And that thou mayst not throw away thy soul and so great a hope, through mere sloth and loathness to be at some pains for thy life, let the text, which hath been thy directory about the things that belong to thy peace, be also thy motive, as it gives thee to behold the Son of God weeping over such as would not know those things.  Shall not the Redeemer’s tears move thee?  O hard heart!  Consider what these tears import to this purpose.

1.  They signify the real depth and greatness of the misery into which thou are falling.  They drop from an intellectual and most comprehensive eye, that sees far and pierces deep into things, hath a wide and large prospect; takes the comfort of that forlorn state into which unreconcilable sinners are hastening, in all the horror of it.  The Son of God did not weep vain and causeless tears, or for a light matter; nor did He for Himself either spend His own or desire the profusion of others’ tears.  “Weep not for me, O daughters of Jerusalem,” etc.  He knows the value of souls, the weight of guilt, and how low it will press and sink them; the severity of God’s justice and the power of His anger, and what the fearful effects of them will be when they finally fall.  If thou understandest not these things thyself, believe Him that did; at least believe His tears.

2.  They signify the sincerity of His love and pity, the truth and tenderness of His compassion.  Canst thou think His deceitful tears?  His, who never knew guile?  Was this like the rest of His course?  And remember that He who shed tears did, from the same fountain of love and mercy, shed blood too!  Was that also done to deceive?  Thou makest thyself a very considerable thing indeed, if thou thinkest the Son of God counted it worth His while to weep, and bleed, and die, to deceive thee into a false esteem of Him and His love.  But if it be the greatest madness imaginable to entertain any such thought but that His tears were sincere and unartificial, the natural, genuine expression of undissembled benignity and pity, thou art then to consider what love and compassion thou art now sinning against; what bowels thou spurnest; and that if thou perishest, ’tis under such guilt as the devils themselves are not liable to, who never had a Redeemer bleeding for them, nor, that we ever find, weeping over them.

3.  They show the remedilessness of thy case if thou persist in impenitency and unbelief till the things of thy peace be quite hid from thine eyes.  These tears will then be the last issues of (even defeated) love, of love that is frustrated of its kind design.  Thou mayst perceive in these tears the steady, unalterable laws of heaven, the inflexibleness of the divine justice, that holds thee in adamantine bonds, and hath sealed thee up, if thou prove incurably obstinate and impenitent, unto perdition; so that even the Redeemer Himself, He that is mighty to save, can not at length save thee, but only weep over thee,