to bring it about. And how can it be otherwise, since by this delay, and by adding daily sin to sin, their sinful habits grow daily stronger; the devil's power over them increases; and God Almighty, who is daily more and more provoked, by degrees, is less liberal of his graces, so that they become less frequent and less pressing: till at length, by accustoming themselves to resist God's grace, they fall into the wretched state of blindness and hardness of heart, the very broad road to final impenitence!
4. Consider the unparalleled madness of those who defer their conversion upon the confidence of a death-bed repentance; designing to put a cheat upon God's justice, by indulging themselves in sin all their lifetime; and then making their peace with God, when they can sin no longer. Unhappy wretches! that will not consider that God is not to be mocked: that what a man soweth, the same shall he reap. Gal. vi. 7. 8. The general rule is, that as a man lives, so he dies: a rule so general, that in the whole scripture we have but one example of a person who died well after a wicked life, viz. of the good thief: an example so singular in all its circumstances, as to give no kind of encouragement to such sinners, as entertain a premeditated design of giving the slip to God's justice by a death-bed conversion. Ah! how dreadfully difficult must it be for a dying sinner, in whom the habit of sin by long custom is turned into a second nature, to attain to that thorough change of heart, that sincere sorrow and detestation of sin above all things, which he never thought of in his lifetime, and which now at least is certainly necessary. Ah! how deceitful too often are those tears, which are shed by dying sinners, (as we see in the case of king Antiochus) which, being wholly influenced
