Heaven so infinitely repugnant to its Nature And certainly to be thus excommunicated from the supreme Happiness of our Natures and be forced to live in everlasting Exile from God and blessed Spirits and wander about like wretched Vagabonds that are chased and driven from all Hopes of Contentment will be unspeakable Damage to our Souls 2ly The Soul of Man is liable to the most dreadful Punishment and Correction of the Father of Spirits There is no Doubt but spiritual Agents can strike as immediately upon Spirits as bodily Agents can upon Bodies and though we who are Spctators only of corporeal Action cannot discern the Manner how one Spirit acts upon another yet there is no Reason to Doubt of the thing and if there be such a mutual Communication of Action between them there is no Doubt but they can mutually make each other feel each others Pleasures and Displeasures and if so then it is only to suppose that the less powerful Spirits are subject to the violent Impression of the more powerful ones and consequently that all finite Spirits are liable to the Lash of an infinite one for why should it be more difficult for the Father of our Spirits to correct our Spirits than it is for the Parents of our Flesh to correct our Flesh For though our Souls are no more impressible with material Stripes than Sun-beams are with the blows of a Hammer yet are they liable to horrid and dismal Thoughts and to be as much pained and aggrieved by them as our Bodies are by the most exquisite Torments So that if God be displeased with us he can imprint his Wrath upon our Minds in black and ghastly Thoughts and cause it perpetually to drop like burning Sulphur upon our Souls He can not only abandon us to the furious Reflections of our own natural Consciences which as I shall shew you by and by will be hereafter extreamly painful and vexatious but he can also infuse supernatural Horrors into us and pour in such Swarms of terrible Thoughts upon us as will give us no Rest but sting us perpetually Day and Night with inexpressible Anguish And of this you have a woful Example in that miserable Wretch Francis Spira who upon that fearful Breach he made in his Conscience by a cowardly Renouncing of his Religion was without any Symptoms of a bodily Melancholy immediately seised with such an inexpressible Agony of Mind as amazed his Physicians astonished his Friends and struck Terror into all that conversed with him For he was so near to the Condition of a damned Ghost that he verily believed Hell it self was more tolerable than those invisible Lashes that were continually laid on upon his Soul and therefore wished he were in Hell and would gladly have dispatched himself thither in hope to find Sanctuary there from those vengful Thoughts which continually preyed upon his Soul And if in this World our Soul is so liable to the Rod of the Father of Spirits we may be sure it will be so in the other too where God if he pleases can render it an eternal Hell to it self by pouring continually into it fresh Floods of horrible Thoughts which being thrust on by an Almighty Power and perpetually urged and repeated on the Mind must necessarily create in it not only a most exquisite but uninterrupted Torment And it being in his Power thus to lash our Souls to be sure when once he is implacably incensed against them as he will be hereafter if we do not appease him he will let loose his Power upon them and make them feel his wrathful Resentments in those dire and frightful Thoughts with which he will Sting and Scourge them for ever And if the Soul carry into Eternity with it those provoking Lusts which do here incense Gods Displeasure against it it will there have no Shelter from the Storm of his Vengance which like a Shower of Fire and Brimstone will be continually pouring down upon it For while it continues in this Shop of Vanities it hath a great Variety of Objects to divert those dismal Thoughts which God many times infuses into it but in the other World all these diverting Objects will be removed and then every dismal Thought which God lets loose will seise and fasten upon it and like Prometheus's Vultures prey on its wretched Heart for ever 3ly The Soul of Man is liable to the Fury and Violence of Devils and other malignant Spirits For when ever the Souls of Men do leave their Bodies they doubtless flock with the Birds of their own Feather and consort themselves with such seperate Spirits as are of their own Genius and Temper for besides that Likeness doth naturally congregate Beings and cause them to associate with their own Kind good and bad Spirits are by the eternal Laws of the other World distributed in two seperate Nations and there live apart from one another having no other Communication or Intercourse but what is between two hostile Countries that are continually designing and attempting one against another So that when wicked Souls do leave this terrestrial Abode and pass into Eternity they are presently incorporated by the Laws of that invisible World into the Nation of wicked Spirits and confined for ever to their most wretched Society and Converse and then how miserable must their Condition be who are damned to such a bellish Neighbourhood and are allowed no other Company but of Devils and devilish Spirits For since as I have already shewed you Spirits can as well act upon one another as Bodies what can be expected when such malignant Spirits meet but that they should be continualâ—â— snarling among themselves and baiting and worrying one another When Wrath and Envy Malice and Ill-nature are the common Genius that inspires and acts the whole Society what can their Conversation be but a continual Intercourse of mutual Mischiefs and Vexations especially considering how they have here laid the Foundations of an eternal Quarrel against one another For there the Companions in Sin will meet who by their ill Counsels wicked â—nsinuations and bad Examples did mutually contribute to each others Ruin and when these shall meet in that woful State how will the tormenting Sense of those irreparable Injuries they have done each other incite them to exercise their hellish Fury upon and play the Devils with one another And when a Company of waspish Spirits so implacably inâ—ensed against one another shall meet and like so many Scâ—rpions Snakes and Addâ—â— be snut up together in the inâ—ernal Deâ—s how is it possible they should forbear â—issing at and sliâ—ging and spitting Venom in one anothers Faces But then besides the mutual Plagues which those incensed and furious Spirits must needs be supposed to instict upon one another they will be â—lso nakedly exposed to the powerful Malice of the Devils those fierce Executioners of Gods righteous Vengeance who as we now find by Experience have Power to suggest black and horrid Thoughts and to torture our
courted you to accept of it and though time after time you scornfully refused and rejected it yet in hope that at last you might be prevailed with you know how long I waited upon you even till you had tired out my Patience and I saw there was no Remedy And do you now charge your not returning to your Duty upon your Hoplesness of Pardon for your former Rebellions 'T is true Lord we cannot deny but thou didst offer us Pardon but alas it was upon an impossible Condition even upon a hearty Repentance and a thorough Reformation which thou knewest we were not then able to perform For by a long Custom of Rebellion against thee we had contracted so many inveterate evil Habits which had so weaken'd and debilitated our Powers that we were no more able to reform and amend our selves than the Leopard is to change his Spots or the Aethiopian his Skin To what Purpose then should we attempt Impossibilities or set our selves to wrestle with Difficulties which we knew we were never able to surmount But pray how did you know that it was impossible for you to repent when by all the Arguments I used with you I could never persuade you to make Trial of it You know in your own Consciences that there are many things that you could do you could have betaken your selves to a serious Consideration of the Duties and Motives of Religion you could have attended and abstained at least from the outward Acts of Sin and humbly implored my Grace and Assistance and that to encourage you to do this and what else was in your Power I gave you the most ample Assurance in the World that I would back and enforce your Endeavours with the Aids of my Grace and in despite of all opposition crown them with Success So that though by your own single Strength indeed you could never have effected your Repentance yet it was far from being impossible to you since you knew that by doing what was in your power you should infallibly oblige me to enable you to do all the rest But blessed Lord what Encouragement had we to repent and return to our Duty for if we had done it we must have bid adieu for ever to all those Pleasures and Delights by which we were invited and detained in the Service of our Lusts and Thou offered'st us nothing in exchange for them but only Sighs and Tears with other ungrateful Rigours of a bitter and severe Repentance How then canst thou blame our Disobedience against thee when we had so many inviting Temptations to it and so little Encouragement to the contrary O prodigious Impudence with what Face can you assert such a notorious Falshood when you know in your own Consciences that besides all those Pleasures that are connatural to my Service and which do vastly exceed all the Pleasures of Sin I laid an immortal Crown at your Feet and faithfully promised you that if you would but spend a short Life in my Service I would at the End of it receive you into that blissful State where you should be happy beyond all your Wishes and to the utmost Capacity of your Nature where you should live with God and Angels in the most rapturous Exercise of everlasting Love and Joy which one would have thought had been sufficient to recompence you for those silly Pleasures for whose sake you deserted me and my Service But since you have trampled upon all my Offers and would by no means be perswaded by all those mighty Tenders I have made you Go ye deservedly cursed into ever Hold Lord we beseech thee and before thou passest thy irrevocable Doom upon us hear this last Petition we shall make for our selves We now confess that we are fully convinc'd and O that we had understood it sooner what infinite Reason we had to adhere to thee and thy Service It is our Misery that these things were not sooner discover'd to us or at least that they were not so clearly discovered as to convince and perswade us Had we but known what we now know we would never have deserted thee as we did and therefore we beseech thee have Pity upon our Ignorance and impute not to our Wills the Faults of our Vnderstandings which are not in our Power to remedy Why is this the utmost that you can plead for your selves Have I not told you all these things before-hand as plainly as Words could express them Have I not instituted an Order of Men in my Church to explain these things to you and to put you in mind of them So that whatever you pretend you could not but know and understand them or if you did not it was because you would not And if you would wilfully shut your Eyes against the Light it was your own Fault that you did not see and you may thank your selves for the Consequents of it I plainly told you where your Wickedness would end and unless you were wilfully blind you could not but see what the Event of your Sin would prove even while you were committing it and you know in your own Consciences that this fearful Doom which now you deprecate you were fairly warned of when you might have easily avoided it by a timely Submission but you would not And seeing you would be so mad as to reject Heaven when it lay before you and leap into Hell with your Eyes open your Blood be upon your own Heads For I have tried all the Arts of Love and Methods of Kindness to reclaim you and since you have render'd them all ineffectual what remains but that you depart from me like accursed Wretches as you are into that everlasting Fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels And now I beseech you do not your own Consciences consent to the Justice and Righteousness of this Procedure Is there any tolerable Plea you can urge at the Judgment-Seat of Iesus Christ which here hath not been fully answered And if so how inexcusable shall we be when we come to plead our own Cause in the great Assembly of Spirits For when these Aggravations of our Disobedience shall be laid open our Guilt will appear so foul and monstrous that we shall doubtless be condemned by the unanimous Vote of all the Reasonable World and as soon as the great Judge hath pass'd his Sentence upon us our own Consciences will be forc'd to eccho Iust and righteous art thou O Lord in all thy Ways Wherefore as we would not be found inexcusably guilty when we come to plead for our Lives before the Tribunal of our Saviour let us all be perswaded to return to his Service and faithfully to continue in it that so instead of Go ye cursed we may hear from his Mouth that welcome Approbation Well done good and profitable Servants enter into the Ioy of your Master III. I come now to the last Proposition in the Text viz. And we beheld his Glory the Glory as of the only Son of the Father In
so evil as its Evils and the one being his Heaven and the other his Hell all other Considerations are overcome by them and to obtain the one and avoid the other he must stick at nothing no not at renouncing his God and his Religion together with all his Hopes of a future Immortality 6. And lastly Living in any known Course of Sin provokes God to give us up to the Power of Delusion For so long as Men submit themselves to the Guidance and Direction of a good Conscience the Spirit of God who is a Spirit of Truth abides with them and not only directs their Wills but also informs their Understandings and enables them to discern the Beauty and Reality of those heavenly Truths which he hath revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures For though since he hath revealed already the whole Will of God to us concerning our eternal Salvation we have no Reason to expect that he will reveal new Truths to us yet seeing so far forth as it is necessary he hath promised and engaged that he will co-operate with us to enable us as well to understand the Will of God as to perform it we have the greatest Reason in the World to depend upon it that so long as we cherish his heavenly Inspirations by yielding to them our free and ready Compliance he will be so far an assâ—sting Genius to our Understandings as to suggest to us those Truths which he hath already revealed and set them before our Eyes in so fair a Light as that we shall not fail more clearly to discern and more distinctly to apprehend them than otherwise we should or could have done For when he writes his Truth upon our Minds it is with such a Victorious Sun-beam as will endure neither Cloud nor Shadow before it Whenever he speaks He speaks not to our Ears but to our Minds and represents Things nakedly and immediately to our Understandings He converses with our Spirits as Spirits do with Spirits without involving his Sense in articulate Sounds or material Representations but objects it to us in its own naked Light and characterizes it immediately on our Understandings And as he proposes the Divine Light to us so he also illuminates our Minds to discern and comprehend it He raises and exalts our Intellectual Powers and as a vital Form to the Light of our Reason invigorates and actuates it and thereby renders its Apprehension of Things more quick and piercing and sagacious Thus doth the Holy Spirit more or less assist us in the true Understanding of Divine Things as he finds us more or less compliant with his heavenly Pleasure and though he stands no more obliged to render our Minds infallible than our Wills impeccable yet so long as by our sincere Obedience to his holy Suggestions we keep our selves under his Conduct and Direction we may depend upon it he will either preserve us from all dangerous Errors or if for just Reasons he should permit us to fall into any such they shall not prove dangerous to us but either we shall be convinced of them while we live or obtain Pity and Pardon for them when we die But whilst we persist in any willful Course of Sin we do not only violate our own Conscience but also repel those good Motions of the Spirit of God whereby he strives to reduce and reclaim us in doing which we continually grieve him and if we do not forbear shall at length provoke him wholly to forsake and abandon us to give us up to our own Hearts Lusts as desperate Wretches with whom he hath hitherto strove and struggled in vain and of whose future Recovery there remains no farther Hope or Prospect And when He hath forsaken us our Mind will not only be left naked and destitute of all those Helps and Advantages for the understanding of Divine Truths which it receives from him but also be exposed to the Cheats and Fallacies of Evil Spirits whose Recreation it is to put Tricks upon our Minds to banter and play upon our easie Faith to cast Mists before our Eyes and therein to juggle away all true Religion from us and foist in the Room of it the most fulsom Errors and Mistakes For so the Apostle tells us of Antichrist the great Deceiver that he should come with all deceivableness of unrighteousness to them that perish because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved And that for that Cause viz. their not receiving the truth in the love of it God should send them strong delusion that they should believe a lye that is by abandoning them to the Power of cheating and deluding Spirits That they all might be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness 2 Thess. 2. 10 11 12. And God grant that this at last prove not our Fate that because we have sinned against the clearest Light and gone astray in all Unrighteousness under the best and purest Religion in the World we are not at length given up by God to follow the wild Delusions of Antichrist and to believe all those fulsom Lyes and Impostures which he from Age to Age hath been imposing upon the World But whether it prove thus or no this I am sure of that by persisting in any vicious Course against the Light and Conviction of our Consciences we highly provoke Almighty God to withdraw his Grace from us and give us up to our own Hearts Lusts and when this is done our own Hearts Lusts will soon betray and give up our Faith to false and vicious Principles of Religion And now having shewn at large what strong and prevalent Tendencies there are in a wicked Life to Apostacy from true Religion I shall conclude this Argument with two or three Inferences 1. From hence I infer What a great Malignity there is in Mens being inconstant to and apostatizing from the true Religion in Compliance with their sinful Affections it being as you see the ill Daughter of a bad Mother a debauched and a dissolute Conscience and consequently partaking of all its natural Bane and Malignity even as all other bad Effects do of the malignant Nature of their bad Causes But the Truth of this will more fully appear by considering the particular Evils which Mens Inconstancy to and Proneness to revolt from the true Religion implies of which I shall give you these five Instances 1. The great Impiety of it 2. The desperate Folly of it 3. The foul Dishonesty of it 4. The shameful Cowardize of it 5. The vast Hazard and Insecurity of it 1. Consider the great Impiety of it He who can part with his Religion or any Principle of it upon any other Terms than a full Conviction of the Falshood of it is either a down-right Atheist who believing no Religion to be true governs himself by this Principle That the wisest Course is to profess none but that which is uppermost and most for his Interest or a prophane and impious
retained against you and the Man being got loose from all the Tyes and Obligations of Fidelity you may be sure he will stick at nothing be it never so foul that his present Interest invites him to to serve himself he will make no Bones whenever he hath a fair Opportunity to cheat and betray his own Father or supplant his dearest Friend or Benefactor and what should hinder him his Conscience and Religion being gone and with them all binding Principles of Truth and Honesty For when a Man forsakes his Religion out of any vicious Affection he doth in Effect make this publick Declaration to the World By this my own Act and Deed I do here for ever renounce all the Obligations to Honesty and fair Dealing with God or Men and am resolved for the future to be deaf and inexorable to all the Importunities of Conscience and Religion From henceforth I will listen to no other Call but that of my worldly Interest when that bids me be honest I will be honest and when it bids me play the Knave I will play the Knave and therefore for the future I warn all that know me to trust me no farther than they can make it my Interest to be true and not to venture the most trifling Matter in which they are unwilling to be wronged either upon my Faith or Word or Oath without demanding of me such ample Securities as may render it impossible for me to wrong them without wronging my self For this is the Principle I now intend to live by That is always best and fittest to be done that is most subservient to my present Interest This in Construction of Fact is the Profession which that Man takes up who in Compliance with any vicious Affection abandons the Profession of his Religion 4. Consider the shameful Cowardize of it The Advantages of true Religion are great enough to encourage a Mind of any Constancy or Firmness to charge through the greatest Difficulties the World can interpose between them and him Who that hath the Spirit of a Man would ever boggle to wade through a narrow shallow Stream of temporary Sufferings whilst on the farther Shore he beholds a Heaven of immortal Joys ready to receive and reward him But for a Man to turn his Back and run away from God and Heaven for Fear only of being disappointed by some leud or covetous or ambitious Hope is such an Instance of vile prostitute Baseness as is beneath even Contempt and Derision For what Danger or Difficulty dares that Wretch encounter that dares not stand by his Religion in which he confesses all his future Hopes are involved for Fear of losing such a Place or being disappointed of such a Preferment which within a few Days or Years he knows very well he must lose for ever He who hath a Mind capable of being scared out of his Religion by such mean Considerations as these is good for nothing but only to be made the Foot-Ball of Fortune to be kick'd up and down upon her scornful Toe at Pleasure who by threatning him with the smallest Evil can huff him out of the greatest Good and finding him a wretched passive Thing that hath not Strength enough to resist her weakest Impressions makes him her Sport and Recreation and turns him into any Thing and tosses him any whither she pleases from Truth to Falshood from God to the Devil and from Heaven to Hell without the least Controul or Opposition For the poor Man's Soul is grown so tender and effeminate that for the greatest Good in all the World he cannot endure the least Air of Suffering to blow upon him Tell him of Suffering for Righteousness Sake and the very Thought of it frights and appales him Present but a Persecution at his Breast and bid him stand and deliver and the crest-fallen Pultroon is presently ready to cry out O spare my Life spare my Skin and take my Religion take my God and all my Hopes of Heaven and Immortality And who but an infamous Coward would ever endure to be hector'd out of so vast a Good by the weak and impotent Evils of this World which if they do their worst can only rob him of a few transitory Enjoyments which without their Constraint he must ere long take his leave of for ever How ridiculously mean-spirited would it be for a Man to deliver up his Purse to a Thief who he knows hath no other Weapon but a slender Switch to hurt and offend him But for a Man to deliver up his Religion and with that his God and his Heaven at the demand of a short Skin-deep Affliction which can only disease him for a few Moments and shall then determine in everlasting Pleasure and Delight is a thousand times more mean and ridiculous 5. And Lastly Consider the vast Hazard and Insecurity of a Man's parting with his Religion in Compliance with his vicious Affections For that which moves him to it is only his Prospect of living at Ease a few Years longer or gratifying some covetous Desire or Ambition but whether he obtain these Ends by parting with his Religioâ— is vastly hazardous and insecure Perhaps when I have acted this impious and perfidious Part I may be cast into such Circumstances as may force me upon impartial Reflections and make me see whether I will or no the Blackness and Infamy of my Revolt and Apostacy which if it should happen would inevitably raise such a Swarm of Horrors in my Conscience and cast me into such Agonies and Convulsions of Soul as will render me a Hell and a Devil to my self and give me a thousand times more Pain and Uneasiness than all those temporal Evils could have done for fear of which I ran away from my Religion And if to shun Poverty I should throw my self into Desparation if to avoid a Prison which to an innocent Mind with a righteous Cause can make a Heaven upon Earth I should cast my self into a Hell upon Earth if to keep in a whole Skin I should bring upon my self the intollerable Anguish of a wounded Spirit if to escape being rejected disgraced and discountenanced by Men I should expose my self to the perpetual Clamour and Reproaches of my own Conscience If these Things I say should happen as it s very probable they may I shall find my self miserably disappointed of that Ease and quiet Enjoyment for the sake of which I basely abandoned my Religion I shall find that to save my Garments from being singed I have thrown my Body into a consuming Flame and only exposed my Breast to save my Buckler But then suppose this should not happen suppose my Conscience should be stupid and insensible enough to bear the Guilt of my Apostacy without Remorse or Relenting yet my Prospect of Gain and Advancement in this World is extreamly hazardous and insecure For it is a thousand to one but they to whose Religion I turn and upon whose Favour I depend will by one Means or other