the delightful banquet, and the door is shut*; the everlasting gates are shut for ever, and barred against me. And here I must lie at this miserable distance, envying and raging at their happiness, of which, whatever sight or knowledge I may have of it, I must never, never, never partake."

Such reflections as these, Sirs, will cut deep into your souls; and accordingly our Lord declares to impenitent sinners in his own days, There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see others sitting down in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust outt. And if you would reflect, you might easily apprehend this. How would you be enraged at yourselves, if by your folly you had neglected securing a plentiful estate, when it was offered to you on the most easy terms; and you actually saw others, once your equals, and perhaps your inferiors, in the possession of it, in consequence of having taken those methods which you stupidly neglected? The reflection I doubt not, would very much impair the pleasure you might find in other comfortable and agreeable circumstances. How much more insupportable then will the loss of heaven appear to you, when you come to see, and know, what it is you have lost, and have nothing to relieve, or support you, under the painful recollection ?

It is to no purpose to object, that upon the principles of my last discourse, there will be no room to lament your exclusion from those entertainments, which you would be incapable of relishing, if you were admitted to them: For you will then see and lament that incapacity, as a very great misery. As if a man who was naturally fond of feasting and mirth, should see a great many regaling themselves, and revelling about him, while he was languishing under some painful distemper, which made him incapable of joining in the entertainment; he would yet grieve, that he had no part in it; And it would be the increase, rather than the alleviation of his uneasiness, that it was his sickness which unfitted him for it; especially if, as in your case, it was a sickness, which he had brought upon himself by his own folly, and for which he had been offered an easy, pleasant, and infallible remedy, which he had refused to use, till the malady was grown utterly incurable. One would imagine, this thought would be enough to impress you; but if you do not, let me intreat, and even charge you to consider,

2. That if you are excluded from the kingdom of heaven, "you will be consigned over to those regions of darkness, despair, and misery, which God has prepared for those unhappy criminals, who are the objects of his final displeasure, and whom he will render everlasting monuments of his wrath."

There is something in human nature, that starts back at the thought of annihilation with strong reluctance: And yet how many thousands are there in this miserable world, who would with all their souls fly to it as a refuge? They Shall seek death, as an inspired writer strongly expresses it, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them*. I will not attempt to enter into a detail of the horrors, attending the place and state, into which all who are excluded from the glories of the heavenly world shall be cast, and in which they shall be fixed. Let that one awful scripture suffice for a specimen of many more; in which we are told, that every one whose name was not found written in the book of life, or who was not registered in the number of those, who were to inhabit the New Jerusalem, or the kingdom of heaven, was cast into the lake of firet, or, as it is afterwards expressed, Into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. Think of this, and as your own hearts, you that are so impatient of the little evils of mortal life, whether you can endure to take up your abode for ever in Devouring fire, or whether you can dwell with everlasting burnings? Yet these are the images, by which the word of God represents it; to be plunged as in a sea of liquid fire, whose flames are exasperated and heightened, by being fed with brimstone; nay, as the prophet speaks, by a copious stream of brimstone, so expressly appointed by God himself, that this, as well as the river of the water of life, is represented as proceeding immediately from him: He has made Tophet deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood, and the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.

It is painful to a tender mind to think of this, as what its fellow-creatures are obnoxious to: It is grievous to speak of it, in these dreadful terms. But who are we, that we should be more merciful than God? Or rather, how can we imagine it is mercy, to avoid speaking of the appointment of infinite wisdom, for the punishmeut of impenitent sinners? What mercy were

* Rev, ix. 6. + Rev. xx. 15. Rev. xxi. 8. § Isa. xxxiii. 14. || Isa. xxx. 33. 30

VOL. II.

that, Sirs, to avoid to mention these terrors to you, and to neglect to warn you of them, because they are great? which is indeed the very reason, why the scripture thus pathetically describes them.

Away therefore with this foolish, this treacherous compassion, which chuses rather to leave men to be consumed, than to disturb their slumbers! Think, Sirs, of that wretched glutton, whom Christ describes as Lifting up his eyes in hell, being in torments; seeing the regions of the blessed at an unapproachable distance, and begging in vain that one drop of water might be sent to cool his tongue, amidst all the raging thirst with which he was tormented in this flame*. Regard it attentively; for as God lives, and as your soul lives, if you continue in an unrenewed state, you see in that wretch the very image and representation of yourselves. Yes, Sinners, I testify it to you this day, that intolerable as it seems, it will, on that supposition, be your own certain fate: or to speak much more properly, your righteous, but inevitable doom. Heaven and earth will desert you in that dreadful hour: Or, if the inhabitants of both were to join to intercede for you, it would be in vain. Sentence will be past, and execution done: Hell will open its mouth to receive you, and shut it again for ever to inclose you with thousands, and ten thousands more, among whom you will not find one to comfort you, but every one ready to afflict you. Then shall you know the value which God sets upon his heavenly kingdom, by the judgments he inflicts upon you for neglecting and despising it; and then shall you know the importance of being born again, that only means by which hell can be avoided, and heaven secured.

And let me farther add, that conviction will quickly come in this terrible way, if you are not now prevailed upon to consider these things; things, which if you have the least regard to the word of God, you cannot but notionally believe. Do not then go about to annihilate, as it were, these prospects to your mind, by placing them at a long distance. The distance is not so great, as to deserve a mention: The patience of God will not wait upon you for thousands, or even hundreds of years: You have a few mortal days, in which to consider of the matter; or rather, you have the present moment to consider of it. And if you improve the opportunity, it is well; but if not, the just and uniform methods of the divine administration shall proceed,

* Luke xvi. 23, 24.

though it should be to your ruin. God has vindicated the honours of his violated law, and despised gospel, upon millions, who, with the rebel Angels, by whom they have been seduced, are even now reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day*: and he will as surely vindicate them upon you. If you do not repent, if you are not regenerate, you shall all likewise perisht, and not one of you shall escape.

And thus I close this copious and important argument; this argument in which life and death, salvation and damnation are concerned. View it, my friends, in all its connection, and see in what part of it the chain can be broken. Will you say, that without regeneration you can secure an interest in the kingdom of heaven, though the constitution of heaven oppose it, and all the declarations of God's word stand directly against it; and though nature itself reclaim, and conscience testify your incapacity to enjoy it? Or will you say, that being excluded from it, you shall suffer no considerable damage, though you lose so glorious a state, the noblest preparation of divine love, the purchase of redeeming blood, and the end of the Spirit's operation on the soul; though you ever remain sensible of your loss, and be consigned over to dwell in that flaming prison, which God has prepared for the Devil and his angels, and where all the terrors of his righteous judgments are made

known.

But if you are indeed inwardly convinced of the truth and importance of these things, and will go away, and act as before, without any regard to them, I can say no more. The reason of man, and the word of God can point out no stronger arguments, than an infinite good on the one hand, and an infinite evil on the other.

Hear therefore, Oh heavens, and give ear, Oh earth! and let angels and devils join their astonishment; that creatures, who would strenuously contend, and warmly exert themselves, I will not say merely for an earthly kingdom, but in an affair where only a few pounds, or perhaps a few shillings or pence were concerned, are indifferent here, where, by their own confession, a happy or miserable eternity is in question : For indifferent, I fear, some of you are, and will continue. I have represented these things in the integrity of my heart, as in the sight of God, not in artful forms of speech, but in the

genuine language, which the strong emotions of my own soul, in the views of them, most naturally dictated. Yet I think it not at all probable, that some of you, and sone perhaps who do not now imagine it, will, as soon as you return home, divert your thoughts and discourses to other objects; and may perhaps, as heretofore, lie down upon your beds without spending one quarter of an hour, or even one serious minute, in lamenting your miserable state before God, and seeking that help and deliverance which his grace alone can give. But if you thus lie down, make, if you can, A covenant with death, that it may not break in upon your slumbers; and an agreement with hell*, that before the return of the morning, it may not flash in upon your careless souls another kind of conviction, than they will now receive from the voice of reason and the word of God.

* Isa, xxviji, 15.