THE THIRD USE.--In the next place, What then will become of them that some time since were running post-haste to heaven, (insomuch that they seemed to outstrip many,) but now are running as fast back again? Do you think those ever come thither? What! to run back again, back again to sin, to the world, to the devil, back again to the lusts of the flesh? Oh! "It had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it, to turn" (to turn back again) "from the holy commandment." Those men shall not only be damned for sin, but for professing to all the world that sin is better than Christ. For the man that runs back again, doth as good as say, 'I have tried Christ, and I have tried sin, and I do not find so much profit in Christ as in sin.' I say, this man declareth this, even by his running back again. Oh, sad! What a doom they will have, who were almost at heaven-gates, and then run back again! "If any draw back," saith Christ, "my soul shall have no pleasure in him." Again, "No man having put his hand to the plough," (that is, set forward in ways of God,) "and looking back, (turning back again,) is fit for the kingdom of heaven." And if not fit for the kingdom of heaven, then for certain he must needs be fit for the fire of hell. And therefore, saith the apostle, those that bring forth these apostatizing fruits, as briers and thorns, are rejected, being nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. Oh! there is never another Christ to save _them_, by bleeding and dying for them! And if they shall not escape that neglect, then how shall they escape, that reject and turn their back upon so great a salvation? And if the righteous, that is, they that run for it, will find work enough to get to heaven, then where will the ungodly backsliding sinner appear? Oh! if Judas the traitor, or Francis Spira the backslider, were but now alive in the world, to whisper these men in the ear a little, and tell them what it hath cost their souls for backsliding, surely it would stick by them, and make them afraid of running back again, so long as they had one day to live in this world!