Part 18 HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness
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Part 19 HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness
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[4.] Fourthly, If repentance be such an easy work as you suppose, I beseech you to tell me—why do many men lie under such horrors and terrors of conscience as they do, for not repenting, when repentance would quickly give them ease, and turn their hell into a heaven? I was last winter with a young man, who upon his dying bed for several hours together, being in a dreadful agony, lay crying out, "I am damned! I am damned! I am damned! I am damned!" Ah, how soon would this poor wretch have gotten out of this hell, if it had been so easy a thing to have repented, as you imagine it is! and how many, when they have been pressed to repent, have professed, that if they might have a thousand worlds to repent, they could not repent! And will you say that repentance is easy? How many have sought repentance with tears, and would have bought repentance with the price of their dearest blood—but could not obtain it! and will you say that repentance is easy? O sirs, is it good to be damned? Is it good to go to hell? Is it good to dwell with a devouring fire, and to live in everlasting burnings? Is it good to have your eternal dwelling place among devils and damned spirits? Is it good to be banished the court of heaven, and to be separated forever from the glorious presence of God, and the sweet enjoyments of Christ, and the blessed society of angels and saints, and the fruition of all the happiness that heaven affords? Oh no! oh no! Oh, why then do not men prevent all this by repentance, if it be such an easy thing to repent! But,
[5.] Lastly, If repentance be such an easy work, why then do your hearts so rise both against the doctrine of repentance, and against those who preach it and press it? Of all words, is not the word of repentance the hardest word to read? John 6:60. And of all sayings and sermons, is not that of repentance the hardest to hear and bear? Luther confesses that before his conversion he met not with a more displeasing word in all the Scripture, nor in all his study of divinity, than that word repent. O man! if repentance be so easy, why does your spirit rage, and why does your heart so swell and rise against those who preach repentance unto life? Of all preachers, there are none who so displease and move you, who so cut and gall you—as those who are still a-crying out, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" Mat. 3:2.
Repentance is the vomit of the soul; and ah, how do sinners' hearts rise against that remedy—and those who bring it! You love those who preach pleasing things, who tickle your ears—though they never touch your hearts! You love those who please your fancies—though they never meddle with your consciences; and you prefer one sermon of mercy—before a thousand sermons of repentance. [Isaiah 30:10; Jer. 5:30, 31; 14:14, and 23:11 to the end.] Now certainly if repentance were so easy to you, the doctrine of repentance would be more pleasing to you.
For a close, know that that white devil who now presents repentance to you as the easiest thing in the world, he will at last—work you to despair, and to cut the throat of your soul—by presenting repentance not only as a hard and difficult work—but as an impossible work. Oh, that these things may be so blessed unto you, as to preserve you from being deceived and deluded with a conceit that repentance is easy, and so by this means keep you from laboring to be holy!
Now as to that part of the plea, from the scriptures formerly cited—namely, that HEREAFTER will be time enough to repent—I shall thus reply: