SECT. XII.
* 1.19. STrive to bring all your Exhortations to an Issue: Stick not in the work done, but look after the success, and aim at that end in all your speeches. I have long observed it in Ministers and private men, that if they speak never so convincing powerful words, and yet their hearts do not long after the success of them with the hearers, but all their care is over when they have done their speech, pretending that having done their duty, they leave the Issue to God, these men do seldom prosper in their labors: But those whose very heart is set upon the work, and that long to see it take for the hearers conversion, and use to enquire how it speeds, God usually blesseth their labors, though more weak. Labor therefore to drive all your speeches to the desired Issue. If you are reproving a sin, cease not till (if it may be) you have got the sinner to promise you to leave it, and to avoyd the occasions of it: If you are exhorting to a Duty; urge the party to promise you presently to set upon it. If you would draw them to Christ, leave not till you have made them confess, that their present unre∣generate state is miserable, and not to be rested in; and till they have subscribed to the necessity of Christ, and of a change; and till they have promised you to fall close to the use of means. O that all Christians would be perswaded, to take this course with all their Neighbors that are yet in the flesh; that are enslaved to sin, and strangers to Christ!