any expectation of living with him as my God hereafter, if I never seek after him here? The face of God, as a stranger in the world to come, carries infinite terrors in it, and yet we are content to be strangers to him, and to live without his acquaintance. The wrath of God abides upon every man who is unregenerate in this life, and who has not trusted in the name of the Son of God; John iii. 36. yet they are thoughtless of it, for they. feel it not; but the moment when they shall awake into the world of spirits, that wrath will be felt with sudden and dreadful an guish, as a most insupportable burden, and will crush all the powers of the soul into torment."

V." It deserves, and it demands our highest gratitude to the great God, our humblest acknowledgments and our most exalted praises to his majesty and his mercy, that we who have long ago deserved this misery, are not yet plunged into the midst of it :" That we have not been entirely cut off from the land of hope, and sent down to this destruction. Blessed be the name and the grace of God for ever and ever.

"While there are thousands who have been sent down to the place of punishment, whence there is no redemption before they had continued so long in sin as many of us have done, what a peculiar instance is it of divine long-suffering and goodness, that we are not actually put under the sting of this living worm, under this fiery vengeance from the hand of God? What was there in us that should secure us from this destruction, while we continued in our state of guilt, rebellion and impenitence? Have we not seen many sinners on our righthand, and on our left, cut off in their sins, and to all appearance they seem to be sent down to the place of sorrow? What is it but the special mercy and distinguishing favour of God that bas dealt thus kindly with us, and spared and saved us, week after week, and month after month, while we continued in our iniquities, and has given us space for repentance and hope? What shall we render to the Lord for all his patience and long-suffering, even to this day? How often have we incurred. the penalty of the law of God, and the fiery sentence of condemnation by our repeated iniquities, both against the authority and the grace of God? And yet we are alive in his presence, and are hearing the words of hope and salvation. O let us look back and shudder at the thoughts of that dreadful precipice, on the edge of which we have so long wandered. Let us fly for escape to the refuge that is set us before us, and give a thousand glories to the divine mercy that we are not plunged into this perdition.

VI. Let us learn from this description of hell, and our imminent danger of it, "the infinite value and worth of the gospel of Christ:" This gospel, which calls us aloud to fly from the

wrath to come, and points out to us the only effectual way to escape it. What can all the riches of the Indies do to relieve us under the guilt and distress into which sin had brought us? What can the favour of princes, and the flattering honours of the world do to rescue us from this danger? What can the bighest gust of sensuality, and the most exquisite delights of flesh and blood do to secure us against this overwhelming misery? It is only the gospel of the blessed Jesus is our refuge and our safety from the tremendous destruction.

"What are the heights, and depths, and lengths of human science, with all the boasted acquisitions of the brightest genius of mankind? Learning and science can measure the globe, can sound the depths of the sea, can compass the heavens, can mete out the distances of the sun and moon, and mark out the path of every twinkling star for many ages past or ages to come; but they cannot acquaint us with the way of salvation from this long, this endless distress. What are all the sublime reasonings of philosophers upon the abstruse and most difficult subjects? What is the whole circle of sciences which human wit and thought cau trace out and comprehend? Can they deliver us from the guilt of one sin? Can they free us from one of the terrors of the Almighty? Can they assuage the torment of a wounded spirit, or guard us from the impression of divine indignation? Alas, they are all but trifles, in comparison of this blessed gospel, which saves us from eternal anguish and death.

"It is the gospel that teaches us the holy skill to prevent this worm of conscience from gnawing the soul, and instructs us how to kill it in the seed and first springs of it, to mortify the corruptions of the heart, to resist the temptations of Satan, and where to wash away the guilt of sin. It is this blessed gospel that clearly discovers to us how we may guard against the fire of divine wrath, or rather how to secure our souls from becoming the fuel of it. It is this book that teaches us to sprinkle the blood of Christ on a guilty conscience by faith, that is, by receiving him as sincere penitents, and thereby defends us from the angel of death and destruction. This is that experimental phi losophy of the saints in heaven, whereby they have been released from the bonds of their sins, have been rescued from the curse of the law, and been secured from the gnawing worm and the devouring fire.

"A serious meditation of hell in its exquisite pain and sorrow, will inhance our value of the salvation of Christ, and will exalt our esteem and honour of the love of God, who has delivered us from eternal death. If we will but appoint our thoughts to dwell a little on the terrors and vengeance from which the blessed Jesus has rescued us by his glorious undertaking, if we will stretch the powers of our souls, and survey the lengths, and VOL. VIL.

the breadths, and the depths of this distress and misery which we have deserved, this will discover to us the heights, and the depths, and the lengths of his love, who submitted himself to the curses of the law of God, and was made a curse for us, that he might redeem us to the possession of an eternal blessing; Gal. iii. 23. This will shew us what exceeding riches of the grace of God, have been laid out upon us for our salvation. This will spread before us the unmeasurable love of Jesus, which has brought him down from the bosom of his Father into such agonies as he sustained in the garden, and on the cross, that he might rescue us from the wrath to come. O what immense and endless debts of gratitude and love are due from every ransomed sinner, who has been released from the bonds of his guilt, and from all this wretchedness, by the love of God the Father, and the grace of his Son Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and honour, and most exalted praise, for ever and ever!" Amen.

DISCOURSE XIII.

The eternal Duration of the Punishments in Hell. Mark ix. 46. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

SECT. 1.-Arguments to prove the Perpetuity of Hell.

WHEN the great and blessed God had a mind to make known his wisdom, his power, and his goodness amongst creatures, he built this world as a theatre, in which those perfections of his nature might be displayed amidst the various works of his hands: He spread it round with the blessings of life and pleasure, he over-hung it with a canopy of skies and stars, and placed the glorious bodies of the sun and moon there to appear in their alternate seasons; and ever amidst the ruins which sin has brought into this world, yet still every eye may behold the traces of an almighty, an all-wise, and a bountiful God. When the same divine and sovereign Being designed to exalt and diffuse the wonders of his grace among the best of his creatures, he built a heaven for them, and furnished it with unknown varieties of beauty and blessing: And we would hope in our appointed season to be raised to this upper world, and there to behold the riches of divine magnificence and mercy, and to be sharers thereof among the rest of the happy inhabitants.

But since sin and wickedness has entered into his creation of men and angels, he saw it necessary also to display the terrors of his justice, and to make his wrath and indignation known amongst rebellious creatures, that he might maintain a just awe and reverence for his own authority, and a constant hatred of sin through all his dominions. For this purpose he has built a hell, a dreadful building indeed, in some dismal region of his vast empire, where he has amassed together all that is grievous and formidable to sensible beings, and wicked spirits carry their own inward hell thither with them, a hell of sin and misery; and though he has sent his own Son to acquaint us with the distresses and agonies of that doleful world, and to warn us of the danger of falling into it; yet if any of us should be so unhappy as to continue in an obstinate state of impenitence and disobedience to God, we shall be made to confess by dreadful experience, that not one half hath been told us.

Therefore hath God set before us these terrors in his word, that we might fly from this wrath to come, and avoid these sufferings: And therefore do his ministers by his commission, proceed to publish this vengeance and indignation of the Lord, that sinners might be awakened to lay hold on the hope that is set

before them, and might be affrighted from plunging themselves into this pit of anguish, whence there is no redemption.

We have taken a short survey of these miseries, in the kind and nature of them in some former discourses; and we are now come to the last thing contained in our Saviour's description of hell, and that is the perpetuity of it: The misery is everlasting in both the parts of it, for the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. The arguments which shall be employed to prove it are such as these:

I. The express words of Christ and his apostles pronounce the punishments eternal; and surely these words are given to us to be the foundation of our faith and practice, and the rules of our hope and fear. My text seems to carry plain and unanswerable evidence in it. The worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And it is many times repeated in this chapter, and that with a special accent on the eternal duration of it, to make that circumstance of it more observed, and to aggravate the terror. Such an awful repetition from the lips of the Son of God should make the sound of the vengeance dwell longer on the ear, and the threatening sink deeper into the soul. Let us next observe the final sentence which Christ, as judge pronounces against impenitent sinners among the sons of men, as well as against fallen spirits, in Mat. xxv. 41. It is this, Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: And as soon as the sentence is pronounced, it is immediately executed, as our Saviour foretels in verse 46. These shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal. What he pronounces as judge, he foretels also as a prophet, that it shall be put in execution.

The express word of God, in describing the punishment of sinners by the pen of his two apostles Paul and John, declares the same thing; 2 Thess. i. 9. They shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord. And the book of the Revelation gives us assurance, that these miseries shall have no end; Rev. xiv. 10, 11. The anti-christian idolators, who worship the beast, shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out, without mixture, into the cup of his indignation, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone—in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever. Jude the apostle, bears bis testimony in the same manner, verse 6. the damned spirits, who kept not their first station, are said to be cast down into hell, and bound in chains of everlasting darkness. Now suppose a man plunged into a pit of thick darkness, by the command of God, and bound there with everlasting chains; what hope can he ever have of deliverance? And if Christ and his apostles, who were taught by him and by his