appearance We must all appear all men that ever lived or shall live upon the Earth high or low rich or poor no order or degree of men excepted we must all then make our appearance 5. There is something considerable in the appearance it self Doctor Hammond interprets the Phrase We must appear onely with analogy to Tribunals of Justice among men that as Prisoners at the Bar are wont to be set in a conspicuous place in order to their Trial so we also must give our appearance before the Judgement Seat of Christ But the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath a more important signification and must be understood not onely of our being actually present at Gods Tribunal but we must appear or be made manifest as the same word is interpreted in the following Verse and then the Apostle means thus much that all our hidden actions and secret designs which are now undiscovered by men shall then at the Judgement Seat of Christ be made manifest and laid open to us before God and all his holy Angels We have now many ways to hide our selves and to disguise our actions from the knowledge of men we can now put on the Mask and Garb of a Righteous man and appear as such to the World when our hearts are full of wickedness and deceit but at the Judgment of the Great Day all these arts will avail us nothing our false pretences will then be discovered our disguise pulled off our hypocrisie made visible and manifest inasmuch as all things are naked and open before him with whom we have to do and we must all appear 6. Here is the method that will be used at the Judgment Seat of Christ Every one shall receive the things done in the body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad 7. Here is the use S. Paul makes of all these considerations Knowing therefore these terrours of the Lord and being assured how dreadful this appearance and the event of it will be we persuade men that they would now behave themselves as men that must then appear but to insist particularly on all these circumstances would be too large an Exercise of your Patience I shall therefore confine my Discourse to these three things 1. I shall endeavour to remind you of those grounds and reasons by which we may be assured of a Judgment to come that we must appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ 2. I shall consider the method of proceeding at the Day of Judgment Every man shall receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad 3. I shall draw some inferences that may be of use to us in the government of our lives First of the truth and certainty of a Judgment to come And this will appear upon these following accounts 1. From the dictates and testimony of our own Conscience 2. From the Nature of God and his Attributes 3. From the concurrent testimony and belief of all Nations 4. From the particular revelation of this truth in holy Scripture 1. If we look into the secrets of our own souls and examine the natural powers we are endued with they will afford us great evidence that there is a Judgment to come when we shall be called to account for our actions here and be rewarded or punished according to them The knowledge of good and evil and the obligation to do one and eschew the other is naturally written in the Soul of Man nor can any man be wicked without violence to his own reason and best faculties Every man bears about with him a secret Monitor in his bosom which upon the temptations to evil doth faithfully forewarn him of it and upon the commission of evil doth afflict his soul with a sense of guilt and with a fearful expectation of punishment due upon it On the contrary there is a secret joy and satisfaction naturally springs up in the soul of a good man which is an exceeding support and comfort to him in the discharge of his duty which enables him to bear many difficulties and oppositions which oft-times attend him in the practice of Vertue his conscience breeding in him a strong confidence and assurance of some future recompence for his good deeds Now that conscience is thus active and busie to forewarn men of the evil which they are about to do and to set before them in order the evils they have done and to support them in doing good every man that gives himself the leisure to attend to the motions of his own mind may be convinced by his own experience Or if we would rather learn from the experience of others it were easie to produce a crowd of Witnesses which give us large descriptions of the unsupportable burden a troubled spirit and the great comfort and security of a conscience void of offence And now would we know the true ground and foundation of those hopes and fears which the conscience naturally suggests to us according to our actions whether good or bad there is no sufficient reason of them can be assigned but this that they are the voice of God and Nature forewarning us of another state after this when all men shall be recompensed according to that they have done here For that the fears and disquiets of a guilty conscience are indeed the effects of Nature and are not grounded upon the apprehension of temporal punishment or of the Laws of men as some vainly suppose is sufficiently evident in that those persons who have been beyond the reach and above the fears of any earthly Tribunal have yet been the greatest examples of this force of conscience The Story of Caligula is in every bodies mouth and is indeed a signal instance of this truth He who was possessed with so unlimited a Soveraignty over a great part of the Known World and exercised his power with so extravagant a cruelty was yet upon every flash of Lightning and clap of Thunder awakened to a sense and fearful apprehension of the power and justice of that God whom at other times he was wont to defie But not to dwell upon a single instance a further evidence that these Fears are the effects of Nature may be gathered from hence that the sting of conscience is most remarkable in those actions which are done in secret and far removed from the knowledge of men For though we seek the darkest retirements where no mortal eye can trace our steps or behold our doings yet there our conscience is as a thousand Witnesses continually upbraiding us with what we have done and afflicting us with terrours which can proceed from nothing else but from a secret conviction of soul that there is a God whose power and knowledge reaches to all places even to our most secret retirements and who will one day bring upon us punishments proportionable to our deservings I will not insist longer upon this Argument than to take notice that S. Paul himself seems
conclusion and could such an Argumentation deceive we could have little encouragement to believe any thing upon the testimony of our Faculties Again If this were the effect of some early revelation made to men when they were yet few in number and retained in the dispersion of Nations and still preserved notwithstanding the gross ignorance they fell into as to other matters This must be a great evidence of the clearness and evidence of that revelation at first and must consequently much confirm us in the belief of it And indeed it is not improbable that the rational Evidences of this Truth of a Judgment to come might have been confirmed to the first Ages of the World by some divine revelations which were communicated to all and thence derived and propagated through all the several Religions and Superstitions which afterward were entertained by the Heathen World It is not to be doubted but that Noah understood this Truth and would not fail to instruct his Family which were all humane souls that were left alive in so necessary a matter which might have so great influence upon them to keep them in obedience to God who had so lately delivered them from so universal a destruction Nay there is still extant the remainder of a Prophecy concerning a Judgment to come much ancienter than the Flood This we find cited by Saint Jude 14. And Enoch also the seventh from Adam prophesied saying Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his Saints to execute judgment upon all and to convince all that are ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him And this leads me to the last and most undeniable evidence of this truth 4. The particular revelation of it in holy Scripture but the testimonies of this Truth that there is a Judgment to come are so frequent in the Writings of the Evangelists and Apostles that it were altogether needless to recite them to you Every one that hath heard of the Gospel must understand that is one chief Article of our Christian Profession Nothing more plainly revealed nothing more frequently inculcated than that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ I proceed therefore to the second thing proposed The Method of proceeding at that day Every one shall receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad That the good or evil of mens actions in this life is the rule and measure according to which they shall be judged at the great day that they who have done good shall receive the good they have done and they who have done evil shall receive according to that likewise is a Truth so fully and plainly taught in holy Scripture that one would think men could not easily mistake or deceive themselves in this matter For 1. It is very plain that no other way of proceeding can be agreeable to the Purity and Justice of the Divine Nature The righteous God loveth righteousness and his countenance will behold the the thing that is just and he is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity The righteous therefore and they onely can be capable of reward from him when he cometh to judge the Earth and the wicked and unrighteous and they only must be the objects of his wrath and vengeance To do otherwise than so and to invert this method would be a contradiction to all the divine Attributes and to all the Methods whereby God hath made himself known to the Sons of men And therefore the Author of the Book of Wisdom saith thus to the Almighty Wisd xij 15. For as much as thou art righteous thy self thou orderest all things righteously thinking it not agreeable to thy power to condemn him who hath not deserved to be punished To which we may also add That it is not agreeable to his Purity and Justice to reward the unrighteous and disobedient And therefore we may observe That in all the methods of Gods dealings with the Sons of men he hath all along declared the greatest abhorrence of sin and wickedness and the greatest severity against those that continued in the commission of it It was Sin onely that brought Misery and Death into the World For by one mans disobedience sin entered into the World and death by sin and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned And when God was pleased out of his infinite mercy and compassion to contrive the way of our recovery and to send his Son into the World for our Redemption he would not admit us to terms of Peace and Reconciliation without the greatest demonstration of his justice and severity against sin and that in the Sufferings of his onely begotten Son For he was made sin for us who know no sin he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities by his stripes we are healed Now we are not to persuade our selves that our Saviours sufferings in our stead can be available to us or free us from the punishment of our sins while we continue in them For he bare our sins in his own body on the tree for no other end but that we being dead to sin might live unto righteousness that so being saved from our sins here we might be saved from the Wages of them hereafter And therefore Saint Paul tells us that the grace of God hath appeared to all men to bring salvation no otherwise than by teaching us to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live righteously soberly and godly in this present World Thus if we consider the nature of God and his dealings with Mankind we cannot but expect that when he cometh to judge the World he will judge according to righteousness They who have done good shall be rewarded by him and they who have done evil shall receive a due recompence of their evil deeds 2. This is further evident from the several promises and threatnings in Scripture which are all along made use of as Arguments to persuade us to the practice of righteousness and true holiness and to discourage and dissuade us from sin and wickedness which it were in vain to do if the promises of the Gospel can be due to any but upon condition of their obedience or if the Wrath to come could be avoided any otherwise than by forsaking those sins to which it is threatned Thus Saint Paul argues from the promises of the Gospel 2 Cor. vij 1. Having therefore these promises dearly beloved let us cleanse our selves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit perfecting holiness in the fear of God Thus again S. Peter i. 4. tells That by the Gospel there are given unto us great and pretious promises that by these ye may be partakers of the Divine Nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through Lust and besides this giving all
diligence add to your Faith Vertue and to Vertue Knowledge and to Knowledge Temperance and to Temperance Patience and to Patience Godliness and to Godliness Brotherly Kindness and to Brotherly Kindness Charity For so an entrance shall be ministred unto you effectually into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Now these and the like Exhortations would be of no force at all to persuade us if these promises could be attained without the performance of these conditions In a word in all the descriptions of a Judgment to come there is nothing plainer than this that I now plead for that God will reward every one according to what he hath done I shall mention but two places more Rom. ij 6. God will render to every man according to his deeds to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality eternal life But unto them that are contentious and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness indignation and wrath tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doth evil of the Jew first and also of the Gentiles For there is no respect of persons with God The other place is Mat. xxv where our Saviour having given us a large description of those good Works which shall then be rewarded and having there represented the vanity of those mens excuses who had not wrought them he concludes with this sentence these shall go away into everlasting punishment and the righteous into life eternal There remains onely to draw some inferences from what hath been said that may be of use to us for the government of our lives 1. If there be a Judgment to come wherein men shall receive rewards and punishments according to their actions whether good or bad it is easie then to understand how much those men deceive themselves who hope to be saved by vertue of any absolute and inconditionate decree For if God have from eternity fore-ordained such and such particular persons to eternal life and others to eternal damnation without any consideration of their actions whether good or bad then certainly God cannot proceed in judgment according to the method before described nor could the promises and threatnings of the Gospel have any force of persuasion to engage men in the practice of Vertue or to discourage them from Sin and Wickedness In vain would the Apostle here make use of the terrours of the Lord to persuade men if God have before determined that such a certain number of them shall not escape the wrath to come whatsoever diligence they use on their parts On the contrary the promises of the Gospel cannot have any reasonable force to engage men to obedience if once they knew and believed that their future state was from everlasting unalterably fixed so that they could not fall short of it by any neglect Nay upon this supposition all the various methods of persuasion which God uses in Scripture to bring men to repentance and a better life prove nothing else but illusion and hypocrisie For that God should so often by his holy Prophets and Apostles invite and exhort and beseech all men that they would turn from their evil ways and live when in the mean time he hath excluded many myriads of men from any possibility of salvation by an absolute and irresistible decree which no endeavour of theirs can revoke or cancel this way of proceeding cannot by any means consist with that truth and sincerity and goodness which is inseparable from the divine nature We must therefore conclude that if there be a Judgment to come when all men shall receive rewards and punishments according to what they have done then certainly no man shall ever be excluded from those rewards but by his own fault nor yet any man obtain the same but by a due diligence in working out his salvation and performing those conditions upon which they are promised 2. From what hath been said concerning the method of Gods proceeding at the Judgment of the last Day we may also observe that those men do extreamly mistake the conditions of salvation who talk of being saved by Faith as it is distinguished from good works and obedience who take so much pains to cry down the value of our good works as though they had little or no influence in the justification or salvation of a Christian For surely if we shall be judged according to what we have done Faith alone cannot be the whole condition required on our parts in order to our salvation It is true indeed glorious things are spoken of Faith in holy Scripture but these things must not be understood of a bare assent to the truth of the Gospel which is the proper importance of that word Faith but of such a Faith as is a principle of life and action such a Faith as hath influence upon the whole course of our lives and is not contradicted by our practice and conversation a Faith that worketh by love and is fruitful of good works and obedience Thus it is not to be considered as a single Vertue and separate from the rest but as being the fruitful parent of all other Christian Vertues and including them in it For if we understand Faith in a more strict sense as distinct from an holy conversation it is no more than the Devils themselves may pretend to and yet this is so far from being any relief to them that it is the great aggravation of their misery To know and be assured of the glorious things revealed in the Gospel and to know withal that they themselves are finally excluded from the benefit of them this doubtless is a mighty aggravation of their horrour and we may well conclude as S. James doth that they believe and tremble nay that this belief doth make them tremble 3. If we shall be judged according to what we have done in the body it then follows that all that is to be done by us in the great work of our Salvation must be performed in our life time whilest we are in the body Now must we give all diligence to make our calling and election sure and not leave any thing to be done after our death either by our selves or others This I observe in opposition to that Doctrine of the Church of Rome which supposes that some sins are expiated after death and purged away by the fire of Purgatory and by the Prayers and Sacrifices of those that are left alive But this is not onely a vain and groundless opinion but certainly doth much tend to the hindrance of Piety and lessening mens care of their future state As the Tree falleth so it lieth As a man goeth out of this World such will be his future state and he will be judged according to what he was when he left the body according to what he had done in the body 4. If it be thus certain that we must all appear before the Judgment seat of Christ that every one may receive the things done in his body this certainly ought to awaken our diligence in the business of our Salvation that to day while it is called to day we break off our sins by a sincere and hearty repentance that knowing the terrours of the Lord we pass the time of our so journing here in fear For surely did men seriously consider that there is a day coming when all the hidden works of darkness shall be made manifest when the secrets of all mens hearts shall be revealed when all the close impieties which had passed here undiscerned should be laid open before God and all the World they would not now so fondly flatter themselves with hopes of secresie or impunity Did men seriously reflect upon the terribleness of that great day when God shall appear with ten thousand of his Saints to take vengeance on them that have not feared his name did they often think upon that dreadful sentence which will then be pronounced against all impenitent sinners Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels this certainly if any thing would put a check to the bold impiety of this Age. Men would not then dare so openly to defie Heaven and blaspheme the Majesty of the great God who will at that day appear so terrible nor would they continue by their hardness and impenitent hearts to treasure up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous Judgment of God On the contrary as the terrours of that day ought to make us sensible of our danger if we continue in disobedience so the glorious reward which shall at that day be given to those that have lived obediently to the will of God ought to be a most effectual motive to persuade us thereunto For what greater encouragement to our duty than the consideration of those great and glorious things which God hath prepared for them that love him Who would not willingly forsake all the flattering joys and transitory pleasures of this life that he may secure to himself such an inheritance incorruptible undefiled that fadeth not away which God the righteous Judge shall give him at that day Or who would not despise all the sufferings of this life which may possibly attend him in the practice of his duty when he remembers that these light afflictions which endure but for a moment work out for him a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory Now the great God grant us all his grace that we may have the judgment of the last day always present to our minds that denying all ungodliness and worldly lusts we may live soberly righteously and godly in this present world looking for that blessed hope and glorious appearance of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ that when we come to stand before that great Tribunal we may be presented pure and unblamable in his sight and that not for any merits of our own but through the mediation of our blessed Saviour To whom with the Father and Eternal Spirit be ascribed as is most due all power praise thanksgiving and obedience for evermore FINIS
and true c. Such also are the general notions of good and evil which God hath planted in every mans soul which have so evident an obligation that no pretended demonstration in the World ought to shake our belief of them But there are other opinions which men take up upon lesser evidence which they are sometimes as tenacious of as of those first fundamental principles And these sort of prejudices are commonly the great hindrances of the propagation of truth there being scarcely any Sect in Religion which have not some peculiar tenets which they take up upon weak and incompetent grounds in proportion to which they judge of all other doctrines and make them the rule and measure according to which all places of Scripture must be interpreted Now in regard we all confess our selves liable to infirmity and mistake it is certainly the most equitable and reasonable thing in the World that when we come to enquire after truth we resolve with our selves always to submit to clear evidence though we have been otherwise persuaded Now that the want of this temper is a very great hindrance both to the receiving the Gospel and to our understanding it aright when we have received it I shall endeavour to prove by two notorious instances of the power of prejudice in either of these cases The first instance shall be that of the Jews in our Saviours days The great opposition which our Saviour met withall among the Jews the great reason why they would not receive him for their Messias was grounded upon this prejudice that they took it for granted that their long expected Messias was to have been a temporal Prince and to have appeared with worldly pomp and splendor and that he should have delivered them from the Roman Yoke and have reigned gloriously in Jerusalem And therefore when they saw him appear in so mean and despicable a condition not all the demonstrations of a divine authority accompanying him in all his mighty work not the greatest wisdom with which he spake not the most divine and excellent precepts he gave not all the predictions of their Prophets fulfilled by him not any of these things though they were in themselves as great evidence as they could have required yet none of them could prevail with them against that one prejudice that his Power was to be temporal and that he should restore the kingdom to Israel in a literal sense which was inconsistent with that state of sufferings in which our Saviour appeared Now that this Opinion of the Jews was taken up upon insufficient grounds is evident from hence because though there are glorious things spoken of the Messias yet his sufferings also are foretold by the same Prophets in as plain words as the other Nay it is expresly said by Isaiah that the glory that should be given to the Messias was to be consequent upon his sufferings as a reward of them And the Jews themselves have been so far sensible of the force of those predictions to prove that the Messias should suffer that to salve those prophecies they invented a Fable concerning a two-fold Messias one of which was to suffer for them and the other to redeem them and to reign gloriously over them Though the Prophet Isaiah ch liij v. 12. expresly attributes both to the same person making the suffering of the Messias the reason of the glory which God would afterward confer on him Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he hath poured out his soul unto death c. But the minds of the Jews were strongly affected with the love of this present World and the glory of it and they hoped that in the days of the Messias they should plentifully enjoy all the blessings of this life and therefore they were resolved to believe no more of the Prophets than agreed with this opinion that was so suitable to their inclinations and were uncapable of being convinced by the most powerful demonstration to the contrary that could possibly be given Thus we see how great the power of this one prejudice was to hinder the Jews from receiving the Gospel at first Nor is the power of preconceived opinions and prejudices less dangerous to hinder our understanding the Gospel when we have received it And of this I might produce many instances in the several dissenting Parties in Christendom every Sect having some peculiar and darling Notion which they hold tenaciously against all opposition and to comply with which all other doctrines must be bowed and wrested as they can best contrive it I shall give but one instance of this kind and that is the doctrine of Infallibility as it is maintained in the Church of Rome This is the leading prejudice of that Party which being once firmly received it becomes the Mother of the most absurd and contradictious opinions in the World and which is worst of all makes those who believe it uncapable of conviction by any argument though never so clear and cogent For what argument can possibly prevail with those who resolve to reject the testimony of their senses though never so well qualified rather than call in question the infallible decision of their Church And this the Papists plainly do in the doctrine of Transubstantiation which hath so many plain absurdities in it and is so clearly contradicted by our several senses that are capable of judging in that matter that there can be no other reason of their obstinate defending of it but that they cannot renounce the doctrine without quitting their claim to Infallibility It is beside my present business to consider upon what grounds they build that infallible power of their Church in determining matters of Faith but yet methinks I cannot persuade my self that they have any Argument for it so plain and cogent as the testimony of their senses and therefore it cannot but seem a strange way of arguing which they use to deny matter of fact evident to their several senses to maintain a doctrine for which they have infinitely less evidence than that they reject We see then how far preconceived opinions and prejudices may prevail both to make men uncapable of receiving the Gospel and of understanding it rightly when they have received it and consequently how much this simplicity of mind doth contribute to our success in the enquiries we make after divine truth 2. The second branch of duty which doth highly conduce to our receiving the Gospel and understanding it aright is purity of heart which consists chiefly in the moderation of our sensual appetites and pleasures He that intends to do the will of God must not retain in his bosom any lust or habitual inclination which he is not willing to forego if he find it contradictory to his will whom he resolves to obey and for that reason must have a constant watch over his sensual desires to keep them in their due bounds Those natural
joy which it affords us in this spiritual Race which infinitely over-ballances all the false pleasures we forsake and all the difficulties we undergo in undertaking this enterprize And lastly I might put you in mind of the great danger reproach and confusion of face which will certainly attend us if by our negligence and indifference we fall short of this glorious prize all which arguments ought to have a mighty influence upon us to awake and excite our utmost industry and vigour to promote our vigilance and to confirm strengthen and maintain our courage constancy and resolution to go on stedfastly in the ways of holiness and to run with patience the Race set before us But the prosecution of these and the like arguments would be too large a scope for the time allotted to this exercise and the words of the Text confine my thoughts to a more particular consideration of the example of the Saints Martyrs and holy Confessors who have gone before us in this glorious Race and have already finished their course with patience Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight c. The word Martyr or Witness in an Ecclesiastical sense is usually restrained to such onely who have laid down their lives in testimony of the truth of the Gospel but in the language of holy Scripture I find no such limitation of it Any of these who were either great examples of obedience and faith in God any who bare witness to divine truth though they were not called to suffer death for that testimony being indifferently stiled by that name The Fathers mentioned in the former Chapter cannot all be accounted Martyrs in the stricter sense however they all help to make up the number which by reason of the multitude of them is here called a Cloud of Witnesses Now the force of their witness and example to engage us in a like diligence and constancy in running the Race set before us I shall endeavour to represent in these following particulars 1. They were witnesses of the truth and faithfulness and goodness of God in whom we believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him and therefore that our labour and industry in our Christian Race shall not be in vain I mention this truth more particularly because it seems to be the onely Creed which all the Saints recited in the former Chapter agreed in Some of them 't is true had a great prospect and hope of a Messias to come Abraham rejoiced to see his day Jacobs prophecy of him is very punctual and particular The other Prophets give witness to him But yet it appears not that all there mentioned had any knowledge at all either that he was to come or what he should do or suffer for the World And therefore the Apostle in the beginning of the Chapter lays down that viz. That God is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him as the fundamental Article of their Belief in confidence of which they willingly underwent so many Trials and Temptations with such bravery and undaunted resolution If therefore we look upon these men onely as giving testimony to this truth yet this alone is sufficient reason for our imitation of them and doth justifie the wisdom of our choice in being religious and serving the same God on whom they believed and forsaking all in obedience to him as they did before us Since we have the same convictions of Reason that they had that our God whom we serve is a Rewarder of those that put their trust in him and are further confirmed in our belief of this by their patience and constancy in the same Profession and by their chearful suffering Persecution for it By their suffering we have this satisfaction at least that we are not singular in this our persuasion concerning God and that he hath not been without his Witnesses in all Ages who have laid down their lives in this Faith and Assurance and therefore we ought to be stedfast in it without wavering Now if any should object that the numbers of those who have died in this Faith though they are here called a Cloud of Witnesses are yet but a very few in comparison of those who have lived without God in the World and have despised and rejected all hopes of a future reward To this it is easie to reply that the credit of any testimony doth not depend on the number and noise of those that affirm any thing but from the manner of the evidence they give Now a few men who give sufficient proof that they understand perfectly what they say and do and would not deceive others are more to be valued as Witnesses than ten thousand of the ruder multitude who take up reports upon trust and if you come to examine them they shrink into nothing They said something they know not what but know not whence they had it nor why they said it The case is the same in matters of religion those that have been truly pious and religious have in all Ages been men of the clearest and best understandings that have always been able to give a reason of their Hope that was in them and to satisfie the World that they did not pretend this for any temporal advantage they did deliberately and chearfully expose themselves to the most severe Trials and Persecutions for their testimony of it not accepting deliverance as the Apostle speaketh that they might obtain a better resurrection This was the case of those Heroick Spirits recited in the foregoing Chapter They were men of found mind as appears by the glorious things they did and suffered many of which are at large recorded in sacred Story They knew the value of life as well as others they were sensible of disgrace and pain and want and could have no reason to expose themselves to these things without a mighty evidence and conviction of the truth of what they believed concerning God of the greatness of his Power that he was able to reward them after this life of the greatness of his Wisdom that he knew when and how to do it better than they could choose of the Justice of his Providence that he would certainly do it But then on the contrary for those that have rejected this belief or at least have not lived answerably to it it is plain that much the greatest part of them are onely a rash inconsiderate multitude of no understanding in these matters who never took time to think whether Religion had any real foundation in Nature or Reason or not and therefore these are not competent Judges in the case and not to be regarded as Witnesses For those others who have lived wickedly and have yet had some reason to consider of the grounds and obligations of a religious course of life it is plain that these are most of them self-condemned and act against the conviction of their