424 LIFE OF 'FAITH. from the clamors of a tumultuous world, to the universal harmony, and perfect uninterrupted love and peace! O, what a blessed change is this ! which, believing now, we shall shortly feel. For an unholy, unrenewed soul, that yesterday was drowned in flesh, and laughed at threatenings, and scorned reproofs, to be sud- denly snatched into another world; and see the heaven that he hath lost, and feel, the hell which he woúld not believe; to fall into the gulf of bottomless eternity, and at once to find that joy and hope" are both departed ; that horror and grief must be his company, and desperation bath locked up the door ! O, what an amazing change is this ! If you think me troublesome for men- tioning such ungrateful things, what a trouble will it be to feel them ! May it teach you to prevent that greater trouble, you may well bear this. Find but a medicine against death, or any security for your continuance here, or any prevention of the change, and I have done; but that which unavoidably must be seen, should be foreseen. But the unseen world is not thus mutable : eternal life is begun in thebeliever. The church is built on Christ the rock ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Fix here, and you shall never be removed. (5.) Hence followeth another difference: the mutable creature doth impart a disgraceful mutability to the soul that chooseth it., It disappointeth and deceiveth ; and therefore the ungodly are of one mind to-day, and another to-morrow. In health they are all for pleasure, and commodity, and honor ; and at death they cry out on it as deceitful vanity. In health they cannot abide this strictness, this meditating, and seeking, and ,preparing for the life to come ; but at death or judgment they will be of another mind. Then, .0 that they had beenso wise as to know their time ! And O that they had lived as holy as the best ! They are now the bold opposers and reproachers of a holy life; but then they would be glad it had been their own: they would eat their words, and will be down in the month, and stand to never a word they say, when sight, and sense, and judgment shall convince them. But things unchangeable do fix the soul. Piety is no matter for repentance. Doth the believer speak against sin and sinners, and for a holy, sober, righteous life ? He will do so to the last : death and judgment shall not change his mind in this, but much confirm it ; Rom. viii. 35-37. And therefore he perseveres through sufferings to death: "For this cause we faint, not; but though our outward,man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things
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