To some men that have grievously sinned under a profession of the
gospel, God. gives this token of his displeasure: they are denied
the power of repentance; their heart is bound, they cannot repent.
It is impossible they should ever repent, should they live a
thousand years. It is impossible for those fall-aways to be renewed
again unto repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of
God afresh, and put him to open shame. Now, to have the heart so
hardened, so judicially hardened, this is as a bar put in by the
Lord God against the salvation of this sinner. This was the burden
of Spira's complaint: "I cannot do it; O, now I cannot do it."
This man sees what he has done, what should help him, and what will
become of him; yet he cannot repent. He pulled away his shoulder
before, he shut his eyes before, and in that very posture God left
him; and so he stands to this very day. I have had a fancy that
Lot's wife, when she was turned into a pillar of salt, stood yet
looking over her shoulder, or else with her face towards Sodom; as
the judgment caught her, so it bound her, and left her for a
monument of God's anger to after-generations.
I have been the more plain and simple in my writing, because the sin
against the Holy Ghost is in these days more common than formerly,
and the way unto it more beautified with color and pretence of truth
I may say of the way to this sin, it is, as was once the way to
Jerusalem, strewed with boughs and branches, and by some there is
cried a kind of Hosanna to them that are treading these steps to
hell.
Pages:
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481