“Here I take every man and woman to witness against one another, that ye had Christ in your offer; and I shall be a witness against all of you that have not received Christ this night.  Yea, though he should never be glorified in such a sort by me, yet I will be a witness against you.  Here, before the throne of grace, I declare in His name, that I have made an offer of Him unto you; and, therefore, your blood shall be upon your own heads if ye perish, and I shall be free of the same.”

In another place, he presses with like earnestness acceptance of the gospel offer:—­“If ye would be rightly concerned, ye must at once come, and be a right son or daughter of the church, and member of Jesus Christ; until then, ye cannot have a fellow-feeling of the body.  Come then, and Christ will give you a fellow-feeling with the sufferings of the church.  Come and embrace Himself, and He will set the stamp of natural children upon you.  Without Him, ye can do nothing; without Him, ye cannot be concerned with the sufferings of His name and members.  Refuse not; reject not His offers, when He calls you to Himself.  It is hard to say if some of you shall have an offer again. Now is the acceptable time—­now is the day of salvation.  He is now spreading his net, and will ye not come about the net’s mouth, that a catch of you may be gotten.  He is proclaiming unto you that He hath invincible power, though managed by apparent weakness.  Oh, find you any of this irresistible power of Christ?  Oh, come unto Him who is the joy of heaven, and it shall be a joyful time in heaven.  He will have a good report of you through heaven, if ye shall have it to say that some poor lad or lass hath put a crown upon His head in such a place.  But oh, how sad will it be, if Christ shall have it to say, ’I gave offer of myself to a people like stocks and stones, but they would not hear!’”

On the duty of devoting the best to God’s service, in another discourse, he thus forcibly reasons:—­

“Observe, that it cannot but be a great injury against God, and procure a curse, when people employ not their best things in His service.  This is clear from the words, ’Cursed be the deceiver which hath in his flock a male, and voweth and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing.’  So men that employ not their best things in the Lord’s service, believe it, they are chargeable with this.  He calls for your best things in His service, and not that you should spend that upon your lusts.  Ye are called to employ the best of your time in his service; and many of you give Him but the refuse of your time, or at least, He gets but your by-time for His service.  But ye should give Him the best of your time and strength, and your hearts—­all should be employed in his service.  Do not say that you do the best that you can; for I am persuaded that there is none of you but may do more for Him than ye do.  Do not say that ye improve the talent that He hath given you to trade with, for ye but misimprove