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Consider these things, all you enemies of God, and reject ors of Christ, whether you be old men and women, Christless heads of families, or young people and wicked children. Be assured, that if you do not hearken and repent, God intends to show his wrath, and make his power known upon you. He intends to magnify himself exceedingly in sinking you down in hell. He intends to show his great majesty at the day of judgment, before a vast assembly, in your misery; before a greater assembly many thousandfold than ever yet appeared on earth; before a vast assembly of saints, and a vast assem bly of wicked men, a vast assembly of holy angels, and before all the crew of devils. God will before all these get himself honor in your destruction; you shall be tormented in the presence of them all.....Then all will see that God is a great God indeed; then all will see how dreadful a thing it is to sin against such a God, and to reject such a Saviour, such love and grace, as you have rejected and despised. All will be filled with awe at the great sight, and all the saints and angels will look upon you, and adore that majesty, and that mighty power, and that holiness and justice of God, which shall appear in your ineffable destruction and misery.

It is probable that here are some, who hear me this day, who at this very moment are unawakened, and are in a great degree careless about their souls. I fear there are some among us who are most fearfully hardened: Their hearts are harder than the very rocks. It is easier to make impres sions upon an adamant than upon their hearts. I suppose some of you have heard all that I have said with ease and quietness: It appears to you as great big sounding words, but doth not reach your hearts. You have heard such things many times: You are old soldiers, and have been too much used to the roaring of heaven's cannon, to be frighted at it. It will therefore probably be in vain for me to say any thing further to you; I will only put you in mind that ere long God will deal with you. I cannot deal with you, you despise what say; I have no power to make you sensible of your danger

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and misery, and of the dreadfulness of the wrath of God. The attempts of men in this way have often proved vain.

However, God hath undertaken to deal with such men as you are. It is his manner commonly first to let men try their utmost strength; particularly to let ministers try, that thus he may show ministers their own weakness and impotency; and when they have done what they can, and all fails, then God takes the matter into his own hands.....So it seems by your obstinacy, as if God intended to undertake to deal with you. He will undertake to subdue you; he will see, if he cannot cure you of your senselessness and regardlessness of his threatenings. And you will be convinced; you will be subdued effectually; your hearts will be broken with a witness; your strength will be utterly broken, your courage and hope will sink. God will surely break those who will not bow.....God, having girded himself with his power and wrath, hath heretofore undertaken to deal with many hard, stubborn, senseless, obstinate hearts; and he never failed, he always did his work thoroughly.

It will not be long before you will be wonderfully changed. You who now hear of hell and the wrath of the great God, and sit here in these seats so easy and quiet, and go away so care less; by and by will shake, and tremble, and cry out, and shriek, and gnash your teeth, and will be thoroughly convinced of the vast weight and importance of these great things, which you now despise. You will not then need to hear sermons in order to make you sensible; you will be at a suffi cient distance from slighting that wrath and power of God, of which you now hear with so much quietness and indifference,

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SERMON X.*

The Eternity of Hell Torments,

MATTHEW xxv. 46.

THESE SHALL GO AWAY INTO EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT

IN this chapter we have the most particular descrip ition of the day of judgment, of any that we have in the whole Bible. Christ here declares, that when he shall hereafter sit on the throne of his glory, the righteous and the wicked shall be set before him, and separated one from the other, as a shep herd divideth his sheep from the goats. Then we have an account how both will be judged according to their works how the good works of the one and the evil works of the oth er will be rehearsed, and how the sentence shall be pronounc ed accordingly. We are told what the sentence will be on each, and then in the verse of the text, we have an account of the execution of the sentence on both the righteous and the wicked. In the words of the text is the account of the exe cution of the sentence on the wicked or the ungodly: Concerning which, it is to my purpose to observe two things.

1. The duration of the punishment on which they are here said to enter: It is called ever lasting punishment.

2. The time of their entrance on this everlasting punishment; viz. after the day of judgment, at the end of the world, when all these things that are of a temporary conting

Dated April, 1739.

ance shall have come to an end, and even those of them that are most lasting, the frame of the world itself; the earth which is said to abide forever; the ancient mountains and everlasting hills; the sun, moon and stars. When the heavens shall have waxed old like a garment, and as a vesture shall be changed, then shall be the time when the wicked shall enter on their punishment.

DOCTRINE. The misery of the wicked in hell will be absolutely eternal.

There are two diverse opinions that I mean to oppose in this doctrine. One is, That the eternal death that wicked men are threatened with in scripture, signifies no more than eternal annihilation; that men will be the subjects of eternal death, as they will be slain, and their life finally and forever be extinguished by God's anger; that God will punish their wickedpess by eternally abolishing their being, and so that they shall suffer eternal death in this sense, that they shall be eternally dead, and never more come to life.

The other opinion which I mean to oppose, is, That though the punishment of the wicked shall consist in sensible misery, yet it shall not be absolutely eternal; but only of a very long continuance.

Therefore to establish the doctrine in opposition to these different opinions, I shall undertake to show,

I. That it is not contrary to the divine perfections to inflict on wicked men a punishment that is absolutely eternal.

II. That the eternal death which God threatens, is not annihilation, but an abiding sensible punishment or misery.

III. That this misery will not only continue for a very long time, but will be absolutely without end.

IV. That various good ends will be obtained by the eter nal punishment of the wicked.

I. I am to show that it is not contrary to the divine perfections to inflict on wicked men a punishment that is absolutely eternal.

This is the sum of the objections usually made against this doctrine, That it is inconsistent with the justice, and especially with the mercy of God. And some say, If it be strictly just, yet, how can we suppose that a merciful God can bear eternally to torment his creatures?

1. Then I shall briefly show, That it is not inconsistent with the justice of God to inflict an eternal punishment. To evince this, I shall use only one argument, viz. that sin is heinous enough to deserve such a punishment, and such a pun. ishment is no more than proportionable to the evil or demerit of sin. If the evil of sin be infinite, as the punishment is, then it is manifest that the punishment is no more than proportionable to the sin punished, and is no more than sin deserves. And if the obligation to love, honor, and obey God be infinite, then sin which is the violation of this obligation, is a violation of infinite obligation, and so is an infinite evil. Again, if God be infinitely worthy of love, honor, and obedience, then our obligation to love, and honor, and obey him is infinitely great. So that God being infinitely glorious, or infinitely worthy of our love, honor, and obedience; our obligation to love, honor, and obey him, and so to avoid all sin, is infinitely great. Again, our obligation to love, honor, and obey God being infinitely great, sin is the violation of infinite obligation, and so is an infinite evil. Once more, sin being an infinite evil, deserves an infinite punishment, an infinite punishment is no more than it deserves: Therefore such punishment is just; which was the thing to be proved. There is no evading the force of this reasoning, but by denying that God, the sovereign of the universe, is infinitely glorious; which I presume none of my hearers will adventure to do,

2. I am to show, That it is not inconsistent with the mer cy of God, to inflict an eternal punishment on wicked men. It is an unreasonable and unscriptural notion of the mercy of God, that he is merciful in such a sense that he cannot bear

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