nor no excuse to make for himself who has neglected and despised all the means of Grace that were offered to him and who would not be perswaded to any true Repentance before it was too late and therefore he must now Repent in vain for ever Who can express the bitter thoughts the fears the horrours the agonies of such a Soul at that time and who would ever feel them who has now power and opportunity to avoid them Death carries something of terrour in it to all Men as it is a punishment of Sin and a dark passage to the unknown Regions that are below and it may be either great presumption or great stupidity to have no Fear of it A good Man may not overcome all the Natural Fear of Death but the wicked has all reason to be scared and terrified with it when it comes near him or he thinks of it I shall therefore in the last place consider the Terrour of Death and how we are only freed from this by Repentance and Religion by the hopes and assurances of Christianity and our having sincerely Repented of all our Sins and so as I have shown fitted and prepared our selves thereby for Death SECT VII Of the Fear of Death and how we are delivered from it by Repentance and Religion THere is no Natural Evil so great as Death the King of Terrors and the chief of those dreadful things that Humane Nature is afraid of Skin for skin and all that a man hath will he give for his life Job 2.4 He is willing to part with every thing that he may compound with it nay what will not he not give to purchase a short reprieve from Death and the Grave that he may but set them back a while and gain a little more time to live How is the poor Man willing to endure any thing to linger out a miserable Life a little longer though in the midst of pains and aches and greater torments of Body perhaps then he would feel in Death it self How patiently will he submit to the most tedious penance and severest discipline that his Physician shall lay upon him and swallow down the most loathsome and bitter draughts that the more bitter cup of Death may pass from him How will he endure the utmost cruelties of Surgery and bear a living Martyrdom rather than dye have his Body burnt and scarified his Flesh cut and mangled to the Bone his Limbs cut off or sawn asunder that so he may dye by piece-meals and out-live some part of himself and escape out of the hands of Death though it be never so narrowly and run away from it though he leave a Leg or an Arm behind him This shows how Natural the love of Life is and how willing most Men are to preserve and purchase it at any rate and with what abhorrence they look at Death and how it frights and startles them when it comes near them when they behold its pale look and its terrible visage and see the ghastly monster laying hands on them and ready to lay them prostrate at its feet how does it then appalle and terrifie them and make their Blood chill and their Spirits cold and clammy and their Hearts dye within them when they think how their once brisk and sprightly bodies that have been long enjoying all the sweet Pleasures of Life and Sense shall in a moments time be deprived of all those and become only a heavy clod and a cold and senseless lump of Flesh laid out upon its once warm Bed and then lock'd up in its little Cabin and so laid in the proper place of Rottenness and Putrefaction where it is to molder into Dust and to be as clean forgotten in a little time as if it had never been This is a very mortifying and a very melancholly Consideration to most Men and when they consider that in a little time this must certainly be their own case and their own fatal condition this must keep them in perpetual fear and bondage if there were no provision against this Natural Fear of Death if Religion did not afford us some helps and assistances against it and there were not something to take off and abate its Natural Terrour and to support and strengthen and encourage the Mind of a good Man against it Death as it is the Punishment of Sin and was for that end ordained by God and brought into the World for by sin entered death as the Apostle sayes Rom. 1.12 carries some marks of his Anger and so must necessarily have some degree of Fear accompany it but Christ who was to deliver Mankind from the greatest Punishments which our first Parents drew upon themselves and their Posterity by their Transgressions and was to free us from the saddest effects of theirs and our own Sins he has tho' not quite taken away this Punishment no more than he has the other temporal ones occasioned by the Fall for we must still dye and still have some fear of Death yet the worst effects of Death and for which it was most to be dreaded those Christ has delivered us from and it was one great reason why he became a Man and why he took part of the same flesh and blood of which we are partakers and which makes us subject to Death That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death that is the Devil and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage as the divine Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews assures us Heb. 2.15 Now the wayes by which Christ and Christianity do this are chiefly these two I. By assuring us of another Life II. By taking away the sting of Death which is Sin upon our true Repentance I shall 1. Show this Then 2. Enquire whether a true Penitent and good Man ought to have no Fear of Death 3. Give some Directions about thus overcoming the Fear of Death that so we may not be too much terrified with it when it approaches I. Christ and Christianity free us from the Fears of Death by assuring us of another Life and of a Glorious Immortality after Death Death would be very terrible indeed if it took away our Being and made an end of us when it came and put us into a state of Annihilation If the Grave were to swallow us up and we were to pass into the dark abyss of Non-Entity when we went out of the World If when we expired our last Breath our Souls were to pass with it into the soft Air and we were to be no more after we went off the stage of this World Nothing can be so close so desirable as our being which is the foundation of all Happiness and Enjoyment to us which some have thought so considerable that they have supposed it more eligible to be miserable than not to be at all though I can by no means be of their mind and think being only in order to be miserable to
be no desirable thing if the Misery be greater than the Comfort of being and bare existence is a very thin evanid abstracted thing to be compared with solid and substantial Misery but the closest Principles of Self-love and Self-preservation must make us very unwilling to part with our Beings and all the Pleasures and Enjoyments that belong to them and therefore if we were to resign up those by Death it would be very terrible And how could we be sure we did not if we had not firm and certain grounds of another Life after this or if we had nothing but the uncertain guesses and conjectures of it from Natural Light Most Men indeed had some dark intimations of this from thence and did either hope or fear there might be such a thing rather than believe it But now Christ hath brought Life and immortality to light through the Gospel 2 Tim. 1.10 He hath utterly dispelled that cloud which kept those of this World from seeing into another and hath clearly and manifestly revealed to us the certainty of another and an Immortal State and by his Resurrection from the Dead and Ascension into Heaven given visible and ocular demonstration of it And how should this take off the Fear of Death when we are sure of another Life after it when 't is only a passage to another and a better World too if it be not through our own fault if we are not unprepared and unfitted for it if we are then indeed this is no great Comfort to us but we might wish that Death would put an end to our Being but if we have Repented us of all our Sins and are truly prepared for Death this should much lessen and abate the Fear of it when though we may be a little unwilling to leave our old State and Circumstances our old Dwelling and Habitation our old Friends and Acquaintance and to go into a new and unknown place yet we are sure in the general that we shall be much better provided for and in a much better condition than we are here and tho' the passage seems to us rough and dangerous and we are loth to leave the shore and to launch into the mighty deep of Eternity yet this is a sort of Childish fondness in us to what we have been used to and like the humour of him that would not leave his poor and pitiful Cottage that he has alwayes lived in though he were to go and take possession of a Kingdom in another Country Do not Mankind that have more Wisdom and a larger Spirit willingly leave their own Native Country and Kinsfolks and Relations and transport themselves to an unknown place where there is any fair hopes and probability of mending their Fortunes and living in a more happy and comfortable condition and have we not as good evidence and as much reason to believe that Heaven is as rich and happy a Country as the Indies or any other place where we have never been and had only relations of them from others has not Christ given us as much assurance of this as we can desire and has not the Scripture described and drawn the Chart and Map of those Heavenly Regions and given us as true and full an account of the Pleasures and Riches of them as we can wish for or expect in this Mortal State If we knew them so fully and particularly as we shall do hereafter we should not so much love Life as we now fear Death but God has concealed the particular knowledge of them from us at present that we may be willing to live here but the general knowledge of a Future and Glorious Immortality which we have by Jesus Christ whereby we are assured that Death does not conclude our Being but only translate us to a much better State if we be fit for it by Repentance this should deliver us from the Fear of Death II. Christ has taken away the sting of death as the Apostle intimates 1 Cor. 15.56 and so has delivered us from the servile Fear of it for the sting of death as he there sayes is sin 'T is that which makes the darts of Death so sharp and poysonous because they are envenomed with our own Sin and dipt in our own Guilt Were that but once drawn out we might play with the harmless Serpent and it would not bite or wound us Could we disarm Death of those Terrours with which our own Sins dress it up it would not appear so ugly and so frightful to us 'T is they which put us in a state of Bondage and Servility and depress and sink our Minds with a slavish Fear that we are going to execution when we are going to dye and that we are committed to the Grave but as to a Prison where Death like a terrible Lictor or Executioner is to torment us or we are to be delivered over to him that has the Power of Death that is the Devil Now this may justly terrifie us when we think that whenever Death arrests us it hurries us only to a place of Torments and seizes us as condemned Prisoners to be carried where we must suffer 'T is not leaving the Pleasures of this Life makes Men so unwilling to dye as the fear of going to the Miseries of another 'T is not a present Temporal Death they are so afraid of as that Future and Eternal one which comes after it And this indeed is justly to be feared were Hell to swallow us up as well as the Grave and were we to sink into the bottomless Gulph when our feet take hold of Death but Christ has delivered us from all the danger of this if we do not wifully throw our selves into it He has taken away all that Guilt and all that Punishment due to our Sins which we are afraid of if we have but sincerely and timely repented of them and though Death summons us to Judgment and we know our selves Criminals yet by the performance of that we have our Pardon signed in the Blood of Christ and Heaven will certainly allow of it to a Christian if he have not forfeited it by a desperate Impenitence True and sincere and perfect Repentance will free us in great measure from the Fears and Horrors of Death when it comes near us Our Sins indeed will then be most apt to scare us when Death sets them in order before us but we have all the assurance of the Gospel all the assurance of Heaven that if we have duly repented of them they shall no way hurt or indanger us I will not say that they shall no way make us afraid for this perhaps would not become a very modest and humble and penitent Sinner to be quite fearless but he will have great hopes with his fears and very chearful and comfortable grounds that shall greatly lessen and abate them The righteous hath hope in his death Prov. 13.32 Hopes that his Sins are pardoned in and through Christ and that whenever he goes hence
Mercy and judges himself as incapable of it as the damned in Hell when Gods Spirit has left him so that he can neither pray nor do any thing to relieve himself but lyes as a condemned Caitiff a Malefactor sentenced past all hopes of Pardon and only expecting Punishment and the last stroke of Vengeance this is a sad a deplorable condition which I have known many a Sinner in under a Wounded Spirit and had one great instance before me when I was writing this These Wounds are not felt indeed by many a Sinner in the heat of Blood in the career of his Lusts and the hot persuit of his Sins when in his high frolicks and jovial diversions he drowns the noise of his Conscience or lulls it asleep with charming Pleasures or full Cups or some unthinking madness but it will awake one time or other and like a sleeping Lyon when 't is roused up by some Judgment by some Sickness or Affliction it will fall terribly upon him with rage and fury and tear and consume him then all the wounds which sin gave it will bleed afresh and it will feel them afterwards unless they have been cured by a timely repentance if they have festered and gangrened and mortified the Soul for a time yet when it comes to it self it will feel them with unexpressible pain and anguish which nothing can asswage I mean when a Man has sin'd away his Life and Death and his Sins are set together before him and 't is hard to know which is the more terrible When the Sting of Death swelled up with Sin and Guilt strikes as deep into a Man's Conscience and wounds his Spirit as Death it self strikes into his Body with its fatal dart so that he suffers a double death at the same time and the Spiritual far more painful than the Bodily I take a Wounded Spirit here in the highest and most common sense and though when a Mans Spirit is dejected and sunk with any thing 't is very hard to bear it which may be the sense of the Wise Mans words in the forequoted place when the strength of a Mans Mind is lost which should support him under all his infirmities that he is subject to from without yet nothing does so sink it so wound and destroy it as Sin and Guilt especially when it is come to such a degree and to such a sad condition as we commonly mean by a Wounded Spirit i. e. a Mind deeply pierced with the sense of its own Guilt and of Gods Anger upon it This likewise admits of degrees and in some cases 't is a very happy thing for a Sinner and 't is to be sure alwayes a just Punishment I shall therefore in the Third place briefly consider what is the proper Cure and Remedy of such a wounded Spirit or troubled Mind for there is no Spiritual Illness but what is curable if we take it in time by Religion no Wound of Soul but what there is Balm for in Gilead in Christianity there is no Disease too great for our Heavenly Physician but what the Gospel has a proper and certain Remedy for if we duely and timely apply it A Man may tarry too long indeed and not use the Physick till it be too late till Death comes and puts an end to the time of Tryal and the time of Repentance and then a Wounded Spirit i. e. the extremest Sorrow for a Mans Sins the deepest Contrition of Soul for them cannot come up to true Gospel Repentance to which there is a certain promise of Pardon and Forgiveness for that is only upon turning to God and leaving all our Sins and leading a new Life and bringing forth the Fruits of Repentance by Obedience to the Gospel for the future which is a necessary condition by the terms of the Gospel which he cannot perform whom God cuts off before he can do it and therefore such an one must be left to the Infinite Mercy and Righteous Judgment of God to be dealt with by such measures as are not within the Covenant of Grace or the Terms of the Gospel for by those I cannot see any title he has to Pardon But in other Cases a Wounded Spirit may be the greatest Mercy and even the very beginning of Health or of a Cure to a Soul when God does not suffer a Man to go on senslesly in his Sins till he come to a seered Conscience and a reprobate Sense and to hardness of Heart and blindness of Mind but by some methods of his Grace and Providence alarums his Conscience and awakens his stupid Mind and brings his almost sensless and stupified Soul to some Spiritual sense of his condition Then his Soul will be wounded as Davids was when he reflects upon those Sins which he committed without consideration and he will be sore struck and smitten as every Penitent must at the remembrance of his evil wayes All Repentance is such a wounding of the Soul as makes its Heart bleed within it and its Blood and Spirits melt into Tears and Sorrow for what it has done 't is not such an easie thing as most men think it to be 't is such a Pain such a Wound to the Soul that the Pleasure of the greatest Sin is but a poor trifle to it and no man that rightly understood it would venture upon any Sin from the reserved hopes of it Repentance is a bitter Remedy made up of very strong and unpleasant ingredients and we must go through a long course to purge out the old Disease and take away the root of it so that before a wicked mind can be cured by it it must be cut and lanced and wounded and have very severe applications made to it The work of Regeneration or the New Birth cannot be wrought without many pangs or throwes nor does God ever almost bring a bad man to become a good one without some trouble and disorder of Mind There is a trouble of Mind indeed which is excessive and unreasonable for every Sinner ought in some measure to be troubled in Mind and he has not a due sense of his Sins if he is not but there is a trouble of Mind which takes away the hopes of Mercy and throwes Men into despair which is commonly called a Wounded Spirit and 't is so in the highest degree and whether there is any Remedy for that and what it is and what advice is to be given in such a case and what judgment to be made of it I shall briefly consider 1. Then this is often joyned with Melancholly of Body which is very hard to be cured and till it be so it is apt to darken the Mind and bring a cloud over the Spirits and to fill the Soul with very black Idea's and Imaginations and to hinder it from making true judgment of it self or its own actions and this is as pityable and ought as much to be remedied by Physick and Care as other Diseases of Body for I have known
Rubbish is taken away a good Life should be built and all the goodly structure of Christian Vertues should be erected I come now to propose the Motives and Encouragements to perswade us to this great Duty and they are as many and as great as there are obligations to Vertue and Religion and disswasives from Vice and Wickedness For Repentance is but a Return to Vertue and Leaving Sin and tho' the passage from one to the other may not be so pleasant and delightful but like the Israelites we must pass through a Wilderness through a vale of Sorrow and a course of Contrition and Humiliation yet Vertue is the happy Land flowing with delights and all manner of good things and Vice is a more than Egyptian Servitude and Slavery which he is mad that will not get out of or that any way hankers again after it or after the Garlick and Onions the sordid pleasures and enjoyments of it I shall first examine the Temptations and Enticements to Sin and expose the false Reasonings and Arguments by which Men are drawn into that then offer the Motives and greater Arguments to Repentance both from the Nature and Reason of the thing and from the Gospel or Christianity SECT I. Of the Enticements to Sin THe Enticements and temptations to Sin and Wickedness are so great and many that if we should judge of them by the effect and power which they have upon Mankind they are much stronger than the Motives and Arguments to Vertue and a good Life for we see they prevail upon more than the other do Whole crowds follow the one and are drawn by them into the broad way of Vice whilst Vertue has but a small party who walk in her narrow path and are perswaded to keep closely to it Now surely there must be some mighty and powerful charms in Vice that make it so generally take with most Men there must be some secret and prevailing Reasons that bring them over and engage them so firmly on that side and make Vertue so generally forsaken and deserted Men are Rational Creatures and free Agents that have a power to consider and choose what is best for them what tends most to please and delight and make them happy and they must be greatly imposed upon if they choose that which tends only to make them miserable God sets Life and Death before them as Moses before the Jews Deut. 30.15 and it must be great madness to choose the worser part and what one would think it impossible for any man to do if his Reason were not cheated and deceived with false appearances of good in it and it were not represented to him in such a false light and such false colours as made it seem quite otherwise then it is in its own Nature For no Man can choose Evil as Evil naked in it self and with its own ugliness and deformity about it but it must be drest up under the show of Good and painted and decked up in a meretricious dress to hide its Native and abominable Filthiness Mens Imaginations must be deluded and so their Reason deceived and imposed upon by the Temptations to Sin and there must be a great many false reasonings used to entice them to it or else so many who have thoughts about them and who cannot do any thing without thinking some way or other could never be drawn over to consent to it and to commit it Now the chief Delusions and false Reasonings and Perswasions by which Men are drawn into Sin for there must be some such process in their Minds are such as these following 1. They see and feel the present Good of their Sins and the after Evil is so uncertain or so remote that they know not what to think of it and so are not much influenced by it for they think it unreasonable to part with the present Pleasure and the certain Profit which their Sins afford them for an unknown and unseen and unconceived Pleasure and Happiness they know not when or where they find and feel most Vices very grateful to their Natural Appetites and outward Senses and they are not such fools as to be perswaded out of those nor to put a force and restraint upon Nature and its proper enjoyments Vertue tyes them up to such severe and hard and unnatural restraints as they cannot endure its Mortifications and Self-denyals are very uneasie to Flesh and Blood and they look upon its Rules and Precepts as the morose dictates of peevish and melancholly Men who cannot so well enjoy what others do and therefore talk against the liberties and freedoms of Humane Nature and fright Men from the pleasures and enjoyments of Sin here with the terrours of another World and imaginary dangers hereafter Is it then so very certain that Vice is so pleasant here So desirable and comfortable upon the account of present enjoyment and that its punishment hereafter is so unknown and uncertain That 't is not to be taken into consideration nor worth being more minded than it is by these Sinners do they never think of dying or are they possessed with such a frenzy as to hope they shall live alwayes or that three or fourscore years will never be run out though few live so long and they perhaps have lived above half that time and see how quickly it is gone and then will any Man in his wits venture to be miserable for ever for the Pleasures or Profits of Sin which are but for a season were they never so great If there were a much greater uncertainty about another World then there is yet who would run so dreadful a hazard who would put so great a matter to such a dangerous venture Were not the evidence we have of a future state from Nature from Revelation from the Resurrection of Christ nay from the belief of all Mankind so strong as it is so that not only whatever the Jews or the Christians have believed and witnessed down through all Ages must pass for a fable if it be not true but what all Wise Men have ever believed about a God and Religion must be a meer dream and chimaera Yet however no Man can ever be sure but that there is another World he can have no positive proof or demonstration that there is not and were there no more in it but that there may be such a thing which the greatest Atheist or Sceptical Infidel cannot pretend to deny yet this might be enough to keep him from running upon so dreadful though meerly possible danger and exposing himself to such extream but irrecoverable mischief especially for the poor and pitiful temptations of Sin at present For alas however pleasant and delightful they may imagine them yet they are generally mistaken and there is more true pleasure and comfort a thousand times to be found in a Life of Vertue and Religion than in the most tempting Wickedness and the most gustful Sensuality For which yields most present pleasure and comfort of Life
greatest motive to Repentance that can possibly be given for nothing is so strong and powerful upon most Men as their fears which is the quickest and strongest Passion in Humane Nature and is apt to make a very great impression where nothing else will and nothing can be so much an object of our fear as Hell and Eternal Misery which is the utmost and most dreadful Evil that can be either felt or imagined I shall particularly and largely offer and represent it to the Sinners thoughts both as to its Nature consisting in the greatest pains and torments of Body and Mind and in the most wretched and miserable state and condition and as all this is Eternal and shall never have end Both which if heartily believ'd and seriously consider'd would have a mighty power and almost irresistible force to bring Men off from their greatest Sins I. Then let us consider its Nature as consisting of the greatest pains and torments both of Body and Mind and in the most wretched and miserable state and condition I shall not attempt fully to describe or draw a picture of this place of Torments our imagination is to be help'd out with all the known instances of Misery and so to form an Idea of that future and unknown and invisible one It is certain it must be adapted to those two parts of which we consist our Bodies and our Minds and what are the proper Evils to either of those we very well know sensible Pain and great Anguish and Sorrow and other tormenting Passions and these we must suppose in the highest degree to belong to Hellish Misery for as Heaven is the utmost good our Natures can possibly receive and are capable of so Hell is the greatest evil and as such is represented to us by that Revelation which assures us of it attended with the most sad and woful circumstances that can be imagined I shall offer the thoughts of it to the Sinner under such Ideas and Representations as are given of it by the Holy Ghost in Scripture And 1. We must conceive a horrid dark and dismal dungeon in some deep cavern of the Earth designed for horrour and fill'd with the blackness of darkness and inhabited only by cursed Fiends and frightful Ghosts and Devils into which the wretched Caitiff is to be thrown bound hand and foot and so cast into outer darkness Matth. 22.13 and delivered into chains of darkness 2 Pet. 2.4 Darkness is the Natural image and symbol of horrour and disconsolateness as Light is of comfort and pleasantness so that the Scripture expresses Happiness by the dwelling in light as it does Misery by being cast into outer darkness where there is not any beam of light nor any the least glimpse of joy and comfort And thus to be shut up for ever in a place of darkness and horrour and confined to this dismal and infernal Prison to all Eternity would be a dreadful Misery were there nothing else but they are to be tormented there as well as imprisoned and that with the most exquisite pains and tortures as they are described to us in the second place 2. By Fire and Burning which is the most terrible the most keen and painful of Bodily punishments which enters the tender parts with pointed and piercing fury and dissolves and distorts them with its rapid motion and has nothing to abate its extreme cruelty but that it quickly consumes and dispatches and spends it self with its own rage and violence as well as destroyes its subject But this is the dreadful Nature of that infernal Fire that it never goes out but is as the Scripture calls it unquenchable and that the miserable wretches that are condemned to it shall endure the pain and the rage of it for ever and shall never be consumed or destroyed by it but shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy Angels and in the presence of the Lamb and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever and they have no rest day nor night Rev. 14.10 11. Let us then set before us a burning Lake of liquid Fire and melted Brimstone like Nebuchadnezzars fiery Furnace heat seven times hotter than any thing we here know and the damned wretches cast into it and like Dives sadly tormented in those flames over all their parts so that the Tongue is swelled with heat as in a raging Feaver and nothing would be so comfortable to it as a drop of Water to cool it and to slake and abate the scorching Calenture Some are inclined to think all this but Allegory and Metaphor and painted Fire but the Scripture speaks so often of it that I cannot but think it may be literally true and that Fire is made the instrument of those Bodily pains that are there to be suffered and inflicted after the general Judgment and Resurrection Or however that as great pains of Body are thereby signified and exprest and shall really be endured some way or other as by burning in Fire For if the Holy Spirit to help our weak thoughts and assist our imaginations has made use of those known things only as emblems and pictures of some real pains yet they are certainly as great or greater than any of those by which they are shadowed out and represented as the pleasure of Heaven is much greater no doubt and does far exceed that of a Feast a Wedding a Crown or any such Earthly resemblance As to the proper pain and torment of the Mind which is the other and the greatest part of Hellish Misery for the Mind has a more quick and keen and immediate sense than the Body that is represented in Scripture by the worm which never dyes Matth. 9.46 i. e. by a Passion that bites and gnaws and corrodes and pains us within as the Fire or something else torments the Body from without and this includes in it all those dismal and reflecting thoughts and apprehensions which the Mind has upon its dreadful state and condition As 1. A direful perception of the Divine Anger Wrath and Displeasure which when it lyes heavy upon the Mind in the highest degree will press it into the deepest gulph of Misery and fill it with the most terrible Ideas and most dreadful apprehensions Even in this World when a Sinner tasts but a little of the Cup of Gods Fury 't is a cup of trembling and a cup of astonishment as the Scripture calls it Isa 51.17 Ezek. 23.32 and what will it then be when all the dregs of it must be drunk up When God hides his Face but a little there is all trouble and horrour and what must it then be when he hides it for ever The sense and apprehension of lying under the displeasure of Almighty Power and provoked Justice and abused Goodness and all these highly incensed against a Man and never to be appeased must be very dreadful and make sad impressions upon the Mind The Presence and the Favour of God giveth
Life and Comfort what Death and Misery must it then be to be banished for ever from both with a Depart from me ye oursed 2. The Mind will reflect upon what is past with infinite remorse and anguish and with great regret curse its own folly and madness that has brought it to this sad condition when God had put it in its power to have made it self for ever happy had it been wise and considering as it ought to have been This will be the great sting of its Misery that it wilfully brought it upon it self and for a few foolish and rash and finful actions undid it self for ever and for some trifling reasons and pitiful temptations the little pleasures or profits of Sin which are now all gone made it self thus wretchedly and eternally miserable How with rage and envy will it look up to that Happiness it has lost and sees others enjoy and vex it self with fury that it should refuse and reject that when it was offered to it and this one thought will double and increase its Misery and make it curse and tear it self that it was its own choice 3. As the Mind with looking back will be filled with remerse and anguish upon its past Sins and past Madness so by looking forward and seeing no end of the Misery it is in it will be filled and overwhelmed with Despair which is a Passion of Mind so perfectly and so unspeakably miserable that I shall not venture to describe it for 't is beyond any thing we can imagine and it properly belongs to the next head which is the eternity and endless duration of these Torments and Misery which though it be but a circumstance of time and not properly that wherein they consist yet is the most dreadful perfection and completion of them which I shall consider by and by Let us now but seriously think with our selves what a dreadful state it is to be under all this torment of Mind and pain of Body to lye thus upon the rack of the greatest tortures both from within and without and that in such extremity that they shall make dreadful and hideous signs and expressions of it in weeping and mourning and lamentation and gnashing of teeth Matth 22.13 when they shall gnaw their tongues for pain and blaspheme the God of heaven because of their pains Rev. 16.10 11. And yet all their bitter cryes and dolorous exclamations shall only blow up and kindle the rage and fury of the surrounding flames for none of their sighs shall put out nor their tears extinguish any the least spark of those flames which are kindled by the Wrath of God who is a consuming fire Who can express or imagine the keenness and sharpness of those pains of Body or the pangs and agonies of Conscience the passions and anguish and remorse of Mind and nothing to take off or divert or give the least intermission to all these but an angry God above a dark and bottomless pit of burning Brimstone below and frightful and ugly and insulting Spirits like so many executioners all about it and no friend to call to to pity or to help it O sad and miserable and intolerable condition Who would not do all he could to warn others and himself that they come not to that place of Torments What pleasure or profit can there be in the most tempting Sin that should make a Man venture the enduring all this for the sake of it Who would endure this but one day or one month for all the things this World can afford Who would suffer it for so long a time as this life of Sin here lasts for all that he gets by it Who would endure it a thousand years for all the Kingdoms of this World and the Glories thereof much less who would for a trifling Lust or a sinful Inclination for a little unjust Gain or unlawful Pleasure endure it for ever Which is the next thing I am to speak to That II. This is Eternal and shall never have end This is the dreadful and amazing circumstance of this Misery and that which must confound him that suffers it that it shall last for ever so that there shall never be any hopes of having an end of it after never so many thousand years but there shall be still an infinite Eternity behind and so as much as there was at the first beginning Who can think of this without the utmost horrour and amazement and having his thoughts swallowed up with the dreadful consideration of it It is so great that some have had their Reason overcome and overwhelmed by it so that they have thought it unagreeable and inconsistent with Gods Goodness and Justice to inflict so long and so great a Misery upon any of his Creatures and have therefore endeavoured to limit this Eternity to a shorter compass of time and not to extend it to an absolute but a limited Eternity as sometimes it is understood in Scripture and therefore to reconcile all those places of Scripture to this notion of it and to interpret them so that Eternity in the fullest and utmost sense may not be understood by them I shall therefore briefly examine this Argument which on the one side seems very careful of the credit and honour of the Divine Justice and Goodness but on the other takes off extremely from the utmost terrour of Hellish Torments in denying them to be Eternal so that it may tend in great measure to take off the power and force of those which are the greatest restraints that God could lay upon Sin and Wickedness and since so few are prevailed upon by them though under the doctrine and perswasion of their being Eternal how much fewer would be so if they thought them otherwise I shall therefore First Briefly show how this Eternity of Hellish Torments is agreeable to Gods Goodness Secondly How it is plainly and undeniably proved from Scripture and Revelation First How ' tls agreeable to Gods Goodness to punish the few Sins of a short Life with such great and never ending Torments when in all Governments and all distributions of Justice the Punishment ought not to be so disproportioned and so much greater than the Crime And besides how a good and tender and pitiful God should keep a poor Creature in being for ever meerly to let it suffer and be miserable and endure infinite Torments To this I answer briefly 1. Whatever Punishment is necessary to secure the ends of Government to preserve Obedience to Laws and to keep bold and daring Men from breaking and violating them whatever is necessary to this end is just and necessary and agreeable both to the Goodness and Wisdom and Justice of the best Government for otherwise there must be no such thing as Government in the World but God must give up his Authority and throw the reins loose upon the necks of his Creatures if he have not a power to threaten and inflict such Punishments as shall be sufficient to