Samuel Slater (d.1704) on God's Readiness and Desire to Receive Sinners

You that are Elder, and are yet in your sins, walking on in the vanity of your minds, suffer the word of exhortation, do you return, and that presently, for you have nothing to shew why you should not; you have taken your swing, and rambled far enough, and lived without God long enough; a man would think you have had your belly full of wind and ashes, and husks, that you have had enough of base sins, and what is worse than childish vanities, and are guilty of such egregious, and ruining follies that you have reason to be weary of them. I beseech you learn to be wise, it is, indeed it is high time, if you will not be wise now, when will you? You that are younger, do ye apply your hearts to true wisdom, come, ye Children, hearken to me, come, ye young men and maidens, come in to God, who desires you, who calls you, who stands with his arms ready and stretched out to receive you, come to him in whom you will find rest to your Souls, and have such joys as will be great and cheap, and never end in sorrow. It is much more easy for you to return than it is for old sinners, who have grown grey in their rebellion and obstinacy, for you are not gone so far from God as they have done, and you have not so many Chains and Fetters,...

Samuel Slater, The Souls Return to its God, in Life, and at Death (London: Printed for John Dunton at the Black Raven in the Poultry, 1690), E1^r.

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