Page:Race for eternal life.pdf/14

 Methinks I have seen how these poor wretched that get but almost to heaven, shall cry out in hell, saying, I was almost a Christian, I was almost got into the kingdom, almost out of my sin almost from under the curse of God; almost, but not altogether. O that I should be almost at heaven, and should not go quite through!

(3.) What will become of them, that some time since were running post haste to heaven, but now are running as fast back again? Do you think those will ever come thither? What! to turn back again to sin, to the world, to the lust of the flesh, to the devil! "It had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment." Those men shall be damned for professing to all the world, that sin is better than Christ; for the man that runs back again, does 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. O sad! What a doom they will have who were almost at heaven's gates, and then run back again? "If any draweth back," says Christ "my soul shall have no pleasure in him." Again, "No man having set his hand to the plough," that is, set forward in the 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, those that bring for these apostatizing fruits, as briars and thorns, are rejected, being nigh unto cursing whose end is to be burned. If they shall not escape that neglect, how shall they escape that reject, and turn their back upon so great salvation?