themselves to thy eyes: see how long thou hast unconcernedly sported thyself on the brink of a dreadful precipice, having no more than a hair's breadth betwixt thy soul and hell. Be confounded at thy past folly; admire and adore the goodness of thy God; and now at least resolve to embrace his mercy.
THE TWENTIETH DAY.
On the relapsing sinner.
CONSIDER, that if any one mortal sin is so heinous a treason against the sovereign majesty of God, as we have seen in the foregoing chapter; if every such sin is an abomination to our Lord, and the death of the soul of that unhappy sinner who is guilty of it; what must we think of the miserable condition of relapsing sinners, that is, of such Christians as are continually falling again and again into the same mortal sins, after repeated confessions and solemn promises of amendment? Alas! what can we think, but that by this method of life they are treasuring up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath; and they will in all appearance, sooner or later, draw down a dreadful vengeance on their heads? Because by every relapse their crime is aggravated, and their latter condition becomes worse than the former.
2. Consider the ingratitude, the perfidiousness, the contempt of God, which the relapsing sinner is guilty of, as often as, after his reconciliation, he returns like a dog to the vomit. He is guilty of the highest ingratitude, in treading under foot the grace of reconciliation, by which he had been a little before raised from the dunghill of sin, and even drawn out of the jaws of hell; and by a distinguishing mercy restored to the friendship of
