incapable of attaining to 1J/'dom. 253 ous confequences which grave and ferious S E x M: perfons talk of; this is, as he elfewhere X. fpeaketh, fporting with firebrands, arrows, and death. The prophet Ifaiah, chap. xxviii. 22. advifeth the yews, not to be mockers, left their bands be made f rong, left they be abandoned, in the righteous judgment of God, to the incorrigible hardnefs of their impenitent hearts, without any further means of being reclaimed, and fo their ill condi- tion being remedilefs, they t reafure up wrath to themfelves againft the day of wrath. One of the plaineft defcriptions we meet with of thefe fcorners is in the zd epiftle of St. Peter chap. iii. 3, ¢. Knowing this, that there (hall come in the lafl days fcoffers, walk- ing after their own lulls, and faying, where is the promife of his coming? For lance the fathers fell afleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. They fupport themfelves in their impiety, and found their contempt of religion, upon force fort of reafoning, whereby they ima- gine they prove that the great motives to godlinefs are merely chimerical, and but idle dreams; as in the inftance before us, the fcoffers are reprefented as alledging that there is nothing at all in the promife of God's coming to judge the world, to reward his
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