"Sinner, turn!" says God. "Lord, I cannot attend to it," says the
sinner. "Turn or burn," says God. "I will venture that," says the
sinner. "Turn and be saved," says God. "I cannot leave my
pleasures," says the sinner; "sweet sins, sweet pleasures, sweet
delights," says the sinner. But what grace is it in God thus to
parley with the sinner! O the patience of God to a poor sinner! What
if God should now say, "Then get thee to thy sins, get thee to thy
delights, get thee to thy pleasures, take them for thy portion; they
shall be all thy heaven, all thy happiness, all thy portion?"

3. But God comes again, and shows the sinner the necessity of
turning now or not at all; yea, and giveth the sinner this
conviction so strongly that he cannot put it if. But behold, the
sinner has one spark of enmity still: if he must needs turn now, he
will either turn from one sin to another, from great ones to little
ones, from many to few, or from all to one, and there stop. But
perhaps convictions will not thus leave him. Why, then he will turn
from profaneness to the law of Moses, and will dwell as long as God
will let him, upon his own seeming goodness. And now observe him, he
is a great stickler for legal performance; now he will be a good
neighbor, he will pay every man his own, will leave off his
swearing, the ale-house, his sports, and carnal delights; he will
read, pray, talk of scripture, and be a very busy one in religion,
such as it is; now he will please God, and make him amends for all
the wrong he has done him, and will feed him with chapters, and
prayers, and promises, and vows, and a great many more such dainty
dishes as these; persuading himself that now he must be fair for
heaven, and thinks besides that he serveth God as well as any man:
but all this while he is as ignorant of Christ as the stool he sits
on, and no nearer heaven than was the blind Pharisee, only he has