The life and immortality, which Chrift hath brought to light, and which he hath promised to all his faithful disci→ ples, is a tranflation from a ftate of dulness and anxiety, trouble, affliction, disappointments, vexations, real grief, folid cares, and at the best but of imaginary pleasures, to a state of true happiness and content, of manly and rational pleasures, pleafures not interrupted by fickness or any fad accidents, not dulled by being weary of them, nor cloyed with them, not disturbed either by the infults of our enemies, or the concernments for our miferable friends, or our own inequality of temper. In that ftate all the powers and faculties of our fouls will be advanced to the highest perfection that they are capable of; and we shall live in perfect cafe and peace, in perfect freedom and liberty, in the perfectenjoyment of ourfelves. Then our bodies, that flept in the duft, fhall be raised again, and united to our fouls, to live in the city of the great King, the heavenly Jerufalem, a paradife of pleasure, a country of perpetual light and blifs, where the glory of the Lords fills the place, and where every object that prefents itfelf adds a new beauty to it, and contributes to the increase of our delight. But,

→ To complete the whole, we are affured that the inheritance we expect is incorruptible, and fadeth not away; that our house in heaven is eternal; and that death shall have no more power over us. There is no difpute concerning the everlasting happiness of the righteous; it being evident, that God in his infinite bounty may reward the fincere obedience -of his creatures as much beyond the merit of their own weak and imperfect works as he fees proper: Yet the everlasting punishment threatened to the wicked has feemed to many a great difficulty; fince it is certain, from our natural notions Ged'sjuftice of the attributes of God, that no man fhall be puvindicated nifhed beyond the just demerit of his tranfgreffion. in punishing But those who confider the nature of human aceternally. tions must confefs that God is juft, and that every one who wilfully offends him deferves eternal punishment: because a rational and moral man not only has in himself a power of acting, which is in common to him with the.irrational creatures; but he has moreover a ftill higher prin

the avicked

ciple

ciple or power of directing his actions, with fome deterininate views, and to fome certain and conftant end. He has a power of judging before-hand, concerning the Becaneman confequences of his actions, concerning the rea- fins wilful fonableness or unreasonableness of the end he aims

at; and he has a power of recollecting, after the action is done, whether he acted with a good or an evil view. He can either follow the irregular motions of all his appetites and paffions, as do the beafts that perifh; or he can reftrain and over-rule their follicitation, by attending to the guidance of a fuperior light of reafon and religion. Nay, a man cannot indeed but have fome view and defign in every thing he does: Even when he abandons himself moft implicitly to the brutal guidance of mere appetite and paffion, ftill he does it with fome view; and with a confcioufnefs, which beafts have not, that he knowingly and deliberately chufes to aim at fome mean and unworthy end. Hence arifes that judgment of reflection which we call confcience; by Against his which a man either approves or condemns his own confcience. past actions, and apprehends, that he fhall accordingly be approved or condemned by him alfo to whom he must finally give an account of himself. If a man, in the general course of his life, accuftoms himself to confiderthefe things beforehand, that is, if he will behave himself as a rational creature; if he accustoms himself in all his actions to confider the reafon and equity of things, to confider what is reafonable for himself to do, or for him to expect thould be done by another; to confider what is agreeable to the will of God, and likely to be approved at the bar of an impartial and allfeeing Judge: If this (I fay) be his main directing principle, and the point which he conftantly keeps in view, his actions, generally speaking, will not fail to be virtuous and good.i

On the contrary, if a man's principles be loose and atheiftical; if he has no fenfe of the reafon and equity The cafe of of things, nor apprehenfion of the righteous judg- athifts. · ment of God; if his views be no other than the fatisfying of his appetites, the gratification of his paffions, the pursuing his prefent intereft, and pleafing his own unreasonable selfwill; it cannot be but his actions will be generally immoral and vicious.

And

And as there never was any person in any age or country All wicked upon earth, but judged himself injured by any viomen are felf- lence or fraud put by another upon himself, the condemned. cafe is precifely the fame, whenever fraud or any violence is used by him towards another; and therefore the judgment paffed by him in that cafe upon other men is in fact a judgment paffed by him upon himself. The fame may be faid concerning any other known inftance of wickedness, concerning every kind of impiety, unrighteousness, or debauchery. The person who commits the crime always condemns himself, and is conscious that he deserves to be punished. Men may divert and turn away their thoughts from the unpleafing subject, by variety of amufements, and numberless vain imaginations: They may flatter themselves as they please with objections against the unalterable and effential differences of virtue and vice, and refolve to say within themselves, though they can never really be perfuaded of it, that they shall have peace, though they walk in the imagination of their own heart, to add one fin to another: they may confidently and prefumptuously dispute and argue general, that all actions are naturally and originally alike; that morality is but a fiction of speculative men; and the notion of vice and virtue only a creature of the laws or customs of nations: But the judgment in particular that every wicked man neceffarily and immediately makes concerning any unjust action of another, by which he himself happens to suffer, will for ever convict him of knowing well that difference of moral good or evil, which he is not willing to acknowledge, or which, however, he is not willing to make the rule of his own behaviour. This is what the Apostle calls the law written in men's hearts, by which they are a law unto themselves, their confcience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accufing or excufing one another; therefore it is certain men are naturally conscious of the difference of good and evil, and of the confequent defert of their own actions: It is natural for them to apprehend, that this judgment of their own confciences is the judgment that God alfo paffes upon them; and the fcripture very clearly affirms that it is fo.

in

The

The fenfe of guilt is foneceffarily uneafy upon the mind of man, that even the moft hardened finners are per- Their excu petually endeavouring to fhift off the blame of fes for sintheir wickedness from themselves, and to throwning are the fault upon whatever comes in their way. Some- vain. times the reafon of their wickedness is because God has not made them better than they are: And who has refifted his will? Sometimes it is the devil that tempts them: And how can frail man withstand so potent and fo cunning a deceiver? Sometimes it is the original corruption of their nature: And who can alter the condition to which he was born? Sometimes it is the general fashion and cuftom of the world: And who can be fingular in oppofing fo violent a torrent? The Apoftle cuts off at once both these and all other excuses, by determining diftinctly, that, whatever aggravations The nature or extenuations of fin may or may not arife from of fin. external circumstances, yet fin in itself, the nature and effence of fin, confifts intirely in the free choice of a man's own will; and that his guilt is always juft fo much in proportion as his choice deviates from the dictates of his reafon. For, though the fenfibility of our confcience, whereby we become uneafy at the commiffion of any crime, may deadened by a long perfeverance in vice; yet the light of our confcience, whereby we difcern the difference between good and evil, can perhaps be never totally put out. But this we may do, and this, if we are wife, we will do: We may by repeated endeavours, by degrees, fubdue our vicious inclinations to our reafon. Every man is then only tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lufts and enticed.

Why the

be

Let it therefore be observed, firft, that no man can say it is unreasonable, that they, who by wilful and stubborn disobedience to their almighty Creator and wicked most merciful Benefactor, and by the habitual hold finalby fuffer epractice of unrepented wickedness, have, during ternal puthe ftate of trial, made themfelves unfit for the nishment. enjoyment of that happiness, which God has prepared for them that love and obey him, fhould be intirely rejected and excluded therefrom. As to the continuance of the punishment, no man can prefume, in our present state of ig

norance

norance and darkness, to be able truly to judge, barely by the ftrength of his own natural reafon, what in this refpect is os not confiftent with the wifdom, and juftice, and goodnefs of the fupreme Governor of the world; fince we neither know the place, nor kind, nor manner, nor circumstances, nor degrees, nor all the ends and ufes of the final punifhment of wicked men. But we are certain that the justice of God will abundantly vindicate itself, and all mouths shall be stopped before him, and be forced to acknowledge the exact righteousness of all his judgments, and to condemn their own folly and wickednefs; forafmuch as the degree or severity of the punishment, which shall be inflicted on the impenitent, fhall be exactly proportionate to their fins, as a recompence of their crime; fo that no man fhall fuffer more than he has deferved, by the evil of his ways. And for argument fake, should it be granted that men are to live here for ever: Let us fuppofe, that fome of them were become abandoned and incorrigibly bad: Would it be any unjustifiable severity to confine them for ever in prifon, that they might not feduce or annoy the rest of the creation; or even to inflict pofitive punishments upon them, in their confinement, adequate to their offences, in order to deter others? It is only therefore to fuppofe, that the foul is in its own nature defigned for an immortal duration: that thofe, who are configned to everlasting mifery, are fuch as by a continued courfe of finning have fo difabled all the powers of the foul, that it is morally impoffible for them, without the extraordinary grace of God, to cease from finning: And then, if it be no injustice, as undoubtedly it is not, that every finner fhould be a fufferer; there can be no injuftice, that every habitual, eternal finner fhould be an eternal fufferer. Suppofe again, that the outward acts of fin are temporary; yet the defilement and habit contracted by a repetition of these acts are, if we die in a state of impenitence, eternal. And as eternal ill habits are the fource of eternal torments; it will follow that the impenitent have intailed upon themselves everlasting mifery. And, finally, let thofe, who infift fo much upon it, that the punishment is difproportioned to the crime, confider fin in all views, and in all its confequences,