: moment? An everlasting world is now come; may we not triumph time-about? which of us have chofen the better part? judge ye: prefent things you efteemed only real; and wondered at our folİy, that lived upon the hope of things to come; yea, and to come after death, and the diffolution of all things. And are you not fools, who neglected immortality, and glory, and honour, though you had a miferable, pining life on earth, earning your daily bread by fore labour and grief? could not a frowning, vexing world loofe your bafe minds from it? O vile wretches, efteemed you earth, in its winter-garb, before the eternal enjoyment of the Fountain of all bleffedness? Verily your mouth is eternally ftopped. Wretches of wretches, who were endowed with the knowledge of the only excellent things; who spake, and wrote: to the good and admiration of others: wonderful! knew you fo much of the all-fufficiency of JEHOVAH, the emptinefs of all things below him; and yet did not put your trust in him, did not: care for a near fellowship with him, but placed your love and delights on vanities? You are to be doubly punished, who knew your Mafter's will, and did it not good had it been for you, vileft wretches, that you had been idiots, and fots: how did you defpife fome of the excellent ones of the earth, because of your more fagacious nature, in uptaking? Your heart hath not been upright before God; your knowledge puffed you up; charity hath been away; your gifts and abilities have you not ufed to his glory, for whom are all things: but felf hath been the end of all your endeavours, What: a glorious luftre had you then among weak faints! the rottennefs of your heart was over vailed with a multitude of natural gifts and education; but i he who knoweth all things, hath found you out; he hath weighed you in an even balance, and ye are found wanting. Now it is manifeft, who is the fearcher of the hearts, and the trier of the reins were they not wife, who overlooked the approbation of men, and gave all diligence to be approven to thee? What thy thoughts are con cerning a creature, that it is indeed. Many hypocrites have paffed off the ftage of time, with the paffport of many of the faints; but thy well done hath only landed fair in thy bleffed kingdom. Indeed, Lord Jefus, in time thou madeft a brave feparation betwixt the righteous and the wicked; how oft haft thou fifted thy church over and over again, with fmaller and fmaller fieves? fo that the difference betwixt the wheat and the chaff was very difcernible. How oft haft thou drawn the controverfy betwixt thy friends and thy enemies, to fmaller and fmaller concernments? fo that many, who for fhame could not, in palpably gross things, comply with the devil and his flaves; yet in matters that feemed of lefs confequence, did they fide with them; whence their hypocrify and lukewarmnefs in the matters of God did appear. O apoftates and betrayers of the interefts of JEHOVAH and the Lamb, your mouth is eternally ftopped! many fine excufes did your hellish minds invent, in the midst of your villany: your fine fubtleties, drawn from prudentials and politics, are now laid open before fun and moon. You were too wife and prudent to take the plain way, and come to the streets for God: you were of too meek a nature to hold the devil and his flaves at long weapons; you were of too fine and fubtle a fpirit to fpeak in plain terms of the controverfies of the time, and fas of the generation you lived in; you you were too courteous and fubmiffive to contend with the very fields of the earth, in every con cernment of the Prince of the kings of the earth : no, you were not fuch fools, as to incur the deadly fewd of those who had authority and power in their hands: yet would many of you been ranked in among the camp of the faints, whereby you were esteemed as excellent amongst some of the weaker ones: now it is evident you were bafe traitors, playing with all hands, for your greater fecurity and advantage; and that you have been lukewarm and indifferent in the royal prerogatives and honours of the great and mighty Lord of all things, and the welfare of his fpoufe. You ftated enemies against JEHOVAH and the Lamb, what think you of your defperate madness? thought you to conquer and deftroy the friends and darlings of the high and mighty One? imagined you that you were triumphing, when you profpered in perfecuting of his church? fools, that was one of the great ends that the Almighty raised you up for, that you might fcour and rub the veffels of his temple: ufeful inftruments were you in the hand of the great Actor; by you he hammered and po lihed the ftones of his houfe; by you he cleanfed it of filth; by you he pulled it down, in order to a more excellent fabric: you, you did the Almighty use, as flaves, in all fervile employments; and, when he had fulfilled his intentions with you, he caft you into the fire. Vile wretches, is it not a dreadful torment, to look our Lord Jefus in the face? how doth his prefence, and the prefence of his holy ones abafh you? Where are your high and lofty looks now? what feared and aflonimed-like countenances ! are you the men that spoke fo highly against the work and people of God? arc are you the men who mocked his holy ones, of not? are you the men who cared not for our fellowship, but thought the world might be well. enough without thefe heavenly creatures? were you weary of our neighbourhood, as troublefome; because of our ftoick (as you fancied) and precife principles, contrary to your loofe and worldly way of walking? now you have your will, you are no more troubled with our fellowship; the tares and the wheat are eternally separate: now your hatred and envy cannot reach us; we tread you for ever as dung among our feet. What are your curfings and blafphemies to our Lord and us? could a filthy toad defile the fua, by spitting ve nom upwards? could the fmoke of the lower region darken that lamp of light? could the bluftering winds make the ftars to tremble? could the proud ocean, with its turbulent fwellings, beat down the pearly foundation of the higher house? Your envy and malice is a vehement flame, burning up, eternally your foul and body: your own wickednefs is poured upon you, and it burneth as the fire; it devoureth the briers and the thorns, and kindleth in the thickets of the foreft, and they mount up like the lifting up of fmoke, Wickednefs contain eth its punishment in its boom All our defires are fulfilled the zeal of our God's house, did eat up our heart, in the days of our pilgrimage; but now we are overjoyed, in beholding of the vengeance: much of the vengeance of the wrath of our God did we, with exceeding joy, behold, when. we lived within time. How oft did he appear for the falvation of his people, with garments rolled in blood? how did he overturn a whole world by an univerfal inundation of waters? how did he burn up countries and citics in one hour? how did did he make earth's devouring jaws fwallow up many of these that it was burdened with? By fword, by famine, by peftilence, by the beasts of the field, how hath he made the carcaffes of his enemies to be fpread like dung upon the face of the earth? What strange judgments have we feen upon families and perfons conform to their iniquities? How fignal was his providence over the children of men? fo that men were convinced, and could not but fay, Verily there is a God that judgeth righteously in the earth: verily there is a reward for the righteous and wicked; a difference betwixt him that feareth God, and him that feareth him not. But all was emblems, types, fhadows, and reprefentations of what now we behold: all the vengeance inflicted on curfed wretches was jult nothing. What was mortality capable of? All the wrath inflicted in time, compounded in one, was nothing to one moment of this everlating day of pure and unmixed vengeance: the inflicting of punishment in time, was only for the fake of the fpectators, that the inhabitants of the world might learn righteoufnefs. Vile creatures, do you not know whom you should have feared? what think you of your prodigious madnefs, who feared feeble nothing creatures, like yourfelves, and forgat and defpifed the threatenings and judgments of the infinite One? What could all creatures do? all their wrath and fury, compared to the vengeance of the Almighty, is like a fmail drop to a boundless ocean. Find you not now, that it is a fearful thing to fall inte the hands of the living God? O what billows of divine vengeance! what oceans of wrath hath he treasured up at his right hand! every drop whereof might confound ten thoufand worlds, The Lord hath |