is no place of pious inclination among all the damneds cries there is not one penitentiall groan God may say to all the damned what he said concerning Sodome and yet yeeld no relief to them to wit if there be ten righteous among them he will save the whole body of them So that I say there is no rationall foundation can be conceived that annihilation should be found in eternity but not only so but if we peruse the Scriptures which are the established rule of our faith we shall not finde the least footsteps or prints give light to any such imagination In Eccles 12. 7. the wiseman The soul upon its separation must return to receive sentence and judgment God sent it into the body and he may recall it and judge it for what it hath done in the body Pemble speaks of the souls return to God but makes no mention of the soules returning to nothing Death indeed opens the window of the cage for the soul to flie up to her Creatour to receive a sentence of absolution or execution But That there should be a time when the persons that are cast upon eternity shall be buried in a totall abolition or wither into a finall extinction the Scriptures are wholly silent Arg. 1 Moreover how would this clip the wings of a Saints zeal in his pious pursuites after the honour of God And how would this prompt the presumptions of wicked men in all sinfull abomination should the Lord after the passage of some spaces of time extinguish and put out the beings of the glorious Saints and calamitous sinners The sinner would grow audacious upon this account that his miseries shall be but pro tempore for a certaine time and duration Arg. 2 Nor would this be a supervacaneous argument should it be urged that God in the very Originall copy of his intention in creating man created him either to be his everlasting Creasti nos propter te irrequietum est cor nostrum donec veniamus ad te Aug. favorite to be partaker of those honours and beatitudes he should shed upon him or else to proclaime his justice in undergoing the torment and woe of his eternall vengeance It is inconsistent to the wisdome of God to create man to communicate himselfe unto and then annihilate him to vote a designe and to crosse it God is an eternall being and must be enjoyed by an eternall being which of all the creation is Men or Angels Nor is this to be overpast in silence Arg. 3 That this is one observable and specificall distinction that God hath put between Man and other Creatures Psal 49. 20. that when other creatures die and evaporate into nothing Man only survives to all eternity In Rev. 14. 13. the Spirit saith there the Saints die and their works follow them what to do unlesse as a Jury to give in their verdict for the Saints that he may be enthroned in everlasting felicity What need was there for the gracious actions and holy life of a Saint to follow him as a goodly train to Gods tribunall if this glorious inhabitant in heaven shall be taken asunder into its primitive nothing That is a very pregnant place Dan. 12. 3. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightnesse of the firmament and they that turn many to righteousnesse as the stars for ever and ever observe for ever and ever Arg. 4 And I might put the question without inpertinency What reason is there more for the annihilation of man after the transiency of certain ages then for the annihilation of Angels the glorious Saints are as pure as the good Angels shining in as much royall perfection Luk. 20. 36. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the damned sinners cannot embrue themselves in more guilt then evill Angels do Now that the Angels shall be annihilated in Scripture we find not the least conjecturall probability And for the close of this Argument Jud. v. 6. we are now upon let us but weigh that wish of Balaam mentioned Num. 23. 10. O that I might die the death of the righteous and that my latter end might be like his Now I say how vain frivolous and ridiculous would this wish be should the curtaines of eternity be drawn by an act of annihilation could extinction stop the breath of eternity and the vanity of this desire will appear in three things There would be no profit in this request Annihilation will bury all joy even the happinesse of millions of ages should the glorified Saint be resolved into nothing all his glory he did enjoy would be annihilated with him annihilation would be the grave of all his former blessednesse and what profit can there be in the death of the righteous if annihilation shall be the Sepulcher of that felicity that death ushers the Saint into There would be no wisdome in this request For annihilation will smother all fears too What need Balaam desire to shelter himself in the dissolution of the godly Annihilation would strangle all those feares Could an extinction befall eternity the fires of hell would be but a sharpe supper as the Martyr said in another case And could we fall into the tombe of annihilation trembling and fear would be buried with us This request would be ridiculous For Balaam seemeth in this petition to put a large distinction between the departure of the Saints and the sinner out of this world death dealing with the hypocrite and the believer as Pharaoh did with his Baker and his Butler the one he restores the other he executes But now annihilation Gen. 40. 21 22. puts no difference but makes all even alike Where was the difference between righteous Abel and bloudy Cain famous Sion and filthy Sodome before the Creation when all things were abortive in an empty nothing Colours differ not in the darke the most orient are not distinguished from the most pedantique and therefore some Philosophers make light to be the ratio formalis the specificall difference of colour And so all things are of the same value in the night of extinction or annihilation But let me only subjoyne at the foot of the argument these two things It is inconsistent to the promise of Christ who hath signed all his promises Fiet in resurrectione ut in singulis beatis resurgentibus mors abolebitur vita aeterna efflorescet Alap which he hath made to his converts and to believers with the seal of everlastingnesse that there should be any stop or close in eternity if Christ promise his Saints life it is everlasting life Joh. 3. 16. if an inheritance it is an eternall inheritance Hic est finis mortis redemptionis mediationis Christi totiusque novi testamenti a Christo instituti ut sc adipiscamur aeternam haereditatem a Christo promissam Id. Heb. 9. 15. Nay the Apostle amplifies this argument in a rare phrase 2 Tim. 1. 10. Who hath brought life and immortality to light
sees the crown before him as Paul Col. 1. 24. Wherefore we rejoyce Col. 1. 24. in our sufferings and why one great Paulus ostendit quomodo se gerat in afflictionibus non solum animo sorti sed laeto alacri Dav. reason was those Martyrdomes stormed heaven for him The troubles and wounds of a Saint here they are those skarres which shall be his trophees for ever and his sighs shall be turned into everlasting persumes So that one means to secure eternity is to labour after life courage magnanimity and alacrity in sufferings which are those bloudy badges of Christ which he will cure and crown with eternall felicity if thou followest Christ in via arctiore in a rough way thou wilt find him in patria uberiore in a glorious home Therefore do not decline shift find out methods for the evasion and escape of necessary afflictions CHAP. XVIII Vse of Exhortation Branch 3 The third branch of the Use will be That you would entertaine a right notion of Death as an in-let to Eternity WEE must look upon death as the common passage as the Posterne gate to eternity the Straights to the Ocean the Heathens they fancied concerning death that after death there was Charon to waft them over the River Styx c. But this is most certain Mors est vehiculum morientis that death only lands the soul upon the coast and shoar of eternity it is only the short bridge to an everlasting condition It is but the twinkling of eye when man dies but he awakens either in eternall woe or welcome Death only is the dying Mors non est obitus sed abitus patient either Sledge or Chariot to carry the Prisoner or Courtier to misery or everlasting felicity Indeed some mens passage is more rough then others some men die with more torment and pain and distemper then others but yet death is but the common road to eternity It is strange to observe what notions most men have of death Some look upon death as the debt of nature that common engagement Job 1. 1. which every one must discharge and Job 14. 14. for which death will arrest every one of us And so men suppose that having paid the debt they are clear for ever as if there were no eternity behind the hangings And therefore they pant not after a Christ nor search the rols of heaven for a pardon nor wrestle with God for a smile but conjecture that surrending according to deaths summons there is an end of all their troubles and triumphs they confine all their care and heat to cocker and supply a subsistence here and when they come to die all their debts are paid What stupid ignorance are most men infatuated with to suppose that because death gives them a discharge of their life it should therefore give them a discharge of their sins Let such desperate sinners conceive that death immediately will clap up their souls in everlasting darknesse and at the resurrection their sins shall drag their worme-eaten bodies from the gaol of the grave to receive the sentence and doome of a miserable eternity and Mat. 5. 26. they shall finde death not to be the discharge but the beginning of their debt and that it shall deliver them into such pursevants hands Mat. 18. 28. as will be plucking them by the throat to all eternity Others look on death as the grave of all their troubles the very exit of all their perplexities they wait for the good time and do imagine that after Mors corporalis est privatio vitae corporis facta per animoe se parationem ab illo propter peccatum Polan all their restlesnesse heats disturbances disappointments and agonies in the world they shall take up their Inne or rather their home in the Sepulchre and shall lie as free from trouble as their marble statues the coffin shall entâ—mbe all their vexations they suppose they shall goe to bed and to rest in their winding sheet Ah! do such vain men conjecture the sin which is the great Promoter Wolfe Lyon Tyger of the soul will cease its pursuites when the sinner comes to the grave or will be bribed by the rhetorick Heb. 9. 22. of a worme Sin to a wicked man is like a tormenting disease to the poor helplesse patient which will not be inchanted with good words but will be at the heels of death as the messenger of Gods wrath to lay hold upon the soul immediately and non-suite it to everlasting losse and misery These deluded sinners who suppose that death will crucifie all their troubles and obliterate all their calamities doe but take up their rest in a shadow death shall not rocke their souls asleepe though it cast their bodies into a temporary swoon Others look on death as a thing of course and they cry we must all die sooner or later And it is the inquiry of the world when any die more what he hath left then where is he gone the inquest is rather after his wealth then his soul Most men look upon the setting of their lives as we do upon the rising of the Sun as a thing common and inobservable And is this all deluded Sinner It is true when the Modus moriendi the way of dying is strange and prodigious then greater impressions are made but otherwise the thing it self is but the subject of a talkative discourse But let the Vulgar of the World steep their thoughts in this meditation death determins us to the throne or the wrack for ever It is either Christs herald to proclaime concerning the deceased Saint Thus shall it be done unto Esth 6. 11. the man whom the King delighteth to honour as Haman cryed before Mordecai Or else it shall be the Sergeant of God sent to arrest the sinner without bail or mainprize to under goe the stroake of eternall vengeance In a word let us ralley up the follies of most men into these foure ranckes 1. The sick patient he cries out for death to take him out of the furnace of his torment that his disease and distemper may be at an end But let me tell the Patient if he is sick of sin death will be a bad Physitian it will heighten his disease turne the rod into a Scorpion will turn the mild soft distemper imagine it in the highest torture the Patient undergoes into a miscellany of all torments let them be boyld to the height 2. The discontented sinner whose disappointments and losses in the world fill him with agonies and perplexities he hanging upon the Crosse stretches out his armes to embrace death and supposeth that it will ease him of all his pangs and vexations but fond sinner death to the wicked is but a Goale delivery and how fretfull wilt thou be when thy soul shall be disappointed to eternity 3. And the old decrepit bed-rid sinner whose body is a common hospitall who hath a bundle of diseases
what wofull notions we must paraphrase upon the death of the wicked Death to the wicked is an inlet to eternall wrath it opens the sluces of divine indignation it powres out and unstops the vials of Gods displeasure upon the reprobate soul those drops of anger which here in this life sometimes blasted and scorcht the sinner death turnes into a perpetuall storme and sets the reprobate as a marke for God to shoot all his arrowes of displeasure against him Here indeed in this life the fiercest anger God drawes out Hab. 3. 2. against a sinner is full of mixtures of mercy and pity is attempered with bowels and compassion hath its intermissions and breathing times hath its pauses and stops but death shall cast Rev. 6. 17. the sinner into the furnace whose heat shall not be allayed by any mitigation Death to the sinner is his particular doomesday the firstday of his dreadfull account as soon as ever death divorces Heb. 9. 27. vorces the soul from the body and gives Seneca Philosophi aiunt Mors homini natura est non poena immo vero ipse dico mors homini poena est non natura Corn. A Lap. the parting blow God passeth an immediate sentence of eternall death upon the widowed soul and the Lord begins the execution of the deceased sinner which shall never be overtaken with a close or end Then the sinner shall begin to reape the fruit of all his evill wayes and passively discharge every particular debt Then all the wounds of a wicked mans conscience shall fester and ranckle with intolerable pain and Gods executions shall finde out every vaine thought and die it in the bloud of the soul death immediately Mors est peccati comes filia stipendium in its stroak summons the sinner to the bar to receive the sad sentence and doom which shall be to all eternity in the execution vengeance doth but wait for a sinner till the clock of death strikes and then it seizeth on him as an everlasting prey Indeed the soul being the nobler part of man and so the more blame-worthy as casting it self away upon the account of sin and likewise being the principall agent in all offences for the poor body is dragged and animated by the soul to all miscarriages that gives life and will and love to all corporcall iniquities the body of it selfe being but a dead piece of clay I say the soul being thus the grand agent in all sin it receives its doom first and fals under its wofull execution and death doth cast it upon the spikes of immediate and everlasting ruine Death to the sinner is the ultimate period of all his comforts all his good As the Poet saith Mors ultimalinea rerum and I may in reference to the wicked solaminum too dayes are buried in the grave with him No lightning of comfort followes the thunder of his death when once the sinner dies there is no hope left of ever enjoying again a smile from God applause from the world refreshment from relations supplies from the creature sweetnesse from ordinances or ever lying in the shade of any relaxation In dying the sinners sun is set with all its beams of mercy and consolation the darknesse of the night of death as Joh. 9. â— death is called sometimes shall bury all colour of satisfaction or ease to the sinner In a word to close this Chapter Death in the generall is not mans conclusion but his initiation to joy or torment rather the budding then the withering of his being In death the 2 Cor. 5. 8. soul is neither must out nor rockt asleep death is but the Alarum of the soul to triumph or tribulation Death is not a gulfe but a gale not to drown the dying patient in but for him to passe thorough it can no more bury the soul then the grave could detaine the body of Christ Finally it is mans summons which cites both Saints and sinners before God the courtiers to attend and waite on his throne and the prisoners to heer and undergoe their doom CHAP. XIX Vse 2. of Terrour AND if our future condition be eternall What terrour should it strike into the hearts of all wicked men What do ye mean fond sinners Can ye hang in fiery chains for ever Remember your everlasting Mat. 3 12. condition your eternity the unquenchable fire Can ye undergoe a fit of the stone for a thousand years Or lie upon the wracke for a million of ages Can ye lie upon the points of needles for more ages then there are atomes in the Sun or drops in the Sea Can ye suffer scalding lead in your wounds in the raw gashes of your consciences for such a duration And what is this cold picture of misery to the damneds eternity Look with amazement Eph. 3. 17. on your future calamity unlesse by faith you hide your souls in the Mat. 25. 41. wounds of Christ Pray consider how dolefully will thae dismall voice sound Go ye cursed into everlasting fire The Martyrs fire turned them into Quam tristis vox est judex cum dixerit Ite ashes but the damneds shall not they shall be scorcht with everlasting flames be ever in the act of execution Can O aeternitas aeternitas tu sola ultra omnem modum supplicia damnatorum exaggeras ye endure ye delicate soft effeminated sinners who now cannot endure the buffeting of gentle blast of wind I say can ye endure to be stung with Serpents for as many ages as there are haires on your heads or to drinke the poyson of Aspes for as many centuries as there are sands on the shoar if ye can goe on in your licentious vanities Tell Quis dicere valeat quae impiis male viventibus tormenta sunt praeparata Cassianus me sinner when thou hast spent millions of yeares in torment what an agony will it be to recollect thou hast not spent a moment Shouldest thou lie to eternity on a bed of down how tedious how wearisome would it be how then canst thou lie on a bed of flames How wretched sinner canst thou hear the dolefull knell of an Adesse intolerabile Abesse impossibile everlasting funerall And will those transient glances of sin and pleasure thou hast enjoyed here make eternity spend the more delightfully shall thy enjoyments the bed and the banquet thy lust and luxury in rumination of them be any pastime in hell Remember if thou art Christlesse thou art to be prest to death for ever for ever And therefore awaken ye drowsy and secure sinners lest suddenly ye fall into infinite death Is it not more noble and plausible to swimme in tears then melt in flames The Saints under Potior est pâ—â—nitentia quam poena the Altar cry How long Lord holy and true Rev. 6. 10 11. But they shall wear white garments but how dolefully shall the damned cry how long
times shall be swallowed and drowned in that Ocean All persons then shall sail for ever upon the Sea of joyes or calamitous eternity After the day of judgement all ages and centuries shall be fledged and leave the world which shall be remaining and the particular parcels of Time shall be all summed up in the totall of Eternity So that now these emblems which represent eternity themselves shall have an end so that they are rather the shadowes then representations of eternity CHAP. XIII Concl. 13 Man 's eternall condition admits of no revocation THere is no sounding of a retreat after we are lanched into the Ocean of eternity then there is no setting us a shoar again to re-act a new life in the world When once the trap-door is let down upon us there is no breaking Fugit irrevocabile tempus that prison-door when we have once passed through that darke entry and shot that inevitable gulf there is then no more retirement back again from behind those darke hangings to visite the shoar of the world Eternity locks up all back-doores against them that are cast upon that condition and prevents all possibilities of flight or escape Christ and his Apostles raised Joh. 11. 44. indeed many from the dead but it was Act. 20. 12 in an extraordinary way and their graves were forced open by the petarre and engine of a miracle Eternity whether it lands its passengers upon the shoar of glory or locks them up in the dungeon of misery it makes their condition equally irreversible Death is not a dream or a swoon Facilis descensus Averni Sed revocare gradum c. Hic labor hoc opus est Virg. nor in this regard a sleep to be awakened again in this life but when once it hath closed the eyes of the departed patient the deccased bids an everlasting farewell to all things here below and enters upon a new but never ending condition Pythagoras and his disciples speake much of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a transmigration of the same soul into many bodies and that death only causeth the soul to change its tenement and habitation but yet in this dream there is no mention made of the same body to be animated again and reflourish in this life by a new resurrection When the soul in death takes its flight and leaves its loving mate the body it shall meet no more with it till the day of the generall Assizes The arrest of eternity as it will not take bale so neither will it suffer any evasion Let not the voluptuous sinner please himself with a vain dream that after death he shall return again and gratifie his sensuall luxuries his palat shall be downe in the grave and being thrown into the Ocean of eternity he shall get up above water no more We may meet with Dives in the flames of death but no Luk. 16. 23. more at his banquets the Zelanders Psal 49. 19. motto Luctor emergo I strive and get up is a paradox in eternity And what should make eternity cast its captives again upon the shoar of the world 1. The sinners sinfulnesse cannot demerit a relaxation or a regaining of his liberty when the soul by death elapsed from the body and fallen into torment shall blaspheme God exasperated by that misery it is tormented in how can justice it self give that damned soul a dispensation for a re-entry in its body again And 2. So likewise the Saints when death hath broken the fetters of all their miseries here and the grave hath swallowed all their moans and feares how shall they return to react all those tragedies and martyrdomes they broak through in this life Psal 44. 22. Gods paternall indulgence will not suffer them to put to Sea again No Eternity is like that cave that whoever Soles occidere redire possunt Nobis cum semei occidit brevis lux Nox est perpetua una dormienda entered into it returned no more again When once we are within the gate of eternity the key is turned upon us and no ransome or price shall be available to turn the lock again And it must be so 1 In reference to the blessed Reas 1 They shall return no more to this life when once cast upon eternity Because their errand is then done and they have accomplished that taske that God sent them into the world for Indeed after death their workes shall follow them but they shall return no more to their work They Rev. 14. 13. Sancti in coelo requiesoent a laboribus suis nempe quia exexantlaâ—i sunt in stadio hujus vitae Par. have made all those prayers and shed all those tears performed all those services and underwent all those reproaches they have suffered all those wounds and broake through all those prisons God had allotted for them in this life The Israelites when they had undergone so many years of bondage God then made way for them to enter Canaan and the Saints when like the Sunne they have broak through so many clouds then they set sail on the Ocean of a glorious eternity And what Christ said when he was giving up the ghost so may all the Saints say It is finished Their work Heb. 4. 9. is over their taske is done their toyle is past and now eternity makes their bed in inexpressible glory and blessednesse the grave closeth the worke of the Saints and eternity gives them their wages and when once they have as when death seizeth upon them they have executed that message which their father hath sent them into the world to performe have brought so much glory to the name of God toyl'd so much with their own hearts scattered so many perfumes Sancti in aeternitate sunt milites emeriti in the Church of Christ then God gives them a dismission and they shall lean their heads in the bosome of Christ for evermore And therefore nothing Joh. 17. 24. can occasion the Saints re-entry into the world after once they have bid farewell to it when the very end and intention of their stay here is fully accomplished This would cast an insufferable dampe and discouragement on the services and sufferings of the Saints here should there be a revocation in their blessed eternity Should they be remanded to their prisons again after they have escaped their goal by death for indeed the world Hic via superne Patria as the Father speaks is but the Saints prison not his paradise not his delight but his dungeon and unkind lattice or wall between Christ and him Death is to the Saints but as the Jaylour to open the grate and set them free in everlasting liberty Now I say for Heb. 11. 13. them to be shackled in the world again after death had filed off their chaines what is this but to cast a languour and faintnesse on all their performances Indeed that is a rationall plea of the Apostle 1
die of it self unlesse it wither by the command of a superiour power but of it self it cannot die for in its own nature it is immortall its essence is eternall One cals the soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and it is Eccles 12. 7. a bud of eternity the originall of the soul speakes it's immortall God still Mat. 10. 28. breaths into men living souls and our souls come from the father of lights God lights up souls in men they bubble 2 Cor. 5. 10. forth from the fountain of Spirits Act. 23. 8. that spirituall essence They are a Act. 7. 59. beam of the most glorious Sun Our Mors saepe somno in Scripturis comparatur Joh. 11. 11. 1 Thess 4. 13. sed sciendum quod hic somnus homini mortuo attribuatur non ratione animae quae est purus actus sed ratione corporis Chemn bodies were raised out of the dust but our souls are of a more noble descent and originall the soul runs parallel to all eternity There are strong and pregnant probabilities of the souls immortality to a naturall eye to a Philosophicall eye with common light And 2. To evidence the souls unperishablenesse we may but take notice how oftentimes in a languishing and consumed body you have a most vigorous well-complexioned and flourishing soul Sometimes the soul is so acute that it even cuts the sheath of the body in sunder the body is oft in the wane when the soul is in the full all which speakes the souls in mortality so that naturally the soul cannot die To this argument I might annex many more 3. As the testimony of conscience 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrys which discernes between good and evill and often rejoyceth in the one and trembles at the other even when there is no humane witnesse or fear of man to cause either What is the reason that oftentimes when the sinner hath committed some villanous act and the Sun it self hath not been conscious to it but it hath been perpretrated with admirable secresie yet then the sinner Multa argumenta probant animae immortalitatem 1. Dei cognitio qua imbuitur quia ad vitae sontem non pervenit vigor evanidus 2. Praeclaris dotibus quibus pollet anima divinum aliquid ei insculptum esse clamitat totidem essentiae immortalis testimonia quot recta justa honesta concipimus quae sensus corporis latent c. is broken upon the wheel and tortured upon the wrack of conscience doth not this clearly and pregnantly demonstrate that there is a future immortality and the soul shall be dragged to a fearfull tribunall why should the soul tremble at a sinfull if secret commission could it be ascertained of a safe impunity And happily the sin committed is a violation of Gods law and not mans or it may be so clancularly acted that the eye of man may be never privy to it This and many other arguments bring in their attestation for the souls immortality and that unfadingnesse is essentiall to it And therefore the assertion remaineth firme that there can be no conclusion in eternity by dissolution in reference to the soul for that is immortall And 2. Neither shall the body die after the resurrection this the Scriptures clearly affirme I shall only cast my eye upon one pregnant and full place 1 Cor. 15. 53. where the Apostle speaking of the manner of the Resurrection saith This corruptible must put on Memorandum est quod Apost dicit demonstrativè Hoc corruptibile hoc mortale sc corpus aperte sic indicans hoc non aliud sâ—bstantia corpus quod nunc mortale gestamus immortale tandem resurrecturum Par. incorruption and this mortall must put on immortality speaking of our bodies Then shall the persons of mankind be eternized in their subsistencies nor shall death or decay eat or worme out their beings But these shattered pieces of clay our bodies which here are but the sinke of diseases and have a thousand windowes in them for death to creep in after the resurrection shall fall asunder no more Gods decree shall infuse into them an essentiall immortality And if we consider the bodies of mankind after the resurrection as related to the Saints or sinners 1. As the rich cases of the soules Luk. 20. 36. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the glorified Saints they cannot die Let that clear text give in its verdict Phil. 3. 21. Who shall change our vil body that it may be fashioned like unto Cristus transfigurabit corpus in aliam figuram non essentialem sed accidentalem ut sc ex corruptibili faciat corpus incorruptibile ex passibili impassibile ex terrestri coeleste A Lap. his glorious body observe here a rare change indeed but no intimation of death the bodies of the Saints which here were the common subjects of pain torment and distemper when past the resurrection shall outvie the Sun in glory 2. Nor can the bodies of the damned die after the resurrection those deformed cages of more deformed soules shall never be blest with a dissolution Divine wrath shall make the bodies of the reprobates lapides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like those stones which naturalists speak of which do alwayes burn They shall be buts for the arrowes of Gods displeasure ever to be shot at the smoak of the lake shall not smother them nor the flames of hell consume them not the least member shall be turned into cinders by everlasting burnings The torments of hell are Mat. 25. 46. often called fire whether figurative or Mat. 3. 12. reall we shall not discusse the question Mat. 25. 41. but this we may conclude that the bodies of the damned are more proper fuell for fire then the souls Isa 33. 14. and everlasting burning will call for immortall bodies Nor shall eternity have an end by annihilation After the passage of millions of ages in eternity mans person shall not be annihilated the glorious Saints shall not be by divine power reduced into an empty nothing those crowned personages shall not be folded up in a confused Chaos Nor Poena infernalis est restis ex tribus câ—ntexta funiculis ex obscuritate tenebrarum acerbitate poenarum diuturnitate miseriarum Innoc. shall the tortured Hypocrites be reduced into their primitive and originall principles or blow themselves up into an aery conception a meer chimera for besides the absurdity of such a fond imâ—gination which hath no argument or reason to be founded or bottomed upon for what should cause the Lord to dash in pieces his vessels of honour or melt them into their materia prima their primitive vacuity heaven cannot harbour any sinfull provocation Or what should induce the Lord so Eph. 5. 5. far to draw out his pity to the damned as to command their torments to dispatch them or cause their souls to evaporate Hell is a Sodome which harbours no Lot in it it
the fruit of sin were turned by God into a blessing and had the stampe of Christ upon it how would the soul be unsatisfied till it saw death cloathed 2 Cor. 5. 8. with the armes of Christ as his Herald to go before him into the Court of glory till he observed death to be only the golden bark to bring the soul to the shoare of a blessed eternity And such meditations would make the soul to keep Court every day to call conscience to the bar and to arraigne irregular thoughts to put Job 14. 14. the heart upon more recluse searches and all to facilitate death and to sweeten the approaches of it When a soul seriously and in its coolest thoughts considers eternity how doth it look on death as its greatest Crisis Mors ultima linea rerum that which will turn the scale one way or the other either land the soul safe in an eternall rest or harbour or shut it Psal 49. 8. within the grate of everlasting imprisonment from whence there is no redemption Such seasonable contemplations Tota vita est meditatio mortis would fill the soul with cares solicitousnesse preparations for expectations of reckoning upon death as the Swedish King before the day of battell what ordering of his army incouraging his Souldiers multiplying his prayers powring out his teares before God he knew not but he might die the next day So eternity well contemplated would make us weigh dive into study the nature of death the originall the suddennesse the certainty and above all the consequence of it it kils or cures for ever In a word the study of eternity will make death More familiar to us we cannot study the Sea of eternity but we must contemplate on the wind of death which is but the stile over which we goe either into the wildernesse of misery or into the green pastures of happinesse Our dayly Contemplations of our everlasting condition would make death a houshold servant which is the common road to eternity as more hereafter Death would not be strange in its stroake were it not so in our meditations thoughts of eternity step beyond death And to familiarize death would be the wombe of these three great advantages 1. Were death familiar to us it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist would breake the force of death and take away the horrour and terrour of it the stroke would not be so grievous so frightfull so full of execution dangers the more invisible the more intolerable the burden is the lightest that is well poysed before-hand Sinners that put farre off the evill Amos 6. 3. day as the Prophet speakes how tremblingly and with what horhour do they behold the ghost of death 2. Were death familiar to us it would arme us against death we prepare more rigorously for the enemy in the field then for the enemy in the ambush Men fight not a duell without a Second nor should we meet death without our armour a pardon in our bosome an interest in Christ the great seal for glory and heaven Therefore men so little prepare for death because they so little thinke of death it is so little in their provisions because it fals not in their contemplation But did we meditate on eternity those very thoughts would be a constant passing bell in our ears a deaths head before our eyes and alarme to our soules the thoughts of death and eternity being inseparable But this familiarizing of death it would uâ—â—â—ske the ambuscado of it and forâ—â—e us against it Have I found thee O my enemy as the 1 King 21. 20. King said And 3. Were death familiar to us it would strangle many fruitlesse and frothy thoughts and designes hear the passingbell when thou lookest upon the gaudy picture of the world cast an eye upon the deaths-head Remember that sentence Luk. 12. 20. This night thy soul may be taken from thee Had we a deaths-head in our study our coffin our winding-sheet it would smother many a carnall designe sinfull contrivance vain dream of the world peevish resolution and frothy Contemplation The thoughts of eternity would make death more expected We should not Mors sanctorum non interitus sed introitus Chrys only thinke of death but waite for it as the Prisoner for his keeper to open the prison-door as the Sentinell for the morning or the poor tyred watchman for the dawning of the day such thoughts look on death as the traveller doth on a muddy plash at the entrance of a famous City Observe Jacobs speech Gen. 49. 18. when waiting the good houre of death I wait for thy salvation O Lord. This is the foord the Felix ante obitum nemo supremaque funera Ovid. Christian is to passe over the narrow and slippery bridge The contemplative Christian whose meditations prey upon eternity doth but wait when the clock will strike when death will come that is the alarum to eternity Death is but a Watch with an Alarum Death is but the Rev. 6. 8. pale horse which carries every one out of this world into an everlasting state 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dlato So the confiderate Christian winding up his meditation to this bottomlesse state is alwayes upon his watchtower when the postern gate of death will open as the passenger waites at the shoar side for the Packet boat so is death to mankind The thought of eternity would make death more facil and easie and pleasant 2 Cor. 5. 1. When mortall diseases batter this tabernacle of clay we carry about us viz. our bodies meditations of eternity look on Christ now storming the body to take the soul As one in an enemies Garrison rejoyceth to see his own party coming to storme the Town and release him All death pangs saith eternity well studied doe but lanch the soul into the Ocean of eternity these distempers open the gate to eternity they rend the vail of the temple of the body and let flie the soul to eternity death to the contemplative Christian is not so much his storme as his stile not so much his tempest as his triumph in death the Saint cries Victoria The wicked wretch whose cogitations have 1 Cor. 15. fled from eternity nor ever would sail on that sea with what difficulty doth he wrestle and struggle with death How is he dragged to dissolution as to execution how would he bribe stop suspend and divert the stroke of death could all his Quando impii moriuntur in inferno posiâ—i sunt mors depascit eos Ger. strength allies greatnesse and revenues purchase it There is nothing more terrible ghastly and frightfull to him then the dreadfull appâ—rition of death and the great reason is because he hath set the skreen of sin and the world between him and eternity this makes him he will not to the block he is arrested by death he is passively the patient of death the sinner I say who hath not
and a systeme of distempers about him who hath more diseases then veins so that if Galen had lost any disease to treat on he might finde it in him he courts and cals for death and waits for one issue more among all the rest an issue out of the world But doth such reumatique flegmatique decrepit frantique sinners suppose death will be a crutch to keep them from falling into hell Surely those diseases which attend nature in the socket in the declension of it if grace have not cured them death shall turne them into insupportable maladies 4. And the tired worldling who hath gone himself out of breath in the pursuance of world affaires he looks upon death as a quiet and retired chamber to rest in But let such a one consider if in all his pursuites he hath not followed an interest in Christ and made that the object of his sweat he shall take up his lodging in a bed of eternall flames Not to amplifie the argument further Death doth not strangle the sinner or stiffle the Saint but only serries them both over to eternity But it shall land them at a different place as may be manifest upon the review of these particulars And first let us observe what death is to a believer Death is the believers change his alteration not his execution his transplantation not his dissolution When Job 14. 14. a believer dies God doth but take a flower out of the wildernesse and plant it in his Garden or take a rose out of the field and put it in his bosome Josephs change from the Prison to the Gen. 42. 12. Throne from being a Prisoner to become a Prince and Jobs change from Job 41. 39. the dunghill to a reduplicated condition were but the pregnant prefigurations of the Saints change by death It doth only change the copy the state the countenance of a child of God and make him who looked pale with trouble and misery here look fresh with glory and beauty for ever Death to a Saint only turnes the scale 2 Cor. 4. 17. and makes it weigh down with a weight of eternall glory As the Moon after its change comes to its full so death it placeth the poor inconsiderable derided scoft Saint whose body it may be is covered with soares and soul beleaguered with agonies and name with reproaches and estate with losses in the throne of boundlesse felicity and sets the Crown of immortality on his head Death is the last day of a believers non-age whilest the Saints live here they live upon a Pension the allowance of providence they are under age but death brings them to receive their portion and therefore heaven is called an inheritance Death is the last day Si tanta tam suavis est aâ—â—ha quam deus hic suis largitur quanta erit hareditas ipsa quam suo tempore praestabit A Lap. of the Saints Apprentiship it manumits the Saint to eternall liberty Here all the Saints are like Jacob they serve for their Ruchels and death puts a period to their servitude to all their longings groanings sighs to all the harshnesse they endure all the toyles they sustain all the bread of adversity Observa quod Christus non dicit ut serviant mihi Sancti sed ut videant gloriam meam Musc and water of affliction they feed upon In a word Death frees the believer from all not only his labours but from his mean allowances as he is an heir under age an heir of promise observe the word promise and puts him in possession of the full transcendent revenues of everlasting never-dying honour and glory Death is the Saints Secretary to write his releases Death brings the Saint into the same presence-Chamber with Jesus Christ Joh. 17. 28. it opens the door for the Saint to come in to God and a conclave of Angels the life of a Saint here is but an unkind wall an injurious lattice between Christ and him now death breaks down this wall and opens the wall for the Saints entry to lie in the everlasting embraces of Jesus Christ it Cant. 2. 14. plucks up the hedge that the Saint may Mors piorum nihil allud est quam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ad Christum laetabatur Patriarcha Jacobus cum videret currum a filio Josepho missum nos contristabimur quando coelestis Joseph currum nobis mittit quo in coelum evehamur Ger. goe over to his beloved it draws the curtain that the believer may have a full view of the beauties of Christ it doth as it were pluck the maske from the face of Christ to present him in his sweetest lovelinesse to the Saint Death takes away all obstructions and impediments of an absolute and entire fruition of the Lord Jesus while we are here we may receive a letter from Christ now and then in Gospell communion but death lodges us in the bosome of our pretious friend Death is the fiery chariot to bring us to the Court of Christ Death is the rest and cessation of a believer from all his disquieting and tumultuous disturbances in the world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the quiettation of a Saint A learned man observes that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rest is the same with that which the Hebrewes call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 refrigeration or refreshment And so death indeed is nothing but the unlading of a Saint of all his burdens the closing after the sun-set it layes the body of a believer in a sweet sleep for a while and brings his soul into the banqueting house of In altera vita deus sanctos ab omnibus miseriis liberatos in vera prepetua quiete laetitia gaudio gloria constituet Chemn eternall felicity Here the poor believer is scorcht sometimes with the heat of Gods wrath sometimes with the storming of Saints malice sometimes with the boyling of his own corruptions and sometimes with the toyles of the affairs of the world but death takes the Saint out of the heat Sed in Christo iis qui in ipsum credunt mors est somnus quies refocillatio Id. and brings him into the chearing shade of endlesse happinesse The Saints dissolution shall unchain him from all his distemperatures and oppressions he was fettered with here and shall lay him at rest in the refreshing ravishing bosome of Jesus Christ Death is the messenger of Christ to bring the Saint newes of an eternall victory the Herald Christ imployes to usher the Saint to the throne Here lies the indulgence of the Lord Christ and one pretious fruit of his bloud That death which was the effect of sin the monster from the womb part of the curse which sin drew upon the head of mankind is now blossomed into a rare blessing and is under Christ the Saints best friend the honourable Ambassadour of Christ to tell the Saint of an approaching crown But now let us traverse the darke side and see under
Gods afflictive and castigatory justice but that is impossible for in eternall happinesse there shall be nothing appearing but smiles love and indulgence And as in eternity the day of grace and favour is past to the reprobate sinner so the day of correction and displeasure is blown over to the glorified Saint In glory the least heat of anger shall not appear in the face of God nor shall the sword of vindicative justice be brandisht there I speak after the manner of men And so on the contrary there shall not be the least change in the eternity of the damned For the worse they cannot for they shall be fully miserable as before hath been demonstrated Nor for the better for this change would either proceed from Gods pity or mans piety First from Gods pity now God will shew no pity in hell For 1. Hell is a place of pure justice and exact severity no mitigation or favour in eternall misery could one drop of mercy fall into hell it would alter the very propriety of it Dives Mat. 5 26. in hell begs a drop of water but a Luk. 16. 24. drop the smallest measure and of water the most common element Natures common bounty yet in hell there is no concession to so reasonable a petition Mercies sweet voyce shall not be heard among the damneds groanes And 2. The day of grace is past when once the sinner is set on the shoare of eternity offers and overtures of mercy and peace are then buried in silence Sometimes the climacterical year of a Luk. 19. 42. Sinner is past before but alwayes then There shall be no mercy after the sun-set of mercy more then the shadowes of the night can counterfeit the light of the day here is the day of salvation which when once blown over the day of love shall break no more And 3. What should move Gods pity in hell 1. The cries of the damned they shall exalt his justice not move his compassion the horrours and the lamentations of the damned shall be the very musicke of Gods justice the Prov. 1. 26. heraulds of his righteous severity Mat. 25. 12. here Ephraims moaning turnes Gods Jer. 31. 20. bowels within him but the reprobates groanes shall only tune his justice Or 2. Shall the sinnes of the damned move God to compassion and therefore stir up pity because they are great Surely sin is the fuel of wrath not the argument of commiseration and grief and guilt shall be the reprobates livery for ever And Secondly as not from Gods pity so neither from mans piety shall any change arise in the eternity of the damned They shall not be refresht with mercy or their condition sweetned with an alleviating change from any conversion to God penitency for sin c. For 1. This piety had it been true or could it be so it had never come to hell nor could it lie there True grace is no Salamander to live in the fire of hell no flower to grow in that stench the fruit of the Spirit shall not lie in the womb of eternall misery that 2 Pet. 1. 4. grace which is honoured with the name of divine nature cannot be the subject of eternall divine wrath Had they been or could they after death be really pious they should not be eternally calamitous the least degree of true grace seales Christ and heaven to the soul Weak faith saint love c. And 2. If this piety be false as all tears in hell shall be for the weeping of the damned cannot be caâ—d a repentance but only a watery desperation an execration of themselves steept in tears then this dissembled mourning is a provocation not a mitigation to inflame not appease Gods wrath and certainly all the self-condemnations of the miserable reprobate proceeds not from a detestation of sin but a deploration of their torment And therefore now to sum up the whole this remains unfallibly true There shall not be the least alteration or change in our everlasting condition Ah! what might this consideration seriously weighed in the ballance work upon our feared and unawakened consciences CHAP. V. Concl. 5 Man 's eternall condition admits of no measure or commensuration ETernity is an Ocean without a shoare a Sea without land it hath neither bottome nor banks it is an unlimited estate As Boetius forementioned Status interminabilis an unconfin'd estate What is said of eternall joy 1 Cor. 2. 9. It hath not entred into the heart of man is true likewise of eternall misery Who can tell how eternity begins or when it ends who can divide or parcell out eternity who can set landmarkes to measure or find plummets to fadome it It is nothing but the vast Ocean the eye cannot see to the end of it nor the understanding reach to the bottome of it The most curious and criticall brain in the greatest abstractions cannot comma or put a stop in eternity Astronomers find out fictitious and imaginary lines to measure the heavens and the earth the Aequator Meridian Horizon c. but what imaginary circles shall compasse eternity who can say so much is gone so many Centuries so many Lustra so many Olympiads and so many ages are yet to come Eternity is a boundlesse being Aeternitas nec tempus nec temporis ulla pars est nec e. in mensuram cadit sed quod nobis tempus est solis motu definitum hoc aeternis aevum est Greg. Naz. there is no infancy in it no strength of years no decrepitnesse Nec efflorescentia nec canescentia aetatis no triumph or decay of age There are no divisions or subdivisions in it Numbers and multiplications are paradoxes in eternity There is no lease or determinate time time it self being a riddle as before But more particularly Eternity is unlimited In the possessions of it the eternall joy of the Saints is said to be full Psal 16 11. In thy presence is fulnesse of joy 1 Joh. 3. 2. but this is a faddomlesse fulnesse who can tell the portion of everlasting happinesse or count it out It is a summe that cannot be measured by number or figure The blessednesse of the Sâ—ints shall be ineffable inalterable inconceivable Who knowes how soft the down of the Saints rest is how sweet the bosome of Christ how pleasant the smile of God who can tell how delightfull the taste of the rivers of pleasure in heaven is There is no measuring or confining the Saints happinesse How unspeakably sweet is communion with God here that sometimes the Sâ—int can set it out more by admiration then eloquence how ravishing then are those extasies of joy which the glorified ones shall be raised and sublimated with And so on the contrary the misery of the damned how inintolerable how incomprehensible how unmeasurable who can tell how hot Gods wrath is when turn'd into a flame Or can any weigh the torments of the damned and say they rise to such an height
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath it Rivers of pleasure fulnesse of joy this is the language of Psal 36. 9. heaven And so likewise Sermons Hearing Meditation they all imply a duskishnesse in the understanding and that the scales of ignorance are not fallen from the eye of the mind But there shall be in heaven a fulnesse of knowledge as well as of joy and the minde shall be as full of light as the heart of joy All duties and services are to be regulated by precepts and winged by promises precepts must guide and Isa 8. 20. promises bribe duty All our services are directed by the line of a Command Jer. 4. 14. and incouraged by the love of a promise But in the eternity of the Saints both precepts and promises cease for in glory there can be no irregularity and therefore no need of a precept and all promises are turn'd into accomplishment Commands they are the rules of unbridled nature but they are superfluous to nature perfected in glory to turn to God wash our hearts bath our selves in penitentiall tears these are anomalies and absurdities in eternity Promises they are spurs to sluggish nature but to the Saint glorified they are supervacaneous incentives God in glory shall be in stead both of precept and promise he shall then guide us by his eye not his scepter and shall give us himself not his bond in a way of promise All rudiments and discipline shall be outdated in heaven And so likewise there shall be no performance of service or duty in the eternity of the damned For There is no reward for duty in hell and therefore no duty every duty eyes its compensation though not ratione meriti by the claime of merit yet ratione promissi in reference to the Psal 50. 15. promise of God And now if Esau Heb. 12. 17. cannot get the blessing if he seek it with teares here what shall he do when death hath let down the trap door of eternity upon him Promises which make the believer heavens creditour all cease in the bottomlesse pit And the cries of the damned shall neither procure ease or liberty and their bitter lamentations shall returne upon them unpitied there shall be no reward for all their moans God hath seal'd up the sentence of death unto them and it is irreversible Now as Philos speaks Vbi cessat finis cessant media where the end ceaseth all means cease the reward of duty failing there can be no service the smile and command of God the supplies and happinesse of the soul which are the great incentives to duty are all obsolete and impossible in miserable eternity God shall not illuminate Psal 4. 6. hells darknesse with the light of his countenance And therefore all adorations and services shall be a dreame in endlesse misery Doest thou think wretched sinner that when thou art swallowed up in eternall flames thou shalt then repent believe wrestle with God in prayer open thy condition to the Lord shalt thou then with an inundation of teares and an heart covered with mourning and sables flie to the armes of free grace and as a prisoner by pleading guilty sue out thy pardon No surely God will not hear nor answer nor pity the soul lodged in flames And all such services Mat. 25. 41. shall in the eternity of the wicked be buried in silence There is no such thing as duty in eternall calamity in reference to the nature of it for the cries tears complaints Joh. 9. 3. of the damned deserve not the name or title of repentance and prayer There is nothing of duty in Dives his Luk. 16. 24. petition the tears of the damned shall be only the exertions and ebullitions of torment the fruit of their misery not their love It is their pain not their pieâ—y the horrour not the dictate of their conscience suggests these moans the damned abhorre duty more in hell then they did upon earth There is no faith no melting of soul no fixed hope in all their lamentations and their violent importunities shall evidence their calamity but not their duty their most fervent prayers are but fictitious services and the fires of hell not the fire of zeal shall inflame their supplications Nothing in the eternity of the wicked can be called duty Hell is no place for duty Who can look for services to God among the cries scritches and extremities of the damned Can any ordinate service befitting the great God be found there the tortured frenzie of the reprobate how incapable of service what methodiz'd prayer can a wrackt miscreant produce Our diseases and bodily torments here in this life how do they stifle and smoother the duties of the patient and turn the Saint into a frantick distemper and what shall the infernall fires do the gout stone strangury how doe they inarticulate and so shatter the services of Gods people here that they all seem to be a distemper'd passion and passionate madnesse and therefore thinke not thou painted hypocrite thou shalt flow in thy usuall elegancy when thou lyest on the wrack of eternall calamity No all the complaints of the damned shall be fury not fealty In the eternity of the wicked there is no object of duty God is the judge not the father of the damned God as reconcileable and in the notion of a compassionate father is the object of all duty but he shall not be found in that notion to the caitiffe reprobates Contemplation it implies a sweetnesse Psal 104. 34. Prayer begins with Our Father Hearing supposes the discovery of our fathers will And so all duties and performances wait on God in expectation of favour answer and indulgence and so duty is cald communion with God but after death God shall be to Psal 63 2. the wicked a severe inexplorable and implacable judge And all the cries which the damned make are to God as their tormentour not their Soveraign They would cry as much to Satan would he burne with a cold iron Here indeed God is easily to be intreated but hereafter never to be entreated so that there is no object of duty in the damneds eternity God sits as to them no more in the throne of grace but in the judgement seat he shall shine forth no more Psal 80. 1. between the Cherubims but break out 2 Thess 1. 8. in flaming fire in perpetuall vengeance and executions But here it may be replied 1. Object 1 Are not the Hallelujahs of the Saints in glory Duty and Service Answ 1 It is answered No. They are the resultancies of service not the performance the rest at night is sweet because of the labour They are as the honey after the toyle of the working Bee They are the rewards of service Those holy rejoycings they are but part of the glory the Saints are crowned with They are the pure vent and sweet overflowing of their love to God that then they shall be fill'd with These Hallelujahs
out this bottomlesse state then draw the effigies of a rationall soul 3. The Ring though it is not broken of it self but is an entire circumference yet it may be broken by a superiour power Man can break the circumference and deface the very forme of it But Gods promise and his past word hath made eternity indissoluble Eternity is a duration which neither will of it self crumble into pieces nor falls it within the verge of any created power to put a stop to it or melâ— it into a conclusion And that there shall be no end Heb. 6. 18. or impairing of it Gods word is irreversible the divine Majesty hath determined eternity both to the Saint and the sinner and it is he alone that can bury and dissolve eternity it self It is with the eternity of men as with Angels Christ is the Mediatour of their sustentation the shedding of his bloud hath purchas'd eternall joy for the Saints and cries aloud for eternall misery on the sinner God hath pawned his trust to support and supply eternity Joh. 3. 16. and therefore the indissolubility of eternity renders the Ring to be an imperfect embleme of it Sometimes the Antients have compared eternity to a Phoenix whose young one ariseth from the ashes of its fire so that there seems to be a specificall immortality the urne of one Phoenix being the womb of another and the ashes proving seminall Answ But this emblem likewise fals short of picturing out eternity there are many deficiencies in this emblematicall adumbration As 1. The Phoenix is immortalized by propagation the ashes of the damme is the originall of the young Occasus Nec mors in vita nec vita in morte aeterna unius est ortus alterius the ones ruine is the others rise But now eternity is a constant state not by propagation not by accumulation not by alteration but by an eternized duration New additions of times in eternity Isa 60. 15. do not flow from the preteritions and transiencies of former as 1 Pet. 5 10. if one past age should leave another its successour and eternity was nothing Omnium beatotorum felicitas erit continua nunquam interrumpenda sempitterna nunquam finienda Ger. but a family of ages in a lineall descent No but eternity is an uninterrupted perpetuity everlastingnesse without stop comma or intermission Eternity is not duration by multiplication but continuation the same person is everlastingly blessed or damned the same Saint in eternity becomes not a species by multiplication but the same individuall believer shall be clothed with personall happinesse for ever and his glory shall be a Phoenix for its rarity but not for its multiplication 2. The Phoenix is renewed by a Christus primitiae resurrectionis interruptibilitatis impassibilitatis nobis factus est Damasc passive alteration the living Phoenix is turned into ashes and the birth is produced from those ashes so that the death of the one is the generation of the other there is ashes and dying and budding all demonstrations of change and suffering But eternity is Corporibus sanctorum non adaequabitur aurum aut vitrum Greg. incapable of change as before Heaven shall not be the Saints urne nor the bosome of Christ their tomb nor shall the glorious bodies of the Saints crumble into ashes there shall be no passivenesse seize on the persons or the bodies of the Saints no decayes or fading deaths or damps glory shall be a Phoenix which shall never turn into ashes Nor on the other side shall infernall fire become funeral nor shall the scorcht bodies of the damned be incinerated or converted into ashes So that now the emblem of the Phoenix is too darke an hieroglyphicke of eternity Sometimes the Antients have compared eternity to the Sun which keeps a constant course and hath its uninterrupted revolutions which courses the world and every day returnes to its due and wonted station The Sun winds about and fetches its large and vast circuits and keeping an even though swift pace it returnes at such a term of time unto the same stage from whence it took its rise and therefore our predecessours observing the stedinesse and constancy of the Suns motion have made it the bright emblem of eternity But the Sun doth not paint out eternity Answ 1. The Sun hath its eclipses its clouds its various aspects So that I may say Mutability is one beam of the Sun The historian reports that Procopius and from him Pedro Mexia about An. 540. the Sun gave not more light then the Moon for almost one whole year in Italy the skie in the mean time being clear and without clouds or any thing to shadow the same Thus the Sun is an alterable body Nay in the very motion of it which is chiefly the embleme of eternity there hath been Josh 10. 13. stoppages and stayes and retrogradations And the Scripture hath pronounced Amos 8. 9. a doom upon its glorious Joel 2. 31. body that it shall it be turned into darknesse and be entombed in obscurity But now eternity is an unmixt invariable state as before there shall be no eclipse in glory nor suspension of happinesse joy in eternity shall never stand still or run retrograde God himself who is the Saints Sun in heaven is essentially immutable No beames of light shall visit hell nor clouds or eclipses darken heaven There is too much variation in the Sun so that it should paint out eternity 2. But further there are many things considerable in eternity besides the duration which the Suns motion seems to be the emblem of There is immutability superlativeness voydness of succession joy torment the aggravation and varieties of both Eternity compriseth more in the womb of it then duration let out for ever eternity is but as the cipher added to the sum of blessednesse or calamity it is alwayes predicate of felicity or misery It is not a naked abstractive duration but is a concrete in its significancy and there is a great difference between the state and duration of eternity What shall we be and how long we shall endure they are 2. Questions And all these emblemes do but paint out the bare continuance of eternity A line of ages that hath no end And this shall be a generall answer to all the emblemes considered complexively and together viz. That all these creature-representations they are at the great day dissoluble the heavens shall passe away and the 2 Pet. 3. 10. element shall melt with fervent heat The Phoenix ashes shall be scattered and the Ring shall be melted in the generall conflagration but the great assizes shall but open the curtaines and see the generall alarme of eternity Men Heb. 9. 27. dying before are gone to their particular eternities but after the grand and universall tryall when every thought shall be anatomized and chined up then nothing shall appear but eternity And all the rivers of
Cor. 15. 19. If Sancti cuncta in hac vita patienter tolerant sustinent spefuturae compensationis gloriosae felicitatis in coelis pro illis per Christum repositae Par. in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men the most miserable This life to a poor believer is but the stage of a diversified calamity a den of Dragons a place of trouble and amazements and it is the hopes of future enjoyment that are the Saints crutches to walke by through his shady pilgrimage and therefore could there be a possibility of the Saints return after death when sailing in the Sea of eternity to this valley of tears again it would cast all their active and passive services into a dying consumption Nor will Christ himselfe suffer his Saints to lose his presence again Rev. 3. 21. when once he enjoyes them in his everlasting embraces After they are As Luther said to the threatning Emperour Aut invenies me sub coelo aut in coelo but if once in coelo no more sub coelo Luth. once courtiers in heaven they shall no more be exiles on earth The bottomlesse love of Christ to his people which was written in the characters of his own bloud and broke out at every vein of his massacred body will not permit those belieuers whom death brought with the veil and ushered into the presence of God to be again banisht into a tempestuous world John the beloved disciple who now lies in the bosome of Christ shall no more see his Patmos And suppose we that heaven can harbour any thing that can breed a discontent between Christ and his glorified ones so that Christ 2 Cor. 5. 8. again should expose them to the crueltie of the world what infinite solecismes would such an assertion be the womb of If we finde Moses and Elias visiting the world again after their death it is in a glorious transfiguration to solemnize that rare appearance Mat. 17. 3. And as there can be no revocation in the eternity of the blessed so neither in the eternity of the Reprobates Because their naturall day and their spirituall ends together death Joh. 9. 14. that closeth the eyes of their body As the Psalmist puts the Quest Psal 30. 9. likewise closeth the eyes of their understanding so far as it hath reference to their spirituall good the grave buries and entombs all their hopes and all their capacities Now for what should the sinner be returned again into the world His destruction is seal'd and irreversible Dies operandi tempus est nox quiescendi Musc his death speaks it in loud language And shall he break the prison of the grave and react the part of a sinfull caitiffe in the world This is one reason why God takes the sinner out of the world and casts him upon eternity to stop his blasphemous mouth and put a period to his carriere in wickednesse No surely when once the sinner is cast into the sea of eternity he shall swim no more to shoar God will not revive the dead sinner to obnubilate his glory with further deeds of darknesse Eternity shall not be as Jonas his whale when once it hath Jon. 2. 10. swallowed up the sinner to cast him up again upon the shoare of the world Death which is the inlet to eternity is but the Lords Sergeant to arrest the sinner to appear before him for his tryall It is but the sinners citation to Heb. 9. give up his accounts when once the sinner is cast upon eternity his work it at an end all the sinners deportments and carriages and conversation now only the cause comes to be tried first death and then judgment No reprieves or protracting Death brings the sinner to the bar and eternity finds him condemned And therefore let all unawakened sinners fill their thoughts with this consideration that when once death casts them on the state of eternity they shall sail back again no more into the world They shall never enjoy their possessions again they shall never feed on their banquets again nor wallow Prov. 9. 17. in their sins again nor cry againe to their stolen morsels they are sweet nor be invited to Christ again nor be capable of penitentiall brokennesse Nor of Gospell-grace of gospell opportunities again Eternity is an reversible and irrevocable condition the soul once lost and death having drawn the curtaines Redemption and restitution shall be a solecisme CHAP. XIV Concl. 14 Man 's eternall condition admits of no conclusion ETernity is a Sun that shall never Non beatitudo esset sic ertum sancti non haberent se ibi semper futures Aug. de civit dei set a taper that shall never fall into the socket a terme without a vacation a race without an end When men in eternity have spent as many millions of ages as there are atomes in all the beames of the Sun Sicut Sancti incessabile habent gaudium ita injusti indesinentem poenam dicuntur ergo ituri in supplicium aeternum i. e. nunquam finiendum Theoph. in Mat. or drops in all the water of the world they are as far from a close or an exit as at the first moment of that state and condition The Vestall fires are out Methuselahs age is spent the Sun shall either be annihilated or else transformed but the eyes of eternity shall never be closed Eternity is an Ocean that we shall be ever sailing in and never see land Let us but Ignis infernalis qui semel accensus est nunquam extinguetur Gerard. illustrate the never-ending duration of eternity in a familiar way as a Divine of late hath gone before us Consider saith he what is the length of eternity How long shall God and his Saints reign How long shall the Dan. 12. 2. damned burn in hell For ever How long is that Imagine an hundred thousand years Alas that is nothing in respect of eternity Imagine ten hundred thousand years yea so many ages yet that is nothing to eternity Imagine a thousand millions of years and yet all this is nothing no espying of a close yet imagine yet more a thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand millions of years and yet no sight of land Imagine once more so many millions of millions of years as there are drops in the Sea and thou are not come to the very beginning of eternity Such for continuance is the eternity of the joy the blessed shall enter into and the eternity of the torments the damned shall be ever wrackt with Gulielmus Peraldus Bishop Diaboli impiorum omnium credimus aeternae tormenta Hiers in Isa of Lyons hath another manner of reckoning meditating upon the innumerable number of years throughout which the damned shall be tormented If the damned saith he should every day distill from their eyes but one small tear and those teares should be added together day
him every day at dinner and to cry to him Memento te esse mortalem Remember thou art but mortall and this should alwayes ring in our ears Memento te esse immortalem Remember thou art immortall thou hast an eternity to spend thou hast an everlasting condition to succeed All our thoughts should be alwayes drawne as so many lines to this center As the Psolmist he did never Psal 139. 18. awake but he was with God his meditations fastned upon that infinite and pleasant object and in the night Psal 16. 7. which buries all things in a silent confusion his heart bubbled forth holy Ejaculations towards heaven Let us in this draw Davids picture to make eternity the sphear of our thoughts and the object of our meditations There is no occurrence or passage that can befall us which may not draw eternity into our thoughts when we see the graves of others we may conclude they have already hoysed saile upon the the Ocean of eternity when we observe the prosperity of others we may conceive they are but ripening for eternity as the Sun when it is at the highest it then posteth to a setting Our lives here let them be the pageants of never so many temporall felicities they are but a short dying groan and are always lanching into the vast Ocean of eternity When we observe our own corporall distempers and indispositions then death is but scaling the wals which being broken down the soul flieth to eternity when we 2 Cor. 4. 17. observe the fleet pace and swift carreer of time how the severall parcels of it slide away in an inobservable velocity one houre treading upon the heels of another all these diversities of time are but so many streams running into the sea of eternity There is no passage or Providence can knock at our doors but eternity may be behind it Therefore let our contemplations be alwayes preying upon our everlasting Luk. 12. 20. estate It is not what I am here whether gorgeous or inglorious filled with the good things of the earth or covered with the reproaches of the Psal 73. 6. world but what shall do for ever where shall I take up my lodging in eternity St. Hierome used to say Nier He could never go forth but he alwayes supposed he heard the sound of the last trumpet and the Angell crying Surgite mortui venite ad judicium Arise ye dead and come to judgmen It is strange to consider how men rally up their thoughts and muster them to prosecute their basenesse here below with what eagernesse and studiousnesse they methodize their earthly affaires how do they live and clog their reasons and understandings with a multiplicity of occurrences how do they put judgment and memory and conscience it self upon the Act. 5. 2 wrack to put to usury their advantages and in the mean while seldome or never seriously and practically put this one question to themselves What shall I do whither shall I fly where shall my harbour be to all eternity Insomuch that most men like that dying Heu vaga animula blandula quae nunc abibis in loca Pope when they come to lie on their death-beads they then begin to enquire where they are going and which way their travels must be So pleasingly and inconsiderately doth poor man delude and turn cheat to his own soul But ah let our contemplations Mat. 24. 28. as the Eagle to the carkasse flock to eternity and there be always hovering and brooding till we get a sight of an eternall crown But now to set home this argument and to invite your meditations to this necessary probleme and subject to chain your thoughts to vast boundlesse eternity a Sea we must all sail in whether rough or pleasant I say to further this designe let me cast in these few considerable incentives That you may fill you thoughts with eternity consider It is the noblest study it is most sublime and generous Eternity compriseth all those noble enjoyments and subjects which are fit for the speculations of the soul of the Saint God and Christ and glory the souls chiefest possession these are Contemplations fit to give the As he said when he used to contemplate on God Nunquam minus sosus quam cum solus studious soul entertainment these are sutable company for our cogitations and thoughts It is strange to take notice how men for the most part fill their thoughts with dirt and the muddie profits of the world how Psal 63. 6. they disgrace and discredit their own souls those pieces of divinity in their breasts with frothy carnall and earthly contemplations How many are there who put only pibble in the beautifull casket of their understanding study drosse and dung and that which the Apostle cals losse are Phil. 3. 8. versed about their inaminate comforts their corne their wine and their oil what is this but to carry rubbish and ragges in a Chariot But the most adequate and noble study of the soul is eternity to be alwayes sounding and fadoming that Ocean how shall my soul fare for ever what will be the portion of my eternity what will God settle on me for everlasting Platoes Treatise De immortalitate animae of the immortality of the soul spake him divine The understanding of man is the noblest faculty of the noblest part viz. his soul and what more proportionable for the encounters of this noble light then eternity and those things that are attendant upon it What a low degeneracy is it for men to corrupt and putrefie their thoughts with perishing and dying objects and crowd into their most serious meditations nothing but earth and the things of the world How doth poor man when wholly taken up in these drossie contemplations but debase Nec in rebus caducis aeternitas complacere potest Bern. himself into the vilenesse of an idoll undervalue and uncoyne himself blot out Gods image and superscription and write in the image and inscription of earth he doth as it were turn himself into brasse and iron and reprobate silver the soul whose heat and studies are vented and wasted upon these sublunary things doth but stain its originall and cast a dampe upon the divinity of its own nature Now how low and sordid these meditations upon terrestriall and drossie vanities are will appear in our viewing of these three things It is a degeneracy to confine our thoughts to sublunaries as they are the impertinency of our life they are Rom. 14. 17. a meer parenthesis These outward things they are nothing to our purpose We are travelling towards eternity and to fix our thoughts on these crackling thornes is but a meer digression It is strange to observe how Mat. 6. 33. men vex their own thoughts plot contrive foster and commence their designes for these outward things which shall never fall into the account no further then as they aggravate the guilt of a sinner the
joy of a Saint in the improvement or mispending of them The question is whether thou hast gained an interest in Christ got thy sins blotted out or hast had the beatificall sight of a smile from God For the trash and chaffe of the world who required will God say these things at your hands what are all these things to thy soul thou studious worldling It is eternity should take up all our Contemplations how thou shouldest fare for ever to spend our thoughts on these earthly enjoyments is as to goe to law for another mans right or intrude our selves into his controversie To fill our thoughts with these outward things it is to stop our meditations from our home The wise men followed the star and we should pursue eternity thy home O soul thy mansion thy portion for ever This Mat. 2. 10. should be the Contemplation of a Christian how soft Christs bosome how glorious his face how sweet Gods smile what those felicities are that are reserved for the Saints But to fill our cogitations with extrinsecals is but the alienation of our thoughts an unnaturall diversion When the poor travaller surveyes Heb. 11. 13. many Countries his thoughts and contemplations they are oft at home and setled on his own coast Our meditations should alwayes be sailing toward our home and let not the world and its flatteries obstruct or stop our Carreer The thought of these outward things unfit the soul for eternity how unprepared is a worldly man for his eternall estate how loath to leave the twig and fall into the Ocean of eternity As the rich man in the Gospell with what regret and reluctancy Luk. 12. 20. of spirit when he is casting upon eternity doth he cry out Farewell my dear enjoyments those pleasant darlings of my soul I say with what reluctancy and contraction doth he then think of eternity when he is entring upon it how ghastly is the face and how unwelcome the arrests of eternity Nothing is more dreadfull to this imprudent miserable wretch then to look from the mast of this life down into the Ocean of eternity What clammy sweates and sad affrightments doth now the thought of an everlasting condition create These worldly and drossie meditations how do they unhindge the soul and make it jarre and discompose it for its entrance upon eternity But then man acts most nobly and in a genuine speare when his contemplations flie forward to eternity and are descrying that boundlesse Sea Now to close this first particular let us but observe a double proportion between eternity and the understanding of man Eternity it is vast unmeasurable and incomprehensible every considerable in it is unlimited and unconfined as before hath been discovered and so the understanding of man is filled with vast apprehensions it only the Angels excepted can fadome what God is survey the excellencies of his nature attributes glory and can conceive what a rare creation the Angels are how fine spun the Angelicall nature what a rare thread the soul only mans understanding can read Gods counsels and bottome his everlasting decrees when revealed and make holy and serious animadversions on them thus the understanding can raise it self and call within its view the most noble and generous speculations Now eternity which compriseth not only the transcendencies of beings but enjoyments how exactly proportionable and analogicall to such a glorious lampe as mans understanding is especially when snuft and encreased by grace Eternity is such a state which is not fully intelligible in this life but still leaves something within the vail and behind the curtain and how doth this fit the ambitions of mens understandings which are alwayes Eccles 1. 8. unsatisfied in their enquiries but still are prying into more and more abstruses The wise man observes of the corporall eye that it is unsatisfied in this life how much more the intellectuall The mind of man is pregnant and operative and as the Bee of the soul is alwayes wandring for some prey of future knowledge This then not further to amplifie the argument let it be a golden spur to us to enrich our minds with constant and serious thoughts of eternity as being the most sublime and sutable study of the soul The study of eternity is a most seasonable study Our lives here Initium hujus abitionis est in nativitatis nostra hora singulis momentis horis propius accedimus ad scopum quem ipsa morte attingimus Chemn they are but as candles in the wind which every blast may blow one they are as glasses that every knock may batter and break what more fragill and brittle then the life and continuance of man in this world Every affliction every distemper every day may see it entombed in death and observe its funerals And therefore what Jam. 4. 14. more proper what more seasonable then alwayes to fix our thoughts on eternity which is our state behind the curtain what more apposite then to be peeping within the vail There is no stability in this life no uncertainty in the other we will descry the Sea we are to sail in ah why not eternity we are every moment entring upon Thou knowest not how soon thou shall be cast on this shoare yet a little while and eternity shall swallow thee up therefore what more seasonable then alwayes to anchor our meditations here It was a grave speech of him who said Tota vita est meditatio mortis our whole life is but the meditation of death But I say Our whole life should be a meditation of eternity this is alwayes seasonable to consider What shall we do whither shall we flie what preparations are made what enjoyments are provided what shelter what honour for the poor soul to eternity It is not what we are here whether we are wrapt up in sores or solaces whether we act Jobs misery or felicity but what shall we do and what shall we be for ever And can then the thoughts of eternity be at any time unseasonable no more then our prayers to God and our visitations of the throne of Act. 12. 23. grace Every moment may put a period to our possessions here and see them all withered into nothing and therefore what fare is at home how am I provided for eternity what lands what leases in glory what treasures have I blanckt up in heaven The poor tenant at will waites still at his Land-lords door for a lease that he may Vniversum vitae nostrae carriculum viae conferatur mors est ultima hujus vitae linâ—a quae nobis januam aperit ad aeterditatem have something certain some security he shall not be cast out of his dwelling the next hour In this life we have no lease nothing certain therefore think on eternity Ah! how few amongst men which are every moment ready to be turned out of the tenements of their bodies are looking after and contemplating of eternity
his honour Psal 17. 15. to execute his commands live upon his promises and to breath after Joh. 4. 32. his everlasting presence This was the worke God sent thee into the world for to advance the fame of his Majesty adore the eternall being and to publish the transcendencie of all his glorious attributes Ah consider a piece of clay thy body a winged piece of duration thy life a Rom. 17. 17. few floating enjoyments thy present inheritance were never set out by God to be the taske and the toil of thy care and animosities 2. Nor is thy care for the world any thing to eternity Thy eternall conditoâ—n Ibi erit fames maxima erit enim tanta inopia ut damnati neque guttam aquae poterunt habere Bonav in glory shall want no supplies in misery shall finde none not a drop of water to coole nor to cherish The rich man shall not find his barnes in eternity though happily with much care and sweat he obtained the filling of them Nero shall not finde his Crown in his everlasting condition though he tortured both brain and conscience to wear the imperiall lawrell Eternity explodes all creature-enjoyments the Saints in glory shall live at a higher rate then the mean and perishing provisions of the world 1 King 17. 6. Elijah doth not want now a Raven to be both his cooke and his caterer And the damned in their endlesse misery shall want the crummes that fell from their own tables In a word carke for thy soul professour thinke of the gulfe of eternity This mouldy bread thou carest for will be no food there Our everlasting condition hath no to morrow no yeares of famine or plenty therefore provide for thy everlasting soul get thy name ingrossed in the lease of glory with Gods hand and the Spirits seal to it and then Providence will either spread thy table here or bring thee to thy Fathers house where thou shalt keep an everlasting festivall And let this additionall consideration come into the account viz. That those outward enjoyments which mens cares are fixt upon and many are so sollicitous to gain and atchieve may occasionally prove the unhappy murtherers of the soul and drown it in everlasting perdition How often do Joh. 14 2. Deut. 6. 12. the riches and delights of the world effascinate the minde blind the understanding Dan 4. 30. 2 Chron. 26. 16. wantonize the spirit inâ—briate Luk. 12. 21 22. the affections seare the conscience Luk. 18. 23. and hearden the heart of the possessors of them and open quatenus instrumenta as instruments the flood-gates of eternall wrath upon them Then the whole amounts to thus much that eternity well weighed will cure the frensie and distraction of mens spirits for sublunary contenements Advant 9 The thoughts of eternity would make us admire Christianity Only the Christian profession acknowledges the state 2 Tim. 1. 10. and the way to eternity What fancies and forgeries doe other professions hold forth and acknowledge The Jewes look for a Messiah to come as if the way to heaven were yet to be found out The Turkes have a tradition and frantick opinion that wicked men at the great day shall carry their sinnes in satchels after their Captaine Cain and such like ridiculous inventions Divers of the Pagans suppose another temporall life to succeed this and therfore give their dead cloaths and money and other appurtenances to bear their charges there Only the Christian profession can unriddle the mystery of eternity How many thousands shall tast of eternity of misery that never heard of an eternity of being this perpetuall estate is only written in a Christian character the knowledge of Christ is our only conduct to the Mar. 16. 16. knowledge of eternity Gospell knowledge Purgatorium est duplex unum in quo est poena damni sensus alterum in quo est poenadamni tantum Bell. Nemo manet in purgatorio ultra decem annos Domin a Soto can only lead us to the mount to behold a future Canaan and teach us how to escape a future Tophet True Evangelicall profession brings us to the shoar to view the Ocean of eternity How do the Romanists themselves defile and adulterate the doctrine of eternity with their fiction of Limbus Patrum Purgatory Limbus Puerorum and many of their guilefull Non est desperatio aut metus gehennae in purgatorio est carentia divinae visionis est poenasensus inflicta est poena ignis Bell. yet gainfull inventions Only the doctrine of the Gospell unmaskes the riddle of our boundlesse and bottomelesse eternity gives us a map of heaven drawes a landskip of glory opens to the believer the wardrobe of eternall beatitude Rev. 21. 16 17 18 19 c. And in Evangelicall story how lively are the flames of hell described how clearly the paines horrours despaires everlasting doomesday is set down and at large deciphered And they said to the rockes Rev. 6. 16. and mountaines Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. Thus onely the Christian faith gives a prospect of evernity which is one of the articles of its beliefe Advant 10 The thoughts of eternity would be a good preparation for death Such thoughts would Observetur suavis mutatio quod cadentibus mors non est miseria aut perditio sed transitur ad vitam aeternam Chemn conduce much to cast us into such a frame that death should not be the womb of our fears but of our joys not our affrightment but our contentment our dying day should be reckoned our wedding day the day of our dissolution the day of our coronation The thoughts of eternity Tolle tunicam hanc graviorem da mihi leviorem Greg. would put us upon getting an interest in eternity which would familiarize meet with and sweeten death it self and put the soul upon enquiries after it How would our everlasting condition well studied frame us to a serious patient and joyfull embracement of death that the gracious expectant having sent his heart to heaven before looks on death but as a good wind to carry him to the Ocean of a joyous eternity Now we may hoise sail upon that sea he had been long in the meditation of Nay what wrestlings with God for assurance Phil. 1. 23. for one smile upon the soul in the face of Christ for God to open his pardon and let him read it what desires that God would draw the curtain and let the soul see Jesus Christ what diving into and searching after tokens of love broken pieces of the ring and former experiences would the thoughts of eternity produce And all by way of preparation for death This endlesse state well ballanced in a serious and continued meditation would make the soul restlesse and in a constant motion till death which originally is a curse as being
minded Psal 49. 14. his everlasting condition nor laid up for it he fals into the arrests of death But the Saints whose word all his life time hath been eternity and who hath been in all his conversation pronouncing this shibboleth he fals into the embraces of it he may be said as Christ was Joh. 10. 15. To lay Morte tabernas nostras pulsante non terremur down his life to lay down his head upon the cushion of the grave and sweetly to sleep being rockt to it by death Now what sweetens and facilitates death to a believer only he hath studied eternity and hath got the scarlet thread in the window eternity Josh 2. 18. is assured to them The Saint whose heart is landed at the staires of eternity before when he comes to die he doth but as the Sun breake thorough a cloud to shine both gloriously and eternally and indeed the body of a Saint is but the darke cloud the curtain drawn before his shining soul Rally therefore and muster up all your thoughts and let them meet with eternity this is the way to perfume the winding sheet to strow flowers on the coffin and to make death it self smile and become a pleasing presage to a more pleasing crown The thoughts of eternity would make death more welcome I long saith the Saint whose heart before is in heaven to come to the stage of eternity he Phil. 3. 20. is in a longing fit impatient as the longing woman and smiling with joy Rev. 22. 20. and triumph on approaching death cries welcome that parting blow that brings me into the everlasting embraces of my dear Redeemer CHAP. XVII Vse of Exhortation Branch 2 The next branch of the Use shall be That we would make sure of Eternity THere are two great ends Why the wombe delivered us into the world the one is to adore an eternall being the other to obtaine eternall life and where the first is rightly performed the second is infallibly accomplished It was a good question the young man proposed What shall I do to inherit eternall life Luk. 10. 25. And indeed the answering of this question cals for all our cares feares troubles time duties industry and what ever fals within the verge of our highest and most extended capacities Things that are most precious we most secure and expose to them to the least hazard our jewels are lockt up in our cabinets our gold seald up in the coffer Now the excellency of man is his soul the excellency of the soul is life and the excellency of life is eternity and with what ambitions should we graspe the diademe of a blessed eternity What artifices did Si peccandum est pro corona est peccandum Absalon use to secure his Fathers throne to himself he lies with his Fathers Concubines in the sight of the people 2 Sam. 16. 22. a most odious practise What 2 Sam. 13. 9. wayes did Ammon use to secure his beauteous Sister for his lustfull embraces he bolted out all that might interrupt his unnaturall incest What Luk. 12. 20 21. thoughts did the Rich man take to secure his plenties the overflowing abundance of his fruites he erects new barnes and leaves not his Corn either a prey for the birds or a morsell for the Gleaners And the Barbarous Turke he kils all his younger Brethren and sacrifices them to his bloudy ambition that he might secure the Crown to himself And shall we be Omnia ei salva sunt cui salva est aeternitas lesse solicitous in our fears cares our holy policies and sacred stratagems to secure etetnity that everlasting blessednesse which is the supreme gift of God the reward of Saints the honour of Angels the rich provisions of heaven and the totall of all Christs merits and bloudy passion How canst thou dear Christian be satisfied or thy heat chilled and ambitions surfeted till thou hast obtained the reversion of a glorious eternity and God hath entailed on thee a crown of 2 Pet. 1. 10. immortality Review with thy selfe the bowels of Gods pity the voice of Christs bloud the desperatenesse and activenesse of Satans malice the shortnesse and uncertainty of thy own life the accusations of thy guilt Nay the very present glory of the triumphant Saints all call upon thee to make sure of eternity Canst thou sleep on the main mast with the dreadfull Ocean under thee or take up thy lodgings in the enemies field What doest thou else when thou hast nothing to shew for eternity Consider thy danger and disadvantagein this Those who can clear up no propriety in a blessed eternity may be considered under a double notion I. As sinners and with what a multitude of dangers is every Christlesse soul encompassed He is but as a wanderer in the wildernesse who may be a prey for every beast he is out of all protection God may suffer 1. Satan to destroy him had not Job been a righteous man his disease Job 2. 4. probably had been his death and Satan had not only been his tormentour The danger that every wicked man is in but his executioner every wicked man is Satans prisoner and who knowes how soon he may be his prey 2. God may suffer the Creature to destroy him as the Lyon did the Prophet 1 King 13. 24. the Bears the children and the 2 King 2. 24. wormes King Herod in all his magnificent Act. 12. 23. pompe Every creature is up in armes against a wicked man and wants only the word of commission to fall on and destroy him Gods wrath and his wretchlesnesse can turne the persumes of the world into ponyards as the Pope who died with joy 3. God may suffer him to destroy himself as Judas did and to become his own assasinate It is only the untired boundlesse patience and infinite long-suffering of God that keeps the wicked mans knife from his own throat Every sinner did not Gods mercy throw a chaine over him he would make his grave in his own wounds he would with Saul fall on 1 Sam. 31. 4. his own sword or like the Jaylour Act. 26. 27. be ready to fall a sacrifice to his own bloudy distemper For God withdrawing his providentiall care from a sinner what should hinder but that nature it self should become a stepmother 4. God himself may destroy a wicked man by an immediate execution as he did Aarons two sons Lev. 10. 2. these unhappy brethren who were brethren not only in nature but in iniquity and misery who as they came from the same wombe so they found the same death I say these brethren offered up strange fire but once but a sinner is continually offering the strange fire of his lusts and therefore God himself may breake him in pieces as a Potters vessell 5. And lastly God may suffer good men to destroy him As Phinehas who quenched the lust of that adulterous couple
mischief as the wiseman saith which Prov. 6. 18. have chaunted after the viall as the Prophet speaks which have often Amos. 6. 4. posted to execute the commands of the inordinate will and sinfull affections which have pleased the wanton soul in its measures and dances shall in eternity be fettered with the burning irons and bear the shackles of ever-flaming wrath and be copartners with the rest of the body in a common execution 4. The heart of the reprobate which here hath been desperately wicked hereafter in eternity shall be intolerably tormented Here it hath been the cage of uncleannesse and hereafter it Jer. 17. 9. shall be the furnace of misery and every lust it hath harboured shall be Jer. 5. 27. turned into a Scorpion an Aspe a Mat. 15. 19. Fury here it was the sink of all those venemous principles the sinner acted by and hereafter it shall be the Sodome which shall be ever consuming Gen. 19. per tot with fire and brimstone and those very corruptions which here checkered the sinner shall hereafter cruciate him and what here was his pleasure shall in hell be his torture And so all parts of the body shall be wrackt in a perpetuall conflagration Then all the haughty looks of a sinner shall be taken down How little will the flames of hell respect the lovelinesse and beauty of those bodies which here they were painted with but as death and the wormes did not reverence the feature of their delicate bodies so neither will the flames of eternity spare their comelinesse And let these three things be subjoyned to this Argument All the parts nerves arteries every parcell and member of the body of the damned after the resurrection shall be all tortured together not by way of succession of priority or posteriority Here indeed diseases run from one part of the body to another and as some parts are full of so others are free from pain But no part of the bodies of the reprobate shall escape the seisure of Gods wrath and hell flames the vengeance of God shall be searching Mat. 25. 41. and tear every vein of the damned In ignem aeternum est totaliter non tantum corpus sed totum corporis All the members shall suffer in a common destruction There shall not be one sinew unstretcht it shall not be with the members of the body as with the sentinels that one should relieve another but as there shall be no relaxation so no exemption All the parts of the body shall be tortured with the extremest pain Indeed happily here some parts of the body have been more forward and froward in sin then others but in eternity every part shall be pullied up and scrued with the extreamest rigour and in the most insufferable perplexity As the Father speaks Adesse erit intolerabile The most choise tender delicate parts of the body which here it may be should not suffer the discourtesie of a gentle blast shall in hell Nunquam dei oculos memoriam manus effugere posset pecator Theoph. be excoriated and unbowelled by unspeakable and inexorable severity Those sost and curious parts of the body which the mimick Dames and proud Gallants of the world have indulged and enshrined in so much bravery shall in eternity suffer the most bloudy tragicall and everlasting execution nor shall the Ladies vail or the Curtizans maske secure their beauty when they shall have no other looking-glasse to see themselves in but the glasse of Gods severe and eternall wrath but the bodies of the most dissolved and effeminated sinners shall be wrackt with a generall torture Here age and diseases can wrinckle their lovelinesse and in eternity wrath and vengeance shall take away all ease and mitigation All the parts and members of the bodies of the damned shall be tortured without the least consumption of them Miseries shall not wast them shall corrode them but not consume them Here diseases do not only tire the spirits but waste the body the face loseth its colour the stomach its appetite the knees tremble with feeblenesse and the flesh melts away But though every part of the body in eternity shall be parched and scorcht with consuming fire yet nothing of its Heb. 12. 29. strength or capacity to endure torment shall for ever be abated for could the parts of the body sinke and gradually consume the whole in time would fall into an extinction which is a felicity God will never give the grant of to the damned reprobate And as all the parts of the bodies and faculties of the souls of the damned shall be tortured with misery for ever so all the senses shall bear their part in the inexpressible doom Those galleries which men so delightfully walke in here those windowes and perspectives of the soul through which the sinner often espies the Bathsheba whose beauty enthrals him those senses which sinners have so studied to bribe and gratifie Esau his tast Gen. 25. 30. Herod his eare Act. 12. 23. Ammon his eye 2 Sam. 13. 6. c. I say these senses which have been the inlets of sin the eye of Pride the tast of drunkennesse the hearing of curiosity vanity and errour c. Those senses which have been the spies of temptation to finde out the bait the panders of the heart to gratifie its lusts and ambitions the Nihil est in intellectu quod non prins fuit in sensu Arist alii false and treacherous sentinels of the soul shall in the dungeon of eternity not only be imprisoned from their pleasant liberty and recreative satisfactions they here enjoyed but be filled and fed with those miseries and distasts which are most noysome and abominable to their susceptible capacities as more particularly 1. The sight shall be cruciated and afflicted with many ghastly and distastfull objects Nihil nisi tremendum Oculi cruciabuntur Daemonum aspectu Ger. nihil nisi horrendum nihil nisi eavendum objectum erit visus Nothing but tragedies and tragicall executions the wounds and wasts the torments and tribulations and terrous of themselves and others shall be the everlasting object of the damneds view The rowling Quoad visum est ibi luminis privatio quod delectabile est oculis videre Gerson eye of the wanton sinner which often fed it self here with beautifull objects whether complexioned in a face or painted in the rarest prospects of the creature shall see nothing but what shall be the fountain of horrour and amazement And the bloudshot eye which diseased hath looked upon every object with malignity and envy shall see nothing but the perpetuall slaughters of doomed malefactours And 2. The hearing of the damned which Quoad auditum est ibi sonus horribilis gemitus miserabilis blasphemia execrabilis Id. it may be here was often raised and ravished with exquisite musickes and pleasing harmonies which oftentimes committed sensuall idolatry with the the Viall and Lute
of misery that is impossible as before was suggested 3. Sin in hell shall be aggravated not crucified shall be envenomed by a more violent blasphemy and not wounded and weakened by a serious and savory penitency Now impenitency for sin leaves the sinner to eternity of misery For Sin is a wound which if not cured is mortal or rather immortal and will cause eternal death the slightest wound if not healed festers and wranckles and kills and so doth unrepented sin for ever Sin is a Fall in which if there be no rising it is perpetual sin casteth the soul upon punishment which if not removed is everlasting Sin is a thief It steals Gods love Christs sufferings heavens joys from the soul now if their be no restitution and no pardon be acquired for the theft it deserves death that death for sin must needs be perpetual because the guilt still remains unsatisfied Rom. 6. 13. Now if the theft of a peice of money deserves a temporal death what death doth the theft of Gods glory demerit Let us but cast up the Account Sin is a chain and a bond And therefore we read of Captivity and slavery of sin of being led captive by lust now if 2 Pet. 3. 6. the person that is bound be not loosed he remains bound for ever Can the chain Isa 6. 18. Vincula insoluta manens Bern. break it self or the cord untwist it self and ye know sins are called the Cords of Vanity Now onely Repentance can file of these chains which is impossible to the damned in eternity as before Sin is a sale by sin the soul sels it self to Hell Satan and misery Ahab sold himself to sin sin sold Ahab to wrath Now 1 King 21. 20. if no ransome be made then the sale remains for ever and onely Christ can pay this ransome in whose merits the Reprobate shall never interest himself And though the sale may be made in a moment for how few sinful dayes do the damned sell themselves yet the force and the end of the sale is for ever Thus yee see sin must be eternally punished in reference to the impenitency of it The sinner must dy eternally in respect of the ingratitude of sin the obligation of every sinner is eternal for as a creature he is obliged to serve God eternally so God being the fountain of his being and sustentation all mans service is but a small retribution for this life which streams from God Now every sin breaketh this obligation and there can be no reparation for this breach but onely in Christ to whom the reprobate hath no title Now therefore the obligation being forfeited the punishment must be adequate to the obligation which was eternal And man once sinning and so breaking this obligation he acts now no more as Gods creature but as Gods enemy and so all his actions being sin not duty he is Everlastingly punishable The sinner shall not onely be everlastingly punished upon the account of his own sin but in regard of God too 1. In regard of the dishonour that one the least sin casteth upon the glorious Name of God Every sin casteth a treble dishonour upon God 1. In its malignity as being most contrary to the pure unspotted perfect nature of God his justice his righteousnes his holines Sin is as contrary to the Nature of God as light to darkness hell to heaven nay infinitely More 2. In its obstinacy it opposeth the Commands of God slights the will of God contradicts the designes of God And 3. principally in its choyce the sinner in sinning chooseth a base lust a venomous sin a crooked Way a sordid corruption before the glorious precious desireable good the Lord himself who is summum bonum summa felicitas 2. In regard of the Magnificence of God Shall a poor worm a painted sepulcher a gaudy nothing Annullity dressed with flesh for so man is comparatively to the Almighty I say shall such a pedantique dream as man is kick and rebell against the most glorious incomprehensible God the Great Soveraigne of the Universe and doth not this fasten the sinner to eternal torment 3. In regard of the Justice of God Pure Justice exacts and requires eternal punishment and will pluck the sinner by the throat for ever and in the eternity of the wicked there shall be summum jus Justice with the sowrest looks the most dreadful frown and the sharpest edge there shall be justice inexorable implacable in its greatest rigor and severity such as tears shall not mollifie or blood satisfy And lastly the sinner shall be punisht to eternity for the pleasure of the Saints They shall be delighted to see the enemies of Christ overwhelmed with eternal Misery Gods justice in heaven shall be as Vide non indutum veste uuptiali ex sponsali dome exemplum nemipro illo intercedentem sic de decem talentū habente quinque stultis virginibus Crysost I◠66. 24. pleasing to them as any other Artribute They shall behold with delight decorem divinae justiciae the beauty of Gods justice How would the Saints here rejoyce to see the Turk the Pope the bloody implacable Enemies of the Gospel buried in ruine and confusion much more when they shall be perfect and lie in Christs bosome And as Gregory observes Although the just in glory by the goodness of their nature be mercifull yet being conjoyned to the justice of God in such a Cap. 20. rectitude they cannot be moved with any compassion at all towards sinners They shall rather loath and abhorre them CHAP. XX. Vse 3. of consolation AND now at last I fall upon the third and last improvement of the proposition our future eternity and that is This flowes with unparallel'd comfort and consolation to all the saints this Truth is a mine a masse a spring of happiness to them Their felicity to come shall be for ever it shall Haec Haereditas Sancti est vita incorruptio regnum coaterna cum Deo babitatio Hilar. never fade nor receive damp Their spring shall know no autumne nor falling of the leaf of glory no declension or abatement No not for ever The sunne of their blessednesse shall never set or be eclipsed Let the saints remember with delight and complacency this one word Eternity Duration is the life of Happinesse A tottering crown is but an honourable misery the best flowers are fond sweetnesses because dying Gold is but drosse because 1 Pet. 1. 18. corruptible what is the lease of the greatest revenues which will soon expire but the saints happinesse shall be immarcessible their crown is made of immortality This shall be the blessedness of the glorified ones that after they have past millions of ages in glory one moment of their happiness is not shed The saint shall ever spring with fresh felicities and shine in an everlasting flourish and renown The Ocean of their joy shall know no bottome