and man so loath to take it off his hands.
Ah poor deluded wretches! who is the wicked counsellor that hardens your hearts from embracing your own mercies? None, sure, but a devil can hate God and you so much. And hath he sped so well in his own quarrel against God, that he should be hearkened to by thee, poor sinner? Can he give thee armour that will quench God's bullets? How then is it that he is so unkind to himself as to let them lie burning in his own bosom to his unspeakable torment? Or will he lend thee any pity when thou hast by his advice undone thyself? Alas! no more than the cruel wolf doth the silly sheep, when he hath sucked her blood and torn her in pieces. Think, and think again, poor sinner, what answer thou meanest to send to heaven before God calls his ambassadors home, and the treaty break up, never to be renewed again. And that thou mayest not want some seasonable matter for thy musing thoughts to enlarge upon on this subject, let me desire thee to treat with thy own heart upon these four heads. First. Consider what it is that is offered thee. Second. Who it is that offers it. Third. How he offers it. Fourth. What thou dost when thou refusest it.
