Oh, ... Do Not Let Your Own Hearts Delude You!

The dregs of old age!
(Thomas Brooks, "The Crown and Glory of Christianity, 
or, HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness", 1662) 

"Let me die the death of 
the righteous, and may my end 
be like theirs!" Numbers 23:10

Many desire to repent when 
old age comes, when . . .
  their wits are cracked,
  their souls distracted,
  their senses stupefied,
  their hearts bewildered,
  their minds darkened and
  their bodies diseased and distempered.

Oh, then they think that they will be 
able to leap into Heaven, with a 
"LORD have mercy upon me" 
in their mouths. Even though 
they have lived like devils--
yet they hope they shall die like saints!

Do you think, O vain man--
that after you have spent your  time, 
and wasted your strength, and 
exhausted your energies in the work 
of satan, and in the service of your lusts--
that GOD will receive you 
to HIS grace and favor? 

If you do thus flatter yourself--
it is ten thousand to one that 
you will deceive yourself! 

Though true repentance is never too late--
yet late repentance is seldom true. 
Ah, how many millions are now in Hell--
who have thought, and resolved, and 
said that they would repent hereafter--
but that hereafter never came! 

You say "Tomorrow, tomorrow I will repent," 
when you know not what a tomorrow will 
bring forth. Alas! how many thousand 
ways may death surprise you before 
tomorrow comes! 

Though there is but one way 
to come into the world--
yet there are a thousand 
thousand ways to be sent out 
of the world. Oh, the diseases, 
the hazards, the dangers, 
the accidents, the deaths--
which daily, which hourly 
attend the life of man!

Ah friends! 
it is a dangerous thing to make 
repentance to be the task of old age. 
The longer any man defers his repentance, 
the more difficult it will be for him to repent:
  his heart will every day grow more and more hard, 
  and his will more and more perverse, 
  and his judgment more and more corrupted, 
  and his affections more and more disordered, 
  and his conscience more and more benumbed or enraged, 
  and his whole life more and more defiled and debauched.

Friends, do not deceive yourselves! 
Old age is but a tottering and sinking 
foundation for you to build your 
eternal hopes and happiness upon--
your eternal making or marring upon! 

Are the dog-days of old age--
are the trembling hands, the wrinkled 
face, the failing eyes, the gasping lungs, 
the fainting heart, the feeble knees, 
and the broken down legs--
are these a sacrifice worthy 
of a majestic GOD? Is a body 
full of sores, aches, and diseases--
and a soul full of sin--
an offering worthy of a holy GOD? 
Surely not! 

Oh, what madness, what wickedness is this: 
to serve satan, your lusts, and 
this world with full dishes--
and to put off GOD with scraps! 

To serve satan, your lusts, and 
this world in the flower, in the 
prime and primrose of your days--
and to put off GOD with 
the dregs of old age! 

Oh, do not let satan deceive you, 
do not let your own hearts delude you!

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