shall be more happy and others more miserable by it The righteous shall not only see God but know what the seeing of God means and that the greatest happiness we are capable of is implyed therein and the wicked shall not only be bid to depart from him but shall then find that the highest misery imaginable is comprehended in it It is a great instance of the weakness of our capacities here that our discourses concerning the happiness and misery of a future life are like those of Children about affairs of State which they represent to themselves in a way agreeable to their own Childish fancies thence the Poetical dreams of Elysian fields and turning wheels and rouling stones and such like imaginations Nay the Scripture it self sets forth the joys and torments of another world in a way more suited to our fancy than our understanding thence we read of sitting down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob to represent the happiness of that State and of a gnawing worm and a devouring fire and blackness of darkness to set forth the misery of it But as the happiness of Hâ—aven doth infinitely exceed the most lofty metaphors of Scripture so doth the misery of Hell the most dreadful representation that can be made of it Although a worm gnawing our entrails and a fire consuming our outward parts be very sensible and moving metaphors yet they cannot fully express the anguish and torment of the soul which must be so much greater as it is more active and sensible than our bodies can be Take a man that afflicts himself under the sense of some intolerable disgrace or calamity befallen him or that is oppressed with the guilt of some horrid wickedness or sunk into the depth of despair the Agonies and Torments of his Mind may make us apprehend the nature of that misery although he falls short of the degrees of it And were this misery to be of no long continuance yet the terror of it must needs be great but when the worm shall never dye and the fire shall never be quenched when insupportable misery shall be everlasting nothing can then be added to the terrour of it and this is as plainly contained in the sentence of wicked men as any thing else is But here men think they may justly plead with God and talk with him of his judgments what proportion say they is there between the sins of this short life and the eternal misery of another which objection is not so great in it self as it appears to be by the weak answers which have been made to it When to assign a proportion they have made a strange kind of infinity in sin either from the object which unavoidably makes all sins equal or from the wish of a sinner that he might have an eternity to sin in which is to make the justice of God's punishments to be not according to their works but to their wishes But we need not strain things so much beyond what they will bear to vindicate God's Justice in this matter Is it not thought just and reasonable among men for a man to be confined to perpetual imprisonment for a fault he was not half an hour in committing Nay do not all the Laws of the world make death the punishment of some crimes which may be very suddenly done And what is death but the eternal depriving a man of all the comforts of life And shall a thing then so constantly practised and universally justified in the world be thought unreasonale when it is applyed to God It is true may some say if annihilation were all that was meant by eternal death there could be no exception against it but I ask whether it would be unjust for the Laws of men to take away the lives of offenders in case their souls survive their bodies and they be for ever sensible of the loss of life if not why shall not God presâ—rve the honour of his Laws and vindicate his Authority in governing the world by â—entencing obstinate sinners to the greatest misery though their souls live foâ— ever in the appreâ—ension of it Especially since God hath declared these things so evidently before-hand and made them part of his Laws and set everlasting life on the other side to ballance everlasting misery and proposed them to a sinner's choice in such a manner that nothing but contempt of God and his Grace and wilâ—ul impenitency can ever betray men into this dreadful State of eternal destruction 2. Thus much for the Argument used by the Apostle the terrour of the Lord I now come to the assurance he expresseth of the truth of it Knowing therefore the terrour of the Lord we perswade men We have two ways of proving Articles of Faith such as this concerning Christ's coming to judgment is 1. By shewing that there is nothing unreasonable in the belief of them 2. That there is sufficient evidence of the truth and certainty of them In the former of these it is of excellent use to produce the common apprehensions of mankind as to a future judgment and the several arguments insisted on to that purpose for if this were an unreasonable thing to believe how come men without Revelation to agree about it as a thing very just and reasonable If the conflagration of the world were an impossible thing how came it to be so anciently received by the eldest and wisest Philosophers How came it to be maintained by those two Sects which were St. Paul's enemies when he preached at Athens and always enemies to each other the Epicureans and the Stoicks It is true they made these conflagrations to be periodical and not final but we do not establish the belief of our doctrine upon their assertion but from thence shew that is a most unreasonable thing to reject that as impossible to be done which they assert hath been and may be often done But for the truth and certainty of our doctrine we build that upon no less a foundation than the word of God himself We may think a judgment to come reasonable in general upon the consideration of the goodness and wisdom and justice of God but all that depends upon this supposition that God doth govern the world by Laws and not by Power but since God himself hath declared it who is the Supreme Judge of the world that he will bring every work into judgment whether it be good or evil since the Son of God made this so great a part of his doctrine with all the circumstances of his own coming for again this end since he opened the commission he received from the Father for this purpose when he was upon earth by declaring that the Father had committed all judgment to the Son and that the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth they that have done good to the resurrection of life and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation Since
of Baubles are in request at the Indies or whether the Customs of China or Iapan are the wiser i. e. than the most trifling things and the remotest from our knowledge But this is to absurd and unreasonable to suppose that men should not think themselves concerned in their own eternal happiness and misery that I shall not shew so much distrust of their understandings to speak any longer to it 3. But if notwithstanding all these things our neglect still continues then there remains nothing but a fearful looking for of judgement and the fiery indignation of God For there is no possibility of escaping if we continue to neglect so great salvation All hopes of escaping are taken away which are only in that which men neglect and those who neglect their only way to salvation must needs be miserable How can that man ever hope to be saved by him whose blood he despises and tramples under foot What grace and favour can he expect from God who hath done despight unto the Spirit of Grace That hath cast away with reproach and contempt the greatest kindness and offers of Heaven What can save him that resolves to be damned and every one does so who knows he shall be damned if he lives in his sins and yet continues to do so God himself in whose only pity our hopes are hath irreversibly decreed that he will have no pity upon those who despise his goodness slight his threatnings abuse his patience and sin the more because he offers to pardon It is not any delight that God takes in the miseries of his Creatures which makes him punish them but shall not God vindicate his own honour against obstinate and impenitent sinners He declares before-hand that he is far from delighting in their ruine and that is the reason he hath made such large offers and used so many means to make them happy but if men resolve to despise his offers and slight the means of their salvation shall not God be just without being thought to be cruel And we may assure our selves none shall ever suffer beyond the just desert of their sins for punishment as the Apostle tells us in the words before the Text is nothing but a just recompence of reward And if there were such a one proportionable to the violation of the Law delivered by Angels how shall we think to escape who neglect a more excellent means of happiness which was delivered by our Lord himself If God did not hate sin and there were not a punishment belonging to it why did the Son of God die for the expiation of it and if his death were the only means of expiation how is it possible that those who neglect that should escape the punishment not only of their other sins but of that great contempt of the means of our salvation by him Let us not then think to trifle with God as though it were impossible a Being so merciful and kind should ever punish his Creatures with the miseries of another life For however we may deceive our selves God will not be mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap for he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting I shall only propound some few Considerations to prevent so great a neglect as that of your salvation is 1. Consider what it is you neglect the offer of Eternal Happiness the greatest kindness that ever was expressed to the World the foundation of your present peace the end of your beings the stay of your minds the great desire of your Souls the utmost felicity that humane Nature is capable of Is it nothing to neglect the favour of a Prince the kindness of Great Men the offers of a large and plentiful Estate but these are nothing to the neglect of the favour of God the love of his Son and that salvation which he hath purchased for you Nay it is not a bare neglect but it implies in it a mighty contempt not only of the things offered but of the kindness of him who offers them If men had any due regard for God or themselves if they had any esteem for his love or their own welfare they would be much more serious in Religion than they are When I see a person wholly immersed in affairs of the World or spending his time in luxury and vanity can I possibly think that man hath any esteem of God or of his own Soul When I find one very serious in the pursuit of his Designs in the World thoughtful and busie subtle in contriving them careful in managing them but very formal remiss and negligent in all affairs of Religion neither inquisitive about them nor serious in minding them what can we otherwise think but that such a one doth really think the things of the World better worth looking after than those which concern his eternal salvation But consider before it be too late and repent of so great folly Value an immortal Soul as you ought to do think what Reconciliation with God and the Pardon of sin is worth slight not the dear Purchase which was bought at no meaner a rate than the Blood of the Son of God and then you cannot but mind the great salvation which God hath tendered you 2. Consider on what terms you neglect it or what the things are for whose sake you are so great enemies to your own salvation Have you ever found that contentment in sin or the vanities of the World that for the sake of them you are willing to be for ever miserable What will you think of all your debaucheries and your neglects of God and your selves when you come to die what would you then if it were in your power to redeem your lost time that you had spent your time less to the satisfaction of your sensual desires and more in seeking to please God How uncomfortable will the remembrance be of all your excesses oaths injustice and profaneness when death approaches and judgement follows it What peace of mind will there then be to those who have served God with faithfulness and have endeavoured to work out their salvation though it hath been with fear and trembling But what would it then profit a man to have gained the whole World and to lose his own Soul Nay what unspeakable losers must they then be that lose their Souls for that which hath no value at all if compared with the World 3. Consider what follows upon this neglect not only the loss of great salvation but the incurring as great damnation for it The Scripture describes the miseries of the life to come not meerly by negatives but by the most sensible and painful things If destruction be dreadful what is everlasting destruction if the anguish of the soul and the pains of the body be so troublesome what will the destruction be both of Body and Soul in Hell If a Serpent
but an Ordinance of God and they who do so shall in the mildest sense receive a severe punishment from him Let the pretences be never so popular the persons never so great and famous nay though they were of the great Council of the Nation yet we see God doth not abate of his severity upon any of these considerations This was the first formed sedition that we read of against Moses the people had been murmuring before but they wanted heads to manage them Now all things concur to a most dangerous Rebellion upon the most popular pretences of Religion and Liberty and now God takes the first opportunity of declaring his hatred of such actions that others might hear and fear and do no more so presumptuously This hath been the usual method of divine Judgments the first of the kind hath been most remarkably punished in this life that by it they may see how hateful such things are to God but if Men will venture upon them notwithstanding God doth not always punish them so much in this world though he sometimes doth but reserves them without repentance to his Justice in the world to come The first man that sinned was made an example of God's Justice The first world the first publick attempt against Heaven at Babel after the plantation of the world again the first Cities which were so generally corrupted after the flood the first breaker of the Sabbath after the Law the first oâ—â—erers with strange fire the first lookers into the Ark and here the first popular Rebellion and Usurpers of the office of Priesthood God doth hereby intend to preserve the honour of his Laws he gives men warning enough by ore exemplary punishment and if notwithstanding that they will commit the same sin they may thank themselves if they suffer for it if not in this life yet in that to come And that good effect this Judgment had upon that people that although the next day 14000 suffered for murmuring at the destruction of these men yet we do not find that any Rebellion was raised among them afterwards upon these popular pretences of Religion and the Power of the People While their Judges continued who were Kings without the state and title of Kings they were observed with reverence and obeyed with diligence When afterwards they desired a King with all the Pomp and Grandeur which other Nations had which Samuel acquaints them with viz. the Officers and Souldiers the large Revenues he must have though their King was disowned by God yet the people held firm in their obedience to him and David himself though anointed to be King persecuted by Saul and though he might have pleaded Necessity and Providence as much as any ever could when Saul was strangely delivered into his hands yet we see what an opinion he had of the person of a bad King The Lord forbid that I should do this thing against my Master the Lord 's Anointed to stretch forth my hand against him seeing he is the Anointed of the Lord. And lest we should think it was only his Modesty or his Policy which kept him from doing it he afterwards upon a like occasion declares it was only the sin of doing it which kept him from it For who can stretch forth his hand against the Lords Anointed and be guiltless Not as though David could not do it without the power of the Sanhedrin as it hath been pretended by the Sons of Corah in our age for he excepts none he never seizes upon him to carry him prisoner to be tryed by the Sanhedrin nor is there any foundation for any such power in the Sanhedrin over the persons of their Soveraigns It neither being contained in the grounds of its institution nor any precedent occurring in the whole story of the Bible which gives the least countenance to it Nay several passages of Scripture utterly overthrow it for how could Solomon have said Where the word of a King is there is power and who may say unto him what dost thou If by the constitution of their Government the Sanhedrin might have controlled him in what he said or did But have not several of the modern Iews said so Granting that some have yet so they have spoken many unreasonable and foolish things besides but yet none of these have said that it was in the power of the Sanhedrin to depose their Kings or put them to death all that they say is that in the cases expressed by the Law if the Kings do transgress the Sanhedrin had the power of inflicting the penalty of scourging which yet they deny to have had any infamy in it among them But did not David transgress the Law in his murder and adultery did not Solomon in the multitude of his wives and Idolatry yet where do we read that the Sanhedrin ever took cognizance of these things And the more ancient Iews do say That the King was not to be judged as is plain in the Text of the Misna however the Expositors have taken a liberty to contradict it but as far as we can find without any foundation of reason and R. Ieremiah in Nachmanides saith expresly That no creature may judge the King but the holy and blessed God alone But we have an Authority far greater than his viz. of David's in this case who after he hath denied that any man can stretch forth his hand against the Lord 's Anointed and be guiltless in the very next words he submits the judgment of him only to God himself saying As the Lord liveth the Lord shall smite him or his day shall come to die or he shall descend into battle and perish He thought it sufficient to leave the judgment of those things to God whose power over Princes he knew was enough if well considered by them to keep them in awe We have now dispatched the first consideration of the words of the Text as they relate to the fact of Corah and his company 2. We ought now to enquire whether the Christian Doctrine hath made any alteration in these things or whether that gives any greater encouragement to faction and sedition than the Law did when it is masked under a pretence of zeal for Religion and Liberty But it is so far from it that what God then declared to be displeasing to him by such remarkable judgments hath been now more fully manifested by frequent precepts and vehement exhortations by the most weighty arguments and the constant practice of the first and the best of Christians and by the black character which is set upon those who under a pretence of Christian Liberty did despise dominion and speak evil of dignities and follow Corah in his Rebellion however they may please themselves with greater light than former ages had in this matter they are said to be such for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever It would take up too much time to examine the frivolous evasions and
the Roman Power What shall we say then to these things Have we any ground to suspect the truth of the story as either made by Christians in hatred of the Jews or improved mightilâ— to their disadvantage Not so certainly when all the circumstances are related by Jewish and Roman Writers who had no kindness at all for Christians Or shall we say there was nothing extraordinary in all this but that the Jews were a wild and seditious people that destroyed themselves and their nation but it is evident they were not always so they had been a people that had flourished with the reputation of wisdom and conduct and had great success against their enemies And the Romans themselves at this time acknowledged they never saw a people of a more invincible spirit and less afraid of dying than these were But all this turned to their great prejudice and they who had been so famous in former ages for miraculous deliverances from the power of their enemies were now not only given up into their hands but into those which were far more cruel which were their own What then can we imagine should make so great an alteration in the State of their affairs now but that God was their friend then and their enemy now He gave then success beyond their Counsels and without preparation now he blasts all their desâ—gns divides their counsels and makes their contrivances end in their speedier ruine Now they felt the effâ—ct of what God had threatned long before Woe he unto you when I depart from you Now their strength their wisdom their peace their honour their safety were all departed from them Whereby we see how mucâ— the welfare of a Nation depâ—nds upon God's Favour and that no other security is comparable to that of true Religion The Nation of the Jews was for all that we know never more numerous than at this time never more resolute and couragious to venture their lives never better provided of fortified Towns and strong places of retreat and all provisions for War but there was a hand-writing upon the Wall against them Mene Tekel Peres God had weigh'd them in the ballance and found them too light he divides their Nation and removes his Kingdom from them and leaves them to an utter desolation Neither can we say this was some present infatuation upon them for ever since all their attempts for recovering their own land have but increased their miseries and made their condition worse than before Witness that great attempt under Barchocebas in the time of Adrian in which the Jews themselves say there perished double the number of what came out of Egypt i. e. above 1200000 men After which they were not only wholly banished their land but forbid so much as to look on the place where the Temple had stood and were fain to purchase at a dear rate the liberty of weeping over it ut qui quondam emerant sanguinem Christi emanâ— lachrymas suâ—s as St. Hierom seaks i. e. that they who had bought the blood of Christ were now fain to buy their own tears It would be endless to pursue the miseries of this wretched people in all ages ever since the slavery disgrace universal contempt the frequent banishments confiscations of estates constant oppressions which they have laboured under So that from that time to this they have scarce had any Estates but never any Country which they could call their own So that St. Augustin hath truly said the curse of Cain is upon them for they are vagabonds in the earth they have a mark upon them so that they are not destroyed and yet are in continual fear of being so God seems to preserve that miserable Nation in being to be a constant warâ—ing to all others to let them see what a difference in the same people the Favour or Displeasure of God can make and how severe the Judgements of God are upon those who are obstinate and disobedient 2. They make the Kingdom of God to consist in the flourishing of their State or that Polity which God established among them He was himself once their immediate Governour and thereâ—ore it might be properly called his Kingdom and after they had Kings of their own their plenty and prosperity did so much depend on the kindness of Heaven to them that all the days of their flourishing condition migh be justly attributed to a more than ordinary providence that watched over them For if we consider how small in comparison the extent and compass of the whole land of Iudea was being as Saint Hierom saith who knew it well but 160 miles in length from Dan to Beersheba and 46 in breadth from Ioppa to Bethlehem if we consider likewise the vast number of its inhabitants there being at David's numbering the people 1500000 fighting men who ought not to be reckoned above a fourth part of the whole and Benjamin and Levi not taken in if we add to these the many rocks mountains and desarts in this small country and that every seven years the most fertile places must lye fallow we may justly wonder how all this number of people should prosper so much in so narrow a territory For although we ought not to measure the rules of Eastern diet by those of our Northern Climates and it be withall true that the number of people add both to the riches and plenty of it and that the fertile places of that land were so almost to a miracle yet considering their scarcity of rain and their Sabbatical years we must have recourse to an immediate care of heaven which provided for all their necessities and filled their stores to so great abundance that Solomon gave to King Hiram every year 20000 measures of wheat and twenty measures of oyl every one of which contained about 30 bushels And God himself had particularly promised to give them the former and the latter rain and that they might have no occasion to complain of their Sabbatical years every sixth year should afford them fruit for 3 years By which we see their plenty depended not so much upon the fat of their land as upon the dew and blessing of heaven And if we farther consider them as environed about with enemies on every side such as were numerous and powerful implacable and subtle it is a perpetual wonder considering the constitution of the Jewish Nation that they should not be destroyed by them For all the males being obliged strictly by the Law to go up three times a year to Hierusalem we should think against all rules of Policy to leave the country naked it seems incredible that their enemies should not over-run the Country and destroy their Wives and Children at that time But all their security was in the promise which God had made neither shall any man desire thy land when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year And to let us see that obedience to