John Bunyan on Warning Sinners

It is not an easy matter to persuade them who are in their sins alive in this world, that they must and shall be damned if they turn not and be converted to God. "Let him testify to them," let him speak confidently, though they frown upon him, or dislike his way of speaking. And how is this truth verified and cleared by the carriages of almost all men now in the world toward them that do preach the gospel; and show their own miserable state plainly to them, if they close not with it! If a man do but indeed labour to convince sinners of their sins, and lost condition by nature, though they must be damned if they live and die in that condition, oh how angry are they at it! Look how he judges, say they, hark how he condemns us; he tells us we must be damned if we live and die in this state! We are offended at him, we cannot abide to hear him, or any such as he; we will believe none of them all, but go on in the way we are a going. "Forbear, why shouldst thou be smitten?" said the ungodly king to the prophet, when he told him of his sins. (2 Chron. xxv. 15, 16.)

I say, tell the drunkard he must be damned if he leaves not his drunkenness; the swearer, liar, cheater, thief, covetous, railers, or any ungodly persons, they must and shall lie in hell for it, if they die in this condition; they will not believe you, not credit you.

Again; tell others that there are many in hell that have lived and died in their conditions, and so are they like to be, if they convert not to Jesus Christ, and be found in him; or that there are others that are more civil and sober men, who, although we know that their civility will not save them, if we do but tell them plainly of the emptiness and unprofitableness of that, as to the saving of their souls, and that God will not accept them, nor love them, notwithstanding these things; and that if they intend to be saved, they must be better provided than with such righteousness as this; they will either fling away, and come to hear no more, or else if they do come, they will bring such prejudice with them in their hearts, that the word preached shall not profit them, it being mixed not with faith, but with prejudice in them that hear it. (Heb. iv. 1, 2.) Nay, they will some of them be so full of anger that they will break out and call, even those that speak the truth, heretics; yea, and kill them. (Luke iv. 25—29.) And why so? Because they tell them, that if they live in their sins that will damn them; yet if they turn and live a righteous life, according to the holy, and just, and good law of God, that will not save them. Yea, because we tell them plainly, that unless they leave their sins and unrighteousness too, and close in with a naked Jesus Christ, his blood and merits, and what he hath done, and is now doing for sinners, they cannot be saved; and unless they do eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, they have no life abiding in them, they gravel presently, and are offended at it, (as the Jews were with Christ for speaking the same thing to them, John vi. 53, 60,) and fling away themselves, their souls and all, by quarrelling against the doctrine of the Son of God, as indeed they do, though they will not believe they do; and therefore he that is a preacher of the word had need not only tell them, but testify to them, again and again, that their sins, if they continue in them, will damn them, and damn them again. And tell them again, their living honestly according to the law, their paying every one their own, their living quietly with their neighbours, their giving to the poor, their notion of the gospel, and saying, they do believe in Christ, will do them no good at the general day of judgment. Ha, friends! how many of you are there at this very day, that have been told once and again of your lost undone condition, because you want the right, real, and saving work of God upon your souls! I say, hath not this been told you, yea, testified unto you from time to time, that your state is miserable, that yet you are never the better, but do still stand where you did; some in an open ungodly life, and some drowned in a self-conceited holiness of Christianity? 

Therefore, for God's sake, if you love your souls, consider, and beg of God, for Jesus Christ's sake, that he would work such a work of grace in your hearts, and give you such a faith in his Son Jesus Christ, that you may not only have rest here, as you think, not only think your state safe while you live here, as you may be safe indeed, not only here but also when you are gone, lest you do cry in the anguish and perplexity of your souls.

—John Bunyan