former hope he had in God could have kept him from following his wife's advice; but he would have been ready to curse God, and spit the venom of his discontented heart in his face, though he died for it. No hypocrite is so far of Job's temper as to be able at the same time to hold fast his hopes, and to embrace a dunghill, and (according to his phrase) to trust in God though he kills him. He cannot heartily call God father, while he whips and chastises him.

Hence Job clears himself of hypocrisy by this notable question, Job xxvii. 10, Will the hypocrite delight himself in the Almighty? God indeed is usually made the prop of his presumption, but never the object of his delight. He never attains to those well-tempered, durable, victorious hopes of the righteous, so excellently set forth in Habak. iii. 17, 18; Although the figtree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vine, and the labour of the olive shall fail; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation. No, the hypocrite's hope and joy is quite of another make and mould. He finds no taste or relish in celestial joys, abstracted from the plenties and jollities of the world. He finds no feast in a good conscience any longer than he sits down to a full table. Come to such an one while he is flushed in honour, strong in interest, and all things flow in full and fair to his ambition, and what devout discourses shall you hear from him, especially after a large meal; and what contempt of the world, and affiance in God, as if his heart were already lodged in Abraham's bosom! But let God once put forth his hand and touch him in his beloved name or interest, toss him upon the tongues of

his enemies, and lay him low in contempt and disgrace; and then come to him, and see whether he can now live upon his former talk, and support his spirits with those glorious pretences he used to flourish his discourse with, in the midst of his former affluence. No; the case is quite altered, and you shall find him a pitiful, abject, dispirited lump of clay pale and whining, and creeping into every company to tell doleful stories of himself and his sufferings. Or, as the prophet, Isaiah li. 20, much better expresses it, you will find him like a wild bull in a net; tumbling and tossing, hampered and impatient, and fit for nothing but to let the world see the strange and ugly difference between the way and postures of an hypocrite in a prosperous and in a calamitous condition. It is clear therefore, that in the time of such severe judgments the hypocrite's confidence leaves him, deserts, and utterly fails him: for he cannot hold his hope in one hand, unless he grasps the world in the other.

2. The other season, in which the hypocrite's hope will be sure to fail and to forsake him, is at the time of death. Although he has by many arts and shifts prolonged his confidence hitherto, yet this hour will put a period both to his life and his expectations at once: for the hypocrite's hope is but an annuity at the best, he has it but for term of life at the longest. When a few days in the flesh shall be passed, he must be forced to lie down, and breathe out his soul and his hopes together. And though it might be said of him, that as long as there was life there was hope; as long as his body breathed, his soul hoped; yet at this time that saying of the Psalmist must pass upon him, Psalm cxlvi. 4, His

breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, and in that very day all his thoughts perish. All his fond expectations shall then upbraid him to his face : Satan, his greatest flatterer, shall then laugh him to scorn; death shall confute, all his confidences, and hell convince him that his hopes of heaven were groundless and irrational. He now steps out of an old world, and finds that old things are passed away, and all things presented to him in a new state and dress his old thoughts, his old reasonings, hopes, and confidences vanish; and he has new apprehensions of God, new conceptions of the nature of sin, and of his own state and condition.

For as soon as the soul is once dislodged from the body, it is also freed from many causes of ignorance and deception, that did encumber it in that estate; so that now its reason is quicker, and its discernment clearer, both to perceive other things, and throughly to reflect upon itself. It now spies out all the flaws and fallacies of its former fair, but deceiving hopes; it sees the non-concludency of those arguments that it rested upon before. Death, as it shuts our bodily eyes, so it opens and enlarges our spiritual. One moment after death shall discover the errors of many ages: for the time of this life is a time in which all things are, as it were, huddled up in a kind of mixture and confusion. The righteous own and profess Christ, and so do the hypocrites; the righteous have their hopes, and so have they and both of them live and act, and are supported by their hopes; and as to any outward appearance, we cannot discriminate the unsound from the sincere. But when death comes, that divides them by an open and a manifest distinction, the

hope of the righteous is crowned, and the hope of the wicked is confounded: a line of eternal separation is then drawn between them; the hypocrite must then let go his hold, bid an everlasting farewell to all his comforts, renounce his usurped confidence, and take up his portion in those mansions of endless despair, where he shall have abundant cause to wish, but no grounds to hope for the least redemption.

And thus much for the second thing proposed; which was, to shew those critical seasons and turns, in which more especially the hypocrite's hope will be sure to fail him. I come now to the

Third and last thing, which is to make some use and improvement of the whole foregoing discourse. And it thall be to display and set before us the transcendent, surpassing misery of the final estate of all hypocrites; whose peculiar lot it is, not only to be damned, but, what is infinitely more, to hope themselves into damnation, and to perish with those circumstances that shall double and treble the weight of their destruction. Hope is the last refuge and retreat of an afflicted soul, the last support of a sinking mind. And in this life the heart of man is not capable of such absolute, entire misery, but that some glimmerings of hope will still dart in upon him, and buoy up his spirits from an utter despondency. But when it shall come to this, that a man must go one way, and his hopes another, so parting as never to meet again, human nature admits not of any further addition to its sorrow; for it is pure, perfect, unmixed misery, without any allay or mitigation. The strongest affections and the greatest hopes, if not answered, do of necessity leave behind them the quickest pain: for if, as the wise

man says, in Prov. xiii. 12, hope only deferred be so grievous, what then must be hope utterly disappointed? If delay be so irksome, what then must be total frustration? Nothing is more contrary and tormenting to the nature of man than to be degraded; to be low is sad, but to be brought low is much worse. Poverty is troublesome, but poverty after riches is insupportable. Former happiness is the greatest ingredient of present misery: for look what comfort springs from past sorrows heretofore endured, the same degree of misery arises from past happiness heretofore enjoyed. In Lament. i. 7, it is represented as the height and sting of the calamity of Judah, that in the day of her affliction and of her misery she remembered all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old. It would be some relief to a condemned sinner, if with the loss of his hope he could lose his memory too: but, alas! when he shall lie down in sorrow and torment, this will recall to his mind all that peace, comfort, and tranquillity that his false hopes formerly fed him with, and then force him to write this emphatical character of misery upon all; Thus and thus I was; these things I did enjoy. No voice will be heard in hell so loud and frequent as this sad and doleful one; My hopes deceived me, my confidences deluded me. And (believe it) this will make it ten times more hell, than the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and all the other torments of it put together.

For take the case in a similitude: When a poor traveller, disheartened with bad ways and weather turmoiling him, and fear of thieves besetting him, shall yet comfort himself with this thought, that when he comes to his journey's end he will refresh