TO THE INHABITANTS

OF THE

BOROUGH AND FOREIGN

OF

KIDDERMINSTER.

Dearly beloved Friends in the Lord,

As it was the unfeigned love of your souls, that hath hitherto moved me much to print what I have done, that you might have the help of those truths, which God hath acquainted me with, when I am dead and gone, so is it the same affection that hath persuaded me here to send you this familiar discourse. It is the same that you heard preached : and the reasons that moved me to preach it, do move me now to publish it; that if any of you have forgot it, it may be brought to your remembrance; or if it worked not upon you in the hearing, yet in the deliberate perusal it may work. I bless the Lord that there are so many among you that know by experience the nature of conversion, which is the cause of my abundant affection towards you, above any other people that I know, (especially in that you also walk in so much humility, unity, and peace, when pride and divisions have caused so many ruins abroad). But I see that there is no place or people on earth that will answer our desires, or free us from those troubles that constantly attend our earthly state. I have exceeding cause to rejoice in very many of you; but in many also I have cause of sorrow. Long have I travailed (as Paul speaks, Gal. iv. 19.) as in

birth, till Christ be formed in you. For this have I studied and prayed, and preached; for this have I dealt with you in private exhortation; for this have I sent you all such books as I conceived suitable to your needs: and yet to the grief of my soul I must speak it, the lives of many of you declare that this great work is yet undone. I believe God, and therefore I know that you must every soul of you be converted, or condemned to everlasting punishment. And knowing this, I have told it you over and over again: I have shewed you the proof and reasons of it, and the certain misery of an unconverted state: I have earnestly besought you, and begged of you to return; and if I had tears at command, I should have mixed all these exhortations with my tears; and if I had but time and strength, (as I have not,) I should have made bold to have come more to you, and sit with you in your houses, and entreated you on the behalf of your souls, even twenty times, for once that I have entreated you. The God that sent me to you knows that my soul is grieved for your blindness, and stubbornness, and wickedness, and misery, more than for all the losses or crosses in the world, and that my heart's desire and prayer for you to God, is, that you may yet be converted and saved. But alas! I see not the answer of my desires, some few of you (and ì thank God they be but few) will not so much as come to me, nor be willing that I should come to you to be catechised or instructed. Some of you still quarrel with the holy way in which you must walk if ever you will be saved. Some of you give up yourselves to the world, and thrust God out of your hearts and houses, and have not so much as a chapter read, or an earnest prayer put up to God nor once a savoury word of heaven, from morning to night. I would there were none of you that secretly hate the diligent strictness that God hath commanded us, and think this daily care for our salvation to be more ado than needs; as if you had found out something else, that better deserved your care and diligence, and would better pay you for it. Too many among you are carping and cavilling against those humble, godly Christians whom you should carefully imitate; you are hearkening after and aggravating all their infirmities, and charging them as hypocrites, because they will not be as careless as yourselves: but you consider not

that in so doing, you censure yourselves, and speak the greatest terror to your souls, that you can imagine; for if they that go so far be hypocrites, what will become of you that come not near them? If they that set their minds on the life to come, and think nothing too much that they can do to be saved, be yet but hypocrites; if they that dare not swear, or curse, or drink, or whore, or deceive, or wilfully live in any sin, are yet but hypocrites; what then shall become of such as you, that so much neglect a holy life, and live so much to the world and flesh, and never did a quarter so much as they for the saving of your souls? If the righteous themselves are scarcely saved, (that is, with much striving and suffering, and with much ado,) and if hypocrites cannot be saved at all; where then shall the ungodly and the sinners appear? Your Judge hath told you that "except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven "." If these men then be no better than pharisees, you must exceed them, or there is no possibility of your salvation. Go beyond them first, and then you may the better condemn them. Till then, you doubly condemn yourselves that come so short of them. If malice did not blind you, you would have seen that this stone which you cast at others, would fly back in your faces.

But above all, it is the odious, swinish sin of tippling and drunkenness, and such like sensuality, that declareth too many of you to be yet strangers to conversion. I have told you the danger of it: I have shewed you the word of God against it, resolving that drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God, and commanding us not to keep company with you, or to eat with you. I have told you, and told you an hundred times, with what a face these sins will look upon you in the end. And yet all will not do, for aught yet I see, as I found you I must leave you; and after all my pains and prayers, instead of rejoicing in the hopes of your salvation, I must part with you in sorrow, and appear against you before the Lord, as a witness of your wilfulness, and negligence, and impenitency. Ah Lord! is there no remedy, but I must leave so many of my poor neighbours

a 1 Pet. iv. 17, 18. Matt. xxiii. 33.

c 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10.

b Matt. v. 20.

d

1 Cor. v. 11-13.

in the power of satan, and in a slavery to their flesh, and a contempt of heaven, and a wilful neglect of a holy life? Is there no persuading them to cast away their known and wilful sin; and to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness? Must I see them condemned by Christ that would have saved them? Must my preaching and persuasions be brought in against them, that were intended by me for their conversion and salvation? O, what is the matter, that we cannot prevail with reasonable men in so plain a case? Can they imagine that sin is better than holiness; or that it is better to obey their flesh than God? Do they think that this life will last always? Or that the pleasures of sin will never have an end? Or that they shall never be called to a reckoning for all this? Can they imagine that heaven is not worthy to be sought, and eternal things to be preferred before those that are transitory? Or that a careless, loose, and fleshly life will be better at last than a life of diligence, obedience, and holiness? O that we did but know what to say to these men that would go to their hearts, and bring them to their wits, or what to do for them that might turn them from their sin, and fetch them home to God, and save them. Is there no hope to prevail with them before they find themselves in hell? Poor miserable souls! O that I knew but what to do for you, that might do you good, and save you before it be too late. But alas! what should we do more? If my life lay on it, I cannot persuade a drunkard from his filthy drunkenness, nor a covetous man from his worldly mind and life, how much less to a thorough conversion, and a heavenly conversation? The example of their godly neighbours at the next doors will not allure them, but they will go on towards hell with the voice of prayers and exhortations in their ears! The reproofs of their neighbours do but anger them, and they cry out, that all is said in malice: as if it were a malicious thing to go about to save them from sin and hell. Ministers cannot prevail with them in public nor in private. Many of them will speak me fair; but they will not be persuaded to turn and live a holy life. And if neither neighbours, nor friends, nor ministers can be heard; if conscience itself cannot be heard; if the God that made them, if Christ that bought them cannot be heard; if the plain