PREFACE. 155 terrible execution, to vindicate the veracity, sincerity and wisdom of the pro. Abets and apostles, and Jesus Christ his Son, the greatest and chiefest of his' divine messengers ; and then if the blessed God should at any time, in a con- sistence with his glorious and incomprehensible perfections, release those wretched creatures from their acute pains and long imprisonment in hell; either with a design of the utter destruction of their beings by annihilation, or to put them into some unknown world, upon a new foot of trial, I think 1 ought cheerfully and joyfully to accept this appointment of God, for the good of millions of my fellow- creatures, and add my joys and praises to all the songs and triumphs of the heavenly world, in the day of such a divine and glorious release of these prisoners. But I feel myself under a necessity of confessing, that I am utterly un- able to solve these difficulties according to the discoveries of the New Testa- ment, which must be my constant rule of faith, and hope, and expectation, with regard to myself and others. 1 have read the strongest and best writers on the other side, yet after all my studies I havenot been able to find any way how these difficulties may be removed, and how the divineperfections, and the conduct of God in his word, may be fairly vindicated, without the establish- ment of this doctrine, as awful and formidable as it is. The ways indeed of the great God, and " his thoughts are above our thoughts and our wags, as the heavens are above the earth; Is. Iv. '8, 9. yet I must rest and acquiesce where our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father's chief minister, both of his wrath and his love, bas left me in the divine reve- lations of scripture ; and I am constrained therefore to leave these unhappy creatures under the chains of everlasting darkness, into which they have cast themselves by their wilful iniquities, till the blessed God shall see fit to release them. This would be indeed such a new, such an astonishing and universal jubilee both for devils andwicked men as must fill heaven, earth and hell with hallelujahs and joy: In the mean time it is my ardent wish, that this awful sense of the terrors of the Almighty, and his everlasting anger, which the word of the great God denounces, may awaken some souls timely to bethink themselves of the dreadful danger into which they are running,' b. fore -these terrors seize them at death, and begin to be executed upon them without re- lease and without hope.
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