that he absolutely threatened contrary to what he knew to be truth. And how any one can speak contrary to what he knows to be truth, in declaring, promising, or threatening, or any other way, consistently with inviolable truth, is inconceivable.

Threatenings are significations of something and if they are made consistently with truth, they are true significations, or significations of truth, or significations of that which shall be. If absolute threatenings are significations any thing, they are significations of the futurity of the things threatened. But if the futurity of the things threatened be no true and real, then how can the threatening be a true signification? And if God, in them, speaks contrary to what he know and contrary to what he intends, how he can speak true is inconceivable.

Absolute threatenings are a kind of predictions; and though God is not properly obliged by any claim of ours to fulfil predictions, unless they are of the nature of promises; yet it certainly would be contrary to truth, to predict and say such a thing would come to pass, which he knew at the same time would not come to pass. Threatenings are declarations of something future, and they must be declarations of future truth, if they are true declarations. Its being future alters not the case any more than if it were present. It is equally contrary to truth, to declare contrary to what at the same time is known to be truth, whether it be of things past, present, or to come; for all are alike to God.

Beside, we have often declarations in scripture of the future eternal punishment of the wicked, in the proper form of predictions, and not in the form of threatenings. So in the text, These shall go away into everlasting punishment. So in those frequent assertions of eternal punishment in the Revelation, some of which I have already quoted. The Revelation is a prophecy, and is so called in the book itself; so are those declarations of eternal punishment..... The like declarations we have also in many other places of scripture.

2. The doctrine of those who teach, that it is not certain that God will fulfil those absolute threatenings, is blasphe

that is as God, according to their supposition was oliged to make use of a fallacy to govern They own, that it is needful that men should ap

the world. prehend the elves liable to an eternal punishment, that they might thereby be restrained from sin, and that God has threatened such a pingishment, for the very end that they might be lieve themselves exposed to it. But what an unworthy opinion does this courey of God and his government, of his infinite majestyinen visdom, and all sufficiency!....Beside, they suppose, that though God has made use of such a fallacy, yet it is not such a one but that they have detected him in it. Though God intended men should believe it to be certain, that sinners amable to an eternal punishment; yet they suppose, that they have been so cunning as to find out that it is not certain so that God had not laid his design so deep, but chat such inning men as they can discern the cheat, and defeat the design because they have found out, that there is no necessarconexion between the threatening of eternal punishmented execution of that threatening.

Considering these things, it is not greatly to be wondered at, that the great Archbishop Tillotson, who has made so great a figure among the new fashioned divines, should advance such an opinion as this?

Before I conclude this head, it may be proper for me to answer an objection or two, that may arise in the minds of

some.

1. It may be here said, We have instances wherein God hath not fulfilled his threatenings; as his threatening to Adam, and in him to mankind, that they should surely die, if they should eat the forbidden fruit, I answer, it is not true that God did not fulfil that threatening: He fulfilled it, and will fulfil it in every jot and tittle..... When God said, "Thou shalt surely die," if we respect spiritual death, it was fulfilled in Adam's person in the day that he ate. God immediately took away his image, his Holy Spirit, and original righteousness, which was the highest and best life of our first parents; and they were immediately in a doleful state of spiritual death.

If we respect temporal death, that was also fulfilled: He brought death upon himself and all his posterity, and he virtually suffered that death on that very day on which he ate, His body was brought into a corruptible, mortal, and dying condition, and so it continued till it was dissolved.....If we look at eternal death, and indeed all that death which was compre hended in the threatening, it was, properly speaking, fulfilled in Christ. When God said to Adam, If thou eatest, thou shalt die, he spake not only to him, and of him personally; but the words respected mankind, Adam and his race, and doubtless were so understood by him. His offspring were to be looked upon as sinning in Eim, and so should die with him. The words do as justly allow of an imputation of death as of sin; they are as well consistent with dying in a surety as with sinning in one. Therefore, the threatening is fulfilled in the death of Christ, the surety.

2. Another objection may arise from God's threatening to Nineveh. He threatened, that in forty days Nineveh should be destroyed, which yet he did not fulfil.....I answer, that threatening could justly be looked upon no otherwise than as conditional. It was of the nature of a warning, and not of an absolute denunciation. Why was Jonah sent to the Ninevites, but to give them warning, that they might have opportunity to repent, reform, and avert the approaching destruction? God had no other design or end in sending the prophet to them, but that they might be warned and tried by him, as God warned the Israelites, and warned Judah and Jerusalem before their destruction. Therefore the prophets, together with their prophecies of approaching destruction, joined earnest exhortations to repent and reform, that it might be averted,

No more could justly be understood to be certainly threatened, than that Nineveh should be destroyed in forty days, continuing as it was. For it was for their wickedness that that destruction was threatened, and so the Ninevites took it. Therefore, when the cause was removed, the effect ceased..... It was contrary to God's known manner, to threaten punish

ment and destruction for sin here in this world absolutely, so that it should come upon the persons threatened unavoidably, let them repent and reform and do what they would; agreeably to Jer. xviii. 7, 8. "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." So that all threatenings of this nature had a condition implied in them, according to the known and declared manner of God's dealing. And the Ninevites did not take it as an absolute sentence or denunciation If they had they would have despaired of any benefit by fasting and reformation.

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But the threatenings of eternal wrath are positive and absolute. There is nothing in the word of God from which we can gather any condition. The only opportunity of escaping is in this world; this is the only state of trial wherein we have any offers of mercy, or there is any place for repentance. IV. I shall mention several good and important ends, which will be obtained by the eternal punishment of the wicked.

1. Hereby God vindicates his injured majesty. Wherein sinners cast contempt upon it, and trample it in the dust, God vindicates and honors it, and makes it appear, as it is indeed, infinite, by showing that it is infinitely dreadful to contemp or offend it.

2. God glorifies his justice. The glory of God is the greatest good; it is that which is the chief end of the creation; it is a thing of greater importance than any thing else. But this is one way wherein God will glorify himself, as in the eternal destruction of ungodly men, he will glorify his justice. Therein he will appear as a just governor of the world. The vindictive justice of God will apppear strict, exact, awful, and terrible, and therefore glorious,

3. God hereby indirectly glorifies his grace on the vessels of mercy. The saints in heaven will behold the torments of the damned: "The smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever." Isa. lxvi. 24. “And they shall go forth and

look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: For their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." And in Rev. xiv. 10. It is said,, that they shall be tormented in the presence of the holy angels, and in the pres ence of the Lamb. So they will be tormented in the presence also of the glorified saints.

Hereby the saints will be made the more sensible how great their salvation is. When they shall see how great the misery is from which God hath saved them, and how great a difference he hath made between their state, and the state of others, who were by nature, and perhaps by practice, no more sinful and ill deserving than they, it will give them more of a sense of the wonderfulness of God's grace to them. Every time they look upon the damned, it will excite in them a lively and admiring sense of the grace of God, in making them so to differ. This the apostle informs us is one end of the damnation of ungodly men; Rom. ix. 22, 23. "What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory?" The view of the misery of the damned will. double the ardor of the love and gratitude of the saints in heaven.

4. The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints for ever. It will not only make them more sensible of the greatness and freeness of the grace of God in their happiness; but it will really make their happiness the greater, as it will make them more sensible of their own happiness; it will give them a more lively relish of it; it will make them prize it more. When they see others, who were of the same nature, and born under the same circumstances, plunged in such misery, and they so distinguished, O it will make them sensible how happy they are. A sense of the opposite misery, in all cases, greatly increases the relish of any joy or pleasure.