ordains it, the tribunal which decrees it, and the Almighty hand which executes it. Here a strong and pathetical description may be made of the greatness of the punishments of the damned.

Having thus established the truth of our proposition, and treated of the degrees of punishments, we may pass on to the vain subterfuges which sinners use on the subject. 1st, It is a distressing subject, therefore they do not like to think about it. You may observe the folly of this conduct; for their condemnation is not the less certain for their forgetting it. They resemble prisoners already in irons, and doomed to punishment, who stifle the sense of their misery by plunging into debauchery. They resemble the old world, who were eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, as the Scripture says, and suddenly, when they least of all thought of it, the flood came and took them all away. They cry Peace, peace, while destruction advances a great pace towards them; and irrecoverably lose the precious moments which yet remain for their escape. 2dly, When worldly men cannot entirely avoid the thought of damnation, which is frequently the case, for God often thunders in their consciences as well as in the air, and these thunder-claps frequently awake the most sleepy; when this is the case, I say, they venture to take refuge in fulse notions. 1. They flee to the mercy of God: "God (say they) is indeed our judge; but he is a gracious judge, he has the compassions of a father," and so on. When a sinner would flatter himself, he will not fail to magnify reigning grace, and to collect all the most tender and soft passages of Scripture on the subject. What a marvellous abuse is this of mercy, to make it an argument against the just punishments their crimes have deserved! True, God is merciful; but he is so only to repenting sinners, and not to those who persevere in their crimes. Mercy, on the contrary, arms itself to pursue the impenitent; for mercy is cruelly abused: nor will mercy allow the impunity of that sinner who persist in sin, and would make compassion itself an accomplice in his crimes. 2. The wicked seldom fail to abuse the evangelical doctrine of the death of Christ: "The blood of Jesus Christ (say they) cleanseth from all sin." But this is to make Jesus Christ the minister of sin, and to entertain

the most horrible of all notions, that he came into the world to leave men in an abyss of corruption, and to make himself a church, a mystical body, composed of infidels and libertines. Harsh as this may appear, it must be so, if there were any room for the illusion of these miserable people, who, to evade the necessity of repentance, oppose the unapplied blood of Christ against the fear of damnation. 3. The greatest part of these people, when they see the sword of divine justice, accustom themselves to hide in a multitude like themselves, and to oppose their num bers against the natural fear of punishment: "If God (say they) were as rigorous as you represent him, paradise would be a desert, and all men would be damned; for how few keep his commandments! how few forsake sin by such a repentance as you require of us!" But Jesus Christ has already answered this vain objection; Many are called, said he, but few chosen. Isaiah and St. Paul have answered it, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant only shall be saved. How great soever the number of those who perish may be, their perdition will be never the less. The death of them who were ingulfed in the deluge was not the less painful for being general; nor was the destruction of the five cities by fire from heaven the less terrible to the unhappy sufferers, because Lot and his family only were saved. 4. One of the most common evasions which the wicked use to elude their conversion, is, to consider damnation as a very distant thing, and to oppose to the idea the advantages and sweetnesses which they find in sinful present objects: "Let us enjoy (say they) the present time, and not trouble ourselves about futurity." I grant, when God is for us, this maxim, of not troubling ourselves about futurity, is good, and necessary to preserve a tranquillity in the mind: but it is only good because it is wise; and it is only wise because we therein commit the care of futurity to the providence of an all-merciful, an almighty Father, who watches over believers, and will suffer no evil to befall them. But there is no greater folly than to be careless about futurity when God is against us. With the help of this negligence, our punishments increase in proportion to our sins: After thy hardness and impenitent heart (says the Apostle) thou treasurest up unto thyself VOL. I.

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wrath, against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Sinners, you would have been a thousand times less miserable, if God had shortened your days, if he had done you the favour (if I may speak so) of putting you to death in your cradle; had he subjected you to the pain of natural death, he would at least have saved you from the accumulated torments which the commission of so many actual sins have deserved; and the longer you live, the more terrible will the judgments of divine justice be; for, as your days increase, the number of your sins increases too. Besides all this, who told you that your damnation was at the distance you imagine? The Lord once said to Cain, If thou doest evil, sin lieth at the door. This every sinner ought to apply to himself; his crimes are at the door. Death follows sin, step by step, wherever it goes; and who can assure you of twenty-four hours life? Conversion (you say) is proper for old men; but it is not proper for young people: let us pass our juvenile years without perplexing ourselves about these scrupulous reflections; they will come in their season." No, they will never come; for the insult you offer to the mercy of God, who calls you, by proudly putting him off till a more convenient season, will provoke him to withdraw when that season comes. You would fix God your time; you would act like sovereigns to him; you would have him go when you say go, and come when you say come: but you are not masters. Do you think to deceive, and act fraudulently with him? Why, were it only for your hypocrisy, you would render yourself eternally unworthy of conversion. 5. The wicked have moreover used themselves to another illusion, that is, to extenuate their sins, and to hide the enormity and number of them: "We are not (say they) so criminal as is imagined; it is the custom of preachers to exaggerate every thing, and to over-act all. We love pleasure, it is true, we labour to acquire riches, we have pride and ambition, we would cut a good figure in the world, and what can be more natural than all this? And where are the saints who are not affected with the same passions?" Foolish souls! I sincerely pity you! I own, were ye to give an account of your actions to me, or, if you please, to the most severe and discerning of all men, yea, were ye to give an account of your

lives to an angel, or to all the angels of heaven together, perhaps you might palliate your crimes; no doubt you would have art and address enough to conceal at least one half of your sins, and to diminish considerably the enor mity of the other half: but neither men nor angels are to enquire into your lives; you must appear before the tribunal of an all-seeing God, before whom there is no veil so thick which he does not penetrate, and in comparison of whom the heavens are unclean, and the angels unwise. Whither will ye go from his Spirit, or whither will ye flee from his presence? If you ascend up into heaven, he is there: if you make your bed in hell, he is there; if you take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall his hand lead you, and his right hand hold you. If you say Surely the darkness shall cover me, be assured the night shall be light about you; know that the darkness hideth not from him, but the night shineth as the day, the darkness and the light are both alike to him. It is an easy thing for a man to flatter himself, and to declare himself righteous, by comparing himself with thieves and highway robbers: but when he compares himself with the unspotted purity of God, when God's immortal hand applies the rule of his law to the heart, the holiest must become nothing, and say to him, Unto thee, O Lord, belongeth righteousness; but unto me, shame, and confusion of face. If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who can stand? My righteousness before thee is as filthy rags. Now, if this be the language of a holy man,-if the righteous scarcely are saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?

But, to speak plainly, all these are only vain pretences, the falsehood of which even the wicked acknowledge; the only reason why they avoid conversion is, that ardent love, that obstinate attachment, which they have to vice. This is the true cause, and all the rest, if they would speak honestly, are only vain pretences. The avaricious is not ignorant that an intense furious love to the world is odious to God and men. The ambitious knows that the Gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to far more noble dignities than any the world can offer; he knows that his ambition is incompatible with that Christian moderation which religion ordains. The voluptuous is not ignorant that his

debaucheries and excesses are directly contrary to the profession of the Gospel. In general, all sinners know very well that they do wrong, and they know also that by such means they draw down upon themselves the wrath and curse of God. Yet, however clear their knowledge of these awful truths may be, when the idea of riches presents itself to the covetous, when that of honours tempts the ambitious, when that of pleasure stares at the debauchee, so powerfully are their passions touched by these objects, that they are insensible to every thing else; all their reason evaporates, and vanishes before these dear objects; the mind is for one thing, the heart for another, and in this combat between judgment and affection the heart always obtains the conquest. Now, I ask, is not this love to sin the greatest fly in the world? when, on the one hand, it renders us incapable of enjoying our selves, and dishonours us in our own eyes, depriving us of one of the most sweet and valuable of all our blessings, which is, a just esteem of ourselves, the joy of being able to approve our own conduct; and, on the other hand, destroys us; for it draws upon us the condemnation of God, and conducts us a great pace-towards those eternal torments which he has prepared for the wicked.

Passing on to the second proposition, (that the practice of good works, and an holy and religious life, is the principal end which the Gospel proposes, and the principal character of a true Christian) you must first establish it by solid Scripture proofs: As-The grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world. Tit. ii. 11, 12. This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. Tit. iii.— The same Apostle elsewhere, distinguishing true from false professors, says, For many walk of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly and who glory in their shame, who mind earthly things: but our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus. Phil. iii.—