Yea, and where the will is made more
quickly to comply with its salvation, it is no thanks to the sinner
at all. It is the day of the power of the Lord that has made the
work so soon to appear. Therefore count this an act of love, in the
height of love; love in a great degree.
"I heard thy voice in the garden." Gen. 3: 10. It is a word from
without that does it. While Adam listened to his own heart, he
thought fig-leaves a sufficient remedy; but the voice that walked in
the garden shook him out of all such fancies.
A man's own righteousness will not fortify his conscience from fear
and terror, when God begins to come near to him to judgment.
Few know the weight of sin. When the guilt thereof takes hold of the
conscience, it commands homeward all the faculties of the soul.
It was upon this account that Peter and James and John were called
the sons of thunder, because in the word which they were to preach
there were to be not only lightnings, but thunders--not only
illuminations, but a great seizing of the heart with the dread and
majesty of God, to the effectual turning of the sinner to him.
Lightnings without thunder are in this case dangerous, because they
that receive the one without the other are subject to miscarry: they
were once enlightened, but you read of no thunder they had, and they
were subject to fall into an irrecoverable state.
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