Christ.  For the man that runs back again, doth 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.’  I say, this man declareth this, even by his running back again.  Oh, sad!  What a doom they will have, who were almost at heaven-gates, and then run back again!  “If any draw back,” saith Christ, “my soul shall have no pleasure in him.”  Again, “No man having put his hand to the plough,” (that is, set forward in 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, saith the apostle, those that bring forth these apostatizing fruits, as briers and thorns, are rejected, being nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.

Oh! there is never another Christ to save them, by bleeding and dying for them!  And if they shall not escape that neglect, then how shall they escape, that reject and turn their back upon so great a salvation?  And if the righteous, that is, they that run for it, will find work enough to get to heaven, then where will the ungodly backsliding sinner appear?  Oh! if Judas the traitor, or Francis Spira the backslider, were but now alive in the world, to whisper these men in the ear a little, and tell them what it hath cost their souls for backsliding, surely it would stick by them, and make them afraid of running back again, so long as they had one day to live in this world!

THE FOURTH USE.—­So again, fourthly, How like to those men’s sufferings will those be, that have all this while sat still, and have not so much as set one foot forward to the kingdom of heaven!  Surely he that backslideth, and he that sitteth still in sin, are both of one mind; the one will not stir, because he loveth his sins, and the things of this world; the other runs back again, because he loveth his sins, and the things of this world.  Is it not one and the same thing?  They are all one here, and shall not one and the same hell hold them hereafter?  He is an ungodly one that never looked after Christ, and he is an ungodly one that did once look after him, and then ran quite back again:  and therefore that word must certainly drop out of the mouth of Christ against them both, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”

THE FIFTH USE.—­Again, here you may see, in the next place, that if they that will have heaven, must run for it; then this calls aloud to those who began but a while since to run, I say, for them to mend their pace if they intend to win.  You know that they which come hindmost, had need run fastest.  Friend, I tell thee, that, there be those that have run ten years to thy one, nay, twenty to five, and yet if thou talk with them, sometimes they will say, they doubt but they shall come late enough.  How then will it be with thee?  Look to it therefore that thou delay no time, not an hour’s time, but part speedily with all, with every thing that is a hindrance to thee in thy journey, and run; yea, and so run that thou mayst obtain!