For to resolve to do it, and yet not to do it, is to break our resolution and our faith, to mock God, to falsify and evacuate all the acts of apparent repentance, and to make our pardon hopeless, and our hope fruitless. For resolution is an imperfect act, a term of relation, and signifies nothing but in order to the actions. He is the self-existent and infinite One, to whom belong all power, wisdom, knowledge, and dominion. He upholds all things by the word of his power, preserving them the same amid perpetual change. All the works of men are subject to decay.
Time sweeps away the proudest monuments of human greatness.
Castles, palaces, temples, cities, and even the more ethereal and beautiful creations of genius are destroyed by its ruthless hand. Nor is the power of God less displayed in the moral government of the world. We walk, as it were, among heated ploughshares and smothered fires. Nothing but the might of Omnipotence could hold men and devils in check, and prevent them from turning the universe into one vast and dismal scene of disorder, misery, and ruin. So great, so mighty, so glorious is the Being who lays his command upon us to repent.