1. And to begin with God's ordinary dealing with sinners: when at first he ministers conviction to them by his word, how strangely do they behave themselves. They love not to have their consciences touched; they like not to ponder upon what they have been, what they are, or what is like to become of them hereafter: such thoughts they count unmanly and hurtful. And now they are for any thing rather than the word: an alehouse, a playhouse, sports, pleasures, sleep, the world, and what not, so they may stave of the power of the word of God. 2. If God now comes up closer to them, and begins to fasten conviction upon the conscience, though such convictions be the first step to faith and repentance, yea, to life eternal, yet what shifts will they have to forget them and wear them off! Yea, although they now begin to see that they must either turn or turn, yet ofttimes they will study to waive a present conversion. They object, they are too young to turn yet; seven years hence is time enough; when they are old, or come upon a sick bed. O what an enemy is man to his own salvation! I am persuaded that God has visited some of you often with his word, and you have thrown water, as fast as he hath by the word cast fire, upon your conscience. Christian, what had become of thee, if God had taken thy denial for an answer, and said, "Then will I carry the word of salvation to another, and he will hear it?" "Sinner, turn!" says God. "Lord, I cannot attend to it," says the sinner. "Turn or burn," says God. "I will venture that," says the sinner. "Turn and be saved," says God. "I cannot leave my pleasures," says the sinner; "sweet sins, sweet pleasures, sweet delights," says the sinner. But what grace is it in God thus to parley with the sinner! O the patience of God to a poor sinner! What if God should now say, "Then get thee to thy sins, get thee to thy delights, get thee to thy pleasures, take them for thy portion; they shall be all thy heaven, all thy happiness, all thy portion?"