nor honesty, nor humanity, will justify you before the tribunal of God, when he lays judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet*, and examines all your actions, and all your thoughts, with the strictest severity. You have not been a drunkard, an adulterer, or a robber. So far it is well. You stand before a righteous God, who will do you ample justice: and therefore will not condemn you for drunkenness, adultery, or robbery. But you have forgotten him, your parent and your benefactor; you have cast off fear and restrained prayer before him; you have despised the blood of his Son, and all the immortal blessings that he purchased with it. For this therefore are you judged and condemned. And as for any thing that has looked like virtue and humanity in your temper and conduct, the exercise of it has in a great measure been its own reward, if there were any thing more than form and artifice in it; and the various bounties of divine providence to you amidst all your numberless provocations, have been a thousand times more than an equivalent for such defective and imperfect virtues as these. You remain therefore chargeable with the guilt of a thousand offences, for which you have no excuse; though there are some other instances, in which you did not grossly offend. And those good works, in which you have been so ready to trust, will no more vindicate you in his awful presence, than a man's kindness to his poor neighbours would be allowed as a plea in arrest of judgment, when he stood convicted of high treason against his prince. §. 9 But you will, perhaps, be ready to say, you did not expect all this you did not think the consequences of neglecting religion would have been so fatal.' And why did you not think it? why did you not examine more attentively, and more impartially? why did you suffer the pride and folly of your vain heart, to take up with such superficial appearances, and trust the light suggestions of your own prejudiced mind, against the express declaration of the word of God? Had you reflected on his character, as the supreme Governor of the world, you would have seen the necessity of such a day of retribution as we are now referring to. Had you regarded the scripture, the divine authority of which you professed to believe, every page might have taught you to expect it. You did not think of religion! And of what were you thinking, when you forgot or neglected it? Had you too much employment of another kind? Of what kind, I beseech you? What end could you ↑ Job xv. 4. * Isai. xxviii. 17. propose by any thing else, of equal moment? Nay, with all your engagements, conscience will tell you, that there have been seasons, when for want of thought, time and life have been a burden to you: yet you guarded against thought as an enemy, and cast up (as it were) an intrenchment of inconsideration around you on every side, as if it had been to defend you from the most dangerous invasion. God knew you were thoughtless; and therefore he sent you line upon line and precept upon precept*, in such plain language, that it needed no genius or study to understand it. He tried you too with afflictions, as well as with mercies, to awaken you out of your fatal lethargy; and yet when awakened, you would lie down again upon the bed of sloth. And now, pleasing as your dreams might be, you must lie down in sorrow†. Reflection has at last overtaken you, and must be heard as a tormentor, since it might not be heard as a friend. ; §. 10. But some may perhaps imagine, that one important apology is yet unheard, and that there may be room to say, you were by the necessity of your nature, impelled to those things, which are now charged upon you as crimes whereas it was not in your power to have avoided them, in the circumstances in which you were placed.' If this will do any thing, it indeed promises to do much; so much, that it will amount to nothing. If I were disposed to answer you upon the folly and madness of your own principles, I might say, that the same consideration, which proves it was necessary for you to offend, proves also that it is necessary for God to punish you; and that, indeed, he cannot but do it: and I might farther say, with an excellent writer of our own age, That the same prinples which destroy the injustice of sins, destroy the injustice of punishment too.' But if you cannot admit this, if you should still reply in spite of principle, that it must be unjust to punish you for an action utterly and absolutely unavoidable; I really think you would answer right. But in that answer you will contradict your own scheme, (as I observed above;) and I leave your conscience to judge, what sort of a scheme that must be which would make all kind of punishment unjust for the argument will on the whole be the same, whether with regard to human punishment or divine. It is a scheme full of confusion and horror. You would not, I am sure, take it from a servant who had robbed you, and then fired your house: you would never inwardly believe, that he could not have helped it: or think, that he had fairly excused himself by such a plea. And I am persuaded, you would be so far from presuming to offer it to God at the great day, that you would not venture to turn it into a prayer even now. Imagine that you saw a malefactor dying, with such words as these in his mouth: O God, it is true, I did indeed rob and murder my fellow-creatures; but thou knowest, that, as my circumstances were ordered, I could not do otherwise: my will was irresistibly determined by the motives which thou didst set before me; and I could as well have shaken the foundations of the earth, or darkened the sun in the firmament, as have resisted the impulse which bore me on.' I put it to your conscience, whether you would not look on such a speech as this with detestation, as one enormity added to another. Yet if the excuse would have any weight in your mouth, it would have equal weight in his; or would be equally applicable to any the most shocking occasion. But indeed it is so contrary to the plainest principles of common reason, that I can hardly persuade myself, any one could seriously and thoroughly believe it; and should imagine my time very ill employed here, if I were to set myself to combat those pretences to argument, by which the wantonness of human wit has attempted to varnish it over. §. 11. You see then, on the whole, the vanity of all your pleas, and how easily the most plausible of them might be silenced, by a mortal man like yourself: how much more then by him, who searches all hearts, and can, in a moment, flash in upon the conscience a most powerful and irresistible conviction? What then can you do, while you stand convicted in the presence of God? What should you do, but hold your peace under an inward sense of your inexcusable guilt, and prepare yourself to hear the sentence which his law pronounces against you? You must feel the execution of it, if the gospel does not at length deliver you; and you must feel something of the terror of it, before you can be excited to seek to that gospel for deliverance. The Meditation of a convinced Sinner, giving up his vain Pleas before God. DEPLORABLE condition, to which I am indeed reduced! I have sinned; and what shall I say unto thee, O thou preserver of men*? What shall I dare to say? Fool that I was, to amuse myself with such trifling excuses as these, and to imagine, they could have any weight in thy tremendous presence; or that I should be able so much as to mention them there! I cannot presume to do it. I am silent and confounded. My hopes, alas, are slain; and my soul itself is ready to die too; so far as an immortal soul can die: and I am almost ready to say, O that it could die entirely! I am indeed a criminal in the hands of justice, quite disarmed, and stripped of the weapons in which I trusted. Dissimulation can only add provocation to provocation. I will therefore plainly and freely own it. I have acted, as if I thought God was altogether such a one as myself: but, he hath said, I will reprove thee; I will set thy sins in order before thine eyes*, will marshal them in battle array. And oh, what a terrible kind of host do they appear? and how do they surround me beyond all possibility of an escape! Oh my soul, they have, as it were, taken thee prisoner; and they are bearing thee away to the divine tribunal. Thou must appear before it ! Thou must see the awful eternal Judge, who tries the very reins †; and who needs no other evidence, for he has himself been witness to all thy rebellion. Thou must see him, O my soul, sitting in judgment upon thee: and when he is strict to mark iniquity, how wilt thou answer him for one of a thousand¶! And if thou canst not answer him, in what language will he speak to thee! Lord, as things at present stand, I can expect no other language than that of condemnation. And what a condemnation is it! Let me refleet upon it! Let me read my sentence before I hear it finally and irreversibly passed! I know, he has recorded it in his word; and I know, in the general, that the representation is made with a gracious design. I know, that he would have us alarmed, that we may not be destroyed. Speak to me, therefore, O God, while thou speakest not for the last time, and in circumstances when thou wilt hear me no more. Speak in the language of effectual terror, so that it be not to speak me into final despair. And let thy word, however painful in its operation, be quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword**. Let me not vainly flatter myself: let me not be left a wretched prey to those who would prophecy smooth things to mett, till I am sealed up under wrath, and feel thy justice piercing my soul, and the poison of thine arrows drinking up all my spirits. * Psal. 1. 21. Job ix. 3. + Jer. xvii. 10. Jer. xxix. 23. ++ Isai, xxx. 10. Psal. cxxx. 3. ‡‡ Job vi. 4. Before I enter upon the particular view, I know in the general, that it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. O thou living God, in one sense I am already fallen into thine hands. I am become obnoxious to thy displeasure, justly obnoxious to it; and whatever thy sentence may be when it comes forth from thy presencet, I must condemn myself, and justify thee. Thou canst not treat me with more severity, than mine iniquities have deserved: and how bitter soever that cup of trembling may be‡, which thou shalt appoint for me, I give judgment against myself, that I deserve to wring out the very dregs of it. CHAP. VI. The Sinner sentenced. The Sinner called upon to hear his Sentence, §. 1, 2, God's Law does now And in general pronounce a Curse: §. 3. It pronounces Death. §. 4. being turned into Hell. §. 5. The Judgment Day shall come. §. 6. The Solemnity of that grand Process described, according to Scriptural Representations of it. §. 7, 8. With a particular Illustration of the Sentence, Depart Accursed, &c. §. 9. The Execution will certainly and immediately follow. §. 10. The Sinner warned to prepare for enduring it. §. 11. The Reflection of a Sinner struck with the Terror of this Sentence. HEAR, S. 1. EAR, O sinner, and I will speak¶ yet once more, as in the name of God, of God, thine almighty Judge; who if thou dost not attend to his servants, will ere long speak unto thee in a more immediate manner, with an energy and terror which thou shalt not be able to resist. §. 2. Thou hast been convicted, as in his presence. Thy pleas have been over-ruled; or rather, they have been silenced. It appears before God, it appears to thine own conscience, that thou hast nothing more to offer in arrest of judgment; therefore hear thy sentence, and summon up, if thou canst, all the It is indeed a powers of thy soul to bear the execution of it. very small thing to be judged of man's judgment; but he that now judgeth thee, is the Lord**. Hear therefore, and tremble, while I tell thee, how he will speak to thee; or rather, while I shew thee, from express scripture, how he doth even Heb. x. 31. + Psal. xvii. 2. ¶ Job xlii. 4. Isai. h. 17. ** 1 Cor. iv. 3, 4. |