the flesh? Oh! "It had been better for them not to have known the way
of righteousness, than after they have known it, to turn" (to turn
back again) "from the holy commandment." Those men shall not only be
damned for sin, but for professing to all the world that sin is better
than 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!