Readings for Every Day in Lent

ble of His blessings; He causes us to be baptized, that we may have a title to the glorious promises evangelical; He gives us His Son, that we may be rescued from hell; and since the best of men, in the midst of all the great adva"fttages of laws, and examples, and promises, and threatenings, does many things he ought to be ashamed of, and needs to repent of, the very design of our birth and education in the Christian religion is, that we may recover of and cure our follies by the antidote of repentance. To have our infirmities excused and our sins forgiven, our habits lessened and our malicecured, after we were wounded, and sick, and dead, and buried, and in the possession of the devil; this was such a blessing, so great riches of the Divine goodness, that it was taught to no religion but the Christian?revealed by no lawgiver but Christ. It is the greatest and the dearest blessing that ever God gave to men, that they may repent; and therefore to deny it, or delay it, is to refuse health brought us by the skill and industry of the physician; it is to refuse liberty indulged to us by our gracious Lord. The duty of repentance is indispensably required in the danger of death; and he that does not repent when he is arrested with the probability of so sad a change, is uncharitable to himself, and a murderer of his own soul. But so is he, in his proportion, who puts it off one day; because every day of delay is a day of danger; and, certainly, it was non... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.